Today, the White House announced a temporary pause on future Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export terminal projects to include consideration of their climate impact. PPI is concerned that the pause announced today overstates and oversimplifies the serious climate, energy, and foreign policy considerations involved in assessing America’s stance on future LNG export expansion. Europe has still not fully recovered from the energy crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, during which U.S. exports were crucial in providing stability to the European Union.
As PPI has previously noted, we do not oppose a well reasoned climate test for LNG export facilities. But the threat of curtailing LNG exports to our allies will put the markets, the EU, and Asia in turmoil, threatening the energy security of our allies with no climate benefit. Since the invasion of Ukraine, LNG shipments to Europe came at the expense of exports to other U.S. allies and developing-world trading partners that were forced to cut back or burn more coal instead; in the longer run, trading partners with manufacturing and chemicals industries that rely on natural gas cannot simply swap in coal, and so will lose out to countries that rely on older and dirtier production methods fed by coal.
As the U.S. works with importing allies like the EU, Japan, and South Korea to develop standards that ensure low-methane LNG purchases, a transparent and rigorous test could help all exports track the progress made through President Biden’s signature IRA methane policies and fairly stack gas emissions against the climate cost of mining and burning more coal or dirtier Russian gas.
But the tenor of today’s announcement belies the real hopes of most test supporters — in their misguided crusade to keep U.S. natural gas “in the ground,” the activists pushing the test could lead to a world of greater global greenhouse gas emissions as countries that import our gas find dirtier sources, or even revert to coal while killing U.S. jobs and increasing Putin’s leverage in Europe. Speeding up zero-carbon clean energy deployment at home and abroad is a much higher priority for the global fight against climate change, and one that doesn’t pit Democratic constituencies or U.S. allies against each other. The urgency of the energy transition cannot excuse counterproductive purity tests: We need to reduce emissions as fast as possible, not stop producing energy and hoping working people around the world stop needing it.
