This is the fourth installment in a four-part series critiquing Matt Yglesias’ support for deregulating the permitting process.
All emphasis (bold text) is mine.
In “Let Joe Manchin have his pipeline” (9/14/22), Yglesias contended that “pipeline-blocking is not an effective strategy” for reducing greenhouse gas emissions:
The goal of the climate movement should be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and pipeline-blocking is not an effective strategy for accomplishing this. But pipeline-blocking as a strategic priority is deeply embedded in the movement because the successful kneecapping of the Keystone XL pipeline has become embedded as a foundational myth of the climate movement.
Ten days later, Yglesias claimed in a Twitter post promoting his pro-Mountain Valley Pipeline piece that “American LNG exports are good.”
In June 2023, when the Mountain Valley Pipeline was given a green light without being accompanied by transmission reforms (as would have been the case had then-Sen. Joe Manchin’s (I-W.Va.) 2022 permitting deal been approved), Yglesias took to social media to repeat his related assertion that climate activists’ generalized opposition to fossil fuel infrastructure reveals a lack of understanding about what’s at stake.
In a piece on “why the IRA is falling short (so far)” (3/1/24), Yglesias wrote that he’s “annoyed by climate activists’ push to curtail LNG exports” because “they haven’t done any formal modeling… of the net emissions impact” of that policy:
One reason I’m so annoyed by climate activists’ push to curtail LNG exports is that they haven’t done any formal modeling, at all, of the net emissions impact of the policy in which they’re advocating. Formal modeling wouldn’t settle the debate, and any given forecast isn’t even particularly likely to be correct. But a formal model would reveal the assumptions these advocates are relying upon. To the extent that activists have thought this through at all, they are relying on out-of-consensus work by Robert Howarth that says LNG is actually dirtier than coal. Precisely because they’re relying on that assumption, they’re not asking a question that’s of interest to most of us who are concerned about this issue: How much does reducing LNG availability boost coal relative to boosting renewables?
It seems to me that most mainstream media coverage of the debate on this hasn’t made the stakes of this technical issue clear.
They treat it as a struggle between Joe Biden’s national security team (which likes the idea of customers buying American rather than Russian or Qatari gas) and political advisors who are networked with climate groups and who want to accomplish everything they can to reduce emissions. And that is, in fact, a real struggle. But the assumption that reducing American exports will reduce emissions is questionable — lots of scientists think Howarth is simply wrong.
I would love to see more people really laying out the work that leads them to different views on the overall policy question.
- If the US curtails LNG exports, how much does that change global consumption of gas vs shifting production to other sources of natural gas?
- If natural gas consumption goes down, how much does coal consumption go up?
- What is the relative emissions impact of coal vs gas?
Even if we don’t have consensus on those questions, it would be good to map out the space of possibilities to really see what we’re arguing about. But all too often, we don’t actually do that.
The post above doubled down on pro-gas arguments that Yglesias had previously made in blogs published on March 31, 2022, and January 31, 2024.
Why Yglesias Is Wrong
Although renewable power advocates have identified alternative pathways to expanding clean energy supply that don’t rely on weakening environmental standards (see here, here, here, here, and here), Yglesias doesn’t seem interested in finding common ground; he’d rather fume about environmentalists impeding methane gas infrastructure. It appears that for Yglesias, restricting any energy supply is bad, whether it’s done through NEPA or through physical interference. His case against blocking pipelines and export terminals rests on the erroneous claim that fracked gas is less polluting than coal.
There is mounting evidence that LNG is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than previously estimated, and ongoing failures to stop methane leakage make it worse for the climate than coal. Yglesias takes aim at Robert Howarth’s 2024 study on the GHG footprint of U.S. LNG exports, but Howarth is not the only scientist coming to these conclusions. Peer-reviewed research published in July 2023 estimated that “a gas system leakage rate as low as 0.2%” puts methane “on par with coal” in terms of climate damage. Meanwhile, “recent aerial measurement surveys of U.S. oil and gas production basins find wide-ranging natural gas leak rates 0.65% to 66.2%, with similar leakage rates detected worldwide.”
Even if methane were better for the climate than coal, the coal-substitution case for fracked gas (i.e., the idea that LNG will displace global coal consumption) is weaker than originally thought because a substantial portion of U.S. LNG exports end up in countries where coal emissions were already set to decline. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC): “The largest current and planned Asian buyers of U.S. LNG are China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand. They all have sizeable coal power plant fleets, but, outside of China and India, none of these other countries are building new coal power plants. China and India combined only account for about 7 percent of current U.S. LNG exports.”
This means that “the vast majority of U.S. LNG is going to oil and gas companies and gas traders who will sell U.S. fossil gas to the highest bidder,” NRDC added. By tethering domestic gas prices to the global market, LNG exports have increased costs for U.S. consumers. Moreover, LNG also poses significant public health risks, as documented by Physicians for Social Responsibility.
European demand for U.S. LNG exports, which spiked in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, have been waning for months, increasing the likelihood that such infrastructure will be abandoned. More concerning than the growing risk of stranded assets, however, is the fact that the recent and ongoing buildout of fracked gas pipelines and export terminals makes it more likely that the world will overshoot its rapidly dwindling carbon budget. As my colleagues Hannah Story Brown and Dylan Gyauch-Lewis wrote for The Nation in November 2023: “The Energy Information Administration is forecasting that US natural gas production and LNG exports will grow through 2050, and a rapid increase in companies signing long-term LNG contracts, like Cheniere’s recent deal to export LNG to Germany’s BASF through 2043, is locking us into this nightmare scenario.”
“This is an especially fraught step backward because fossil energy production’s total lifetime costs skew heavily toward upfront capital expenditures, rather than toward ongoing operating expenses,” Hannah and Dylan observed. “Once fossil fuel companies invest in building new operations, they have a strong financial incentive to continue operating them for their full lifespans. On the flip side, delaying the construction of such capital-intensive infrastructure ensures that a serious transition into clean energy becomes that much more cost-competitive. This makes the obstructionist tactics of environmental protesters seeking to delay fossil fuel projects not only moral but financially strategic as well.”
The photo above is a work of the U.S. federal government and in the public domain.