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air quality
'Right Thing to Do': FERC Delays Controversial LNG Export Terminal
"We are happy about the delay, but these projects don't ever need to be approved and neither does any other LNG facility," one frontline advocate said.
Dec 04, 2024
Frontline communities along the Gulf Coast were granted a "temporary reprieve" last week when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission moved to pause its approval of the controversial Calcasieu Pass 2 liquefied natural gas export terminal while it conducts an assessment of its impact on air quality.
FERC approved Venture Global's CP2 in late June despite opposition from local residents who say the company's nearly identical Calcasieu Pass terminal has already wracked up a history of air quality violations and disturbed ecosystems and fishing grounds in Louisiana's Cameron Parish, harming health and livelihoods.
"This order reveals that FERC recognizes that CP2 LNG's environmental impacts are too great to pass through any real scrutiny" Megan Gibson, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), said in a statement on Monday.
"FERC's pause on construction may give us some temporary reprieve, but this project never should have been authorized in the first place."
FERC's decision follows a request for a rehearing of its June decision filed by frontline residents and community groups including For a Better Bayou and Fishermen Involved in Sustaining Our Heritage (FISH) as well as the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. In their request, the groups and individuals pointed to errors the commission had made in its approval decision.
"With this order, it seems FERC is finally willing to acknowledge that it has not done enough to properly consider the cumulative harm on communities caused by building so many of these LNG export terminals so close together," Nathan Matthews, a Sierra Club senior attorney, said in a statement. "Prohibiting construction of CP2 LNG while FERC takes another look at the environmental impact of this massive, polluting facility is the right thing to do."
"Still," Matthews continued, "FERC must take concrete steps to properly evaluate the true scope of the dangers posed to communities from gas infrastructure moving forward and avoid making unwarranted approvals in the future."
FERC's decision comes over four months after the D.C. Circuit Court remanded the commission's approval of Commonwealth LNG, also in Louisiana, over concerns that it had not fully assessed the impacts of that project's air pollution emissions. Now, frontline advocates are urging FERC to do its due diligence as it weighs the environmental impacts of CP2.
"Through the lenses of optical gas imaging, we've seen massive plumes of toxic emissions, undeniable proof that these projects poison the air we breathe," James Hiatt, director of For a Better Bayou, said of LNG export facilities. "Modeling must use the latest data from the most local sources to fully capture the harm these facilities inflict on Cameron Parish. Anything less is a betrayal of our community. FERC must choose justice over profit and stop sacrificing people for polluters."
Gibson of SELC said that FERC had already repeated some of the errors in its CP2 approval in its new order.
"This continued failure to fulfill its regulatory duty is not just an oversight—it is a failure to protect vulnerable communities and our economy from the real potential harms of this massive export project," Gibson said.
FERC's decision comes as the fate of the LNG buildout itself hangs in the balance. The Biden administration's Department of Energy is currently rushing to complete its renewed assessment of whether or not LNG exports serve the public interest. Environmental and frontline groups have argued that they do not because of local pollution, the fact that they would raise domestic energy bills, and their contribution to the climate emergency. CP2 alone would spew 8,510,099 metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent per year, which is about the same as adding 1,850,000 new gas cars to the road.
While President-elect Donald Trump has promised to "drill, baby, drill" and is likely to disregard any Biden administration conclusions, a strong outgoing statement against LNG exports would help bolster legal challenges to Trump energy policy.
At the same time, Bill McKibben pointed out in a column on Tuesday that the administration's pause on LNG export approvals while it updates its public interest criteria has acted to slow the industry's expansion, and that FERC's reconsideration of CP2 could add to this delay.
"The vote for the new review is 4-0, and bipartisan," McKibben wrote. "It could slow down approvals for the project till, perhaps, the third quarter of next year. And that's good news, because the rationale for new LNG exports shrinks with each passing month, as the gap between the price of clean solar, wind, and battery power, and the price of fossil fuel, continues to grow."
Ultimately, frontline Gulf Coast advocates want to see the LNG buildout halted entirely.
"I, along with the fishermen in Cameron, Louisiana, know firsthand how harmful LNG exports are, and see the total disregard they have for human life as they poison our families and seafood," said FISH founder Travis Dardar, an Indigenous fisherman in Cameron, Louisiana. "FERC's pause on construction may give us some temporary reprieve, but this project never should have been authorized in the first place. As far as anyone who believes in the fairytale of LNG being cleaner, we have paid with our communities and livelihoods. It's time to break these chains and turn away from this false solution."
Roisheta Ozaine, a prominent anti-LNG activist and founder of the Vessel Project of Louisiana, said that she, as a mother in an environmental justice community, saw "firsthand how LNG facilities prioritize profit over the well-being of our families. Commonwealth and CP2 are no different."
"We are happy about the delay, but these projects don't ever need to be approved and neither does any other LNG facility," Ozane continued. "My children are suffering from health conditions that threaten their daily lives, all while regulatory agencies and elected officials turn a blind eye. It's time for our leaders to put people before profit and prioritize the health of our communities over the pollution that harms us. We deserve a future where our children's health is safeguarded, not sacrificed."
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Only 7 Countries Meet WHO's Air Quality Guidelines as Fossil Fuels Worsen Pollution
"The science is pretty clear about the impacts of air pollution and yet we are so accustomed to having a background level of pollution that's too high to be healthy," said an official at Swiss firm IQAir.
Mar 19, 2024
A Swiss air quality monitoring firm on Tuesday said its latest worldwide data reveals the need for more walkable cities and a swift transition away from planet-heating fossil fuels, as just 7 out of 134 countries were found to meet global standards for dangerous air pollution.
IQAir found that Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius, and New Zealand were the only countries that met the World Health Organization's (WHO) guidelines for particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) pollution, which is made up of microscopic airborne particles and can become embedded in peoples' lungs and even their bloodstreams, especially in cases of high exposure.
Three territories—Bermuda, French Polynesia, and Puerto Rico—also met WHO's standard.
PM2.5 can cause or aggravate asthma and has been linked to worsened lung function, heart attacks, respiratory ailments, and irregular heartbeat.
While IQAir measured countries' air quality against WHO's guideline for "safe" PM2.5 levels—five micrograms per cubic meter—U.S. scientists found last month that there is no safe amount of PM2.5 for humans.
IQAir found that PM2.5 levels were highest in the Global South. Bangladesh was found to have more than 15 times the amount of PM2.5 pollution than what is advised by WHO, while Pakistan's level was 14 times higher. The most polluted metropolitan area in 2023 was Begusarai, India, and India had four of most polluted cities in the world.
But "things have gone backwards" in wealthy countries as well, Glory Dolphin Hammes, North America chief executive of IQAir, told The Guardian, particularly as planetary heating has fueled wildfires like those that stunned scientists in Canada and Europe last year.
Canada, long a leader in air quality, had a PM2.5 level of 10.3 in 2023, and air quality across North America was "significantly influenced by extensive Canadian wildfires that raged from May to October." More than 40% of Canadian cities recorded annual PM2.5 levels that exceeded 10 micrograms per cubic meter. Eleven percent, or 35 cities, exceeded 15 micrograms per cubic meter, compared to just a single city in 2022.
World Weather Attribution directly linked Canada's wildfires to the climate emergency,
saying fossil fuel combustion and the resulting planetary heating made the blazes twice as likely.
The country's PM2.5 levels last year showed that governments "should act to make their cities more walkable and less reliant upon cars, amend forestry practices to help curtail the impact of wildfire smoke, and move more quickly to embrace clean energy in place of fossil fuels," Hammes told The Guardian.
"The science is pretty clear about the impacts of air pollution and yet we are so accustomed to having a background level of pollution that's too high to be healthy," she said. "We are not making adjustments fast enough."
Robb Barnes, climate program director for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, said the report shows Canada is "no exception" as governments are urged to confront the fact that "climate change, pollution, and burning fossil fuels is disastrous for human health."
Air pollution is blamed for an estimated 7 million premature deaths each year, with countries in the Global South—where clean energy sources are less available for heating and other uses—reporting the most deaths linked to PM2.5.
Frank Hammes, global CEO of IQAir, noted that much of the Global South, including many countries in Africa, lack air quality monitoring mechanisms.
"A clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a universal human right. In many parts of the world the lack of air quality data delays decisive action and perpetuates unnecessary human suffering," said Hammes in a statement. "Air quality data saves lives."
In order to prevent more premature deaths linked to PM2.5 pollution, the report said, policymakers in Canada and other wealthy countries where air quality suffered in 2023 must take decisive steps to decrease PM2.5 emissions from fossil fuel-powered vehicles, power plants, and industrial processes, including:
- Broadening the adoption of renewable, clean energy in public transportation systems;
- Providing subsidies for battery-powered and human-powered modes of transportation;
- Championing infrastructure projects that enhance pedestrian mobility; and
- Introducing incentive programs to stimulate the adoption of clean air vehicles for commercial and personal purposes.
"IQAir's annual report illustrates the international nature and inequitable consequences of the enduring air pollution crisis," said Aidan Farrow, senior air quality scientist for Greenpeace International. "In 2023 air pollution remained a global health catastrophe. IQAir's global data set provides an important reminder of the resulting injustices and the need to implement the many solutions that exist to this problem."
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Global Air Pollution Is Cutting More Than 2 Years Off Average Human Life Expectancy: Report
"Particulate pollution remains the world's greatest external risk to human health, with the impact on life expectancy comparable to that of smoking."
Aug 29, 2023
High and rising levels of global particulate matter pollution—caused by wildfires, the combustion of fossil fuels, and other factors—are cutting 2.3 years off of the average human's life expectancy, according to research unveiled Tuesday.
The latest version of the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI), produced annually by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), estimates that fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution's impact on global human life expectancy is "comparable to that of smoking, more than three times that of alcohol use and unsafe water, more than five times that of transport injuries like car crashes, and more than seven times that of HIV/AIDS."
Despite the terrible impact of air pollution on human health, governments around the world are doing little to address the crisis, according to EPIC's research.
"While there is a large global fund for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis that annually disburses 4 billion USD toward the issues, there is no equivalent set of coordinated resources for air pollution," the new report states. "The entire continent of Africa receives under 300,000 USD in philanthropic funds toward air pollution. Just 1.4 million USD goes to Asia (outside of China and India). Europe, the United States, and Canada receive 34 million USD, according to the Clean Air Fund."
Michael Greenstone, a creator of the AQLI, noted in a statement that "three-quarters of air pollution's impact on global life expectancy occurs in just six countries, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, China, Nigeria, and Indonesia, where people lose one to more than six years off their lives because of the air they breathe."
In the United States, 20 of the 30 most polluted counties in 2021 were in California, which saw more than 8,800 fires that year. Plumas County, California was the most polluted area of the U.S. in 2021.
The new research estimates that Plumas residents could gain 2.1 years of life expectancy if air quality in the California county is brought into line with World Health Organization (WHO) air quality standards.
EPIC's report notes that the annual average PM2.5 level worldwide "has shifted between 3.8 to 7.2 times the WHO guideline, making air pollution the greatest external threat to human health globally."
Reducing global air pollution to levels recommended by the WHO would save a combined 17.8 billion life-years worldwide, according to EPIC.
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