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gas certification
Senators Urge FTC Crackdown on Gas Industry 'Greenwashing Scheme'
"It's important our lawmakers are advocating for the government to step in, stop this scam, and regulate gas companies to clean up their mess," said one campaigner.
Feb 12, 2024
Seven U.S. senators on Monday demanded a federal regulatory crackdown on what they described as a "dangerous greenwashing scheme" in the fossil fuel industry: producers hiring so-called gas certification companies to measure operations' methane pollution so they can claim their gas is "preferable from a climate perspective."
"Gas producers sometimes publicly describe their product as 'certified,' 'responsible,' or 'differentiated' and market it as a climate-friendly fossil fuel. But too often these green claims are false or misleading due to opaque methodology, unreliable technology, and unacknowledged downstream climate effects of gas combustion," the senators explained. "Still, many utilities are using so-called 'certified' gas to falsely burnish their climate bona fides, and some charge premiums for gas bearing these often meaningless designations."
"We therefore urge the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate and crack down on unfair and deceptive environmental claims made by fossil fuel producers and gas certification programs, including by updating FTC Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims, informally known as the 'Green Guides,' to expressly provide guidance on the claims those programs can legitimately make," the lawmakers, led by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), wrote to the agency's chair, Lina Khan.
"Our lawmakers are wise to call for a stop to this scam, and get ahead of what's likely to be a mad scramble to greenwash gas."
Markey, a well-established climate champion, was joined by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). As they noted, "natural" gas is mostly made of methane, which has over 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere and has caused about 30% of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution.
"The reality is that gas certification schemes allow the oil and gas industry to justify the continued expansion of methane gas use and undermine efforts towards a just transition to renewables," the senators said. They argued that "there is no incentive to ensure the accuracy of emissions measurements" because the gas producers and certifiers rely on each other for profit.
"Moreover, certified gas schemes directly harm consumers, who end up paying a higher price for gas that might not be as clean as its producers claim," they added, pointing to estimates that "prices for certified gas could be set at 5% higher than market price."
The senators stressed that the "current Green Guides—last updated in 2012—do not specifically address claims about certified gas. In fact, they don't include any guidance for oil and gas marketing whatsoever, in contrast to explicit guidance on misleading claims from gas suppliers and utilities in other countries, such as the United Kingdom."
In addition to pushing for updates to the guidelines and a probe of the industry, the senators asked the FTC leader to respond to a series of related questions by the end of March.
The letter references various research, including an April report from Earthworks and Oil Change International (OCI), which welcomed the senators' attention to the issue amid a worsening climate emergency as a result of fossil fuels.
"We investigated one of the primary companies gas producers pay to 'certify' their fossil fuel as 'clean' or 'responsible'—and found nothing to support their claims," said OCI research director Lorne Stockman. "We put independent pollution monitors at sites the company claimed to track and found over 20 pollution events. The company's monitors missed all of them."
"Private gas 'certification' is flawed because companies have every incentive to claim they're clean, and no repercussions when they instead pollute, poison our air, harm our health, and cause the climate crisis," Stockman added. "It's important our lawmakers are advocating for the government to step in, stop this scam, and regulate gas companies to clean up their mess."
OCI U.S. program manager Allie Rosenbluth highlighted that the letter comes on the heels of the Biden administration's January decision to halt approvals for all liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to non-Fair Trade Agreement countries.
"In response, companies may try to make the desperate case that gas is in the public interest by 'certifying' their gas as 'cleaner,' 'responsibly sourced,' 'climate safe,' or other false advertising," she warned. "Our lawmakers are wise to call for a stop to this scam, and get ahead of what's likely to be a mad scramble to greenwash gas. Only phasing out fossil fuels will solve the climate crisis and protect the health and safety of our communities."
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As EU Parliament Weighs Methane Rules, Green Groups Warn of US 'Certified Gas' Scheme
"Our research shows that gas producers and LNG exporters cannot be trusted to clean up their methane emissions," said Oil Change International's research co-director.
Apr 26, 2023
On the heels of a "damning exposé" of U.S. companies' so-called "certified gas" programs, a pair of green groups this week told members of the European Parliament that "it is crucial to strengthen the measures to regulate methane emissions from fossil fuel imports."
Earthworks and Oil Change International (OCI) sent a two-page summary of the report they released last week, Certified Disaster: How Project Canary & Gas Certification Are Misleading Gas Markets & Governments, with their letter to MEPs, who are discussing rules to reduce methane emissions in the energy sector.
Methane, a potent greenhouse gas with more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere, is to blame for roughly 30% of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution, according to the International Energy Agency.
The European Parliament's environment and industry committees on Wednesday backed legislation aimed at cutting methane emissions.
As Reutersreported:
The committees said the E.U. should require oil and gas companies to check their above-ground infrastructure every two to four months, and repair any methane leaks they discover.
From 2026, the lawmakers said importers of oil and gas into Europe must prove that the overseas suppliers of those fossil fuels do the same.
Given the difficulty of procuring that proof, importers who made "all reasonable endeavors" to get the information, but failed, may be exempted from penalties for failing to comply with the E.U. law.
German MEP Jutta Paulus of the Greens/European Free Alliance parliamentary group warned after Wednesday's vote that "without ambitious measures to reduce methane emissions, Europe will miss its climate targets and valuable energy will continue to be wasted."
"We call for ambitious and stringent methane reduction measures," Paulus added. "In the energy sector, three-quarters of methane emissions can be avoided by simple measures and without large investments. As Europe imports more than 80% of the fossil fuels it burns, [it] is essential to expand the scope of these rules to energy imports."
\u201cMethane emissions\n\nTo reach EU climate goals and improve air quality, MEPs in @ep_environment & @ep_industry today adopted their position on reducing methane emissions in the energy sector with \u2b06\ufe0f114\u2b07\ufe0f150\u20e33\n\nPress release with quote by @JuttaPaulusRLP \u2935\ufe0f\nhttps://t.co/R84jmEHWWZ\u201d— ENVI Committee Press (@ENVI Committee Press) 1682513836
After a planned vote by the full European Parliament next month, the body and bloc members "will negotiate the final methane law," Reuters explained. "E.U. countries want weaker rules for European companies, and only a few—including Germany and Poland—have said they would be willing to extend the E.U. rules to cover fossil fuel imports."
The United States is the world's top producer of natural gas—and as the green groups' letter to MEPs notes, last year, the European Union "was the primary destination" for U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
"Certified gas is a new scheme that U.S. gas producers and LNG exporters are pushing to help clean up America's reputation for producing dirty methane gas," the letter states. As the summary details:
Only recently, oil and gas companies have transitioned from denying their methane pollution to trying to rebrand themselves as part of the "solution." To support those claims, producers are increasingly turning to third-party gas certifiers—companies hired to measure pollution and verify lower-methane emissions.
There is currently no regulation of gas certification. In fact, each certification company uses different criteria, technology, and methodology to certify a client's gas. Once emissions are measured and determined to be below a certain threshold, their gas is considered "certified."
The report and subsequent summary specifically highlight "the failures of Project Canary," which monitors oil and gas wells in Colorado.
"Our research shows that gas producers and LNG exporters cannot be trusted to clean up their methane emissions," said OCI research co-director Lorne Stockman in a statement. "This strengthens the case for rigorous regulation for gas certification programs that ensure the protection of communities and the accuracy of emissions reductions."
"The report recommends greater transparency and accountability for gas certification, a verifiable commitment to transition away from methane gas, and governmental oversight to ensure accurate emissions reductions," he added. "We urge the E.U. and other importers to adopt our recommendations as minimum criteria for documentation of methane emissions associated with gas imports."
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'Damning Exposé' Details Industry Push to Greenwash Fracked Gas as 'Certified'
"We cannot afford to put support behind the next Theranos of climate solutions," said one campaigner.
Apr 18, 2023
The rapidly growing gas certification industry claims to accurately measure methane pollution and verify lower emissions from fracking operations.
But according to Earthworks and Oil Change International, so-called "certified gas" programs—an emerging frontier in the effort to greenwash fossil fuel production—are "likely highly unreliable and ineffective, resulting in increased threats to health and climate."
Certified Disaster: How Project Canary & Gas Certification are Misleading Gas Markets & Governments, a report the two groups published Monday, exposes "on-the-ground failures" to detect methane pollution by Project Canary—one of the largest certifiers of fracked gas in the United States—and implores policymakers to "avoid these follies and shift their time and energy toward facilitating a safe, managed decline in the production, distribution, and use of fossil fuels."
Given that methane traps 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide during its first 20 years in the atmosphere, emissions of the potent greenhouse gas must be slashed substantially this decade to avert the worst effects of the climate crisis. The fossil fuel industry is the leading source of global methane pollution.
"History shows us that global problems attract snake oil salesmen, trying to make money pawning off false solutions... Gas certification is unproven, unregulated nonsense."
In an attempt to justify continued fossil fuel expansion despite mounting scientific evidence of the need to urgently phase out coal, oil, and gas extraction, the industry is pushing to label fracked gas as "responsibly sourced," by which it means less polluting.
To this end, fossil fuel producers are "increasingly hiring companies like Project Canary to certify their operations as meeting a certain standard," Earthworks and Oil Change International explain. "While no standards exist for the certification process, companies are racing ahead to charge a premium for certified gas and secure contracts and expand markets for a greenwashed product."
"Project Canary's marketing aggressively positions its certification services as a conduit to a 'net-zero' emissions world," the report notes. The Colorado-based firm's CEO, Chris Romer, "has openly discussed fixing the gas industry's 'brand problem,'" admitting that "Project Canary's 'goal' is to allow the oil and gas industry to maintain 'a social license to operate' and that 'clean' certified carbon will allow the industry to operate 'for many decades to come.'"
"We are going to be able to solve climate change with measurement," Romer asserted last year. And yet, as the report points out, "Project Canary monitors consistently fail to detect pollution events."
During a seven-month field investigation (May-November 2022) of 30 different oil and gas production sites along Colorado's Front Range where Project Canary and similar monitors are installed, Earthworks' trained thermographers recorded 22 significant pollution events using Optical Gas Imaging (OGI) cameras capable of detecting emissions invisible to the naked eye.
None of the 22 OGI-documented pollution events were detected by the Continuous Emissions Monitors (CEMs) used by Project Canary and other companies.
The following video shows how Project Canary and similar monitoring technologies fail to detect methane pollution.
"How can Project Canary measure and certify methane emissions if it can't even detect them?" the video asks.
Other key findings of the report include:
- Lack of Transparency: Despite claims of 'radical transparency' and third-party verification, there is limited access for regulators, academics, or the public to confirm data generated in the certification process.
- Conflicts of Interest: Evidence suggests that a key Project Canary director and advisory board members have direct financial investments in the same gas companies it certifies.
"History shows us that global problems attract snake oil salesmen, trying to make money pawning off false solutions," report co-author Josh Eisenfeld, corporate accountability campaign manager at Earthworks, said in a statement. "We cannot afford to put support behind the next Theranos of climate solutions."
"Over and over again we found that the monitors Project Canary uses to certify gas were failing to detect significant pollution events in the field, the very pollution that they claim to be monitoring," said Eisenfeld. "What we found in the field is just further evidence of what we have been hearing from industry insiders: Gas certification is unproven, unregulated nonsense."
\u201cWow. This is a damning expos\u00e9 of the notion of "certified gas" as peddled by Project Canary and others. The monitors seemed designed to fail. A must-read for any regulators considering allowing utilities to charge more for this.\n\nhttps://t.co/QI1cHnAcdu\u201d— David Pomerantz (@David Pomerantz) 1681760086
Earthworks and Oil Change International call for "federal oversight for gas certification programs that ensure the protection of communities and the accuracy of emissions reductions." In addition, they demand "greater transparency and accountability for gas certification and a verifiable commitment to transition away from methane gas to truly clean and renewable energy sources in line with climate science."
As the groups note: "The report comes just as the European Parliament considers methane regulations requiring fossil fuel imports into the E.U., such as U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG), to meet emissions criteria. This report makes clear that current efforts by U.S. gas producers and exporters to quantify and report the emissions associated with their cargoes cannot be trusted. It is imperative that the E.U. and other importers adopt the recommendations in this report as minimum criteria for documentation of methane emissions associated with gas imports."
"It's time to end the greenwashing of gas and focus on genuine climate solutions such as energy efficiency, electrification, and renewable energy."
Last year, the U.S. became the world's top exporter of LNG, which is methane gas that has been chilled and liquefied after being extracted through fracking or conventional drilling. Ahead of last week's G7 meeting, climate justice advocates told the Biden administration, which has helped Big Oil secure dozens of long-term fracked gas export contracts amid Russia's war on Ukraine, that "the global LNG boom must be stopped in its tracks"—a demand that went ignored.
On Monday, Lorne Stockman, co-director of research at Oil Change International and co-author of the new report, warned that "certified gas is being used to greenwash U.S. gas and LNG, creating a false narrative that expanded use of methane gas plays a role in the energy transition."
"This is simply not true," said Stockman. "Our report shows that Project Canary is misleading the public and investors about the true impacts of methane gas and must be held accountable."
"It's time," he added, "to end the greenwashing of gas and focus on genuine climate solutions such as energy efficiency, electrification, and renewable energy."
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