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The fossil fuel lobby has now supersized their hostage demands with the single-minded goal of guarding against an incoming Harris administration by mandating a steady stream of fossil fuel leases and permits.
The hardest lesson I have learned over my career working on climate policy is to never underestimate the power and craftiness of the fossil fuel lobby. The evidence of their success: global fossil fuel consumption and emissions were higher in 2023 than at any time in history. That, in a nutshell, is how we are losing the fight against climate change.
This is why I grew alarmed when U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), the fossil fuel industry’s strongest champion in Congress, rushed a new energy deal through his committee late last month before it could be properly scrutinized. Manchin will give up his energy gavel when he retires this year. This is his last hurrah, and it’s a doozy.
The Energy Permitting Reform Act combines significant reforms in electricity transmission—potentially unlocking big gains in renewable energy—with coal, oil, and gas boons that would be big wins for the fossil fuel lobby.
The permitting laws surrounding oil, gas, and coal leases and permits may be an arcane abstraction to most analysts, but they are the keys to the energy kingdom to fossil fuel industries intent on expanding production for decades to come.
Now energy analysts are in the hot seat as they are asked to validate whether this energy bargain is a good deal for the planet.
The lessons from a similar energy deal in 2015 should give anyone pause before joining the Manchin parade. The 2015 budget deal paired renewable energy tax credits with a provision to lift the decades-old ban on exporting U.S. crude oil. Energy analysts rushed to validate the bargain. Those clean energy provisions would “dwarf the impact on carbon emissions of allowing oil exports,” wrote Michael Levi in an analysis widely quoted at the time.
To quell fears about the oil provisions, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sent a letter, writing: “While lifting the oil export ban remains atrocious policy, the wind and solar tax credits in the omnibus will eliminate around 10 times more carbon pollution than the exports of oil will add.”
Her appeal worked. The bill passed. Contrary to the assurances of energy experts, the oil export floodgates opened. Crude exports surged from zero to 4 million barrels a day today. This growth in exports was 20 times higher than the worst-case scenario forecasted in 2015 by Levi, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), and others.
As I said at the start, the oil lobby is smart. They knew that fracking technology was going to transform oil and gas production, but they needed new markets.
The 2015 experience should caution everyone to step back and look more closely at what the fossil fuel lobby helped Manchin write behind closed doors. The permitting laws surrounding oil, gas, and coal leases and permits may be an arcane abstraction to most analysts, but they are the keys to the energy kingdom to fossil fuel industries intent on expanding production for decades to come.
There is ample cause for concern. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Manchin’s co-author, gloats that the bill “guarantee[s] future access to oil and natural gas resources on federal lands and waters” in ways that not even former U.S. President Donald Trump could do under current law. Further, he says that “it will permanently end President Joe Biden’s reckless ban on new liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board agrees, urging Trump to “steal a march on Kamala Harris by endorsing” Manchin’s energy bill.
Changing the law in order to expedite new fossil fuel infrastructure can directly threaten global climate goals. The IPCC, the world’s leading authority on climate science, warned in their 2022 report that “cancellation of plans for new fossil fuel infrastructures” is needed to avoid “significant carbon lock-ins, stranded assets, and other additional costs” and potentially putting the Paris climate goals “out of reach” (p. 267).
Similarly, the International Energy Agency, the world’s leading tracker of global energy trends, concluded in their 2023 World Energy Outlook that “investment in oil and gas today is almost double the level required in the [net zero emissions scenario] in 2030, signaling a clear risk of protracted fossil fuel use that would put the 1.5°C goal out of reach” (p. 19).
Every energy bill ever passed by Congress has some degree of “hold your nose” compromise. Even the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the most important piece of climate legislation ever enacted, gave some ground, tying oil and gas leases together with offshore wind leases in a Beltway version of a shotgun wedding.
But the fossil fuel lobby has now supersized their hostage demands with the single-minded goal of guarding against an incoming Harris administration by mandating a steady stream of fossil fuel leases and permits.
In a separate analysis (update available here), I calculated the energy and greenhouse gas impacts of the LNG portion of the Manchin bill. The five LNG liquefaction plants expedited by the bill are designed to produce up to 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas through 2050 (10.6 Bcf/day).
This long-lived fossil fuel infrastructure is far more likely to dampen investment in renewable energy, electrification, and energy conservation than displace other fossil fuels.
Liquefying gas, which must be cooled to 260°F below zero, requires significant energy. According to EIA, 14% of the gas used to produce LNG is consumed during liquefaction. That means that up to 13 trillion additional cubic feet of natural gas through 2050 (1.7 Bcf/day) will be consumed to produce the LNG from these five projects.
The total volume of natural gas consumed and processed by these LNG projects (94 trillion cubic feet through 2050) is enough to meet almost all of the gas needs for homes across America (99 trillion cubic feet) over the same timeframe. It is also equivalent to 62% of the total amount of gas (152 trillion cubic feet) EIA forecasts will be used by the electric power sector from 2030-2050.
The lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of all LNG produced by these five plants would be 616 million metric tons annually (13 gigatons through 2050), equivalent to 165 coal-fired power plants.
Using government estimates of the economic damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions, we can put a dollar estimate to these emissions: $1.7 trillion (cumulatively through 2050).
Keep in mind this only accounts for the LNG section of the Manchin bill and does not include the impacts of the bill’s oil, coal, and gas leasing mandates.
Assumptions used in greenhouse gas analysis can have profound effects on policymaking. It’s impossible to achieve numerical science targets without good measurements.
One set of assumptions in particular can make or break assessments of fossil fuel infrastructure. Energy substitution analysis looks at what happens to energy markets when new energy sources are added or removed, which in turn shapes how greenhouse gas emissions are calculated.
This is where some energy analyses get sloppy, relying on outdated, simplified assumptions to minimize the climate impact of fossil fuel infrastructure. The federal government is particularly bad at this. It can be awkward to approve projects after finding they superchage global warming. My analysis of seven major environmental impact statements across five federal agencies found that the agencies erased 98% of the greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas projects, on average, obscuring $1 trillion in climate damages.
The pertinent question when assessing the substitution effects of energy infrastructure is whether the energy helps or hurts in achieving deep decarbonization pathways. This question is kept firmly in sight when analysts assess clean energy supply policies but can fade into the background when people argue that fossil fuel supplies don’t matter because the emissions aren’t any worse than current pollution sources.
Someone can claim a punch to your right arm won’t hurt more than a punch to your left arm, but the reality is that the punch still hurts. You can claim that LNG doesn’t increase emissions because it’s substituting for other fossil fuels, but the reality is that the planet is still getting cooked.
The theoretical argument that U.S. LNG coming online in five years will replace coal in China is especially unrealistic in light of global and regional trends toward renewable electricity. According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA): “Evidence from China, the world’s largest coal consumer, shows that LNG is unlikely to materially displace coal-fired power generation.”
Keep in mind that these LNG plants won’t come online until about 2030, and the billions of dollars invested are dependent on decades of LNG production thereafter. This long-lived fossil fuel infrastructure is far more likely to dampen investment in renewable energy, electrification, and energy conservation than displace other fossil fuels.
The oil and gas industry has a particularly long and successful history of creating and defending markets to absorb supply. Consider, for example, the oil lobby’s successful efforts to keep fuel economy standards, and how they have pushed fossil fuel-based plastics across the world. Now that America is shifting off gas, they have turned their sights to shifting those emissions overseas.
There are many factors that go into assessing the impacts of Manchin’s energy bill, with valid grounds for different approaches and results. I suggest the following principles as potential common ground and a worthwhile test for any analysis:
One campaigner called the Energy Permitting Reform Act "a shameless attempt by Sen. Joe Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrifice communities, and endanger our climate."
A bipartisan energy permitting reform bill introduced last week in the U.S. Senate—and described by one campaigner as "the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry"—advanced Wednesday in a key vote that came over the objections of hundreds of green groups.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee passed the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 in a 15-4 vote. Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) voted against advancing the bill.
The bill's co-sponsors, Sens. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), claim the proposal will "strengthen American energy security by accelerating the permitting process for critical energy and mineral projects of all types in the United States."
Critical lawmakers and climate campaigners warn that "this proposal includes a litany of fossil fuel giveaways, undermining potential climate benefits that might be attained by bringing renewable energy sources to the grid more quickly," as Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, said in a statement Wednesday.
Echoing warnings from last week, Slocum stressed that the bill "is nothing short of the first steps to implement the radical corporate giveaway agenda espoused in 'Project 2025,'" a sweeping far-right initiative led by the Heritage Foundation.
"That agenda essentially calls for automatic approvals of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports regardless of the impact on climate change, frontline communities suffering with environmental and health problems, and on prices for American families," he said. "The bill would also make it harder to build renewable energy on public lands, while making it easier to drill for oil and gas and to dump mining waste."
"Some Democrats who voted for the bill claim 'this is the best deal we can get,'" Slocum noted. "That is false. This legislation will only get worse if it advances to the floor and then heads to the GOP House. We call on Senate leadership to stop this misguided legislation."
Public Citizen was among the over 360 groups that sent a letter to senators on Tuesday urging them "to reject this proposal and instead, put forward real solutions to build a clean energy economy, and not pair those reforms with giveaways to the fossil fuel industry."
The letter has sections on LNG exports, the fossil fuel industry, federal mining law, and judicial review, emphasizing that the bill "guts bedrock environmental protections, endangers public health, opens up tens of millions of acres of public lands and hundreds of millions of acres of offshore waters to further oil and gas leasing, gives public lands to mining companies, and would defacto rubberstamp gas export projects that harm frontline communities and perpetuate the climate crisis."
Wyden was similarly critical in his comments to the committee on Wednesday. He acknowledged that the bill contains "useful provisions," specifically endorsing the transmission language, the encouragement of geothermal energy development, and the creation of the hardrock mining cleanup fund.
"If the bill contained these provisions alone, I'd give my support and recommend a parade down Main Street," Wyden said. "The big problem is the improvements in law I've just described are held hostage in this legislation to the outdated fossil fuel status quo that existed before our reforms of 2022 were enacted."
Two years ago, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act—a watered-down but still historic climate package that only got through Congress because Manchin, then a Democrat, had a backroom deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to vote for it in exchange for passing permitting reforms.
Since then, climate-conscious campaigners and lawmakers have repeatedly blocked related proposals from Manchin, a longtime fossil fuel industry ally who leads the panel that voted Wednesday and is set to retire when this congressional session ends.
"The Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee should be ashamed that it voted to advance the Energy Permitting Reform Act, a blatant, dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels at any cost," declared Allie Rosenbluth, United States program manager at Oil Change International. "This outrageous bill would unleash more oil and gas drilling on federal lands and waters and recklessly rush the review of proposed LNG export projects equivalent to the greenhouse gas pollution of 165 new coal plants."
Rosenbluth highlighted that "the International Energy Agency and scientists worldwide have made it clear: No new fossil fuel project is compatible with a livable future. The United States, already the world leader in oil and gas production and expansion, is failing miserably to meet its climate commitments."
"We thank Sens. Ron Wyden, Bernie Sanders, and Mazie Hirono for voting 'no' and voicing their strong opposition to the fossil fuel giveaways in this bill," she added. "This bill is a shameless attempt by Sen. Joe Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrifice communities, and endanger our climate. We demand the Senate reject this disastrous proposal and commit to real action to protect frontline communities from the devastating impacts of fossil fuel development and the ongoing climate crisis."
Manchin’s latest attempt at permitting reform would try and force the approval of huge new LNG export terminals along the Gulf Coast, which are both environmental justice nightmares and major carbon bombs.
A story. In December of 2015, everyone who worked on climate issues was in Paris for the white-knuckled final negotiations of the historic accords. While that was going on, Big Oil’s friends in Congress passed—almost without debate—an end to the longstanding ban on oil exports from the U.S. I cobbled together—with the help of the Sierra Club’s Mike Brune—what may have been the only op-ed opposing the measure, in a Paris cafe fueled by pain au chocolat. But the Democratic Senators I reached out to back home laughed—it wasn’t a big deal, they said, and anyway they were getting a production tax credit for wind energy in return. They were wrong: America in a decade has gone from not exporting oil and gas to becoming the world’s biggest producer. Bigger than Russia and the Saudis.
The moral of the story is: Big Oil is sneaky, and they will use moments when attention is diverted (say, by the advent of a truly powerful new presidential candidate) to advance their agenda. And the point of the story is: They’re trying it again.
A couple of days ago—while all of us were paying attention to Brat Summer, heterosectionality, and the general splendor of Kamala Harris’ first week (huge thanks to the members of the climate community who came together online last night to raise huge money for the campaign)—Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) announced he had cobbled together a new proposal for “permitting reform.” On the face of it, some of the new proposal makes real sense: Among other things, it would ease the process of approving the badly needed transmission lines for moving solar and wind power back and forth across the continent.
This week saw the hottest temperatures on our planet in at least the last 125,000 years. Get real.
But remember: Joe Manchin has taken more money from the fossil fuel industry than anyone else in D.C. (Which is saying something—he’s the Simone Biles of corruption). And so it’s not surprising that there’s a huge cost for this sane policy change: The bill will also try and force the approval of huge new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals along the Gulf Coast. This is not only disgusting on environmental justice grounds (watch Roishetta Ozane explain the cost to her community) but it is also the single biggest greenhouse gas bomb on planet Earth.
Jeremy Symons, the veteran climate analyst who has supplied the most relevant climate analyses throughout the LNG fight, came up with these numbers last night. If enacted, he said, the LNG portion of the Manchin bill would “lock in new greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 165 coal-fired power plants or more” and “erase the climate benefits of building 50 major renewable electricity transmission lines.” It is exactly, to the letter, what Project 2025 has called for.
And yet it has some actual chance of passing. Martin Heinrichs, the Democratic senator from New Mexico, endorsed it on Wednesday—which makes a certain amount of local sense, since the state derives an outsized share of its government revenues from taxes on gas production. But Heinrichs is selling out the planet to help his state. The question is, how many of his fellow Democrats will go along? Enough to allow this legislation to move through the upper chamber?
Because remember: The ultimate goal of climate policy is not to rewire America so it can use more renewable energy. That is a good goal, and it will make money for solar and wind developers which is why many of them will support this bill. But the goal of climate policy is to prevent the planet from overheating. And if you make renewable energy easier in America at the cost of addicting developing Asian economies to exported American LNG, you have taken an enormous step backward. (You’ve also screwed over the American consumers who still depend on natural gas and will now pay more, which is one reason senators like Ed Markey (D-Mass.) have taken a dim view of this proposed law).
The big green groups have come out strongly against it. Here’s the position of the League of Conservation Voters, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and EarthJustice, and the Sierra Club, and Oil Change International. And here’s mine: This week saw the hottest temperatures on our planet in at least the last 125,000 years. Get real.
This week saw the explosion of joy that comes when politicians stand up to business as usual. Don’t undermine all of it with a “deal” whose main beneficiary is Big Oil. Don’t give Joe Manchin a gift on his way out the door. Don’t do what you did in 2015, when you opened the door to the oil and gas export boom. Don’t turn off the same young voters that U.S. President Joe Biden turned off by approving the Willow oil complex. Don’t get in the way of the momentum we’re trying to build as November approaches.
And on top of all that political reality, there’s reality reality as well. Physics doesn’t get a vote in Congress, but it gets the only vote that matters in the real world. Pay attention to it for once!