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100+ Global Lawmakers Urge Biden to Reject New LNG Exports
"Every dollar invested in unnecessary, harmful, and expensive LNG infrastructure costs us double—first, by our failure to invest instead in secure, abundant, and cheap renewable energies, and second, by locking in higher greenhouse gas emissions."
Sep 23, 2024
With Climate Week underway in New York City, 106 lawmakers from the United States and around the world on Monday urged the Biden administration to reject new liquefied natural gas export permits, stressing that they "are not in the U.S. public interest or necessary for the national or energy security of our allies."
Rejecting new permits, they wrote, "will help protect communities from the environmental harm that fossil gas causes; promote global energy security and encourage investment and trade in clean energy technologies; and help our nations satisfy both national and global climate commitments, including those made at the 2023 U.N. climate change conference COP28 in Dubai."
The letter to U.S. President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was led by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Congresswoman Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), and Lisa Badum, a Greens member of Germany's Bundestag. Along with other American and German lawmakers, it's signed by members of the European Parliament and legislatures in over a dozen other countries.
"Curtailing U.S. LNG export activity will send a strong global signal in favor of new investments in renewable energy."
They explained that in January, the Biden administration paused new export authorizations for liquefied natural gas (LNG) to countries that don't have free trade agreements with the United States, and although a recent federal court ruling blocked the policy, "that misguided decision does not force any immediate export project approvals, prevent the Department of Energy (DOE) from updating its environmental and economic analyses, or impact the factors that DOE already considers in its application review process."
"Far from being a clean 'bridge' fuel, LNG causes significant environmental harm," the lawmakers declared, highlighting the impacts of gas on not only the global climate but also the health of people exposed to nearby hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations and infrastructure such as processing plants, import facilities, export terminals, and pipelines.
"In addition to the environmental and health benefits, limiting U.S. LNG exports will actually support global energy security, not jeopardize it," they wrote. "Curtailing U.S. LNG export activity will send a strong global signal in favor of new investments in renewable energy, discouraging overinvestment in a volatile and high-priced fossil fuel."
The letter notes that the United States is "the world's largest exporter of LNG" and warns that such exports "affect the world's regions in various ways, but uniformly, they are negative," with sections on Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe.
"Every dollar invested in unnecessary, harmful, and expensive LNG infrastructure costs us double—first, by our failure to invest instead in secure, abundant, and cheap renewable energies, and second, by locking in higher greenhouse gas emissions, with attendant future climate damage," the letter emphasizes. "Continued reliance on LNG means more harm to frontline communities and the environment from extracting, transporting, and shipping fossil gas around the world."
The lawmakers' letter follows one that a coalition of more than 250 climate, environmental, and frontline groups sent to Biden and Granholm earlier this month—during the warmest summer on record and what is on track to be the hottest year on record.
"We are on the verge of seeing global average temperatures exceed 1.5°C warming above preindustrial temperatures, failing the internationally agreed upon goal of the Paris agreement and crossing the threshold upon which ever more catastrophic effects of climate change begin," the green groups wrote. "The only way world leaders can avoid this moral and political failure is to work together to end fossil fuel production."
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'Real Solutions, No Bullshit': Action Targets Biden DOE Over Climate Scams, Greenwashing
"Now more than ever, we need real leadership from the Department of Energy to end fossil fuels," said one organizer.
Oct 31, 2023
Climate advocates on Tuesday donned Halloween costumes to greet attendees of the U.S. Department of Energy's "Justice Week," but the organizers assembled outside the agency will be urging guests to demand far more from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and the Biden administration, who they say are "greenwashing" efforts to further equity and environmental justice.
The department's Office of Economic Impact and Diversity is holding the five-day event, where officials plan to highlight efforts to move "toward a more equitable, clean, and just energy future."
The week will include discussions of the Low-Income Communities Bonus Credit Program, which pushes for more access to renewable energy facilities in underserved communities, and executive actions President Joe Biden has taken to promote environmental justice.
All those actions, however, have happened alongside the administration's push in favor of so-called climate "solutions" that scientists say are unproven and serve only to perpetuate fossil fuel extraction under the false assumption that it can do so while still addressing greenhouse gas emissions and planetary heating.
The DOE, noted Basav Sen, a climate justice project director at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) who took part in the action, is "the biggest funder of false solutions such as carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, and direct air capture."
"These are scams. We know that the real solution to the climate crisis is to keep fossil fuels in the ground and make a rapid, just transition to real renewable energy controlled by communities," said Sen, wearing zombie face paint at the direct action. "Instead what were seeing from the Department of Energy is a continuation of the fossil fuel economy."
As Common Dreams reported in May, analysts say that just running the machinery to operate a carbon capture and storage project—like the ones the Biden DOE announced a $1.2 billion investment in earlier this year—would increase energy consumption by 20%, adding to carbon dioxide emissions.
Smog, benzene, and formaldehyde emissions also increase with carbon capture technology, biologist Sandra Steingraber said—three types of pollution that disproportionately affect people in low-income neighborhoods, the very communities the DOE says it's targeting with environmental justice programs and events like "Justice Week."
Additionally, noted Sen, the DOE is continuing to license exports of fossil gas.
"We are here today to tell attendees of the Department of Energy's Justice Week that the version of environmental and energy justice that they're going to hear from the Department of Energy in the event is greenwashing, pure and simple," said Sen. "The Department of Energy cannot pretend to be on the side of environmental justice while they are actively licensing more fossil gas exports, which means more fracking, more air and water pollution, more pipelines, more export terminals, more sacrifice zones in frontline communities."
Some of the campaigners displayed the organizers' message succinctly on a banner reading, "Real Solutions. No Bullshit."
"Now more than ever, we need real leadership from the Department of Energy to end fossil fuels, quit peddling climate scams and advance energy justice," said Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), one of the groups behind the action.
Addressing Granholm, the group added that the secretary "can't cover up [her] record with greenwashing events like Justice Week 2023 while undermining real climate and environmental justice with [her] actions."
"We demand an end to fracked gas exports, carbon capture, and hydrogen energy," CJA said.
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Critics Warn Biden $7 Billion for Hydrogen Helps 'Industry Ploy to Rebrand Fracked Gas'
"The Biden administration has clearly fallen for this scam hook, line, and sinker," said one campaigner. "This multibillion-dollar bet on greenwashed dirty energy will undermine efforts to address the climate crisis."
Oct 13, 2023
As U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Friday celebrated the "historic investment" of up to $7 billion for seven regional hydrogen hubs as a key to achieving President Joe Biden's "goal of American industry powered by American clean energy," some climate campaigners warned that the administration is falling for—or participating in—a fossil fuel industry scam.
Roughly two-thirds of the H2Hubs investment will go toward green hydrogen, which is made using renewable energy, according to the White House. However, the bipartisan infrastructure legislation Biden signed in 2021 requires broader support, including for pink (nuclear) and blue (gas) hydrogen projects, the latter of which includes carbon capture, utilization, and storage.
"At face value—and according to the Biden playbook—the hydrogen hub grants aim to help transition the United States to clean energy. In reality, they amount to another corporate scam, one that preserves and extends the life of the extractive economy and prevents the frontline communities most impacted by climate disaster from having input," said Marion Gee, co-executive director at the Climate Justice Alliance, representing 89 rural and urban environmental justice groups.
"Hydrogen development is energy intensive to produce, could present a public safety risk in transit, can produce health-damaging air pollution when combusted, and is a play by the fossil fuel industry to extend its viability and profits," Gee stressed. "We must work to move capital and power into the hands of local communities who will center traditional ecological and cultural knowledge and create a pathway toward a regenerative future."
"The fossil fuel industry is working to continue our nation's reliance on fossil fuels by any means necessary—and hydrogen offers yet another possible inroad for Big Oil and Gas."
Earthworks policy director Lauren Pagel also asserted that "prioritizing hydrogen hubs across the United States is more about extending the life of oil and gas companies than addressing the climate crisis. These hubs are a dangerous distraction from the obvious consensus solution that the world must stop expanding fossil fuels that are warming the atmosphere."
Food & Water Watch policy director Jim Walsh was similarly critical, declaring that "the massive build-out of hydrogen infrastructure is little more than an industry ploy to rebrand fracked gas. The Biden administration has clearly fallen for this scam hook, line, and sinker. This multibillion-dollar bet on greenwashed dirty energy will undermine efforts to address the climate crisis, while increasing pollution of our air and water, and milking taxpayers for billions in new fossil fuel subsidies."
"Even the cleanest forms of hydrogen present serious problems—most notably the massive amount of water that would be waste," Walsh added. "As groundwater sources are drying up across the country, there is no reason to waste precious drinking water resources on hydrogen when there are cheaper, cleaner energy sources that can facilitate a real transition off fossil fuels."
The seven selected projects are the Appalachian (West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania), California, Gulf Coast (Texas), Heartland (Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota), Mid-Atlantic (Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey), Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan), and Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, and Montana) hydrogen hubs.
As The New York Timesdetailed:
Not all of the $7 billion in funding will be spent at once. As a first step, the Energy Department will give awardees initial grants to create more detailed proposals for their hydrogen hubs. If the agency deems the projects viable, it will disburse more money over time—but that money is not guaranteed if any of the hubs prove unworkable.
"We're still a long, long ways away from creating a large-scale hydrogen economy," said Alex Kizer, a senior vice president at the Energy Futures Initiative, a Washington nonprofit organization. "Think of these hubs as laboratories of sorts to experiment with potential business models for hydrogen and to try to figure out some of the technological and infrastructure hurdles."
Even groups that support green hydrogen raised concerns over funding longtime polluters. Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous warned that "the fossil fuel industry is working to continue our nation's reliance on fossil fuels by any means necessary—and hydrogen offers yet another possible inroad for Big Oil and Gas to lock in polluting and noneconomic uses of gas for decades to come."
"Decision-makers in the administration and at the local level must be wary of these attempts and ensure as much hydrogen-specific funding as possible goes to green hydrogen and its most efficient end uses to ensure this investment actually addresses climate change," he said.
Jill Tauber, vice president of litigation for climate and energy at Earthjustice, suggested that "hydrogen can be a clean energy solution, or it can drive us deeper into the climate crisis and hurt communities," and that green projects powered by renewables "can play an important role cleaning up what we cannot electrify, like steel manufacturing."
Julie McNamara, deputy policy director of the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, joined the chorus of alarmed critics on Friday, saying that "billions of taxpayer dollars are at risk of perpetuating fossil fuel industry injustices and harms while subsidizing fossil fuel greenwashing."
"Today's announcement also sets in stark relief the significance of upcoming administration decisions around implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act's hydrogen production tax credit, which could be a bulwark against heavily polluting hydrogen—or a backdoor subsidizing it," she noted. "The Department of Energy and the Biden administration now must set rigorous implementation, evaluation, and engagement criteria to ensure the development of a hydrogen industry that is unequivocally aligned with our climate objectives and that serves our collective goal to secure a safe, clean, just, and healthy future for all."
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