Environmental groups have warned that a major deal allowing the US to increase its gas supply to Europe in an effort to shift away Russian fossil fuel imports is a disaster for the climate crisis.
The agreement, which was announced Friday, will allow the US to provide an additional 15 billion cubic meters of liquified gas (LNG), to the European Union for this year. This represents approximately a tenth to 40% of the total gas that the EU receives from Russia.
The US will continue to increase its gas exports. The EU plans to receive 50bn cubic meters per year from America and other countries, in order to reduce its dependence upon Russia following the unprovoked invasion Ukraine.
Joe Biden announced the deal while on a visit to Brussels. He said that the increased supply will help families in Europe get through the winter. It will also hinder Vladimir Putin, who has used gas income for his war machine.
However, environmental groups have reacted with alarm to the agreement, arguing that it will embed years of future natural gas use at a moment when scientists are urging the world to rapidly eliminate fossil fuels in order to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Kelly Sheehan is the Sierra Club’s senior director of energy campaigns. She stated that we should be moving quickly to affordable clean energies and not doubling down on fossilfuels. Reduced dependence on fossil fuels is the only way we can stop being dependent on greedy industries and geopolitics.
In recent years, the US has been a net exporter and importer of energy. Fracking technology has helped draw on its vast reserves of natural gas. This gas can be frozen into LNG and loaded onto ships to be exported around the globe. The US is already nearing capacity for the amount of gas that it can ship out.
There are 16 LNG terminals that are being proposed along the US Gulf of Mexico Coast. These terminals have been granted the federal permits necessary to start construction. These projects, which could take many years to build and then operate for decades, may now be more feasible because of the EU deal.
Sheehan said that allowing the expansion of gas export facilities to expand would lock in decades’ worth of reliance on volatile fossil fuels. This would spell doom for our climate and already overwhelmed Gulf coast communities.
Biden insists that the plan will not compromise his climate goals. He claims that the war in Ukraine will act to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy.
The US and EU have agreed to work together to approve solar and wind projects, plug gas pipeline leaks that release methane, a potent greenhouse, into the atmosphere, and to improve energy efficiency measures that reduce demand for fossil fuels.
Climate activists warn that it is too late to prevent catastrophic global warming. The International Energy Agency says that no new fossil fuel infrastructure can ever be built in order to prevent 1.5C of global warming above the preindustrial era. Scientists warn that this level will lead to dangerous heatwaves and flooding, wildfires, and mass displacement.
The creation of new toxic export facilities for methane gas and the expansion of methane production for decades is a death sentence for those who are at the forefront of the climate emergency. This will not solve Europe’s current crisis and Kassie Siegel, director, Center for Biological Diversitys Climate Law Institute, stated that it is a death sentence.
The approval of more export terminals and pipelines is a way to fuel our world’s fire.