“We think that we can switch to another vehicle, but we are still driving towards the abyss,” said Andy Gheorghiu, a Germany-based anti-gas and fracking campaigner after US president Joe Biden and European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen announced aUS – EU gas deal to reduce Russian energy dependence.
An additional 15 billion cubic metres of US LNG will be sourced almost entirely from hydraulic fracking wells. It will now arrive on European shores via the Atlantic. But this is only a third the amount of gas Germany imported from Russia this year.
Activists fear that replacing natural gas by more expensive gas, due to the new infrastructure to import LNG, will not only compromise energy security but also threaten longer-term climate goals.
“[This]The agreement places the US and the EU on a dangerous and misguided path by fast-tracking the development of infrastructure to import fossil gasoline into Europe,” said Murray Worthy from Global Witness, an environment NGO. “Building new terminals for fossil gas imports would lock in these fuels for years to follow the EU’s decision to stop using them as a climate-destructing fuel.
However, there are growing concerns about the immediate climate impact of LNG fracked from deep below the ground shale deposits.
Fracking is prohibited in Europe because of its environmental impact. However, it is allowed to source it from the USA.
Fracked gas and climate-destroying methane leakage
Campaigners believe that the push to increase so-called “freedom gas” has serious climate implications because it comes from fracked sources with high methane emissions. Methane is the most potent greenhouse gases (GHG), and its global warming impacts are approximately 85 times methane higher than CO2 over a 20-year period Gheorghiu says that little has been done to tackle the diverse sources of “supply-side” methane leaks on both sides of the Atlantic.
The US-EU agreement was announced on Thursday, but it was careful to balance the goal of diversifying gas supplies and “climate objectives.”
The LNG deal is therefore designed to “reduce the greenhouse gases intensity of all new LNG infrastructures. This includes using clean energy to power onsite operations and reducing methane loss. It also aims at building clean and renewable hydrogen-ready infrastructure.
Yet if Russian gas is simply to be replaced in the short-medium term, it is likely to retain its mantle as the second largest sourceThe EU’s CO2 emissions are the second-highest after coal.
Meanwhile across the Atlantic, Gheorghiu points out that inconsistent regulations have made some US states a “wild west” for the fracking industry.
In Texas, for example, high emissions from so-called methane flaring often go unregulated, allowing leakage from the tens of thousands of wells in the Permian Basin that stretches into New Mexico its gas reserves have been Labeled “some of the dirtiest in the world.”
Indeed, one 2019 StudyFracking boom in the US was responsible for a decade of a ten-year increase in global atmospheric methane emission. It concluded that North American shale gas production may have been responsible for more than half of the global increase in emissions from fossil fuels in the past decade.
Gheorghiu notes that a lot of the gas imported to Europe is being used as a chemical feedstock to plastics and fertilizers. This means that new LNG will discourage decarbonization in these high-emission raw material sectors.
Exports of LNG threaten 1.5 degree target
Researchers Amanda Levin from the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council and Christina Swanson have concluded that US attempts at increasing LNG production and exports would make it impossible to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
They described the “rapidly increasing” export of the product, which was marketed as a “bridging oil” to clean energy transition. The emissions are approximately 50% lower than coal, but will “lock in fossil fuel dependency, making it even harder to transition to low-carbon and zero-carbon energy.”
Research has shown that LNG’s climate impacts will double when transport, liquefaction and regasification are added to GHG emissions from actual gas combustion.
The US will emit between 130 and 213 million metric tonnes of GHGs from a tripling in US exports between 2030 and 2020. This is equivalent to putting 45 million more cars powered by fossil fuels on the road each year. It will also reverse the 1% annual GHG decrease over the past decade.
Russian gas will not be replaced by LNG.
German Economy Minister Robert Habeck visited Qatar and UAE earlier this month, trying to diversify LNG import sources. But analysts warn that there is too many global demands to significantly increase the flow to Europe.
Moreover, infrastructure like terminals, which are essential for Russia’s gas imports, will take between two and three years to build. This makes it unlikely that Europe can achieve its goal of reducing Russian gas imports by at least two-thirds by the end of the year.
Climate campaigners believe that fossil fuel energy is a key driver for war and must be phased out and replaced with renewable energy.
Global Witness’ Murray Worthy said that “more investment and reliance in fossil fuels is music” to the ears despots around the globe who know this is an energy source that benefits them. “If Europe wants to get rid Russian gas, it must phase out all gas.
Gheorghiu said, “We have the unique historical obligation and chance to choose now for an unprecedented shift in the way that we generate and consume electricity.” “But, the solution presented by trans-Atlantic governments was nothing but business as usual.”