Head in the gas oven

Many oil and gas companies have pushed natural gas as a “bridge to the future”; a way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while providing the consistent supply of energy that renewables like solar and wind cannot yet deliver. But natural gas is mostly methane – a greenhouse gas 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Any unburned methane released into the atmosphere, therefore, contributes to climate change and several natural gas projects have been shown to leak significant amounts of the gas. Scientists calculate that a leakage rate of just 3 per cent makes gas a bigger contributor to climate change than coal, while multiple studies have found that the industry underestimates the amount of gas that escapes. A 2016 study by the American Geophysical Union found that methane emissions in the US jumped by more than 30 per cent between 2002 and 2014.

Gas industry firms are spending millions of euros influencing European policymakers to ensure that the continent continues to rely on fossil fuels for decades to come, according to a new report. It claims that gas lobby groups have used their financial firepower to push the “myth” that gas is a clean fuel in order to win financial and political backing from the European Commission for costly and potentially useless pipelines and other infrastructure. The report came from the campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) said.

In the past two and a half years, gas industry representatives met with the two European commissioners in charge of climate and energy policy and their cabinets 460 times. Eight out of the 10 most frequent business visitors received by Miguel Arias Cañete, commissioner for climate action and energy, and Maros Sefcovic, vice-president for energy union, were linked to the gas industry which spent €104m (£92m) on lobbying in 2016.  This dwarved the amount spent by public interest groups advocating a fossil-free future by a factor of 30.

The top spender is CEFIC, the European Chemical Industry Council, with a budget of over €12m and 82 lobbyists, followed by General Electric which spent €5.75m in 2016 and Shell which spent €4.75m.

 Fossil-fuel infrastructure companies provide the commission with a “wish list” of projects that they think should be completed over the next 10 years, via a group called the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas (ENTSO-G). This list is based on projections of demand for gas, which ENTSO-G calculates. Its past projections significantly overestimated gas usage. “If asked, of course the gas industry will say we need more gas," said Pascoe Sabido, a researcher and campaigner at CEO. The commission then asks ENTSO-G to analyse the costs and benefits of these projects, despite the fact that, in more than three-quarters of cases, the group’s own members stand to benefit from their construction.  There are clear conflicts of interest in the way gas projects are approved and how money is allocated for their construction. Projects included on the Projects of Common Interest (PCI) list can have their permits and impact assessments fast-tracked and are also eligible for various funding streams, including the Connecting Europe Facility, which has already handed out more than £1bn to gas PCIs. ENTSO-G supplied draft amendments to multiple MEPs on the recent regulation guaranteeing future gas supply as it passed through the European Parliament. The industry group was also present during a shadow rapporteurs’ meeting, where compromises are thrashed out between the political parties. The group  shares the same office as well as several staff with Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE), a trade association which spent €1.5m on lobbying during the two and a half year period.

The EU’s Transparency Register is supposed to keep track of lobbying activity but it is entirely voluntary and only top-level meetings are recorded. The bulk of work, however, is done at lower levels of the Commission. Of the gas companies identified by the researchers as actively lobbying in the EU, 40 per cent simply did not appear on the register, while others had made entries in the past but had then stopped doing so. 

“Investing in big infrastructure risks locking us into using gas for decades and slowing down the transition to renewable energy”, CEO’s report said. “In particular, tighter regulation on climate change and the use of fossil fuels would create a risk of stranded assets, ie infrastructure built now will no longer be usable, let alone profitable, in a decarbonised futures, making investments worthless. We can, therefore, anticipate that the gas industry will marshall all of its firepower to try and prevent the introduction of any regulations discouraging the use of gas and devaluing its assets.”