For climate campaigners, fossil fuel energy is a key driver of war and needs to be phased out and replaced by renewable energy.
"More investment and reliance on fossil fuels is music to the ears of despots and warmongers all over the world who recognize this is an energy system that benefits them," said Global Witness Murray Worthy. "If Europe truly wants to get off Russian gas, the only real option it has is phasing out gas altogether."
"We have the unique historical chance and obligation to choose now for a radical shift of the way we generate and consume energy," said Andy Gheorghiu, a Germany-based anti-gas and -fracking campaigner. "But the solution our trans-Atlantic governments presented was nothing but business as usual."
The EU has turned to the US for an alternative gas supply. An extra 15 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) — sourced largely from hydraulic fracking wells that have mushroomed across the United States will now arrive in Europe this year. Concerns are also growing about the immediate climate impacts of LNG fracked from shale deposits deep under the ground. Though fracking is banned across much of Europe due to its environmental impact, including the use of chemicals that contaminate groundwater, the EU is happy to source fracked gas from the US.
"The agreement puts the EU and the US on a misguided and dangerous path by fast-tracking new infrastructure to import fossil gas into Europe," said Murray Worthy, gas campaign leader at the environment NGO Global Witness. "Building new import terminals would mean locking in fossil gas imports for years to come, long after the EU needs to quit this climate-wrecking fuel for good."
It has severe climate implications because of LNG's high methane emissions. 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, which stretches into New Mexico — its gas reserves have been labelled "some of the dirtiest in the world."
Indeed, a 2019 study attributed a decade of growth in global atmospheric methane emissions to the fracking boom in the United States. It concluded that shale-gas production in North America may be responsible for "over half of all of the increased emissions from fossil fuels globally" in the previous decade.
Researchers Amanda Levin and Christina Swanson, from the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council, have concluded that US attempts to ramp up LNG production and exports could scupper any chance of limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F).
They describe the "rapidly expanding" export of LNG as a "bridge" to the clean-energy transition — gas emissions are about 50% lower than coal — will "lock in fossil fuel dependence, making the transition to actual low-carbon and no-carbon energy even more difficult."
The climate impact of LNG will double when extraction, transport, liquefaction and re-gasification are added to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of gas burning, the researchers note.
The 130 to 213 million metric tons (143-235 short tons) of new GHG emissions in the US generated by a tripling of exports between 2020 and 2030 will be like putting up to 45 million more fossil fuel-powered cars on the road annually — it will also reverse the 1% annual GHG decline achieved in the past decade, according to the authors.
The European Union's imported LNG is also being used as a feedstock for plastics and fertilizers. With import contracts often locked in for up to 20 years, such fossil fuel availability will be a disincentive to decarbonize these high emission raw material sectors.
However, necessary infrastructure such as terminals will take two to three years to construct, making the European Union's goal of cutting Russian gas imports by two-thirds by year's end unlikely.
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