Natural gas may be worse for the world than coal, but it’s got two important things on its side: the word natural and the seemingly unconditional support of the United States government. Preliminary research by Cornell University’s Robert Howarth, reported in The New Yorker by Bill McKibben this week, finds that “natural” (methane) gas may be 24 percent worse for the climate than coal in the best-case scenario. That’s thanks to extensive methane leaks at just about every stage of its production, from drilling to transportation. In the worst-case scenario—when LNG makes long journeys on old, polluting tankards—the fuel is 274 percent worse for the environment than coal is.
So why is the Biden administration enthusiastically trying to expand methane exports? Last spring, the administration greenlit a $39 billion project to export gas from Alaska. The U.S. is the largest gas exporter in the world, having only gotten into the business in 2016. Last month, McKibben notes, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved a fracked-gas pipeline in the Pacific Northwest and an expansion of a Venture Global facility known as Calcasieu Pass. Not factoring in Howarth’s math, emissions from “CP2” were already expected to be 20 times greater than those given off by the controversial Willow Project in Alaska. Both the industry and the administration have argued that such projects are necessary to provide energy security to “our European allies,” who have been attempting to wean themselves off gas from Russia since it invaded Ukraine last year. As the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis has found, though, Europe’s spending binge on gas-import facilities is outpacing demand.