Exported gas emits far more greenhouse gas emissions than coal, despite fossil-fuel industry claims it is a cleaner alternative, according to a major new research paper that challenges the controversial yet rapid expansion of gas exports from the US to Europe and Asia.
Coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels when combusted for energy, with oil and gas producers for years promoting cleaner-burning gas as a “bridge” fuel and even a “climate solution” amid a glut of new liquefied natural gas (or LNG) terminals, primarily in the US.
But the research, which itself has become enmeshed in a political argument in the US, has concluded that LNG is 33% worse in terms of planet-heating emissions over a 20-year period compared with coal.
“The idea that coal is worse for the climate is mistaken – LNG has a larger greenhouse gas footprint than any other fuel,” said Robert Howarth, an environmental scientist at Cornell University and author of the new paper.
“To think we should be shipping around this gas as a climate solution is just plain wrong. It’s greenwashing from oil and gas companies that has severely underestimated the emissions from this type of energy.”
Drilling, moving, cooling and shipping gas from one country to another uses so much energy that the actual final burning of gas in people’s homes and businesses only accounts for about a third of the total emissions from this process, the research finds.
The large resulting emissions mean there is “no need for LNG as an interim energy source”, the paper says, adding that “ending the use of LNG should be a global priority”.
The peer-reviewed research, published on Thursday in the Energy Science & Engineering journal, challenges the rationale for a huge surge in LNG facilities along the US Gulf coast, in order to send gas in huge tankers to overseas markets. The US is the world’s leading LNG exporter, followed by Australia and Qatar.
Previous government and industry estimates have assumed that LNG is considerably lower emitting than coal, offering the promise that it could replace it in countries such as China, as well as aiding European allies menaced by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, a major gas producer.
“US LNG exports can help accelerate environmental progress across the globe, enabling nations to transition to cleaner natural gas to reduce emissions and address the global risks of climate change,” Dustin Meyer, director of market development at the American Petroleum Institute, has said.
But scientists have determined that LNG expansion is not compatible with the world avoiding dangerous global heating, with researchers finding in recent years the leakage of methane, a primary component of gas and a potent planet-heating agent, from drilling operations is far higher than official estimates.
Howarth’s paper finds that as much as 3.5% of the gas delivered to customers leaks to the atmosphere unburned, much more than previously assumed. Methane is about 80 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, even though it persists for less time in the atmosphere, and scientists have warned that rising global methane emissions risk blowing apart agreed-upon climate goals.