United States-based energy analysts and campaigners have warned the booming Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry will play at least as big a role as new coal investments in bringing on a climate crisis if all planned projects go ahead.
The report by the Global Energy Monitor appears at odds with comments by Angus Taylor, the Minister for Emissions Reduction in Australia’s conservative Liberal-National government, who has said the country could be proud that the rapidly expanding LNG export industry was displacing coal power overseas.
Government analysis identified LNG as the main reason Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have risen each year since 2015, but the minister and industry say Australian gas deserves credit for lowering global emissions.
The Global Energy Monitor, formerly known as CoalSwarm, is a US-based research and advocacy group that tracks fossil fuel development.
It found there were US$1.3 trillion in planned LNG investments across the globe, including nearly US$38 billion in Australia, putting it fourth on a list behind the US, Canada and Russia.
The Guardian reports Ted Nace, the group’s executive director, said the proposed tripling of global LNG capacity risked introducing decades of emissions of methane, a potent and difficult-to-monitor greenhouse gas, at odds with the United Nations sponsored Paris Agreement on climate change.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last year estimated methane emissions would need to be reduced by 35 per cent between 2010 and 2050 to meet the Paris goals.
“The one piece of good news is that most of these projects are in the pre-construction stage so there is still time for a moratorium on LNG infrastructure before we lock ourselves into even more irreversible climate damage,” Mr Nace told The Guardian
A separate study in the journal Nature found existing fossil fuel infrastructure alone, including coal and gas-fired power stations, would almost certainly be enough to push the world beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius global heating if not shut down earlier than planned.
Australia’s LNG industry has already more than tripled since 2012 as developments have come online in Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory.
A recent government Resources and Energy Quarterly report forecast the value of Australian LNG exports will be nearly US$50bn this year, second only to iron ore.
Natural gas is at times described as a transition fuel in the response to the climate crisis as it has about half the carbon dioxide emissions of black coal when burned to generate electricity.
That head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and science bodies have rejected that argument, warning the world needs to rapidly move to clean energy and industries.
The Guardian reports Mr Nace said it was difficult to compare emissions from coal and gas given their different nature.
Gas has lower carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions than black coal when burned for electricity, but LNG developments also leak methane, which is a relatively short-lived gas that lasts in the atmosphere about 12 years but still has a warming power about 28 times greater than the same amount of CO2 when calculated over a century.
A recent study found the level of atmospheric methane has increased significantly since 2007 after a relative flat period and scientists are unsure why.
Global Energy Monitor researchers found fugitive methane emissions from new LNG extraction and processing would be expected to have as large or larger global heating impact than proposed coal power expansion.
“The truth about LNG is nobody knows what is happening across the supply chain,” Mr Nace said.
“But it’s very easy to see leakage of two to three per cent and if that much gets away into the atmosphere it is significant, it gives a jolt of warming.”
The Guardian reports that on Mr Taylor’s claim that Australia’s gas was displacing coal in Asia, Mr Nace said it was likely this was true in some places, particularly parts of China, but in others it was being used to meet new energy demand that could be delivered with clean energy.
Mr Taylor has said Australia’s LNG exports had the potential to lower global emissions by up to 148 million tonnes last year, equivalent to 27 per cent of Australia’s annual climate pollution.
However, his department reached this estimate by assuming all exported Australian gas was used to replace coal.
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