It’s no surprise that the natural gas industry hated the Biden administration’s report on the impacts of increasing natural gas exports. Industry-allied Republicans balked at the report before it even came out, preemptively calling it bad science.
But now that it’s out, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm is getting a different kind of pushback from some in the energy research community.
Several energy experts are praising the robust analysis of the effects of liquefied natural gas exports in a new 600-page, long-awaited study from the national laboratories that the Biden administration commissioned. The research is sound, they say. Rather, they think Granholm’s statements about it veer too much into politics and mischaracterize the reports’ actual findings, several researchers told NOTUS.
“I don’t think the messaging fully reflects the depth and the range of analysis in the study,” said Ben Cahill, the director for energy markets and policy at the University of Texas at Austin. Cahill previously advised oil and gas companies on politics. “Secretary Granholm’s letter kind of seems at odds with some of the conclusions of the report itself.”
Granholm laid out serious negative implications for consumers and the climate in her statement associated with the study. “Today’s publication reinforces that a business-as-usual approach is neither sustainable nor advisable,” Granholm wrote.
Another researcher called the study extremely “fair” and questioned why Granholm presented it how she did.
“It was really kind of down the middle. It was really fair,” said Ira Joseph, an LNG researcher at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. (Joseph previously worked as a gas and power analyst at S&P, and the CGEP receives funding from oil and gas companies, as well as from the renewables industry.) “There was no really extreme stuff that would favor either point of view. It didn’t tell the left that LNG was worse than coal. And because it didn’t do that, the right is upset, too, because they have one less culture war thing to wave in front of someone’s face.”’
Joseph said the study’s findings on consumer impacts — that prices could increase as much as about $120 a year annually for the average consumer if natural gas exports are unfettered — are actually not high enough to cause alarm.
“The numbers were so miniscule in terms of the sensitivity of exports to domestic prices that it was like a big nothing,” he said.
Cahill agreed, calling it “really not a big price increase at all.”
Both researchers also critiqued how Granholm discussed emissions and future LNG demand across the globe. Neither of them believes she is wrong to raise the issue of declining demand or increased carbon emissions, but both say the study doesn’t reach a definitive conclusion.
“Even if you take that scenario of enormous unconstrained growth, the net global emissions impact is almost a wash,” Cahill said. “It’s a complex issue, and the study shows the complexity.”
Arvind Ravikumar, a greenhouse gas and methane emissions researcher who co-directs the emissions modeling lab at UT Austin, wrote in an analysis for the Center for Strategic and International Studies that the study did not show any definitive emissions result.
“Proponents argue that increased U.S. LNG exports will reduce global carbon emissions, while opponents claim the opposite. It turns out neither of them is right, or at least that is what the DOE concluded in its recent report on the global GHG emissions impact of U.S. LNG exports,” he wrote. “There are several reasons why the United States should evaluate whether to allow unconstrained LNG exports. The impact on global GHG emissions is not one of them.”
The U.S. became the world’s largest exporter of LNG in under a decade and has already authorized dramatically increasing those exports over the rest of the decade. The Biden administration commissioned the report while pausing additional exports. The pause was a victory for environmental activists, who have long advocated against any further LNG exports.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, has called to immediately increase exports and begin issuing new permits as soon as he takes office. Republicans balked at the report’s findings before they were even released, questioning the science that went into its creation.
The presence of a new study threatens the speed at which Trump could increase LNG exports, giving more fodder for lawsuits. And environmental groups are already threatening those lawsuits.
“These findings can now be incorporated into the Department of Energy’s future decision-making processes on LNG export authorizations and provide a solid legal foundation for challenges to LNG permits on the grounds that they are not in the public interest,” the Sierra Club wrote in a press release after the study was published.
Mary Anne Sullivan, a former general counsel at the Department of Energy, did not criticize Granholm’s statements, but she is cautioning that the report is not “all bad” for the LNG industry.
“I see the report as basically sending a message. This is complicated,” she said. “In the past, to get an LNG export approval from DOE, you wrote the letter and you knew the answer was going to be yes. This is saying the public interest determination requires more thought. But on the other hand, I don’t think it dictates a no.”
The LNG industry is already raising complaints about the entire study and its methodology. Meanwhile, they are simultaneously saying the study doesn’t look all that bad for them.
“There’s all this sort of cautionary tale in the messaging,” said Charlie Riedl, the executive director of the industry group the Center for LNG. “I don’t know that the report is nearly as suggestive or aligned with that messaging.”
The Department of Energy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Anna Kramer is a reporter at NOTUS.