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Averting Climate Catastrophe: Fossil Fuels Must End While Renewables Take Over [1]

['Food', 'Water Watch']

Date: 2022-03-01

Part 3: Emphasizing Renewables Alone Will Not Displace Fracking Waning consumer demand for fracked gas means frackers turn to exports, industrial uses.

A single-minded focus on the promotion of renewable electricity, without addressing fossil fuel use in other sectors, will fail to adequately address climate change. Only 34 percent of the natural gas produced in the United States is burned at power plants. Buildings and industrial users each account for about 25 percent of natural gas use, and the remaining 17 percent of natural gas is exported (Figure 2).27

Even in the context of electricity, the promotion of renewables has done little to check the rise of new natural gas power plants supplying the grid. Since 2010, the contribution of renewable energy to the grid has risen from 2.8 percent to 11.5 percent (Figure 3). At this rate, the United States would only reach 100 percent renewable electricity by 2130.28

However, the main trend in the electricity sector has been a substantial shift to natural gas. Natural gas grew from supplying 22.7 percent of electricity in 2010 to supplying 39.3 percent in 2020.29 This was the result of building more than 1,100 new natural gas generators with combined nameplate capacity greater than 100,000 megawatts (about 9 percent of all power plant capacity, or enough to power around 100 million homes if running at maximum).30 These new gas plants are intentionally designed with lifespans of 40 to 50 years.31 Without new policy, natural gas plants are likely to represent 40 percent of the new electric generation built through 2050, with even more gas plants opening through mid-century.32

Natural gas is used for air and water heating in 9.7 percent of commercial buildings and 14.6 percent of residential buildings in the United States.33 This use (for air and water heating) could be displaced by readily available electric alternatives, as technologies that enable full electrification eliminate the need for natural gas in buildings.34 However, current trends indicate that without policy changes, natural gas use in buildings is unlikely to end. Natural gas appliances emit dangerous pollutants such as particulate matter, nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide and formaldehyde, which are linked to respiratory illness and cardiovascular disease. Operating a gas-powered stove and oven for an hour can raise indoor pollution to levels that exceed national air quality standards.35

Long-term climate goals cannot be reached without electrification.36 Despite this, the current pace of electrification in buildings is nowhere near fast enough. Buildings have slow turnover, and owners are often reluctant to invest in retrofits. Full electrification would likely require stringent standards for new buildings combined with rolling retrofit requirements for existing buildings.37 Deep reductions in buildings’ energy use are unlikely without the mandated retrofitting of the existing building stock.38 While constructing new buildings without natural gas should be the easier task, natural gas companies have fought tooth and nail against modest measures to limit the supply of natural gas to newly constructed buildings.39

Fracking’s Petrochemical and Plastics Push

The slow-changing buildings industry, while providing a stable outlet for entrenched natural gas companies, is not large enough on its own to support the continued fracking boom. The two sectors that are best positioned to enable the ongoing rise in natural gas production are exports and industrial users.40

The use of natural gas in the industrial sector is booming. Bulk chemicals (the production of organic and inorganic chemicals, resins and agricultural chemicals) account for half of this new industrial demand, including as feedstock (for hydrogen, methanol and nitrogenous fertilizer) as well as for heating purposes. Refineries, as well as producers of paper and bulk chemicals, also use natural gas for process heating and electricity generation, often at combined heat and power (CHP) plants.41

In February 2021, the main industry group representing petrochemical companies noted nearly 350 petrochemical projects that were planned, under construction or completed were made possible as a result of fracking.42 The EIA anticipates that the use of natural gas as a feedstock and a heating source in the industrial sector will grow substantially over the next decade.43

x What is fracking’s link to plastic? See the Answer What is fracking’s link to plastic? Fracking has unlocked a glut of ethane, a key petrochemical building block for plastics. In January 2020, the United States produced twice as much ethane as a decade earlier, sending growing quantities of ethane to domestic petrochemical plants and exporting it overseas.44 Ethane production is set to grow faster than other fossil fuels, buoyed by the fleet of new U.S. petrochemical plants.45 This additional petrochemical manufacturing will compound the local pollution generated by existing large facilities, disproportionately affecting marginalized communities.46 The petrochemical boom is ramping up plastics production, generating not only industry profits but also mountains of plastic waste. More than half of the new raw plastic resins produced in the United States are slated to be shipped overseas to be turned into plastic products.47 The majority of the packaging manufactured by the plastics industry involves materials that are immediately thrown away.48 Globally, on average, a person discards 110 pounds of plastic annually.49 Of the 18.3 trillion pounds of plastics produced since 1950, only around 9 percent have been recycled — meaning that more than 16 trillion pounds have been tossed into landfills, littered in the environment or incinerated.50 In addition to the environmental impacts of plastic waste, plastic production was responsible for 4 percent of global emissions in 2015.51

Exporting Natural Gas: A Booming Industry

U.S. energy production hit record highs in 2018 and 2019.52 Because of the pandemic, among other things, consumption of natural gas is set to decline slightly through 2022.53 However, after a brief decline, U.S. production of natural gas is accelerating,54 mostly because of the amount being sent to other countries. The EIA projected that natural gas exports would rise from 14.4 billion cubic feet per day in 2020 to 18.3 billion cubic feet per day by the end of 2021 (equal to nearly 20 percent of total U.S. natural gas production). This new export volume would more than compensate for a slight dip in the domestic use of natural gas for electricity, keeping producers flush.55

Of this increase in exports, 80 percent will be filled by fracked gas from newly drilled wells — gas that otherwise would have remained underground.56 Some natural gas is exported by pipeline or truck to Mexico and Canada, and the rest is shipped by tanker from export terminals to reach overseas markets.57 The gas moving via tankers first gets converted into liquefied natural gas (LNG), and its transport is highly dangerous.

x Why is LNG so dangerous? See the Answer Why is LNG so dangerous? Natural gas is almost impossible to ship in its gaseous state. Super-cooling natural gas converts it to a liquid that takes up 600 times less volume, making it possible to load the liquefied natural gas (LNG) onto tankers. When unloaded, the LNG is heated to return it to a gas.58 When LNG is stored in tanks, the vastly different air and storage temperatures lead to pressure buildup and require venting to release or “boil-off-gas.”59 At some facilities, super-cold LNG is stored in tanks with only a single inner shell capable of withstanding the extreme temperature of the gas.60 Observed leak rates are as high as 10 percent, which more than offsets any climate advantage of natural gas relative to coal combustion.61 The tankers and storage facilities also pose significant risks of potentially catastrophic explosions. In 2014, a pipeline explosion at a Washington state LNG terminal sent shrapnel flying into a 14.6 million gallon storage tank, causing it to leak.62 The accident injured five workers, forced the evacuation of 1,000 residents within a two-mile radius and caused $72 million in property damage.63 In 2004, an LNG explosion at the terminal in Skikda, Algeria killed 30 people and flattened port infrastructure.64

U.S. LNG exports rose to record levels by the end of 2020, averaging 9.8 billion cubic feet per day in December.65 Existing LNG export capacity supports exporting as much as 10.1 billion cubic feet per day, but facilities that are currently approved and under construction would expand that capacity to 42.1 billion cubic feet per day, nearly half of all natural gas produced in the United States.66 If built, this export capacity could completely offset the total elimination of natural gas from the electric power sector, enabling producers to export all of the gas that they otherwise would have sold to power plants.67

If built, this export capacity could completely offset the total elimination of natural gas from the electric power sector, enabling producers to export all of the gas that they otherwise would have sold to power plants.

LNG advocates love to argue that the export of LNG is necessary to displace coal plants abroad; however, the United States also continues to export coal.68 The switch to natural gas power in the country has actually pushed some of the domestic coal supply overseas, where international consumers burn it.69 Every 10 percent drop in U.S. natural gas prices is associated with a 3.3 percent increase in coal exports.70 As fracking boomed from 2007 to 2013, U.S. coal exports doubled, despite the economic recession.71 However, continued coal exports depend on expanding the capacity at west coast terminals or adding rail capacity to Canada — hotly contested projects that are vulnerable to public opposition.72

These rising fossil fuel exports could be the final nail in the coffin for climate stability. Under so-called “baseline” scenarios — in which no additional mitigation of fossil fuel emissions occurs —the world is on track to hit 4.3 degrees Celsius of warming this century.73

So far, modest reductions in the consumption of coal and oil in member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have been largely offset by an increase in natural gas consumption domestically and by a dramatic rise in fossil fuel use in non-OECD countries.74 Exports would help enable a nearly unlimited supply of fossil fuels, meaning that any policies to mitigate climate change proposed by countries such as the United States, if implemented, would still put the world on track for 3.2 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100.75

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[1] Url: https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2022/03/01/climate-catastrophe-fossil-fuels/

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