Biden’s Latest War on Energy Will Increase Carbon Emissions

T he Biden administration recently announced a pause in approvals for new liquefied-natural-gas exports (LNG). Raising the bar for approving 16 pending gas-export projects to include a complete life-cycle environmental assessment could ironically derail President Biden’s own energy and environmental agenda with grave domestic and international ramifications.

No industry could be more central to achieving President Biden’s energy and environmental priorities than the natural-gas industry. The staggering growth of domestic supply spurred on by the advent of hydraulic fracturing over the last 15 years has turned the United States from a net importer into the world’s largest LNG exporter. This market shift has created thousands of jobs and allowed the industry to exceed the volumes in President Biden’s pledge to Europe to supply 50 billion cubic meters of LNG, preventing Russia from being able to use its leverage over this resource to splinter Western support for Ukraine.

On climate change, the shift from coal to natural gas in the United States has been a driving force in reducing American carbon emissions. It has the potential to do the same in countries across the world that depend on coal, such as China, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc. On the economy, even as Americans struggle with the consequences of inflation, the LNG boom is creating many of the blue-collar jobs that President Biden promised to voters with his “blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America.”

Given this reality, what explains these self-destructive attacks on the American LNG industry? The answer may lie in a paper from Cornell professor Robert Howarth that has received an outsized share of media attention. Last October, Howarth published an analysis claiming that LNG “is worse for climate than coal.” Despite the study not yet having a peer review, the paper has been covered uncritically in news outlets such as Politico, NBC, and the New Yorker and touted by Democratic lawmakers such as Senator Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.). It is quickly becoming a rallying cry for environmentalists to use in pressuring the Biden administration.

When digging deeper into the paper, however, it becomes clear that its headline-grabbing claims don’t standup.

Howarth tries to justify his claims by comparing the emissions from exporting LNG across the Earth to the emissions of transporting coal from Pennsylvania to New York. This is the definition of an apples-to-oranges comparison. Howarth also downplays methane emissions from coal production and transportation, further distorting the results. In fact, Howarth’s own paper states that LNG is cleaner than coal. In the real world, coal must also travel the same distance from the U.S. to Europe or Asia, ultimately creating far larger carbon emissions.

It is unfortunate, though perhaps not surprising, that, in politics, academic research is often weaponized against disfavored industries. It will be far more tragic, however, for the American people if this all-too-familiar tactic is successful in crippling an industry that has become indispensable to our national security, economy, and environment.

In 2012, my colleagues Govinda Avasarala and Kevin Massy at the Brookings Institution and I led a Natural Gas Task Force (Liquid Markets; Assessing the Case for U.S. Exports of Liquefied Natural Gas Policy Brief 12-01) composed of leading natural-gas specialists. As evidenced by the U.S. and global expansion of the industry beyond any level of expectation at that time, our conclusion then has held up:

History suggests that government intervention in the allocation of rents can lead to inefficient outcomes and unintended consequences. To avoid these outcomes, the U.S. government should neither act to prohibit nor to promote LNG exports. In refraining from intervention in the gas market, the government will ensure that U.S. gas is allocated to the most efficient end uses, many of which will bring ancillary political and economic benefits to the United States and its partners and allies around the world.”

For all these reasons and more, the Biden administration should reconsider its push to halt LNG while it still can.