Renewables Activists Outraged By North-American LNG Boom

The booming liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure around the world—with the U.S. and Canada accounting for 74 percent of proposed LNG export terminal capacity—poses “a direct challenge to Paris climate goals,” a new report from Global Energy Monitor has found. The push for LNG has sparked outrage by renewables activists who liken the so-called bridge fuel to kicking an oxycontin habit in favor of heroin. Global Energy Monitor, a network of researchers developing collaborative informational resources on fossil fuels and alternatives, argues that the massive increase in LNG-related infrastructure globally is incompatible with the warning of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that gas use must drop by 15 percent by 2030 and 43 percent by 2050 compared to 2020, if the planet is to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. “With the move to natural gas, it’s as if we proudly announced we kicked our Oxycotin habit by taking up heroin instead,” Global Energy Monitor’s report said, quoting environmentalist Bill McKibben. According to the report, the main component in natural gas—methane—has been responsible for 25 percent of global warming to date.