Fossil fuel industry

Billions of federal tax dollars will soon be pouring into Louisiana to fight climate change, yet the projects they’re supporting may actually boost fossil fuels – the very products warming the planet. At issue are plans to build dozens of federally subsidized projects to capture and bury carbon dioxide from industries. On the surface, these projects seem beneficial. Keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere prevents the greenhouse gas from fueling climate change. In practice, however, this may lead to a net increase in fossil fuel production and more emissions. That’s because many of these carbon capture projects will be handling emissions from facilities that rely on oil and natural gas – in fact, many of the projects are tied to major oil and gas companies through subsidiaries. Under new federal rules, the projects can receive generous tax subsidies. The more carbon dioxide the factories produce and capture, the more federal money the projects can r...

On a recent visit to Rangely, a small town in northwest Colorado, my colleagues and I met with the administrators of a highly regarded community college to discuss the town’s economy. Leaving the scenic campus, we saw families driving into the mountains in off-road vehicles, a favorite activity for this outdoors-loving community. With a median household income above US$70,000 and a low cost of living, Rangely does not have the signs of a town in economic distress. But an existential risk looms over Rangely. The town is here because of an oil boom during World War II. Today, the oil and gas industry contributes over half of the county’s economic output. Rangely is not unique in the United States, which is the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas. There are towns across the country that depend on the oil and gas industry for well-paying jobs and public revenues that fund their schools and other critical services. A heavy dependence on any single indus...

Honolulu has lost more than 5 miles of its famous beaches to sea level rise and storm surges. Sunny-day flooding during high tides makes many city roads impassable, and water mains for the public drinking water system are corroding from saltwater because of sea level rise. The damage has left the city and county spending millions of dollars on repairs and infrastructure to try to adapt to the rising risks. Future costs will almost certainly be higher. More than US$19 billion in property value, at today’s dollars, is at risk by 2100 from projected sea level rise, driven by greenhouse gas emissions largely from the burning of fossil fuels. Elsewhere in Honolulu County, which covers all of Oahu, many coastal communities will be cut off or uninhabitable. Unwilling to have their taxpayers bear the full brunt of these costs, the city and county sued Sunoco LP, Exxon Mobil Corp. and other big oil companies in 2020. Their case – one of more than two dozen involving U.S. ci...

Leer en español. You’ve probably seen ads promoting gas and oil companies as the solutions to climate change. They’re meant to be inspiring and hopeful, with scenes of a green, clean future. But shiny ads are not all these companies do to protect their commercial interests in the face of a rapidly heating world. Most also provide financial support to industry groups that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on political activities, often to thwart polices designed to slow climate change. For example, The New York Times recently reported on the Propane Education and Research Council’s attempts to derail efforts to electrify homes and buildings in New York, in part by committing nearly US$900,000 to the New York Propane Gas Association, which flooded social media with misleading information about energy-efficient heat pumps. The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, which represents oil refiners and petrochemical firms, has spent millions...

The European Union is embarking on an experiment that will expand its climate policies to imports for the first time. It’s called a carbon border adjustment, and it aims to level the playing field for the EU’s domestic producers by taxing energy-intensive imports like steel and cement that are high in greenhouse gas emissions but aren’t already covered by climate policies in their home countries. If the border adjustment works as planned, it could encourage the spread of climate policies around the world. But the EU plan – which members of the European Parliament preliminarily agreed to on Dec. 13, 2022 – as well as most attempts to evaluate the impact of such policies, is missing an important source of cross-border carbon flows: trade in fossil fuels themselves. As energy analysts, we decided to take a closer look at what including fossil fuels would mean. In a newly released paper, we analyzed the impact and found that including fossil fuels in...