LNG gas

The Biden administration has frozen pending decisions on permit applications to export liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to countries other than U.S. free trade partners. During this pause, which will last for up to 15 months, the administration has pledged to take a “hard look” at economic, environmental and national security issues associated with exporting LNG. Environmental advocates, who have expressed alarm over the rapid growth of U.S. LNG exports and their effects on Earth’s climate, praised this step. Critics, including energy companies and members of Congress, argue that it threatens European energy security and energy jobs in the U.S. Emily Grubert, associate professor of sustainable energy policy at the University of Notre Dame and a former official at the U.S. Department of Energy, explains why large-scale LNG exports raise complex questions for U.S. policymakers. Is the US a major LNG supplier? The U.S. is now the world’s largest LNG exporter...

Most of the clothing and gadgets you buy in stores today were once in shipping containers, sailing across the ocean. Ships carry over 80% of the world’s traded goods. But they have a problem – the majority of them burn heavy sulfur fuel oil, which is a driver of climate change. While cargo ships’ engines have become more efficient over time, the industry is under growing pressure to eliminate its carbon footprint. European Union legislators reached an agreement to require an 80% drop in shipping fuels’ greenhouse gas intensity by 2050 and to require shipping lines to pay for the greenhouse gases their ships release. The International Maritime Organization, the United Nations agency that regulates international shipping, also plans to strengthen its climate strategy this summer. The IMO’s current goal is to cut shipping emissions 50% by 2050. President Joe Biden said on April 20, 2023, that the U.S. would push for a new international goal of zero emi...

Through a year of war in Ukraine, the U.S. and most European nations have worked to help counter Russia, in supporting Ukraine both with armaments and in world energy markets. Russia was Europe’s main energy supplier when it invaded Ukraine, and President Vladimir Putin threatened to leave Europeans to freeze “like a wolf’s tail” – a reference to a famous Russian fairy tale – if they imposed sanctions on his country. But thanks to a combination of preparation and luck, Europe has avoided blackouts and power cutoffs. Instead, less wealthy nations like Pakistan and India have contended with electricity outages on the back of unaffordably high global natural gas prices. As a global energy policy analyst, I see this as the latest evidence that less wealthy nations often suffer the most from globalized oil and gas crises. I believe more volatility is possible. Russia has said that it will cut its crude oil production starting on March 1, 2023, by...

Russia’s war on Ukraine has cast a shadow over this week’s meetings of world leaders at the G-20 summit in Bali and the United Nations climate change conference in Egypt. The war has dramatically disrupted energy markets the world over, leaving many countries vulnerable to price spikes amid supply shortages. Europe, worried about keeping the heat on through winter, is outbidding poor countries for natural gas, even paying premiums to reroute tanker ships after Russia cut off most of its usual natural gas supply. Some countries are restarting coal-fired power plants. Others are looking for ways to expand fossil fuel production, including new projects in Africa. These actions are a long way from the countries’ pledges just a year ago to rein in fossil fuels, and they’re likely to further increase greenhouse gas emissions, at least temporarily. But will the war and the economic turmoil prevent the world from meeting the Paris climate agreement’s lon...

As the U.S. prepares for another Trump administration, one area unambiguously in the incoming president’s crosshairs is climate policy. Although he has not released an official climate agenda, Donald Trump’s playbook from his last stint in the Oval Office and his frequent complaints about clean energy offer some clues to what’s ahead. Exiting the Paris climate agreement Less than six months into his first presidency, Trump in 2017 formally announced that he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord – the 2015 international agreement signed by nearly every country as a pledge to work toward keeping rising temperatures and other impacts of climate change in check. This time, a greater but underappreciated risk is that Trump will not stop at the Paris Agreement. Trump attends a session of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in 2019. When he announced he would pull the U.S. out of the Pari...