Llewellyn King: Biden's conflicted policies on natural gas; is a carbon-capture breakthrough coming?

Model of the LNG tanker Rivers. It was built in 2002 and is registered in Bermuda. Its capacity is 137,500 cubic meters of gas.

WEST WARWICK, R.I.

Joe Biden at war and Joe Biden at peace aren’t the same person. When it comes to the Russia-Ukraine war and energy policy, the U.S. president is severely conflicted.

Central to Biden’s strategy has been to cut off Russia’s huge revenues from exporting natural gas to Europe. He has unambiguously declared that the shortfall Europe will have in natural-gas supplies from Russia will, in time, be remedied with other sources, especially with liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from the United States.

So far so good. But Biden has always favored the environmental vision of the left wing of his own party and its implacable resistance to all forms of carbon-based fossil fuels because of their contribution to global warming.

Europe imports one third of the natural gas it needs for electric generation, heating and other domestic uses by pipeline from Russia. Particularly vulnerable is Germany, which depends on half of its gas imports from Russia: a dependency which it has happily allowed to grow year after year.

That was worsened when Germany turned its back on nuclear, aided by its influential Greens, after Japan’s Fukushima disaster, in 2011.

Charlie Riedl, executive director of Center for LNG at the Natural Gas Supply Association, said on my weekly PBS program, White House Chronicle, it will take several years to boost U.S. LNG exports to Europe and will need substantial infrastructure investment.

 The United States has six operating export LNG terminals and a seventh nearly ready to enter operation. Europe has 26 main receiving terminals and eight smaller ones. Each new U.S. terminal has a price tag of around $20 billion, Riedl confirmed. Similarly, tankers must be available and gas exporters, like Qatar, are increasing their tanker fleets.

The impediments to building new natural-gas infrastructure in the United States are formidable. On the same broadcast, Sheila Hollis, acting executive director of the U.S. Energy Association, a nonpartisan, non-lobbying group that embraces all energy, explained, “I don’t think there is any easy way to make anything happen of this magnitude in the country, regardless of what infrastructure you’re building, or which industry’s infrastructure.

She went on to say, “I do think it will remain an ongoing saga of slogging your way through the morass of regulations, both state and federal of every conceivable variety, and the strong opposition that comes from entities like financing communities and universities that may have a particular interest in reducing CO2; and because of the magnitude, it is one that will be lit on in the regulatory setting, in the judicial setting, and in the legislative setting, both state and federal, because that is the nature of the beast.”

Moreover, Hollis said, there are environmental-justice sensitivities: “Who gets the work? Where will the facilities be sited? And there will be extreme attention to environmental issues at the facilities and the pipelines.” 

Biden is caught between his own plans to cut fossil-fuel use in electric supply in the nation and his commitment to Europe that the United States will be a reliable supplier of fuel for their electricity needs over the long haul.

Commitment is important to the gas industry, which is whipsawed between demands for natural gas and attempts to limit its use by obstructing development. New natural-gas infrastructure will need to operate over several decades to recover  investment -- at odds with the Biden plan to reduce fossil-fuel generation in the United States by 2030 and get to net zero by 2050.

A bright spot: The industry is confident that sometime in the future, carbon can be removed from natural gas at the time of combustion. This technology is called carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) and envisages getting the carbon out of the combustion effluent before it goes into the air. It can then be used as a building material and for future gas and oil well stimulation.

According to USEA’s Hollis, the Department of Energy is working with its national laboratories and is making solid progress in perfecting the technology. Energy aficionados believe increasingly that a breakthrough is at hand.

If that is so, then Biden can shush his environmental critics and approach the future with more confidence, giving gas companies and utilities the durable assurances they need.

Meanwhile Biden is bullish on future gas in Europe and bearish on gas in the United States. As in the Johnny Mercer song, “something’s gotta give.”

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com, and he’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

whchronicle.com

Tim Faulkner: Nature is a lousy 'bridge fuel'

By TIM FAULKNER, for ecoRI News (ecori.org)

A new report concludes what has long been suspected about natural gas: Leaks of methane during the extraction and transportation process eliminate any climate benefits from the supposed low-carbon fuel.

“These findings should lead policymakers to reject natural gas as a ‘bridge fuel’ and instead to redouble America’s efforts to repower with truly clean energy from the sun, the wind and other sources of renewable energy,” according to the report “Natural Gas and Global Warming” compiled by the environmental advocacy groups Environment America and the Toxics Action Center.

Their research analyzed studies of both fracking and traditional extraction of natural gas from mining sites across the country. Aircraft-based sampling across Colorado's Front Range found a 4.1 percent leakage rate. Production sites in southwestern Pennsylvania had a 7 percent leakage rate, according to the report.

The report also questions previous studies of leakage by the Environmental Protection Agency and the University of Texas for underestimating natural-gas leakage. The 22-page report also calls into doubt the claim that natural gas is a “bridge fuel” to renewable energy, by producing less carbon than oil and coal. Both Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker support natural gas a bridge fuel.

Although natural gas emits less carbon dioxide when burned, it generates higher carbon emissions than traditional fossil fuels when the full life cycle of natural gas is considered. Leaks during extraction, storage and transportation of natural gas release greenhouse-gas emissions that equal some 250 new coal-fired power plants, according to the report.

Methane, the primary gas in natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas, and the report emphasizes the near-term impacts of methane leaks that can occur from 29 different activities and equipment that natural gas goes through during its life as a fuel.

“Temperature increases over the next few decades have the potential to push the climate past ‘tipping points’ — such as the release of methane deposits in the ocean or Arctic permafrost — that could further trigger warming,” according to the report.

Environment America suggests that the rapid growth of the wind and solar industries presents an opportunity for a rapid shift away from natural gas. The advocacy group points to the wave of new natural-gas infrastructure projects as a threat to a low-carbon energy future.

“New fracked gas infrastructure proposed across the region threatens our climate future, our health and our neighborhoods,” Ben Weilerstein, of the Toxics Action Center, said during a July 27 press conference outside the Rhode Island Statehouse.

The event was one of seven held recently across southern New England to protest natural-gas pipeline and infrastructure projects. At another press event on July 27, this one in Massachusetts at the New Bedford Harbor Walk, Sylvia Broude, executive director of Toxics Action Center, said, “For years, communities on the frontlines of proposed pipelines, power plants, compressor stations and LNG terminals have been told by the fossil-fuel lobby and politicians that gas is a low-carbon bridge to a clean energy future. Today, it’s clearer than ever that this is not the case. New fracked-gas infrastructure proposed across the region threatens our climate future, our health, and our neighborhoods. It’s time to double down on clean local renewable-energy sources right here in New England."

In Rhode Island, new fossil-fuel projects include a natural-gas power plant and the expansion of a pipeline compressor station, both in Burrillville, and a liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing facility on the Providence waterfront. Rehoboth, Mass., is being asked to host a new compressor station. A new LNG storage facility is proposed for Acushnet, Mass.

“These new fracked-gas proposals on the South Coast are nothing more than a money-making scheme for the fossil-fuel industry,” said Rachel Mulroy, an organizer with the Fall River, Mass.-based Coalition for Social Justice and a board member for South Coast Neighbors United, which formed out of concerns about Spectra Energy’s LNG proposal in Acushnet.

Marc Brown: New England's shortsighted electricity policies

This wholesale electricity costs haven’t reached the historic levels seen during the 2013-2014 winter, but that doesn’t mean that all is well with New England’s electricity markets. We still have the highest regional electricity costs in the United States, and impending capacity shortages will be a challenge to policymakers for years to come.

ISO-New England, which operates New England’s power grid, has repeatedly warned that 8,000 megawatts (25 percent) of New England’s electricity capacity has either retired or is “at-risk” of retiring. ISO’s calculations don’t include Pilgrim (Massachusetts) or Millstone (Connecticut) nuclear plants, which represent an additional 2,500 mw that some experts have considered to be at risk of closing.

How did we get here? Over the past 15 years, New England has implemented short-sighted electricity policies that have led to a hodgepodge of mandates and regulations that favor renewable energy generation and state-decreed long-term contracts between electricity suppliers and renewable electricity generators.

A significant factor in the premature closing of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant was the continued expansion of the renewable portfolio standard and purchase power agreements that accompany them. Add that to the federal production tax credits that benefit wind farms, giving them a $50/mwh head start on their competitors in the marketplace. This allows them to submit negative bids into the market, artificially depressing prices, which provides short-term savings, but ultimately leads to more base load retirements and long-term pain for ratepayers.

So why have electricity prices not reached the historic heights of last winter? Two reasons: First, it has not been as cold this winter and this has put less pressure on electricity demand. Second, and more importantly, we have had an increase in liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports mainly due to the inclusion of LNG in the winter reliability program.

The winter reliability program was implemented last winter (without LNG) and was largely responsible for keeping the lights on during last winter’s cold snap. It has played a similarly important role this January. This out-of-market program is designed to incentivize oil, natural gas and dual-fueled generators to carry inventory (oil) or to contract for fuel (LNG), ensuring that they have sufficient fuel reserves to operate when called upon.

Last summer, New England’s winter LNG strip prices were being offered with the highest forward prices, which means that LNG tankers from Trinidad chose New England over Europe or Asia. The Northeast Gateway, an LNG receiving facility located 13 miles off of the coast of Boston, has provided the region with an additional 1 billion cubic feet of LNG this winter from a facility that has laid dormant since the spring of 2010.

We can thank ISO’s changes to the winter reliability program for the increased LNG supplies, but is this a long-term solution? While the program has kept the lights on and the influx of LNG supplies have suppressed prices this winter, it would be foolhardy to depend on LNG imports as a long-term solution to future electricity supply shortages.

The ongoing debate on electricity prices has focused on natural gas pipeline expansion because of our growing reliance on natural gas for generation. There have been a number of pipeline projects proposed throughout New England, but proposals like Kinder Morgan’s Northeast Energy Direct Project have been met with fierce opposition from residents in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

When faced with policy decisions, our elected officials need to answer one simple question: Will passing this bill raise the cost of electricity? If the answer to that question is yes, then their vote on the bill needs to be no. Until that happens, we will continue to lose jobs to other parts of the country. For those who disagree, maybe you should speak to the thousands of out-of-work millworkers in Maine or machinists in New Hampshire and hear what they have to say.

Marc Brown is executive director of the New England Ratepayers Association.

---