The world’s climate scientists continue to issue dire reports about the climate catastrophe awaiting the world if we don’t take immediate and far-reaching action to cut carbon emissions 50 percent by 2030 — and move to net-zero by 2050. But now the war in Ukraine is pushing governments in the opposite direction — ramping up production of coal, oil and especially liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to replace the fuels that Russia currently sells to Europe.
Producing LNG is itself an incredibly energy-intensive process, requiring the gas to be converted to a liquid and transported to where it will be converted back to gas. In addition, the war in Ukraine is greatly increasing climate emissions from tanks and planes on both sides that are locked in battle.
Ted Glick is co-founder of the group Beyond Extreme Energy, that’s focused for the past eight years on pushing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, to stop rubber stamping approval for all fossil fuel projects that come before it and switch to promoting renewable energy. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus, a member of BXE, spoke with Glick about some recent actions taken by FERC, both positive and negative, and how listeners can get involved in the campaign to stop FERC’s blanket approval of fossil fuel projects.
TED GLICK: The big story right now as far as FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) – is that this is the agency that makes decisions about whether or not the methane gas, the fracked gas industry expands or not – new pipelines, new export terminals, etc. And there’s a major push underway led by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, the Republicans in the Senate, other corporate Democrats, to get the White House to move to dramatically ramp up the production of methane gas and the expansion of export terminals to ship gas allegedly over to Europe but you can be absolutely certain that if they get this, they are going to ship it anywhere in the world where they can make the most money, because that’s what the gas industry has been about for this whole decade: creating an export gas industry because the prices of gas have been higher in Europe and Asia than in the U.S. And that’s what they’ve been pursuing and they’re not going to stop doing that if the Biden administration and people in Congress who should know better allow this to happen.
MELINDA TUHUS: Yes, it’s very disappointing and distressing to see this unfold. But I wanted to back up a little and talk about some good news that lasted for about a month, when the three Democratic commissioners, led by Chairman Richard Glick – no relation to you – made some decisions that actually were very promising, and if they were to stay in effect it could actually put a real damper on some of the things you were just talking about. So, tell us what happened at their regularly scheduled February meeting.
TED GLICK: Yes. I think it was Feb. 17. They made a decision by a 3-2 majority – three Democrats in favor, two Republicans against it – that they were going to have a new policy when it came to making decisions about gas industry expansion, which is one of the things that FERC is assigned to do by Congress. And they’ve been a rubber stamp for 20 years, giving the gas industry almost every single expansion policy they want. They changed that policy. They said that now, when a pipeline company says they want to build a pipeline or an export terminal or a compressor station to push the gas along through pipelines, that it’s not enough for the pipeline company to have a contract with a gas supplier – the company that brings the gas out of the ground and brings it to the pipeline.
And that’s basically what they’ve been using for why they give permits to pipeline companies. Now, what’s necessary is that FERC will look at impacts on landowners whose land is going to be taken for a pipeline; impacts on local communities where this infrastructure would be built, particularly from an environmental justice lens in terms of people of color and low income people; and also very much the issue of the climate crisis.
There have been at least four major court decisions in courts of appeals that have essentially told FERC that they need to take seriously the climate impacts of this infrastructure, and that’s one of the things that pushed them to make this decision, that legally the courts are telling them you have to take this issue much more seriously.
So, it was a good development. The problem is that a month later, because of all this pressure with the Ukraine war on March 24, at their last meeting, they decided to suspend that decision to give stakeholders more time for input. Richard Glick, the chair, who’s no relation to me, by the way, when he said that and said that he’d be voting to suspend the decision until there was more input, he explicitly talked about meetings that he’s had with pipeline companies and the gas industry as a main reason why it’s being suspended.
So, it’s very disturbing, it’s very concerning. There’s a need for FERC to hear from a lot of people right now. People should write to FERC. The specifics of the dockets, as they’re called, are PL 18-1 and PL 21-3. That’s a little technical; that’s the way FERC works. But if people can write those down and contact FERC; go to their website at FERC.gov, or just write them a letter. They should be flooded; they should be hearing from people all over the country that we don’t want the war in Ukraine to be used as an excuse to just accelerate the climate crisis through the expansion of the gas industry.
For more information, visit Beyond Extreme Energy at beyondextremeenergy.org and watch FERC Doesn’t Work Video at youtu.be/5UexITOF1ds.
