At the end of October Professor Robert Warren Howarth from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University in the USA published an article The Greenhouse Gas Footprint of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Exported from the United States. The article has not yet undergone peer review, so a degree of caution should be exercised with regard to its conclusions, but the issue raised in the text illustrates an interesting phenomenon.
For years, there has been no doubt that decarbonizing energy systems requires moving away from fossil fuels, primarily hard coal and lignite. Of course, it would be best to replace these fuels with clean energy from the sun, wind, and nuclear power, but the problem is the transition period. Therefore, we take it for granted that in the meantime, coal should be replaced with fuels that cause lower greenhouse gas emissions during combustion, such as natural gas.
The natural gas consumed in Europe is supplied partly from within our continent (e.g., from the North Sea) and partly transported by sea in liquefied form (e.g., from Arab countries and the United States). According to Prof. Howarth's analyses, the total carbon footprint of such liquefied natural gas exported from the US is higher than the carbon footprint of coal used for energy production. These differences are significant, ranging from 24% to as much as 274% in different scenarios. This is due, among other things, to emissions from the combustion of fuels used in transport and the escape of methane, a gas whose greenhouse effect is up to 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide during the first twenty years.
What does this mean if the calculations are confirmed in the peer-review process? First of all, we must agree with the representatives of non-governmental organizations who left the Platform on Sustainable Finance in 2022. They did so in protest against the European Commission's decision to recognize natural gas as a transitional fuel that can be considered sustainable in the EU Taxonomy. This decision was not justified by the state of scientific knowledge at the time, and Prof. Howarth's article only confirms this.
Does this mean we can safely return to burning coal in our power plants? Not at all! The carbon emissions have not decreased; we have simply learned that the emissions from natural gas imported from other regions of the world are even higher. We must acknowledge this and work even harder to modernize our energy system in order to achieve true decarbonization.
When creating strategies and operational plans for sustainable development in our companies, we should not use half measures or decide on certain solutions just because everyone else is doing so. Every decision, every solution, every planned action should be justified in accordance with the current state of scientific knowledge. We cannot be satisfied with half measures or decide to do the bare minimum. And this applies not only to environmental issues, but also to the impact on people and society. This is, after all, the essence of due diligence processes.
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