US & Canada Will Drown Us All In A Sea Of Methane

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We spend a lot of time here at CleanTechnica spreading the good news about renewable energy and how it will allow us to electrify everything in accordance with the vision of such notables as Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford University. Perhaps that focus blinds us to some aspects of life in the real world, where marketing ever larger quantities of fossil fuels is central to the economic plans of both the United States and  Canada.

Many celebrated the recent election of Mark Carney as the prime minister of Canada. They viewed him as the Anti-Trump who would return Canada to the path of democratic liberalism, making it a counterweight to the authoritarian “White Men Rule” stance favored by the multitude of MAGA morons. But in many respects, he is mirroring many of the policies roiling the politics of the nation next door.

According to the CBC, Carney has given government ministers until the end of the summer to complete a federal program review aimed at finding billions of dollars in cuts or savings. Federal departments have also been given 60 days to identify federal regulations that can be eliminated. Those mandates sound a lot like the policies of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency in the US.

One of the first acts of the Carney government was to push through Bill C-5, known as the One Canadian Economy Act. Part of what the legislation does is allow the central government to fast track infrastructure projects deemed vital to Canada’s national interests. And a big part of those interests includes finding new markets for Canada’s natural resources, now that the US has proven it could care a flying fig leaf about its northern neighbor.

“Fast track” is a reference to breaking the stultifying web of government regulations that seem to be specifically designed to keep progress from happening. Environmental reviews, objections by Indigenous people, NIMBY — all must be swept away so business can do what business does best. In the US last week, the failed administration issued a similar fatwa designed to prevent locals from opposing the rapid roll out of new data centers.

CleanTechnica readers, being well above average, will recognize these policies fly in the face of the anti-big government idea that underlies all populist movements. We are sick and tired of government telling us what we can and cannot do. Tear it down! Smash it to bits! Drain the swamp! Bust up the Deep State! Then the new government says, “We don’t give a horse’s patoot about what locals want. We are going to impose our will and if you don’t like it — tough.” Oh, the irony!

Canada has vast reserves of methane in what is known as the Montney Formation is located in western Canada in British Columbia and Alberta that covers a total area of 130 000 km² (50,000 sq mi). According to the Canadian Energy Regulator, it has the potential to produce a total of 449 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of methane with modern technology, making it one of the biggest gas resources in North America.” There are currently about 14,00o methane wells in the Montney Formation.

Now, thanks to the powers invested in the Canadian government by the new C-5 infrastructure act, Canada wants to drill up to 32,000 new wells, transport the methane to ports on Canada’s west coast, and sell it to customers in Asia. Doing so will be a slap in the face to Uncle Sam, while at the same time boosting the Canadian economy by finding new markets for its resources.

But Ottawa, we have a problem. If you do this, the odds of Canada meeting its emissions reduction goals agreed to in Paris in December of 2015 will be essentially zero, according to a report by David Hughes, a climate scientist with 30 years experience at the Geological Survey of Canada. “Personally, I don’t think with the way things are going…that we’re going to meet our net-zero commitments by 2050,” he told DeSmog. “That’s unrealistic at this point.”

At the end of last week, the US and EU agreed on a new tariffs structure that everybody in government is calling a huge win, which is a little hard to understand, since it triples US tariffs on goods imported from Europe. The details are still a bit murky, but one part of the alleged “deal” is that Europe will import a lot more liquified natural gas (LNG) from the US, which is rushing to complete a half dozen new LNG terminals in the Gulf of Mexico off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana.

According to a number of news sources, a major component of the tariff chaos created by the US administration is a desire to browbeat other nations into buying methane from the US. It seems that plan is working quite well, which is making all the little MAGAlomanies delirious with joy.

But Houston, we have a problem. The EU has some fairly ambitious climate objectives of its own and if it accepts all that lovely American LNG, those goals won’t be worth the paper they were written on. DeSmog reports that an army of US energy lobbyists is currently running around Brussels trying to find work-arounds to those climate regulations.

“It’s very clear that the industry and the State Department are putting a lot of pressure on the EU to just give us a pass on this methane rule and commit to our dirty LNG,” said Lorne Stockman, of Oil Change International and co-author of a new report detailing climate impacts from five US LNG projects. “And we certainly hope the EU does not buckle to that pressure. But it’s extremely concerning because there’s a lot at stake.”

Charlie Riedl, executive director for the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas, said at the Reuters Global Energy Transition conference on June 26, “There’s uncertainty about the US’s ability to actually comply with the methane regulations. That has slowed down our ability to actually finalize those deals. It has slowed down those projects that are close to reaching a final investment decision.”

About 75% of US LNG exports currently go to Europe, Riedl said, but the Center for LNG, whose members include BP, Chevron, Shell, and Total, says American gas exporters probably can’t meet Europe’s standards on methane pollution or even accurately measure the climate-altering pollution created by a given cargo of LNG.

“We’re going to have significant challenges meeting the letter of the law with those requirements,” Riedl said. He noted that because of the way those requirements are written, by the end of this decade, the US LNG industry could see significant challenges to expand into EU markets if the rules are not revised or relaxed. He added that some companies are simply gambling that American exporters will eventually find a way around the rules.

“What we’ve seen is the large portfolio participants taking a flier on this and saying we think that we’re going to be able to get gas there. We think that we’re going to be able to revise the methane regulations or get them relaxed or some sort of equivalency put into place to allow them to ultimately get that gas there.”

And so, here we are. As the effects of a hotter planet become clearer with every passing day, human beings who presumably went to college and have a functioning brain are plotting to make things worse, all in the name of national interest (and making a few bucks as well). You might think the national interest would, first and foremost, involve preserving the country as a place where people can live and thrive, not suffer premature death and elevated health risks.

There is a solution to this madness, however, and that is for Europe and Asia to continue their push to power their economies with renewable energy. Eliminating the demand for fossil fuels would be the best way to preserve the Earth for everyone.