@olliemilman
Mon 23 Oct 2023 06.00 EDT
“The well-funded environmental activists opposing CP2 and all US LNG projects are completely out of touch with reality,” said a spokesperson for Venture Global, the company behind CP2, which it hopes to start building by 2026.
“Ironically, Mr McKibben and other activists who claim to want to lower global emissions are actually advocating for restricting access to a cleaner form of energy and denying energy security to millions of people.
“This would only result in continued-and increased coal use and prevent the reduction of global emissions.”
Critics point out that the production of LNG, when drilling, production and burning are considered, is a major driver of the climate crisis. Studies have shown that while gas emits less carbon dioxide than coal, it often also involves the leaking of large quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
“This is a carbon mega bomb,” said Jeremy Symons, a former Environmental Protection Agency official, of CP2, which has requested a permit to operate until 2050, a point when Biden aims for the US to have zeroed out its emissions. “The scale of the project is almost unfathomable and it locks us into a fossil fuel dependency for the next 30 years. If all we do is shift from coal to gas, we are cooked.”
According to calculations by Symons, who runs his own consultancy, the CP2 project would cause 197m tons of planet-heating gases each year once fully operational, including emissions from the production of the gas and its eventual burning overseas, which isn’t counted in the US’s own emissions tally.
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