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Global investments in liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure threaten to undermine climate goals. There will be far more LNG capacity than we need if we want to limit global warming.
This is clear from an analysis that Climate Action Tracker will publish on Thursday during the climate summit in Egypt.
With Russia having sharply reduced its gas exports, Europe is fully committed to bringing in liquefied natural gas. There are plans to create 26 new LNG terminals in the EU, and many exporting countries want to build new plants to liquefy natural gas.
Much of this new infrastructure will not be usable until after 2025, according to the Climate Action Tracker report. This at a time when the use of fossil fuels must be reduced sharply by 2030, in order to reduce European CO2 emissions by at least 55%.
If all proposed plans are implemented, around 500 million tonnes (over 600 million cubic meters) more LNG could be shipped by 2030 than we still need. Europe could import more LNG than natural gas from Russia has ever arrived on the continent.
Large-scale expansion of LNG infrastructure is therefore a “false solution” to the energy crisis, concludes the research group. If we fully utilize the LNG capacity, we will continue to emit too much CO2. The alternative is that we build the terminals and factories, but we don’t use them. This in turn can lead to significant economic losses.
Countries like Germany expect to be able to use their LNG terminals later to import green hydrogen. But according to a recent to research from the German research institute Fraunhofer ISI, there are still “great uncertainties” about this. There are significant costs and technical challenges involved.
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Climate plans not on track for 1.5 degrees
In its report, Climate Action Tracker also looks at the climate plans that countries have submitted to the UN. Researchers have seen little change since the climate summit in Glasgow a year ago. Only 25 countries have tightened their climate targets in the past year, and in some cases that was mostly a token change.
With current policy, global warming will reach 2.7 degrees by 2100, predicts Climate Action Tracker. If all countries fully adhere to their 2030 targets and their pledges to become climate neutral after that, the warming will be 2 degrees.
The think tank sees good news from the US that a very ambitious climate package will be launched this year assumed. China is also increasing its commitment to renewable energy in the five-year plan presented by President Xi Jinping this year.
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