More than 200 liquefied natural gas terminals are either under construction or in planning worldwide, mainly in North America, representing an outlay of $1.3 trillion, according to a report by Global Energy Monitor.
Energy companies plan to spend about $507 billion in the United States alone on LNG import and export terminals,
Global Energy Monitor said the scale of LNG expansion currently unfolding around the world could have a potentially larger impact on global warming than the expansion of coal-fired power plants. LNG production creates methane emissions, which is a greenhouse gas that is roughly 30 times more harmful than carbon dioxide emissions. Both coal and natural gas produce carbon dioxide emissions, though natural gas creates far less than coal.
If the proposed LNG expansion goes forward, the climate impact would be twice as damaging as the current installed base of coal in the United States, the Global Energy Monitor told CNN Business.
“We know that LNG is not a good answer climate-wise,” Ted Nace, founder and director of the Global Energy Monitor, said in an interview. “It might even be pretty foolish financially — for all the reasons that coal turned out to be a bad investment 10 years ago.”
However, the American Petroleum Institute, said in a statement that the industry “is already driving emissions to 25-year lows — more than any nation on earth — made possible by the growing use of clean natural gas for power. The United States and the world can continue that progress, meet record consumer energy demand, and protect the environment by investing in modern natural gas and oil infrastructure.”
And API said U.S. natural gas and oil production has increased by 50 percent since 1990, while methane emissions are down 14 percent.
