Fw: Climate: U.S. natural gas will flow through Mexico
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Fracked U.S. gas will flow through Mexico
The fracking boom has transformed the United States into the world’s largest natural gas producer and exporter, causing enormous shifts in energy markets. Energy giants like Exxon Mobil have the supply. The rest of the world, especially in Asia, has the demand, using ever more natural gas, partly to move away from coal and oil. Mexico will be key to America’s continued dominance. By next year, American natural gas will start flowing to Energía Costa Azul, a gas terminal in Baja California that was originally designed for gas traveling in the other direction, from Asian producers to U.S. markets. Costa Azul is undergoing a $2 billion transformation into an export facility for American gas, the first in a network of planned liquid natural gas exporting facilities down Mexico’s West coast.
Soaring gas production and exports could delay the world’s transition to solar and wind. In a key development last month, the Biden administration paused the approval process for new export terminal projects in the U.S. while it considers the potential effects on global warming. The pause also affects several proposed Mexican projects, because they would be exporting American gas. Crucially, it won’t affect Costa Azul, which already has its approvals and is mostly complete. “Costa Azul locks in fossil fuel dependency over a 20- to 30-year period,” said Gregor Clark, who researches energy projects across the Americas for Global Energy Monitor The new route through Mexico could cut travel times to energy-hungry Asian nations roughly in half, bypassing the Panama Canal, which has been choked by heavy traffic and low water because of drought. The biggest proposed export terminal along the Gulf of California, called Mexico Pacific, faces longer odds. It would be roughly 10 times as large as Costa Azul if all its proposed phases were to be built, and even larger than the largest proposed project on U.S. soil, Venture Global’s CP2 project. Activists worry not just about climate change but potential pipeline leaks and increased shipping traffic in the biodiverse Gulf of California, sometimes referred to as “the Aquarium of the World.” “The operation of those export projects would mean not only a great deal of carbon and methane emissions but also the industrialization of a pristine ecosystem,” said Fernando Ochoa, who runs Northwest Environmental Defense, a nonprofit lawyers’ group focusing on the environment and human rights in northwestern Mexico. The ripple effects on the global gas market created by President Biden’s directive are still shaking out, analysts said, and it remains unclear how long the pause will remain in effect. The question of who will win the U.S. presidential election in November also looms over the market. Continue reading the main story
Can we build solar power without harming nature?For pronghorn, the grassland north of Flagstaff is prime habitat. It gives the antelope-like creatures of the American West the food and conditions they need to survive fall and winter. But for a nation racing to adopt renewable energy, the land is prime for something else: solar panels. The Arizona sun shines strong, the terrain is flat and high-voltage transmission lines are already in place from a decommissioned coal plant. Animals need humans to solve climate change. But they also need places to live. Loss of habitat is the top driver of a staggering global decline in biodiversity, the variety of life on earth. The boom in solar, set to be the fastest-growing energy source in the United States, is predicted to fence off millions of acres across the nation, blanketing them in rows of glassy squares. The good news for wildlife is that there are ways for solar developers to make installations less harmful, and even beneficial, for many species, like using fences that let some animals pass, building wildlife corridors, adding native plants that nurture pollinators, and more. But at this pivotal moment, as solar farms sprout across the country, those measures often go unused. “We’re faced with two truths: We have a climate change crisis, but we also have a biodiversity crisis,” said Meaghan Gade, a program manager at the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies. “We have to be mindful that there’s wildlife that are dependent on these habitats, and we have to be smart and thoughtful about how we’re doing this deployment so that we can hold both of those crises at the same time.” — Catrin Einhorn More climate news
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