After the outbreak of the Ukraine war, many states quickly found an alternative to Russian gas imports in liquid gas. Contracts are concluded, terminals are to be built in record time. However, a study comes to the conclusion that too much is being invested in the alternative - and that the climate goals are in danger.
In the current energy crisis, countries around the world are building a lot of infrastructure for liquid gas in a hurry - but far more than is actually needed. This is the result of an analysis by the Climate Action Tracker published by researchers at the world climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh.
The climate-damaging emissions of these new gas capacities are therefore massively jeopardizing the goal of limiting the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times. According to the data, the foreseeable oversupply of LNG could reach around 500 megatons as early as 2030. This corresponds to almost five times the amount of Russian gas imported by the EU in 2021. And it is twice the total amount that Russia is currently selling worldwide.
Bill Hare, head of partner organization Climate Analytics, said there is a global run on LPG - in Europe, Africa, North America, Asia and Australia. If all projects were to be implemented, it would drive emissions of climate-damaging gases such as CO2 and methane to even more dangerous levels. However, fossil fuels could never be the solution to the current climate and energy crisis.
Another result of the Action Tracker analysis: According to researchers, even if the commitments of all countries to climate protection for the year 2030 are implemented, the earth will still warm up by around 2.4 degrees by the end of the century. On this point, the analyzes come to the same conclusion as at the climate conference in Glasgow a year ago. If you only look at what the states are doing now and ignore further announcements, the planet will heat up by 2.7 degrees by 2100. According to calculations by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, emissions of climate-damaging greenhouse gases would have to be roughly halved by 2030 in order to achieve the 1.5 degree target.
