Members Of Congress Deliver Strong Message To DOE: Community Voices, Climate Analysis Are Essential to Determine Public Interest in LNG Exports

Today, more than 60 members of Congress sent a letter to Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Granholm urging the agency to update how it determines whether the climate, environmental justice, and consumer costs of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports are in the public interest. To date, DOE has never rejected an LNG export application based on climate, environmental justice, or economic harms, and has refused to develop clear and universal guidance governing how it determines whether an export application should be approved

After the release of the letter, Chris Espinosa, Earthjustice Legislative Director for Climate and Energy, issued the following statement:

“Members of Congress are delivering a strong message to the Biden administration’s Department of Energy: DOE cannot credibly determine if LNG exports are in the public’s best interest if it has never released a transparent, consistent, and scientifically sound approach for those decisions.

“It’s obvious that DOE’s current case-by-case approach to export approvals ignores the aggregate impact that the LNG build out is having on climate progress and frontline communities. DOE believes that all LNG exports yield net climate benefits, but this assumption ignores the proliferation of better clean energy alternatives and the severe health and environmental losses to communities here at home.

“We thank these members of Congress for their leadership in opposing the status quo on LNG that locks the U.S. and the world into decades of more fossil fuel extraction and expansion. We share their call to DOE and urge the agency to modernize its public interest determination as quickly as possible.”