[Scott] Next on "Energy Switch," we'll look at if and where we should build more natural gas pipelines.

- We need to be looking at the decision to continue to export more domestically produced U.S. gas overseas.

The more we export gas, there are going to be impacts in terms of domestic pricing and impacts on U.S. energy consumers.

- If we're not shipping our cleaner, less leaky gas to the world, that world's getting that gas from Russia, who don't give a darn about leakage.

And so, if we're not exporting our gas, whether it's to Europe or Asia, they're never gonna get off coal.

[Scott] Coming up on "Energy Switch," a fascinating discussion on natural gas pipelines.

[Narrator] Funding for "Energy Switch" was provided in part by, The University of Texas at Austin, leading research in energy and the environment for a better tomorrow.

What starts here changes the world.

[upbeat music] - I'm Scott Tinker, and I'm an energy scientist.

I work in the field, lead research, speak around the world, write articles, and make films about energy.

This show brings together leading experts on vital topics in energy and climate.

They may have different perspectives, but my goal is to learn, and illuminate, and bring diverging views together towards solutions.

Welcome to the "Energy Switch."

The U.S. natural gas pipeline network is critical infrastructure.

It carries gas from offshore and onshore reservoirs, to the many places it's used, such as power plants, factories, home furnaces, and kitchen stoves.

Proponents of natural gas want more pipelines so gas can replace more coal, here and abroad.

Opponents worry about more methane leakage from more pipelines and about local environmental impacts.

I'll discuss with Tim Ryan.

He's a former Democratic congressman from Ohio, who served 10 terms from 2003 to 2023, and is now a leadership council co-chair at Natural Allies.

Gillian Giannetti is a senior attorney for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council and leads NRDC's Liquefied Natural Gas program.

Next on "Energy Switch," we'll hear different perspectives on natural gas pipelines.

- Thanks for being here.

Looking forward to this discussion for sure.

- Thank you.

- We'll just dive right in.

So gas pipelines, subject of the day, why should our viewers care?

- Well, gas pipelines are three million miles scattering across our country, transporting natural gas from fracking sites to homes, businesses, and power plants.

And it affects all of us directly in terms of energy supply and the safety of the places that we live and work.

But it also affects us indirectly, in terms of the long-term impacts on the climate, the environment, and environmental justice.

- Yeah.

Stuff to add to that?

Why do they care?

[Scott laughs] - Well, I mean they should care because natural gas is 40% of our, you know, energy in the United States.

Double of nuclear, you know twice as much as coal, twice as much as wind and solar, and really much safer than transporting it any other way.

- Makes good sense.

Where do they go?

Where do gas pipelines currently go?

- There's the pipeline that comes from onshoring gas, gathering the gas.

- Right.

- And that's about a hundred thousand miles.

And then that goes to a larger pipeline, the interstate pipelines, that are bigger and move huge volumes of natural gas.

- Yeah.

- Those are about 300,000 miles.

And then, but the largest of 2.3 million that's left, is what goes to the utilities.

It goes to businesses, it goes to homes.

- So who owns them?

Who owns the pipelines?

Start here Gillian?

- Yeah, so one common misconception is that pipelines are utilities in the purest sense, and are owned by the government, and that's not true.

- Mm-hmm.

- Of course, some of the distribution pipelines that are used from taking those interstate gas pipelines to utilities are owned by the utilities.

But the transportation pipelines are largely privately owned by private companies.

- Yeah.

Who regulates them?

- Well, there's multiple agencies.

Obviously FERC, the federal agency, is kind of the main driver.

But you can have a dozen different agencies, evaluate whether this pipeline is, as Gillian said-- - And that's just federal.

That's just your federal piece.

- Right.

- And it can take six, seven years.

So I think there's a whole permitting reform here, both for natural gas and for transmission lines, because transmission lines have the same problem.

- Power transmission, electricity transmission.

- Exactly.

So the hope for guys like me who support both, is that we could come together around permitting reform that would allow the expansion of natural gas and allow the electrification of wind and solar and some of these alternatives.

- The congressman is right that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, is the lead agency for reviewing these big, you know, Interstate 10 type pipelines.

And they also are in charge of being the lead for the environmental review that is required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

That requires them to work with the EPA and sometimes the Department of Transportation, sometimes the park service, sometimes fish and wildlife.

You know I think that permitting reform has been characterized as, how do we get these things built faster?

When I would reframe permitting reform is how do we have the right projects built faster and more efficiently?

Because at this point, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approves 99.8% of all projects.

It is not a question of whether a project will be approved, it's when.

In the meantime, all of those agencies that are involved in the process are involved in the process because there's a lot of impacts.

You look at Ohio, the Rover pipeline, which is currently operational in Ohio.

When it was constructed, not only did it leak two million gallons of drilling fuel into the Tuscarawas River, it also is currently under investigation for having destroyed a national registry of historic buildings, places building, and then lying about it to federal regulators.

Those are the kinds of things that you don't wanna see happen so-- [Scott] So they're bad actors.

- Right.

So when we're...

Exactly.

And the gas industry is not a monolith, it's extremely important to keep that in mind.

You know, there are just like anything else.

- But you apply those same standards to any energy project?

- Yeah, no absolutely.

- Yeah.

I am actually a huge fa-- as a lawyer, - Yeah.

- I'm a huge fan of the Natural Gas Act.

I know that makes me, you know, a little bit of a nerd.

But, I love the fact that there is a robust, legal standard in place - Yeah, yeah.

- that mandates the assessment of public interest factors.

- Sure.

- However there are things that can be done to make sure that that coordination between FERC and these other agencies is more efficient and more accurate.

Because one of the things that actually has caused delays in the process is shoddy reviews by some of those sister agencies that then get knocked down in courts and then have to be redone.

- There's gotta be a sweet spot, you know, where we're gonna be able to use the latest and greatest technologies, or maybe more investment in manpower at some of these agencies, to be able to cut it from six, seven, eight years, down to three.

But you had companies cancel five different projects, since 2013, here in the United States because it's such a pain in the neck to try to go through the permitting process.

And there's always bad actors and there's always stuff that happens.

And they should be absolutely punished, put in jail, fined, whatever the case may be.

But we have to move forward because this is such a critical part of our economy and the health and welfare of our own people here.

Here's the backdrop that I think is really important for us.

The new projections for energy usage and demand in the United States has just doubled.

And right now, wind and solar cannot even come close to meeting that demand.

And so we have to have this expansion of natural gas.

And so those pipelines are, are essential.

- Yeah, energy underpins a lot of it, for sure.

- And candidly, I disagree with the framing that natural gas is what's going to be helping to power that transition.

I mean, you just look at the natural gas markets.

We're not building more pipelines to serve local communities.

We're building them to build export facilities to send gas overseas.

Our first export of our own natural gas was in 2016 and now, we are the world's number one exporter of liquified natural gas.

- Right.

What percentage right now, not future, but right now of our gas, total gas production, is exported?

Do you know?

- Well I know it's about, 15 BCF that we export-- - Okay - every day.

- That's billion cubic feet.

- Right.

- And that we are projecting to have over 40 BCF by the end of the decade.

- Yeah.

- So, there is no doubt that the gas industry is moving towards wanting to export more and more of it overseas.

- Right.

- The Natural Gas Act, specifically section three of the gas act that has to do with liquified natural gas, is evaluating whether the export is in the U.S. public interest.

Trade energy security, national security, is undoubtedly a public interest factor.

- Right.

- But so are - Sure.

- the impacts that are happening domestically and those are not being considered.

So, you know, I am for a sensible evaluation - Right.

- and development of energy.

And using the law that we have and making sure that it actually is benefiting the people, which is what it's supposed to do.

- Yeah.

How much methane actually leaks from pipelines?

- Well, from the natural gas industry, writ large in the world, it's six percent.

- That's a big number.

- Well, of the six percent, America's maybe one percent of that entire piece.

- Right.

Are you saying that's not all from pipelines though?

That's the whole methane industry.

- That's the whole industry.

And when you're talking about the exports as well, if we're not shipping our cleaner, less leaky gas to the world, the world's getting that gas from Iran, the world's getting that gas from Russia, who don't give a darn about leakage.

They don't give a darn about methane.

You know, we talk about the public interest with regard to, - Right.

- the Natural Gas Act, is climate change.

And we saw this in Ohio.

If you look at a graph of Ohio, you'd see a huge increase in natural gas, huge decrease in coal.

We cut carbon in Ohio by almost 50%.

If we're not exporting our gas, whether it's to Europe or Asia, they're never gonna get off coal.

- So on the, coming back kind of the leaky piece, six percent methane, U.S. better, similar numbers and from where, like at what point, have we enough studies to know where its leaks are coming from?

- Yeah, if we want to take climate change seriously, we have to address methane leaks.

Because, if you even have a little bit of gas leakage, domestically, it can significantly offset any potential climate benefit of switching to gas over coal.

Because pure methane is so much more potent in terms of its greenhouse gas warming effect than carbon.

- Do you have a feel for like, in terms of the amount of gas we're moving around in pipelines, what percentage is leaking and.

- Unfortunately, I think part of the problem is we don't have a really good handle on how much is leaking because we don't have enough monitoring technology.

And again, the industry is not a monolith.

So there are some companies that are very serious about making sure that they have, you know, these things called like PIGS or other sorts of technologies that can assess whether - It's a technology that, - methane is leaking.

- runs up and down the pipeline - Exactly.

- looking for leaks.

- But there are others that frankly don't, and the industry wouldn't deny that leakage is happening across the value chain.

- What are the other impacts of pipelines?

Talked about leakage, but what are some of the other environmental impacts?

- So one impact that is, often unfortunately not discussed enough, is environmental justice.

Pipelines are historically built in low income communities, communities that do not have as much political power, or impact, or ability to advocate for themselves.

Increasingly, as we see the shift towards LNG export, these facilities are being built in overwhelmingly Black and brown communities that already have comorbidities and issues that they are dealing with, that are compounded by the continued construction of these facilities next to them.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has shown some moves, lately, to taking environmental justice seriously.

- What do you think?

- It's not as cut and dry as to say, well these minority communities are hurt by x, y, or z aspect of the natural gas industry because on the other end of that, you have Black and brown communities being hurt because they don't have access to affordable, reliable - Right.

energy.

If you are energy insecure, you're more than likely food insecure as well.

Because energy is taking more and more a chunk of your, of your income.

This falls predominantly on Black and brown communities.

And, what the studies are showing is that these families that are energy insecure, food insecure, their kids are more likely to go to the hospital, more likely to be depressed, and more likely to have behavioral issues.

So this is a complicated thing.

[Scott] Right.

Heat or eat.

- all the way around-- heat or eat.

- This is why we need to be looking at the decision to continue to export more domestically produced U.S. gas overseas.

The more we export gas, it's a simple supply and demand.

There are going to be impacts in terms of domestic pricing and impacts on U.S. energy consumers.

And we saw that happen when the Freeport LNG terminal in Texas had to shut down because of an explosion.

Gas prices domestically plummeted, and then they started to go back up again once that export terminal went back online.

- Well, here's, you know, again, another view of that, that we had a huge increase in natural gas.

The projections were the prices were gonna go up four percent, they only went up about three percent.

- Mhm.

- There's no easy way out of this.

And so what we're saying is that, what we're doing now with natural gas, the prices are, are lower.

This is good for the economy, and if we get rid of the permitting problems, we can increase production, and increase capacity here in the United States.

To me, that sounds like a win-win.

- Let's just kind of get down then, given all that, do we need to build more natural gas pipelines?

- NRDC's position and my own personal position is not a yes we do, or no we don't.

- Right.

[Gillian] We need to look at it in a project by base.

- Same question.

- We need more pipelines.

We have to look at this through the lens of emissions, and we have to look at it through the lens of economic growth happening in our country.

And from the emission standpoint, natural gas, by all accounts, has helped us displace coal, and dramatically lead the world in carbon reduction.

Now, of course we need to make sure we do it properly, but we are doubling the projection of economic growth.

We're re-industrializing the country.

That re-industrialization cannot happen without more pipelines.

If we could build a political coalition, with the natural gas industry, the unions and the workers in that industry.

and the renewable community.

You can actually move an agenda around climate and energy that can be sustainable for the next 10 to 20 years.

- One of the things that, that the congressman has said that I encourage and agree with is the importance for, we'll say, historically unlikely allies to come together and come to a creative solution here.

And that's why it's so challenging and frustrating when, you know, you hear the industry going out on their megaphones and their press releases saying, we care about environmental justice, we care about climate change, we care about gas pricing.

But then, on the legal filings that, you know the three of us read, and nobody else reads, they sue, and appeal, and file, and challenge, every effort, that is been made by federal regulators to actually consider those.

So it's disingenuous.

[Scott] Yeah.

- Well, you have that on the environmental side as well.

[Scott] Yeah.

- Right, it's clear evidence that natural gas has had a dramatic impact on reducing carbon.

But yet, you still have the most pro environmentalists in the country say that they want to end the natural gas industry.

- Not simple, I think you're both saying that.

They're just complexities here and it's not simple.

That's why we're visiting about these things.

So, just briefly, if we build new pipelines, should they be able to be adapted to carry other things, like super critical CO2 for sequestration, or hydrogen?

- Yeah, for sure.

I mean, this is, again, this is an engineering issue, and I'm way out over my skis on this.

But talking to people in the industry, that is the direction, whether it's, you know, renewable natural gas, whether it's hydrogen, and what the opportunities are for that moving forward.

And new kind of more dynamic pipelines could be a, a big part of that.

- Interesting, yeah.

- So, to speak to the congressman's point, the studies that have been put on this to date, show that it would be either extremely expensive, or extremely questionable, as to whether it would be possible to build a pipeline that could be built, - To retrofit.

- to retrofit, - Yeah.

- one or the other.

Hydrogen and CO2 pipelines that are bid on a legal no man's land.

You know we have the, the National Gas Act, we don't have a hydrogen act.

- Mhm.

- We don't have a carbon pipeline Act.

So we don't have a federal set of guidelines of what are the kinds of factors that we should be considering for these kinds of infrastructure.

And it's a, it's a major gap and it leads to uncertainty and concerns.

And as the congressman knows, when there's legal uncertainty and concerns, nobody wins.

- Yeah we've talked about, could they be built?

Should they be built?

[Scott laughs] Now let's talk about will they.

Will we see new pipelines built and if so, when and where?

- When it comes to large interstate transportation pipelines, there haven't been that many projects proposed in the last few years.

We have seen more projects proposed for pipelines that are specifically used.

to feed liquefaction terminals.

And we also have seen projects that are meant to improve, retrofit, or expand existing pipeline capacity.

But we'll have to see whether there's going to be more of those big large, you know, I-95, I-10 type pipelines being proposed.

- Do you think there will be?

- I mean, I don't think that we really need that many of them in order to take care of our energy needs.

So to the extent that the gas industry agrees, and decides that it's not commercially viable and therefore doesn't propose them you know, we'll have to wait and see.

- Yeah, okay.

What do you think?

- Well I think they're gonna need a signal from Washington and other states that this is the direction we wanna move in.

And so, if Washington DC doesn't say, we're gonna have regulatory reform, and encourage investment, then the answer will be no.

If we get into a lame duck session, then we may be in a situation where a deal can be made, and I hope there is.

- Let's pretend hypothetically like we're gonna build three new big gas pipelines in the country.

Where would you see them regionally?

- Well I'm geographically biased, coming from eastern Ohio.

[Scott laughs] [Scott] Utica.

I would love to see Utica.

- Yeah.

- Out to New England, out to the east coast.

- Yeah.

- For both consumption by Americans on the East coast, and then off to our friends and allies in Europe and around the world.

- Yeah.

Okay.

How about you Gillian?

- My guess is that, to the extent that we see any major gas projects being proposed in the next few years, that they are going to be meant to either interconnect with existing pipelines that already take gas for export, to expand existing pipelines that are meant for export, or to expressly facilitate export, and to link up to a liquefaction terminal which would be on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi.

- Right, right.

The final thoughts, if you would like our audience, which is PBS viewers, take away two or three points.

Gillian, start with you.

What would, what would you like them to hear?

- Sure.

So first thing that I think is really important Scott, is that, this is a complicated issue, but it's a critical one that we have to solve.

So first, we wanna make sure that the law is being followed.

We have a federal regulator, that historically has rubber-stamped these applications, without actually considering climate change, environmental impacts, economic impacts, pros and cons.

We have an industry who wants to be the savior, for jobs, and climate security and national security, but then, have opposed every effort to try and actually make those things considered.

And then, the third thing that I think is really important for us to consider, is the fact that we don't have time to waste.

And if we aren't taking a serious look, at natural gas' pros and cons, and making sure that we are responsible about this, it's not the three of us that are gonna pay, we're gonna be gone.

- Mhm.

- It's gonna be our children and grandchildren who are gonna wonder why we didn't do something.

- Mm.

Yeah, good points.

Yeah, thank you.

Tim.

- Yeah, I believe that natural gas, is a major part of the solution.

We've seen it here in the United States, with a dramatic reduction in carbon, because of natural gas, displacing coal.

We've taken 200 coal fired power plants offline.

The problem is China's putting 200 on, and other people around the world are moving in the wrong direction, including Germany.

We need to get our clean natural gas to the world to take coal offline.

That's one.

Two, I think we have to start looking at, and ask your audience to start looking at this from an emissions standpoint.

What is reducing carbon emissions?

If we get into that frame, we will see that natural gas can help us reduce emissions, in partnership and conjunction, with all of the renewables.

We should support all of these.

And lastly, tapping into my, you know 20 years in Congress, and political life, we need compromise.

I mean, we're not gonna agree on everything.

And you can't, deep six, any pragmatic approach that's gonna reduce emissions, because you don't agree with everything.

Or you think at the end of the day, natural gas should be left in the ground.

If we don't have a path forward, for the next 10 or 15 or 20 years, we're gonna be in 2040 and we're still gonna be fighting with each other.

And everybody loses in that scenario.

- Yeah.

Look, terrific summary.

And in many ways, actually converging.

So, I appreciate both of you being here.

Gillian, thank you, thank you for your time today.

- Thank you Scott.

- Really helpful.

- Tim.

- Terrific.

- Thank you very much.

- Scott Tinker, "Energy Switch."

Three million miles of natural gas pipelines cross the U.S., providing gas to commercial and residential users.

Lately to LNG export terminals, and especially to power plants.

Gas makes 40% of our electricity.

Natural gas has replaced so much coal in the power sector, that the U.S. leads the world in CO2 reduction.

However, natural gas is mostly methane, a very potent greenhouse gas.

Our system currently leaks about six percent of its gas.

Some worry that more pipelines will mean more methane in the atmosphere.

The best run companies take leakage very seriously, but some don't.

Both guests thought producers and users should be held accountable to reduce methane leaks.

And that the environmental impacts of pipelines must be better considered.

Nonetheless, Tim believes natural gas, is a domestic, lower carbon energy source, that could spark economic growth, and complement wind and solar.

To expand its use, we must find compromise, to build new natural gas pipelines.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] Funding for "Energy Switch" was provided in part by The University of Texas at Austin, leading research in energy and the environment for a better tomorrow.

What starts here changes the world.