API: US "Leading The World" In GHG Cuts; Reality; Emissions Up 3.4% In 2018; More Fresh Lies On Tap

[hatrack]

In 1998, the U.S.'s largest oil and gas industry lobbying group, the American Petroleum Institute (API), was involved with a communications plan whose goal was promoting “uncertainties in climate science” among the American public. Over 20 years later, their communications plan looks a little different but still needs fact-checking.

In September, API began running TV, billboard, and social media ads promoting natural gas as a climate solution. “Thanks to natural gas, the U.S. is leading the way in reducing emissions,” the ads claim, and “leading the world in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.” But is all of that true? In fact, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions actually rose 3.4 percent in 2018. While API appears to be specifically referring to emissions from power generation — attributing those savings to the switch from coal power to natural gas — even the power sector saw emissions rise 1.9 percent last year.

EDIT

While the oil and gas industry — or as API's new ads call it, “the natural gas and oil industry” — is touting natural gas as a way to decrease emissions, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that natural gas will have the greatest increase in carbon dioxide emissions growth of any fuel source through 2050. That would make the U.S. a world leader in increasing CO2 emissions from natural gas.



EDIT

In one of the new API ads, viewers are presented with the claim that the largest producing oil and gas regions have seen a “60 percent reduction in emissions,” a point prominently flashed across the screen.



At first glance, that seems like a great accomplishment, but a close listen to the video's narrator (and a close reading of the API website) reveals the industry has reduced emission rates, not overall emissions, by 60 percent in the most productive oil and gas fields. That means greenhouse gas emissions are not increasing in these regions as fast as they once were, but that doesn't mean they are going down. However, methane emissions, both in the U.S. and globally, have surged in the past decade, and a 2019 Cornell University study points to fracked shale oil and gas production as a major culprit. Considering how much more powerful methane is at warming the climate compared to CO2 in the short term, these claims by API are misleading at best.

EDIT

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/10/16/fact-checking-american-petroleum-institute-gas-ads

[NickB79]

1. And it probably doesn't even factor in fugitive methane

Or at least, not the real numbers.