WASHINGTON — Amos Hochstein, President Joe Biden’s husband for global energy problems, says he knows it’s the only way to move away from the climate-destroying pollution of fossil fuels. He urgently advocates sustainable energy, energy-smart thermostats, and heat pumps.
But when tackling the pressing energy challenges posed by Russia’s war on Ukraine, Hochstein may also sound like nothing quite like the West’s oil field, a giant pipe wrench to the world’s near-crisis level—Energy shortages.
Hochstein appeared this month before a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on US aid for Russia’s fueled energy problems in Europe, speaking enthusiastically about prospects for a new floating natural gas terminal in Albania, new gas connections elsewhere in the Balkans, increasing gas flow from Central -Asia, and gas from Spain to the rest of Europe.
“We have to face the reality that the current European system depends on gas,” Hochstein told the AP after the hearing. “And I have to make sure that people have heating in the winter and they have electricity.” It was a relatively rare public record of an envoy whose work normally takes place behind the scenes.
Increasingly, however, some climate advocates are expressing concern about what they see as the Biden administration’s emphasis on new heavy-duty US natural gas and infrastructure projects as part of a comprehensive effort by Europe and the US to tear Europe away from its dependence on Russian oil and gas.
Climate groups argue that new spending on building pipelines, terminals, port facilities, and storage threatens to entail increased reliance on fossil fuels in the coming decades while doing little to solve Europe’s most immediate energy crisis.
Criticism mounted Tuesday after Biden and other leaders in the Group of Seven softened their 2021 climate pledges to move away from public funding of new fossil fuel infrastructure, citing the war in Russia.
“Government support for gas infrastructure is not the climate presidency that Joe Biden promised,” Kate DeAngelis, Friends of the Earth international financial program manager, said in a statement.
But as US companies have nearly tripled US exports of liquefied natural gas to Europe in the months since Russia invaded Ukraine, Hochstein calls his immediate challenge: Europeans get through the end of the year without freezing in their homes.
Before the war, the European Union received about 40% of its natural gas from Russia. Western-led sanctions, Russian lockdowns, and Europe’s major switch to non-Russian suppliers are robbing Europe of Russian natural gas.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers welcomed Hochstein’s efforts to disconnect Europe from Russia’s pipelines and asked for more. Climate change and clean energy are “major challenges,” Democratic New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen, chair of the panel on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation where Hochstein appeared, told the AP. “But I think our number 1 priority here should be to beat Putin and help Ukraine.”
The Biden administration struggles to solve two problems simultaneously: a global energy crisis and a rapidly warming planet.
The deficiencies in oil and gas supplies are causing problems for European and Asian allies that, if not addressed, could threaten the united economic front against Russian President Vladimir Putin. At home, the energy shortage is contributing to high gas prices, inflation, and discontent that threatens Democrats in the November midterm elections and Biden’s reelection down the road.
But at the same time, scientists, climate advocates, and the Biden administration are saying that global governments are counting down the last few years to avert the more devastating climate change scenarios.
The rate at which the world is now burning oil, natural gas, and coal gives people a 50-50 chance of blasting through the hoped-for maximum average temperatures set in the Paris climate agreement within five years; the World Meteorological Organization said last month.
Some climate advocates fear that current energy shortages will cause Biden and other world leaders to return to an oil and gas drilling-and-construction vision they had renounced in the name of climate change, despite Biden’s climate efforts elsewhere.
Many were stunned by the joint statement this week by Biden and other leaders of the G-7 Club of Rich Democracies that it was once again OK for governments to invest in gas infrastructure as a “temporary response.”
A dangerous and unnecessary step, climate advocates said of the G-7’s climate move.
“New funding for fossil fuel exploration and production is delusional,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres tweeted after the G-7 statement. “Fossil fuels are not the answer. Renewable energy does.”
Climate advocates are wary of what they see as Hochstein’s support for some liquefied natural gas infrastructure projects in Europe.
Friends of the Earth points to its oil and gas industry ties. In Hochstein’s government position, Biden has entrusted him with top policy missions, including working with oil giant Saudi Arabia during frosty relations. He has served as senior vice president of Houston-based LNG exporter Tellurian and a member of the advisory board of Ukrainian state-owned company Naftogaz before stepping down in 2020 to protest corruption he described in a newspaper column.
Hochstein described the US-backed LNG build-out in Europe as essential to prevent Russia from exerting power over Europe’s energy and economy.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have the clean infrastructure to replace natural gas in the short or medium term,” Hochstein told the AP. “So that’s a tough balance to have. But that’s what we’re committed to.
“And I agree with all those who say that this only reinforces the absolute need to accelerate the energy transition” of oil and gas, he added.
Energy experts from environmental groups say there are cleaner ways to escape Russian gas.
Faster action to curb the energy industry’s flaring and venting and plug natural gas leaks — both things the Biden administration has already pledged to work on — could yield quick results without further damaging the climate, Mark Brownstein said, a senior vice president for energy at the Environmental Defense Fund.
Brownstein pointed to an International Energy Agency’s finding that the fossil fuel industry leaked or wasted more natural gas last year than all the gas used in Europe’s energy sector.
Natural gas is usually methane. Methane from agriculture and fossil fuels alone are responsible for about a quarter of all climate damage.
David Kieve, chairman of the Environmental Defense Fund’s advocacy division, said the days have “come and gone” when natural gas could be considered a “bridge fuel.” He served as director of public engagement with the White House Council on Environmental Quality in Biden’s first year.
“I think we understand that we need to go much faster.”
