Princeton Professor’s Work Used To Support Climate Rollback Bill
Junk Modeling At Princeton
We Go Down The Modeling Rabbit Hole
There is consensus that in order to make the transition to “clean” (renewable) energy, that major investments and upgrades to the electric transmission grid are required. There also is widespread agreement that there needs to be changes to federal approvals and permitting to resolve a huge backlog of solar and wind projects seeking to connect to the grid. Climate scientists, policy experts, and activists (with whom I agree) also demand an end to fossil fuel extraction (“keep it in the ground”).
But the powerful Big Oil, Gas, and Coal lobby, who have long successfully opposed any restrictions on their fossil production and profits, is now holding legitimate grid modernization and renewable energy transition reforms hostage to guarantees to promote even more fossil fuels extraction and infrastructure. They also are seeking to dismantle existing environmental protections.
Corporate Big fossil are doing that by demanding that any federal “reform” legislation that addresses grid modernization and renewables also include fossil promotion and deregulation. That is the insane game they are playing and their well funded puppets in Congress are going along.
But if you read yesterday’s NJ Spotlight story on pending federal legislation purported to “reform” energy permitting, modernize the electric grid, and accelerate the clean energy transition, you might think that the legislation is “bipartisan” (a term used in the story’s headline) and – wait for it – would REDUCE both energy prices and greenhouse gas emissions (emphases mine):
If a bipartisan bill pending in the Senate becomes law, it could lead to lower electricity prices for the public, including customers in New Jersey. […]
Overall, the bill, due to its sections about transmission, would result in cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, according to modeling researchers, including Jesse Jenkins at Princeton University, released last month.
My jaw dropped when I read those claims, because if you simply listen to the Senate hearing you learn that Democratic Senators Wyden and Sanders strongly opposed the bill in Committee.
Senator Wyden denounced the bill and sought amendments to block oil and gas drilling off the west coast. His amendment failed. Senator Sanders blasted the bill by stating that the LNG provisions alone would increase greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 165 coal power plants. He proposed an amendment to delete the LNG section. It too failed.
Senator King (I – Maine) sought an amendment to block oil and gas development off the New England coast. It failed too.
Over 360 environmental and climate groups vigorously oppose the bill.
The environmentalists wrote: (read the whole thing – boldface in original)
On behalf of over 360 organizations, representing millions of members and supporters, we write to express our opposition to the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 (S. 4753). This legislation guts bedrock environmental protections, endangers public health, opens up tens of millions of acres of public lands and hundreds of millions of acres of offshore waters to further oil and gas leasing, gives public lands to mining companies, and would defacto rubberstamp gas export projects that harm frontline communities and perpetuate the climate crisis.
These groups have issued multiple press releases documenting the flaws in the bill, see:
Senator Joe Manchin and his Big Oil, Coal, and Gas promoting Republican colleagues are the only ones who call this legislation “bipartisan”. If you listen to the Senate hearing on the bill, Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso blasts the Biden administration’s energy and climate policies, including efforts to “pause” oil, coal, and gas drilling and leasing on public lands and a moratorium on the approval of LNG export plants.
So how on earth could NJ Spotlight’s Washington DC based reporter miss all that and get spun so badly by his biased Neoliberal technocratic sources?
Aside from the politics and lousy journalism, I was intrigued by how the work of a Princeton University’s “modeling researcher” could be cited as evidence to conclude that the bill would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
So, I hit the links and went down the modeling rabbit hole.
The modeling being used to support these sham claims is the following:
- Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing modeling by RFF can be found here.
- Offshore Oil and Gas Leasing modeling can be found here.
- LNG Export Terminal modeling by Jesse Jenkins can be found here.
- Electric Transmission modeling by RMI can be found here.
I decided to drill down on the Princeton LNG export model because it was cited by NJ Spotlight, because it contradicted Senator Sanders and climate activists claims (i.e. LNG exports would increase GHG emissions equivalent to 165 new coal power plants!); and because intuitively it seemed absurd that increasing LNG exports (and natural gas fracking to produce the gas for those exports) would reduce GHG emissions!
Not surprisingly, the LNG export model was based on highly dubious economic assumptions, flawed science, and produced a wide range of unreliable conclusions that DO NOT SUPPORT THE NJ SPOTLIGHT CLAIMS ABOUT NET EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS.
Princeton Professor Jesse Jenkins’ LNG model can be found in this draft unpublished paper, (which has not undergone peer review and therefore does not warrant the favorable news coverage it received by NJ Spotlight):
Hitting the link and opening the model’s spreadsheet, you find the following dubious assumptions and results:
- increasing LNG exports by 11.1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) results in a US domestic price increase of 9 – 15% (keep in mind that NJ Spotlight reported price decreases)
- that domestic price increase will reduce US demand by 3.5 – 4.3 Bcf/d
- higher domestic gas prices will increase US natural gas production by 8 – 8.8 Bcf/d
- combining these factors in US energy markets results in a range of greenhouse gas emissions from a reduction of 50 million metric tons (MMT) to an increase of 110 MMT (using the 100 year warming potential of methane, not the far more potent 20 year timeframe mandated by NJ law)
The model then examines impacts on world energy markets and again the results are highly suspect and the huge range of outputs is not reliable:
- increase in US LNG exports would reduce world prices by 4 – 6% (the folks in Germany might differ with that conclusion. Here’s the typical European headline: “Electricity & gas hit record prices in 2022″
- lower world prices increase natural gas consumption by 3.5 to 4.1 Bcf/d
- increased use of natural gas displaces coal and reduced GHG emissions
- based on these world market conditions, greenhouse gas emissions range from a reduction of 70 MMT/yr to an increase of 60 MMT/yr (again using warming potential 100)
And here is the final conclusion of US domestic and world impacts:
summing the full range of plausible effects across the US and there rest of the world, I estimate the net change in annual global GHG emissions circa 2035 – 2040 ranging from a decline of 120 MMT/yr to an increase of 170 MMT/yr
That’s a range of 290 MMT/year! (that’s some “confidence interval” eh?)
Jenkins then dismisses the impact of using the more powerful 20 year methane warming timeframe: it “does not have a significant effect”. (keep in mind that NJ law requires that BPU and DEP use the more potent 20 year timeframe).
What Jenkins finds not significant is that his modeled range of emissions INCREASES from -170 to +240 MMT/year (instead of -120 to +170 MMT/yr).
We didn’t examine them, but will assume that the other 3 models (see above) have similar flaws.
How can such widely ranging (and thus uncertain and unreliable) modeled outputs be cited as evidence to support a claim that the legislation would REDUCE both prices and greenhouse gas emissions?
I emailed professor Jenkins to ask him to support his assumptions and results with real world data.
I’ll let you know if I get a reply.
[Update – just opened my email and here is Professor Jenkins’ reply:
Dear Bill,
The overall emissions impact of the proposed permitting reform act are highly uncertain and span a wide range. Several different analysts and modeling groups have assessed the potential impact of specific sections of the bill. As you have seen, I have looked into the potential impact of expanding LNG terminals. My analysis is an extreme upper bound on the impact of the legislation, as I explain in the research note. Third Way’s Clean Energy Program put out a composite memothat combined several different analyses to present a range of possible aggregate impacts. That is what the NJ Spotlight article refers to. I did not contribute to the writing of that memo, but I am comfortable that my work on LNG has been presented accurately.
Regarding choice of GWP: my work includes both, and the results are not significantly different. There is no “right” choice of GWP to use, as both are oversimplifications of the impacts of different GHGs on climate change. Methane is much more of a flow problem, where the instantaneous peak warming impact and potential to trigger irreversible tipping points in the earth-climate system are the primary concern, but once emissions are reduced, warming is reduced immediately. In contrast, CO2 emissions are effectively permanent and are thus a stock problem: reducing cumulative CO2 emissions is the single most important determinant of long-term climate damages and equilibrium warming. There’s no right answer here, and choice of GWP often reflects implicit normative or ethical judgements (which are not always applied consistently: for example, using GWP 20 implies a very high discount rate as it disregards warming impacts beyond 20 years; while applying a high discount rate would similarly discount long-term climate damages that are the primary rationale for treating climate change with urgency).
Regarding elasticity of supply and demand estimates, these parameters are uncertain but derived from economics literature based in empirical analysis of past responses to price changes. The fact that supply and demand respond to changes in price and vice versa is well established empirically. Considering the multiple reactions of both supply and demand to changes in US LNG exports is important to capture the full picture of potential climate impacts, and that is what I’ve done in my analysis. As parameters are uncertain on several fronts, I present a wide range of possible outcomes and leave it to the reader to determine which scenarios they find most plausible (as this is a subjective decision under deep uncertainty in any case and not my decision to make).
Jesse
