Clearing the Air

The future of Canada’s natural gas industry could hinge on the success of exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from its west coast. [...] We suggest, instead, that national and provincial governments and regulators, within the limits of their respective authorities, could maximize the climate benefit of LNG by: • encouraging importers of Canada’s LNG to reduce their use of coal power through diplomacy and regulations that ratchet up to reward trading partners that implement their own GHG pricing policies; and • focusing on the emiss [...] Recent research estimates the marginal life cycle of GHG emissions due to LNG exports from Canada and considers the sources of power that LNG exports likely would displace (see Coleman et al. [...] On the other hand, GHG emissions would increase if Canadian LNG displaced low-GHG sources such as renewables, nuclear, and hydro power.1 In short, the impact of Canadian LNG exports on emissions would depend on what sources of power they displaced. [...] Life cycle emissions from British Columbia LNG are higher than the median life cycle emissions from natural gas because of the energy cost of liquefying and transporting LNG.