Emissions From 1 Year Of Tankers Carrying US LNG Shipments Outweighs GHG Gains From All EVs Driven By Americans

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Scientists have warned that LNG production involves significant greenhouse gas emissions at every step in the process, from methane leaks at wells to the burning of the gas by end users. But there’s been little attention to the impact of emissions from the tankers that ship LNG from the U.S. to other countries. That too is substantial, an Inside Climate News analysis found. A single year of greenhouse gas emissions from tankers carrying LNG from the United States more than cancels out the annual emissions reductions achieved through all the electric vehicles currently on U.S. roads.

To estimate the climate pollution from vessels exporting U.S. LNG, Inside Climate News analyzed federal export data, information from the International Gas Union on the ships’ capacities and propulsion systems and ship tracking data supplied by the maritime analytics provider MarineTraffic.

The first-of-its-kind analysis totaled emissions for two one-year periods: between April 1, 2017 and March 31, 2018, shortly after large-scale exports from the U.S. began with the opening of the Sabine Pass export facility in Louisiana, and again between April 1, 2023 and March 31, 2024.

Inside Climate News found that total greenhouse gas emissions more than quadrupled from about 4.1 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent for 224 return journeys in 2017-2018 to around 18.4 million tons for 1,265 journeys in 2023-2024. To put the latter figure in perspective: It equals the annual greenhouse gas reductions from swapping 5.8 million gasoline-powered vehicles with an equal number of electric vehicles. That’s around 50 percent more than all the light-duty EVs currently registered in the United States.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16042025/liquefied-natural-gas-exports-greenhouse-gas-emissions/