The Missing Data Behind Manchin’s Dirty Pipeline Deal
(AP photo/Jim Mone and Andrew Harnik)
Dems touting a bill to expand fossil fuel pipelines have not released any emissions projections showing what the bill would do to the climate.
by David Sirota and Julia Rock
As heatwaves and droughts scorched the country this summer, Democrats in Washington sold their Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to voters as a tool to combat climate change. To deflect questions about why fossil fuel companies were celebrating the bill, party leaders and their media acolytes pointed to studies — one by an institution with ties to fossil fuel giants — asserting that even with its provisions expanding oil and gas development, the legislation would result in a huge net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
However, those studies did not take into account an agreement that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) says was an integral part of the IRA: Legislation to accelerate the construction of fossil fuel pipelines, which data show drive planet-warming emissions.
Now, as Senate Democrats are moving to pass that pipeline side deal — and as some liberal pundits insist climate activists should halt their criticism of the agreement — lawmakers appear to be flying blind about the legislation’s environmental impacts.
Congressional staffers and environmental groups tell The Lever that they have seen no reliable analyses comprehensively quantifying the climate effects of the initiative to expand oil and gas infrastructure, even though the bill is now moving forward, and even though a draft version of the pipeline bill has been in the public domain since early last month, before the IRA even passed.
“Our modeling of the IRA was based on the final legislative text, and there was no permitting reform text to refer to so it was not explicitly considered,” John Larsen, partner at the consulting firm Rhodium Group, told The Lever. The Rhodium Group’s projections were widely cited as proof that Democrats’ IRA would significantly reduce emissions.
The pipeline agreement, which is being backed by the Biden administration, was originally negotiated between Schumer and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) — respectively Congress’s top recipients of utility and fossil fuel industry campaign cash.
Though the final text of the measure is still secret, the leaked draft — which was emblazoned with the watermark of a powerful oil and gas industry lobbying group — elucidated the broad strokes of the deal: weakened environmental laws and expedited timetables to steamroll any opposition or delay when fossil fuel companies want to build pipelines through fragile ecosystems and local communities.
And yet, the same Democratic lawmakers who waved around emissions projections to justify passage of the IRA have produced no similar estimates about the emissions implications of the pipeline deal that Schumer acknowledges was “part of the IRA.”
“The fact that emissions projections for Schumer’s side deal have not been discussed either in private or in public point to the reality of what’s at stake here,” said Jim Walsh of the environmental group Food and Water Watch. “Schumer and Manchin’s deal is not talking about clean energy; it’s a fossil fuel payday. The leaked draft specifies the fast-tracking of 19 fossil fuel-related infrastructure projects. Any effort to spin that increased pollution as emissions reduction would be just that — spin.”
“Pipelines Are The Vast Majority Of The Emissions”
Environmental groups say speedy approvals for pipelines and other fossil infrastructure could undercut projected emissions reductions from other parts of the IRA.
“Just looking at a couple pipelines and our public lands gives you a sense of how much damage this could do,” said Jamie Henn, a co-founder of 350.org and director of Fossil Free Media, which is backing a coalition of 1,200 groups opposing the pipeline deal. “The Mountain Valley Pipeline is estimated to have the lifetime emissions of approximately 25 coal-fired power plants, the Line 3 pipeline that Biden refused to stop is estimated to have the equivalent emissions of 50 coal fired power plants, and one quarter of U.S. emissions since 2005 have come from public lands, which Manchin and the GOP want to open up for more drilling. Start adding these up and we’re talking serious emissions.”
The link between pipelines and emissions was spotlighted in a recent study from researchers at Michigan Technological University, who found that pipelines account for nearly half of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions, because the infrastructure accelerates the distribution and use of fossil fuels.
That is in addition to emissions from natural gas pipeline leaks of methane, which is a particularly potent greenhouse gas. Such pipeline leaks are releasing millions of metric tons of methane every year, according to government data cited by the Environmental Defense Fund.
What’s more, congressional investigators earlier this year found that “oil and gas companies have internal data showing that methane emission rates from the sector are likely significantly higher than official data reported to [the Environmental Protection Agency] would indicate.”
“Allowing any additional fossil fuel infrastructure like pipelines that we put in place locks you into additional fossil fuels,” Michigan Tech engineering professor Joshua Pearce told The Lever. “The pipelines are [responsible for] the vast majority of the emissions within the United States. To build more of them is really sacrificing the future.”
Studies Touting IRA Did Not Account For The Pipeline Deal
This summer, as Manchin’s Energy Committee touted support from fossil fuel companies and lobby groups for Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, party lawmakers preemptively countered alarms from environmental critics by citing a trio of studies asserting that their legislation would reduce emissions.