Biden’s natural gas decision is nuts. Climate extremists don’t know the facts

Natural gas can be the backbone that allows renewables to flourish. Gas provides firm power, complementing the variable nature of solar and wind as new battery storage technology scales. 

The U.S. has already significantly lowered emissions in the power sector without compromising reliability and affordability. That happened because of innovative natural gas extraction, relicensing nuclear power plants, and increasingly cheap renewables. 

The future is even brighter: U.S. trailblazers developing and deploying inexpensive energy technologies — everything from solar-plus-storage and carbon capture for natural gas to nuclear fusion — and exporting them. 

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In the meantime, American L.N.G. exports have a crucial role in not just reducing global emissions, but also in strengthening our allies’ energy security and our economy.

In early 2019, during my time as chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), I visited Poland and witnessed the importance of American gas exports to our friends’ energy security. My Polish counterparts were deeply concerned about regional dependence on Russian gas. Even then, long before the war in Ukraine, they were asking the U.S. to undercut Russia’s weaponization of energy.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 turned those fears into reality. Russia’s economic power comes from oil exports, but its political power over Europe at that time came from natural gas exports. And Russia bet that starving European countries of natural gas would weaken their support for Ukraine. 

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But American L.N.G. helped our allies wean off of Russian gas. Stopping or limiting the supply of this crucial resource to the global market would be as disruptive as economic sanctions. Our friends and allies, in Asia as well as Europe, are relying on us to continue exporting this fuel. 

L.N.G. exports also benefit our economy. These exports have the capacity to create tens of thousands of jobs along the entire economic supply chain — including jobs in Wisconsin and Ohio, not just in Texas or Louisiana. 

As FERC chairman, I pushed for bipartisan action to streamline L.N.G. export terminal approvals without sacrificing safety or environmental quality. It’s now time for President Biden to do likewise. He should ignore the activists staging a sit-in. They’re wrong on the facts and should sit this one out. 

Neil Chatterjee served as chairman and a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He has decades of experience working on the most important energy policy initiatives for Republican leadership in Congress.