THE SMOKE AND MIRRORS DEFENSE OF RNG

The gas industry is writing checks that RNG alone can’t cash.

Laura Feinstein and Eric de Place  Sightline, April 19. 2021

Gas utilities are facing an existential crisis: fossil fuels have no future in a decarbonized economy. Yet that bit of reality hasn’t shocked utilities into changing course, not even in the Northwest, where state climate targets are flatly incompatible with continued gas usage.

Rather than adapt, these utilities are doubling down on gas with a deceptive campaign centered on “renewable natural gas” (RNG). The problem, as we detailed in our first exploration of RNG, is that it has four fatal flaws: cost, availability, carbon footprint, and industry obfuscation. In this installment, we will dive into industry obfuscation, which we think is the most toxic. The gas industry uses RNG as a smokescreen to mask its real intention of maintaining its climate-unfriendly status quo.

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