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See you outside the Department of Energy in early February (unless we win before then!)

One from the vaults—at a Keystone pipeline protest from more than a decade ago. That’s the late Julian Bond, civil rights hero, in the black hat to the left, and Rev. Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus, one of the authors of today’s letter, in the black baseball cap to the right.

The official announcement came this morning that in early February—a dozen years after a quite similar protest helped nationalize the Keystone pipeline fight—protesters will gather for (very civil) civil disobedience outside the Department of Energy, hoping to persuade Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and her crew that the time has come to pause the permitting of new LNG export terminals.

You can sign up here. You don’t have to risk arrest to participate; there will be rallies each of the three days (Feb. 6, 7 and 8) that the protest is underway, and plans are building for distributed support actions elsewhere in the country. If you are willing to engage in civil disobedience, there will be a training session the night before each of the actions. Risking arrest is a big deal, but you will be in the supportive company of calm people who know what they’re doing. We’ve also got online nonviolence training underway at Third Act, and since we don’t check IDs those of you under 60 are welcome to join in!

To review: for several years, local organizers in Louisiana and Texas have been trying to call attention to the vast buildout of LNG export facilities. It took a while, but national groups have joined in decisively behind them. You can read the pubic letter that these campaigners issued last night. The coalition issued a press release this morning that read in part:

Over the last two months, stopping LNG export facilities, including the massive CP2 project in Southwest Louisiana, has become a top priority for the environmental justice and climate movement. Videos opposing the projects have generated more than 12.5 million views across social media platforms, driving more than 300,000 signatures on petitions urging DOE to pause approvals. In December, more than 170 scientists wrote a letter urging President Biden to stop what they called the “staggering” buildout of export facilities. The administration’s support for LNG exports has also caused what The Hill called a “revolt” within the Democratic Party, with dozens of members of congress opposing the buildout.

The arguments against DOE granting new export licenses will be familiar to those who have been reading this newsletter, but:

1. They produce an ungodly quantity of greenhouse gas emissions. Just the next proposed plant, CP2 in Louisiana, will produce 20 times more emissions than the controversial Willow oil complex over its lifetime. If the industry gets everything they’ve asked for, US LNG exports will produce more greenhouse gas emissions than…Europe. All of it. This is the biggest fossil fuel expansion project currently underway on planet earth.

2. It’s even dirtier than coal—you get carbon when you burn it, and methane when it leaks before you burn it. And since we now live in a world where solar and wind energy—which produce no greenhouse gas emissions—are the cheapest power, that’s almost criminally dumb

3. We told the world in Dubai last month that the time had come to “transition” off fossil fuels. No possible definition of transition includes building giant terminals for the export of fossil fuels that are designed to last a half century.

4. It’s almost unbelievably nasty for the people who have to live near these facilities—constant flaring and leaking. Read Roishetta Ozane’s account

5. For those Americans still dependent on natural gas for heating and cooking, exporting it to Asia drives up the price. Even American manufacturers know this—Dow Chemical, of all people, quit the National Association of Manufacturers a decade ago over their support for LNG exports. Dow can probably afford the extra cost; the family struggling to heat their home not so much.

6. All of which means that the polling shows huge opposition to these exports.

   That opposition, in turn, means that the Biden administration can do themselves and the planet a good turn by pausing the permitting process. And that’s all anyone is asking for. Again, the modest demands of this protest are worth noting

   We need the administration to stop CP2—the next big facility up for approval—and all other facilities by committing to a serious pause to rework the criteria for public interest designation, incorporating the latest science and economics, before any such facility is permitted.

   The only real case I’ve heard anyone in the administration even try to make for this boondoggle of a policy relates to Ukraine—the need to supplant Russian gas supplies in the wake of Putin’s grotesque invasion has now been met, and the world is awash in LNG.

In fact, the argument is so one-sided here that I continue to think the administration may do the right thing even without a protest—and I’m hopeful that sometime in the next few weeks I’ll get to write a newsletter saying that organizers have been able to call the whole thing off (and get to work campaigning against Donald Trump, who would clearly sell anything to anyone given half a chance). Indeed, late last night Politico Pro moved a story (behind a paywall) saying that administration officials were “reviewing the criteria it uses to approve new liquefied natural gas export projects, according to two people familiar with the plan, a move that could tap the brakes on the fast-growing industry that has made the United States the world’s biggest shipper of the fuel." If that pans out, then the protest will be unnecessary, as organizers have made clear.

The organizers —led by those frontline advocates like Roishetta Ozane, Travis Dardar, John Beard, Sharon Lavigne, Jo Banner, James Hiatt, Gwen Jones, Melanie Oldham, Robin Schneider, and Anne Rolfes—have also made it very clear they don’t want hotheads coming to DC:

For those of who do head to Washington, we agree to keep this action peaceful in word, mood, and action; if your level of frustration is too high to insure that, please stay home and think of other ways to help. We are committed to calm, to dignity, and to giving the Biden administration every possible chance to prove that they are climate leaders on the dirty energy side of the climate crisis as well as the clean.

Some part of me always thinks it’s crazy to have to wear handcuffs to get the powers-that-be to pay attention to physics. But I’ve done it a dozen times, and sometimes it actually works. So I will try it again if need be, and I hope some of you will join me. The authors of the letter have a noble way of looking at it that’s worth mulling over:

“2023 saw the hottest weather on this planet in at least 125,000 years; we think it is an honor to rise in defense of the planet we love, and the places where we live. Thank you for considering joining in.”

In other energy and climate news:

+Here’s some encouraging news: German carbon emissions were at a 70-year low last year, as coal use dropped precipitously

Electricity generation from renewable sources was over 50 percent of the total in 2023 for the first time, while coal's share dropped to 26 percent from 34 percent, according to figures published by the federal network agency on Wednesday.

The cut in coal use accounted for a reduction of 46 million tonnes in CO₂ emissions, the think tank estimated.

The renewables record brought Germany closer to its target to produce 80 percent of its electricity from wind and solar by 2030, Agora chief Simon Mueller said.

Since no one ever went to Germany for a beach vacation, this is a good reminder that we can do this everywhere. And it’s not just Germany. A Reuters report this morning shows that across Europe windpower surpassed coal for the first time last year

+So happy to see campaigning whiz Ferrial Adam cited as South Africa’s environmentalist of the year—one pleasure of doing this work for a long time is watching people you knew at the start of their careers become true leaders!

+In an almost perfect mirror image of the Dubai climate talks fiasco, the host for next year’s talks, Azerbaijan, announced that it too wants to increase its gasproduction by a third.

Azerbaijan owns one of the world’s largest gasfields, Shah Deniz in the Caspian Sea, and the country is expected to extract 411bcm of gas over the next 10 years, according to data sourced by the campaign group Global Witness from analysts at Rystad Energy. This would emit 781m tonnes of carbon dioxide – more than two times the annual carbon emissions of the UK.

The figures are based on an analysis of Azerbaijan’s current gas production, plus its reserves approved for development and those that have been assessed by oil and gas companies but have not yet been cleared to develop. They suggest that the country’s annual gas production is likely to rise from an estimated 37bcm this year, to 49bcm a year in 2033.

The conservative analysis does not include gas reserves that are understood to be present but have not yet been proven by drilling, which could still be developed within the next 10 years.

+An extraordinary amount of energy is washed down the drain every day in the form of hot water from showers and dishwashers. Apparently, it can be recovered! All you need is this newsletter’s third favorite machine, the heat pump (after the e-bike and of course the blimp)

The unused heat from the sewage can be recovered using heat pumps before it reaches the treatment plants. At 68 Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) sewage water is only mildly warm but heat pumps can capture and concentrate this to produce water that reaches 176 Fahrenheit (80 degrees Celsius). Such a facility has been currently operational in False Creek, Vancouver since 2010, a BBC report said.

"What's exciting is that our heat recovery system operates at efficiencies of over 300 percent," Derek Pope, facility manager told the BBC. "For every unit of electricity that we put in to run the heat pump, we get over three units of thermal energy or heat out of it."

More than 6k residents in the neighborhood warm up their homes using recovered heat through a system that works well even in frigid winters when the demand is highest.

Buildings in Vancouver are responsible for 50 percent of greenhouse emissions since they use natural gas for heating. This approach of recovering heat, if adopted widely, can help reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, thereby leading to emission improvements.

Not just a neighborhood in Vancouver but even densely populated areas in Stockholm, Sweden have adopted this approach and now provide heating to 800,000 residents.

+It’s officially official. 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded. But if you’ve been reading this newsletter, you already knew that. Thanks to all of you for being part of the most important effort in the history of our species.