Fact-Free U.S. Energy Policy Metastasizes

On May 19, the U.S. Department of Energy released its Response to Comments on its 2024 Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) export study, rewriting the conclusions of the previous administration in the opposite direction. DOE now says that “unleashing” LNG exports can be accomplished while “minimizing impacts… resulting in gradual increases in domestic natural gas prices”—not the 31% rise by 2050 that DOE projected five months ago.

While even the Biden version likely understated the price impacts, its successor ignores current events. Just this month DOE forecasted that, due to existing LNG exports, by the third quarter of 2025 the price of natural gas will almost double from a year earlier.

And that’s just the beginning. LNG export capacity is on track to more than double by 2028.

The 2024 report modelled greenhouse gas emissions based on certain assumptions about future demand, the extent of fuel-switching in importing countries, technological progress, and geopolitics. It found that unconstrained LNG exports will cumulatively increase GHG emissions by about 710 million metric tons by 2050—less than 1 percent of global emissions.

DOE says now that growing LNG exports will have “no discernable impact” on emissions—not that much of a difference.

But the emerging picture of actual methane emissions—as opposed to models—was troubling in 2024 and has only become more worrisome. Improved measurement technology is exposing a vast underestimation of methane emissions from oil and gas production and transmission in government estimates and modelling exercises: 

• A 2023 analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund found that existing natural gas pipelines nationwide are leaking as much as 2.6 million tons of methane each year—significantly higher than current EPA estimates.
• A study published last year of aerial measurements in regions comprising 52% of onshore oil and 29% of U.S. gas production found fugitive methane emission rates that were triple the government inventory estimate. 
• A February 2025 studyusing peer-reviewed facility-level methane emission rate data gathered in prior work found that 70% of the methane leaking from onshore oil and gas activities in the continental U.S. comes from smaller, dispersed sources, and fully 30% of emissions are from very small leaks. Measurement and detection methods focusing on super emitters—and hence government inventories and models—are missing a very significant portion of the problem.
• Plus, the greenhouse gas emissions from tankers carrying LNG are not insignificant.

The LNG report is a microcosm of larger policy reversals.

Ignoring basic economics and pesky science and rejiggering a critical government report to fit a political agenda are, alas, not terribly unusual occurrences. But science, expertise, and public information are being purged, including in the energy space. Energy data is being withheld, and its corruption is not out of the question. DOE has apparently stopped looking forward, deleting its immensely important Pathways to Commercialization reports. This groundbreaking work charted a course for the U.S. to accelerate the commercialization of clean energy technologies, create hundreds of thousands of high-quality jobs, strengthen U.S. global competitiveness—and propel an equitable energy transition.

Worse, reactionary policies are having immediate, calamitous impacts on public health, consumers, the economy, and the planet that will only grow. “Grow” as in a trillion dollars in damage to the U.S. economy in the House-passed H.R. 1, which effectively repeals Biden-era federal tax credits and other funding for clean energy. That will not only spike emissions but also increase energy costs, slow electric capacity additions, and decimate the nation’s international competitiveness, according to an analysis from Princeton University. 

Public-spirited citizens and groups are gathering critical data independently, and among many efforts to salvage artifacts of American democracy, the Pathways documents have been saved, hopefully to be employed again one day if the nation can muster the will.

Meanwhile, in the fact-based world, cheap, clean energy continues to rapidly replace fossil fuels, with other nations reaping the benefits.

John Quigley

Senior Fellow, Kleinman Center

John Quigley is a senior fellow at the Kleinman Center and previously served on the Center’s Advisory Board. He served as Secretary of the PA Department of Environmental Protection and of the PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.