[MCN] Money finally moves agains natural gas "faster and earlier than many expected."

[Lance Olsen]

Extended excerpt : The natural gas industry is reeling as the political climate begins to shift against the industry faster and earlier than many expected.

“If large institutional financial banks stop funding fossil fuel companies, that's going to be a real challenge,” Charlie Riedl, executive director of industry trade group Center for Liquefied Natural Gas, said this week at the Gulf Coast Energy Forum in New Orleans, according to S&P Global Platts <https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/trending/0yXZbZ0C0IYiSuP0XEofDA2>. “That's a conversation we have to have. If natural gas becomes the next coal, that's going to be a real challenge.”

To date, the gas industry, although having been under fire from environmental groups for years, has been spared the draconian crackdown by both capital markets and regulatory action. In fact, Big Oil has made a massive bet on natural gas as the future, which oil executives view as a hedge against peak oil demand.

But the political winds are shifting quickly. Earlier this year, Berkeley, California became <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/23/berkeley-natural-gas-ban-environment> the first U.S. city to ban new natural gas hookups in new buildings. Menlo Park and Windsor soon followed <https://earthjustice.org/blog/2019-august/berkeley-bans-gas-for-new-electric-buildings>, and dozens of other cities are exploring <https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23072019/berkeley-natural-gas-ban-california-cities-incentive-all-electric-building-construction-future> similar prohibitions.

It’s notable that the reference to gas becoming the new coal <https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/09/27/natural-gas-new-coal-climate> has been uttered by several industry executives in the past few weeks. “The industry really is at a critical juncture,” Woodside Petroleum CEO Peter Coleman said <https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/119622-natural-gas-risks-demonization-similar-to-coal-says-woodside-ceo> at a recent conference in Houston. “We run the risk of being demonized like that other fossil fuel out there called coal.”

For the oil industry, this is very much an existential problem. Many large oil companies are massive gas producers as well, and their portfolios are trending in a more gas-heavy direction.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/A-Draconian-Crackdown-Looms-Over-Natural-Gas.html <https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/A-Draconian-Crackdown-Looms-Over-Natural-Gas.html>

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2011 :
“Using a meta-analysis, we estimated that the distributions of species have recently shifted to higher elevations at a median rate of 11.0 meters per decade, and to higher latitudes at a median rate of 16.9 kilometers per decade. These rates are approximately two and three times faster than previously reported”

Chen et al. Rapid Range Shifts of Species Associated with High Levels of Climate Warming. Science 2011
 
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2013 
“The rate of warming implies …  range shifts of up to several kilometers per year, raising the prospect of daunting challenges for ecosystems …”

Diffenbaugh and Field. Changes in Ecologically Critical Terrestrial Climate Conditions. Science. 2013
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2015: 
"If you are an organization that has focused on conserving particular species in a particular place, as many of today's conservation organizations are, then something has to give—either you need to change your business model or revisit your conservation priorities. And neither is going to be easy for some of these groups," said Paul Armsworth, lead author and associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

Full release:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150302105334.htm

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2017 
"At a time when the world is anticipating unprecedented increases in human population growth and demands, the ability of natural ecosystems to deliver ecosystem services is being challenged by the largest climate-driven global redistribution of species since the Last Glacial Maximum.”

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2018:  
Adapting Conservation Approaches to Address a Changing Climate.

A Wildlife Conservation Society report offers real-world examples of how conservation practitioners are already beginning to modify their conservation endeavors to include information on climate. 

The first step, says WCS, is to consult the latest science on observed and projected climate impacts. 

Learn more >>
https://www.wcsclimateadaptationfund.org/resources 

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