Southern Gas Corridor 'More Emittive than Coal': Study
The Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) could be as, if not more, emissions-intensive as coal power, says a study published January 30 by CEE Bankwatch Network (Bankwatch), working with Catalan researchers.
Bankwatch, an umbrella group of 17 central and east European environmental and human rights groups, is campaigning against the possible February 6 award by the EU’s lending arm, the European Investment Bank (EIB), of a €1.5bn ($1.86bn) loan to the TransAdriatic Pipeline (TAP), which EU and company backers hope will flow gas from Azerbaijan, and later other sources, towards Italy starting 2020.
TAP, the western leg of the 3,500-km SGC, is expected to deliver 10bn m3/yr from the BP-led Shah Deniz phase 2 gas project in Azerbaijan to the EU starting 2020. An extra 6bn m3/yr will be piped to Turkey via TransAnatolian pipeline (Tanap), the central component of SGC. Overall, SGC is expected to carry 31bn m3/yr of Azeri gas from 2026.
Bankwatch says that European Commission (EC) and other officials have claimed that SGC could help the EU meet its climate goals, but adds that in January 2017 EU climate commissioner Miguel Arias Canete said the EC had not carried out any climate assessment of SGC, the largest EU-backed fossil fuels project.
Bankwatch says its new study, conducted by researchers from the Observatori del Deute en la Globalitzacio and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, finds that in more than half of the nine scenarios examined, the level of fugitive emissions of methane from the entire SGC project, inclusive of all pipeline sections and its upstream production component, would mean its climate footprint is comparable to coal-fired power’s or even greater. The researchers say the IEA defines 3% as the threshold, above which fossil gas stops delivering a climate benefit relative to coal.
In five of the scenarios considered by the authors of the new study, the share of unintended releases of methane in production and transmission would range between 2.44%-5.95%, thus raising the risk of exacerbating, rather than mitigating, climate change. It also says that SGC’s annual emissions in its first stage alone would exceed the total emissions of Bulgaria in 2015, or even match Romania's in that year.
Bankwatch’s EIB Policy Officer Anna Roggenbuck said: "As long as Europe continues to pursue the Southern Gas Corridor project, the findings of this study cast serious doubts over the EU's commitment to tackling the climate crisis as a party to the Paris Agreement." Its study is available here.
NGW reported that last month Germany and others raised political and environmental concerns over Tanap receiving a €1bn EIB loan, forcing a vote by the EIB board on it to be deferred. Bankwatch says that EIB is to decide February 6 on whether to make the €1.5bn loan to TAP. The campaign group derived about 70% of its 2015 overall €1.9mn funding from the EC's development and environment departments.