Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. We
Speaker 1: are running a new series right now in both the
Speaker 1: podcast and on our website at drilled dot Media, focused
Speaker 1: on what we've been calling false solutions. These are really
Speaker 1: new climate problems masquerading solutions, things that the fossil fuel
Speaker 1: industry has suggested as ways to decarbonize, but that actually
Speaker 1: just lock us into more fossil fuel development for the
Speaker 1: next several decades. I'm talking about things like liquefied natural gas,
Speaker 1: carbon capture, hydrogen, renewable natural gas. There's a whole host
Speaker 1: of these technologies and new products that are being sold
Speaker 1: to both US and European and Asian consumers as quote
Speaker 1: unquote green, when actually they come with ever more greenhouse
Speaker 1: gas emissions. We've already put one story out about a
Speaker 1: fossil fuel lobbying group that's trying to rebrand liquefied natural
Speaker 1: gas as a clean, low, or even zero carbon fuel.
Speaker 1: Go check that out on our website. We'll have a
Speaker 1: corresponding podcast episode about the LNG boom in the next
Speaker 1: week or so. In the meantime, today we're talking about
Speaker 1: something that's really insidious and that it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to cover because it gets into the weeds a little bit.
Speaker 1: And that is the role that management consultancies play and
Speaker 1: all of this they have mostly been flying under the
Speaker 1: radar where disinformation and false solutions is concerned, but they
Speaker 1: play a really important role in shaping information and data
Speaker 1: and giving the industry sort of a credible bent to
Speaker 1: its proposed solutions. And they do that by providing data
Speaker 1: and a nonnalysis and technical reports to industry groups and companies.
Speaker 1: The catch is that the data is highly limited by
Speaker 1: parameters at the companies and industry groups set, so while
Speaker 1: the consultancy is doing a rigorous analysis, it's also being
Speaker 1: asked to leave out some pretty key components of that analysis.
Speaker 1: This allows them to sort of hold up their hands
Speaker 1: and say, hey, we did the data and analysis they
Speaker 1: asked us for. You know, that's that's our contribution. We
Speaker 1: aren't the ones that are saying that that justifies this,
Speaker 1: that and the other. But really that's kind of a
Speaker 1: cop out because of course these reports are then being
Speaker 1: used to lobby for particular policies or to convince people that,
Speaker 1: you know, energy transition is going to be too expensive,
Speaker 1: all those kinds of things. Un group called Reese to
Speaker 1: Zero is actually starting to look at these kinds of
Speaker 1: things in a more serious way. So they are looking
Speaker 1: at professional services providers PSPs, and they're including management consultancies
Speaker 1: in that, as well as PR and advertising firms, which
Speaker 1: of course we've looked at a lot over here at Drilled.
Speaker 1: Several months ago, a former employee from a management consultancy
Speaker 1: reached out to me with some information about how that
Speaker 1: firm was approaching its fossil fuel clients. This happens to
Speaker 1: be a firm that also does quite a bit of
Speaker 1: work for the US government on really robust climate analysis,
Speaker 1: and there's a reason that the industry also goes to
Speaker 1: them because they know that the government trusts their technical analysis.
Speaker 1: So again, it's just not as innocent as a lot
Speaker 1: of consultancies would like to make it out. As I
Speaker 1: asked reporter Matty Stone to look into those leads, and
Speaker 1: she did and she found a lot. So she is
Speaker 1: here today to talk me through what she found and
Speaker 1: why it's important to look at these things. You can
Speaker 1: also find a written version of that story on our
Speaker 1: website at Drilled dot Media. After the break, Maddie Stone
Speaker 1: on management consultancies.
Speaker 2: Hi I'm Maddie Stone. I'm a freelance journalist covering climate change,
Speaker 2: energy transition, and lots of related topics. Okay, Maddie, we
Speaker 2: asked you.
Speaker 1: To look into this particular management consultant for this story.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit about who they
Speaker 1: are and what they do?
Speaker 2: Yes? So, the management consultant I've been looking into is
Speaker 2: called ICF. They are a multinational consulting firm that works
Speaker 2: in a variety of different sectors, providing data and analysis
Speaker 2: to government regulators and private industry clients. But one of
Speaker 2: their biggest practices is climate and energy, and so they
Speaker 2: have more than two thousand people employed across their climate practice,
Speaker 2: which does a lot of work with the US federal
Speaker 2: government as well as state governments and local governments around
Speaker 2: the country, including a lot of really legitimate and sort
Speaker 2: of respected work studying decarbonization pathways that cities, states and
Speaker 2: governments can use, helping to implement energy efficiency programs for
Speaker 2: municipalities as well as utilities, and even helping to do
Speaker 2: the analysis underpinning some really high level and influential climate documents.
Speaker 2: ICF contractors have helped to author and coordinate several recent
Speaker 2: installments of the National Climate Assessment, which is this very
Speaker 2: authoritative federal government report that comes out every few years
Speaker 2: on how climate change is impacting the US. So that
Speaker 2: is sort of the climate and energy work that ICF
Speaker 2: likes to present to the world. However, what my investigation
Speaker 2: found is that the firm is also hired by industry
Speaker 2: groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the American Gas Association.
Speaker 2: These are fossil fuel lobby groups that want to maintain
Speaker 2: the fossil fuel centric status quo, and they hire this
Speaker 2: respected so called objective energy and climate consultancy to produce
Speaker 2: reports for them that they have a hand in shaping.
Speaker 2: They can tell the consultancy, we want you to model
Speaker 2: this and that, and don't model this and that, and
Speaker 2: the end result is these very technical, official looking reports
Speaker 2: produced by this credible consultancy that the industry ultimately uses
Speaker 2: to promote itself and its positions, namely that we should
Speaker 2: continue using gas and other fossil fuels, and that decarbonization
Speaker 2: strategies should embrace the potential for things like fossil gas
Speaker 2: and industry preferred solutions. And it's a really sort of
Speaker 2: tricky issue that you have this very highly regarded climate
Speaker 2: consultancy best known for work on decarbonization and actually tackling
Speaker 2: climate change, that has an albeit seemingly fairly small part
Speaker 2: of its business devoted to producing reports that are then
Speaker 2: used by fossil fuel industry interests, lobby groups.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you spoke with Julie McNamara at the Union
Speaker 1: of Concerned Scientists right about this.
Speaker 2: I thought what she had.
Speaker 1: To say was really interesting because I think people tend
Speaker 1: to think of anything that's modeled as being objective in
Speaker 1: some way, like if it has a chart, then it's objective, exactly.
Speaker 2: And Julie McNamara is someone who has a lot of
Speaker 2: technical expertise on climate and energy modeling. She herself has
Speaker 2: worked for a organization that did government contracted analysis work
Speaker 2: not too dissimilar from ICF, is familiar with their work,
Speaker 2: And Yeah, she was kind of able to help me
Speaker 2: understand what exactly it is that makes this so sort
Speaker 2: of tricky and nefarious, what consultancies like ICF are doing
Speaker 2: when they work with fossil fuel industry groups.
Speaker 3: Or in an era where it's clear that climate change
Speaker 3: is happening and that fossil fuel is the cause, right,
Speaker 3: that we need to transition away from our current practices,
Speaker 3: processes that are all reliant on the fossil fuel industry.
Speaker 3: The fossil fuel industry has responded with every single possible
Speaker 3: way to delay and distract action, and these types of
Speaker 3: technical analysis allow the fossil fuel industry to hold up
Speaker 3: the report in one hand and say no, look, we're
Speaker 3: working on it, we have answers while continuing to solidify
Speaker 3: policy outcomes that perpetuate investments in fossil fuel infrastructure today.
Speaker 3: So those technical reports, they just by time, they are
Speaker 3: absolutely a greenwashing mechanism to say we're not ignoring the problem,
Speaker 3: we're not saying it's not here, we have a plan,
Speaker 3: and at the same time doing absolutely nothing to prove
Speaker 3: out whether that plan would ever be viable, would ever
Speaker 3: be in the public interest, and is even something they
Speaker 3: would ever be actually working towards. The question becomes who
Speaker 3: is running those models, how are they being shaped, what
Speaker 3: are the questions being asked, and what are the assumptions
Speaker 3: being entered. Because it is absolutely the case that analyzes
Speaker 3: are only as good as the questions being asked and
Speaker 3: the assumptions being employed. Models can be so readily co
Speaker 3: opted to justify favored results. They can also be readily
Speaker 3: deployed for rigorous, right extremely helpful, and insightful analyses. The
Speaker 3: difference comes in who is doing the work and who
Speaker 3: is overseeing that selection process. And to me, that's one
Speaker 3: of the most insidious things about an organization that simultaneously
Speaker 3: use even the exact same model, but to use it
Speaker 3: for fossil fuel lotty groups on the one hand and
Speaker 3: state policy implementation on the other, because it muddies the
Speaker 3: water of what's real and what's not, what's rigorous and
Speaker 3: what's not because the model doesn't change the assumptions that
Speaker 3: are used due but suddenly write this organization that can
Speaker 3: be seen as doing very rigorous work, puts its analytical
Speaker 3: stamp on a set of questions and a set of
Speaker 3: assumptions put forward by the fossil fuel lobby, and that
Speaker 3: is a fundamentally different outcome than something being informed through
Speaker 3: a rigorous public stakeholder process like one might see at
Speaker 3: the state level.
Speaker 2: What they're doing is they're supplying a model, and in
Speaker 2: many cases it's a perfectly legitimate model that might also
Speaker 2: be used by the Department of Energy or the EPA
Speaker 2: to do perfectly legitimate climate and energy modeling. But when
Speaker 2: they go to an industry client like the American Gas
Speaker 2: Association for example, that client might tell them, okay, only
Speaker 2: use this model to study XYZ and ignore xyz other scenarios, right,
Speaker 2: And so, for example, ICF provided the analysis. Is how
Speaker 2: they put it behind it twenty twenty one American Gas
Speaker 2: Association report looking at various decarbonization pathways that the gas
Speaker 2: industry could follow. And so this was a report specifically
Speaker 2: set up by the gas industry to demonstrate how it
Speaker 2: could zero out its carbon emissions. So the underlying assumption
Speaker 2: there that the client came to ICF with was we
Speaker 2: can be part of the climate solution and a big
Speaker 2: part of the climate solution. And here are all these
Speaker 2: very technical, rigorous, you know, science backed data points showing
Speaker 2: how we can eliminate our carbon emissions.
Speaker 1: By the same consultancy that you know, you guys and
Speaker 1: the government use exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: But you know what's left unsaid There is everything that
Speaker 2: is excluded from the model. So, for example, an economic
Speaker 2: comparison of what it's going to cost to implement all
Speaker 2: these gas industry preferred solutions versus simply switching to renewable
Speaker 2: energy and electrifying buildings. And you know, there are other
Speaker 2: things that might go into that model that the gas
Speaker 2: industry wants to put in. For example, not saying this
Speaker 2: went into this specific case, but maybe a gas industry
Speaker 2: client would come to a consultancy with some numbers around
Speaker 2: the cost of electrification, right, And maybe those numbers are
Speaker 2: considered unrealistic today, but those are the numbers that the
Speaker 2: industry wanted to use to run its models. And then
Speaker 2: as a result you get a report that has some
Speaker 2: conclusions that appear to favor gas over electrification.
Speaker 1: Right, right, and so and the consultancies kind of go, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we just provided the data thing.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly, so the consultancy can say, you know, we
Speaker 2: just did this objective, science based analysis. We don't take
Speaker 2: any policy or advocacy positions based on it. But what
Speaker 2: makes that so problematic in a way is that it's
Speaker 2: allowing industry groups to take this white paper and say
Speaker 2: this is a completely objective, third party analysis. You know,
Speaker 2: that supports all of our preferred policy positions. And that's
Speaker 2: only true on this very you know, surface level, where
Speaker 2: you're not considering all the ways that the industry might
Speaker 2: have informed or shaped or restricted how that analysis was done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's it's super interesting. We interviewed Ben Fronta
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago when he had this paper
Speaker 1: out that was called weaponizing Economics. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you if you read that paper, but he he talked
Speaker 1: to an economist who worked for a firm called Charles
Speaker 1: River Associates, and they were contracted by the API, like
Speaker 1: I want to say, in the nineties early nineties to
Speaker 1: run economic models that would show that the cost of
Speaker 1: acting on climate change was like just way too expensive
Speaker 1: and not realistic, and they left out the cost of
Speaker 1: not acting on change. And so like Ben found this
Speaker 1: economist who'd been part of that work who said, you know,
Speaker 1: we did rigorous analysis of the stuff that we were
Speaker 1: like told to look at, but I regret that, you know,
Speaker 1: we went along with this thing of like not including
Speaker 1: this other scenario, which is clearly important for policymakers to understand,
Speaker 1: and that model got used for years to justify no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't be doing anything. Look at how expensive it
Speaker 1: is and all of that stuff. So, I know, ICF
Speaker 1: kind of came back to you and said, look, this
Speaker 1: is a very small part of our business. And that's
Speaker 1: quite a common response I think in these kinds of cases.
Speaker 1: But I know you also talk to some people who
Speaker 1: have seen this ICF report for the AGA, for example,
Speaker 1: or the API be cited kind of every time policy
Speaker 1: debates come up about this. So yeah, I'd love to
Speaker 1: have you to kind of talk about that, like how
Speaker 1: much I guess, like how much this stuff gets leaned
Speaker 1: on in these policy conversations.
Speaker 2: The sense I have is that certain reports ICF has
Speaker 2: authored for certain fossil fuel interest groups have been leaned
Speaker 2: on a lot in recent years, that twenty twenty one
Speaker 2: American Gas Association reports sort of being a very prominent
Speaker 2: example of that. I spoke with some folks at the
Speaker 2: climate change think tank Influence Map who have been closely
Speaker 2: tracking the gas industri's influence in policy debates over things
Speaker 2: like building decarbonization and electrification and even gas stove debates
Speaker 2: in recent years, and they told me they've seen this
Speaker 2: AGA slash ICF report come up over and over again
Speaker 2: in formal comments submitted on rulemakings to various agencies, in
Speaker 2: letters to business leaders and politicians, and basically every context
Speaker 2: you can imagine where the American Gas Association wants to
Speaker 2: point out to influential politicians or regulators or folks in
Speaker 2: the business world that hey, look, there's a way for
Speaker 2: the gas industry to be part of the future, even
Speaker 2: a decarbonized future, and we don't actually have to do
Speaker 2: all of this complicated and in their view, costly switching
Speaker 2: to electrification because we have this analysis showing all the
Speaker 2: ways that we can decarbonize gas. So it's really become
Speaker 2: a powerful tool for them in helping to bolster their
Speaker 2: own credibility and influence and shape policy conversations. The really
Speaker 2: tricky part about that is how then do you quantify
Speaker 2: that impact?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: You know, it's like it's a hard thing to put
Speaker 2: a carbon amount on ICF. One of their specialties as
Speaker 2: a consultancy is carbon accounting, and they love to point
Speaker 2: out all of the emissions reductions associated with the work
Speaker 2: they do with the EPA for its energy efficiency programs
Speaker 2: and with utilities to implement energy efficiency programs, all the
Speaker 2: millions of tons of carbon they're saving per year. But
Speaker 2: what is the climate impact associated with producing a report
Speaker 2: that an influential gas industry trade group can then use
Speaker 2: to block decarbonization policies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, that would be really
Speaker 1: interesting to study.
Speaker 2: Actually, it's a hard thing to study, and it's allowed
Speaker 2: consultancies like ICF to sort of exist in this gray
Speaker 2: space of you know, we are just these objective information providers,
Speaker 2: these data analysts who can crunch numbers and will provide
Speaker 2: that service to anybody. But we're not going to take
Speaker 2: action positions. We're not going to you know, say, policymakers
Speaker 2: should do X, Y and z based on the results
Speaker 2: of this work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they will say, you know, like we're a
Speaker 1: climate leader exactly, you know, helping to decarbonize and those
Speaker 1: kinds of.
Speaker 2: So the positive you know, the aspects of the work
Speaker 2: that are positive for climate, of which I should emphasize again,
Speaker 2: this firm does a lot of good climate work. Are
Speaker 2: things that ICF really likes to tout. Yeah, and as
Speaker 2: you pointed out a moment ago, they emphasized to me
Speaker 2: that the work for fossil fuel trade organizations is a
Speaker 2: small part of their practice in terms of in terms
Speaker 2: of their revenue. But again, I think it's an open
Speaker 2: question as to what the overall climate impact of that
Speaker 2: work is, even if it's just a few reports every
Speaker 2: couple of years, If those reports can be used to
Speaker 2: delay or block important electrification measures in cities or states
Speaker 2: across the country. Like that could have a big ripple effect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and to lend credibility to you know, kind of
Speaker 1: industry preferred solutions and all of that kind of stuff too.
Speaker 1: And you know, I always whenever companies or agencies or
Speaker 1: consultancies are like, it's only a small part of our work,
Speaker 1: my immediate thought is like, then why do it at all,
Speaker 1: especially if, like you know, you spend a significant amount
Speaker 1: of your marketing space and I would imagine budget like
Speaker 1: talking about decarbonization and climate and all these other things.
Speaker 2: You know, it is an interesting question, you know, why
Speaker 2: why do that? Why not just decide you're going to
Speaker 2: draw a line in the sand with certain types of
Speaker 2: projects or certain types of clients.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, I want to on that note, I
Speaker 1: want to ask you about that. There was one thing
Speaker 1: that they that they worked on that made me laugh
Speaker 1: out loud, and that was the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: a gallon of oil from the Gulf of Mexico is
Speaker 1: like lower carbon than you know.
Speaker 2: Other price. So yeah, that was a really interesting finding
Speaker 2: and report. So ICF was hired by the National Ocean
Speaker 2: Industries Association several years back. This is a trade organization
Speaker 2: that largely represents oil and gas producers and affiliated industries
Speaker 2: and interests of offshore producers. Correct, so a lot of
Speaker 2: oil and gas producers who have assets in the Gulf
Speaker 2: of Mexico and who want to you know, build more
Speaker 2: oils and drill more oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 2: So this organization hired ICF to produce a report that
Speaker 2: looked at a very narrow technical question of what are
Speaker 2: effectively the emissions associated with producing a barrel of oil
Speaker 2: in the Gulf of Mexico. They also, i should add,
Speaker 2: looked at the United States as a whole, So they
Speaker 2: looked at you know, land based oil and gas production,
Speaker 2: and they also looked specifically at the Gulf. And then
Speaker 2: they created this huge database of data points for addressing
Speaker 2: the same question elsewhere around the world. So what are
Speaker 2: the emissions associated with producing a barrel of oil in
Speaker 2: this part of the Middle East or you know, offshore
Speaker 2: in the Baltic Sea. So they looked at all these
Speaker 2: different regions around the world and ultimately concluded that the
Speaker 2: emissions associated with producing a barrel of oil in the
Speaker 2: Gulf are relatively low compared with most other parts of
Speaker 2: the world. I keep emphasizing the word producing because the
Speaker 2: emissions that they looked at are the emissions that come
Speaker 2: along with literally pulling the oil out of the ground
Speaker 2: and packaging it up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so not distribution, not burning, right, So we're talking
Speaker 1: like maximum eight to ten.
Speaker 2: Percent a small Yeah. These are what would be called
Speaker 2: in greenhouse gas reporting lingo, the Scope one and Scope
Speaker 2: two emissions, yeah so.
Speaker 1: And not even all of Scope two, not even.
Speaker 2: All of scope too. So the downstream Scope three emissions,
Speaker 2: aka the vast majority of emissions associated with fossil fuel products,
Speaker 2: the actual burning of that oil and gas are not
Speaker 2: something that we're considered here. So again ICF was contracted
Speaker 2: to do was probably a totally solid technical analysis looking
Speaker 2: at this narrow technical question. And then with this report
Speaker 2: in hand, this oil and Gas Industry trade association put
Speaker 2: out press releases and blog posts saying, look, how much
Speaker 2: climate friendlier oil production in the Gulf of Mexico is
Speaker 2: compared with all over the world, And wouldn't it be
Speaker 2: great if America produced more oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 2: Isn't that a great idea? Both for our economy and
Speaker 2: the climate. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so interesting because we've been looking at LNG
Speaker 1: producers in the US too, and one of them, EQT,
Speaker 1: commissioned a very similar type of report from McKenzie that shows,
Speaker 1: you know that US LNG in particular is a you know,
Speaker 1: climate solution because yeah, these production emissions are lower, and
Speaker 1: then you know, I don't know the location and the
Speaker 1: way we get it and all this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and because you know, they all love to say that
Speaker 1: US companies operate within stricter environmental regulations and that that
Speaker 1: helps as well and all of that stuff. And there again,
Speaker 1: McKinsey was sort of like, we just supplied the data
Speaker 1: and the you know, technical analysis. We didn't come to
Speaker 1: any conclusions or write this report or you.
Speaker 2: Know, exactly exactly. Yeah, and that's that's exactly what happened here.
Speaker 2: And this report in particular was like pounced on by
Speaker 2: Republican Congress people who are advocating for you know, more
Speaker 2: oil and gas production in the Gulf. I think I
Speaker 2: saw the American Petroleum Institute cite it in a press
Speaker 2: release on a lawsuit it was launching against the Biden
Speaker 2: administration for essentially not not permitting more oil and gas
Speaker 2: drilling to occur in the Gulf of Mexico. So it's
Speaker 2: it's it's worked its way into the conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's I didn't even think about the litigation piece,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that kind of stuff absolutely gets pointed to
Speaker 1: as sort of evidence in those kinds of situations too.
Speaker 1: That it's interesting. Okay, tell me about the Race to
Speaker 1: Zero and how they're looking at these kinds of firms.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Race to Zero is a un associated initiative. It's
Speaker 2: sort of a coalition of businesses and university leaders and
Speaker 2: members of civil society who are trying to come up
Speaker 2: with decarbonization strategies for various sectors of society that align
Speaker 2: with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to
Speaker 2: one point five degrees. And there is a new Race
Speaker 2: to Zero initiative to develop a set of effectively a
Speaker 2: set of best practice guidelines for professional service providers, including
Speaker 2: consultancies and ad agencies and law firms to adhere to.
Speaker 2: So the reason Race to Zero is now focusing on
Speaker 2: professional service providers like consultancies is exactly because they're in
Speaker 2: this unique position of having influence and of not necessarily
Speaker 2: having a large carbon footprint on their own. When you
Speaker 2: think about what is the carbon footprint of a consultancy
Speaker 2: like ICF, Well, they use energy to keep the lights
Speaker 2: on in their office space. You know, maybe they're you know,
Speaker 2: driving to work. It's it's it's relatively you know, small
Speaker 2: potatoes types of things. They're not running huge industrial facilities
Speaker 2: that are creating a lot of pollution. But what they
Speaker 2: are doing is they're working with clients who run huge
Speaker 2: industrial facilities. They create a lot of pollution, and the
Speaker 2: advice that they provide to those clients or the types
Speaker 2: of technical analysis they do, has these downstream ripple effects
Speaker 2: on really like the entire economy and Race to Zero's
Speaker 2: contention here is that those ripple effects and the emissions
Speaker 2: associated with them are likely to be a lot greater
Speaker 2: than the emissions that a firm like ICF can kind
Speaker 2: of claim a flame as their own emissions. So we're
Speaker 2: talking emissions that are even a little bit beyond the
Speaker 2: scope one two three sort of standard reporting framework. This
Speaker 2: is indirect emissions associated with giving advice. So if you
Speaker 2: tell a utility it's going to cost you this amount
Speaker 2: of money to decarbonize, and the utility looks at that
Speaker 2: number and goes, oh, oh, we're not going to do that,
Speaker 2: you know, right, that has a climate impact.
Speaker 1: And or if a report is used for lobbying exactly successfully,
Speaker 1: then that.
Speaker 2: That has a climate impact too. And these impacts can
Speaker 2: be both positive and negative. What Race to Zero is
Speaker 2: saying is that PSPs need to account for them when
Speaker 2: they're attempting to account for their own climate impact. And
Speaker 2: here are some best practices you can follow if you
Speaker 2: want to drive down emissions and climate impact throughout your practice,
Speaker 2: such as maybe taking a hard look at your entire
Speaker 2: client base and what sorts of projects you're working on
Speaker 2: for them and the climate impact of those projects, and
Speaker 2: making some high level corporate decisions about the types of
Speaker 2: work you will continue to do if you want to
Speaker 2: align your practice with a decarbonized future.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I feel like another place that this shows
Speaker 1: up a lot is in the sort of support of
Speaker 1: false solutions kind of realm. And I know we've been
Speaker 1: talking about doing like a follow on story because there's
Speaker 1: so much around ICF and other consultancies work supporting the
Speaker 1: idea of renewable natural gas as a climate solution. But
Speaker 1: just give us like a little tease of what what
Speaker 1: exactly are the sorts of things that that they're doing
Speaker 1: to just like I don't know, kind of like provide
Speaker 1: the evidence base for this being a good idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So ICF is contracted by both utilities and government
Speaker 2: agencies to look at certain climate solutions quote unquote that
Speaker 2: the gas industry is really heavily promoting and pushing for.
Speaker 2: So chief among those being this idea of renewable natural
Speaker 2: gas or RANG, which is essentially methane gas that was
Speaker 2: produced from a biological source. So maybe it's gas escaping
Speaker 2: from landfills during decomposition, or maybe it's methane that is
Speaker 2: synthetically manufactured by taking crop residues and subjecting them to
Speaker 2: a gas production process. It's this umbrella term that can
Speaker 2: refer to a lot of different things, but it's effectively
Speaker 2: methane gas that can be a drop in replacement for
Speaker 2: fossil gas. And there's a lot of debate and controversy,
Speaker 2: to put it mildly, around how much of a climate
Speaker 2: solution this can actually be. But to the gas industry,
Speaker 2: it's like it's this amazing thing that allows them to
Speaker 2: effectively do nothing to change their infrastructure or their operations.
Speaker 2: They just need to partner with companies that can supply
Speaker 2: and produce a lot of this RNG, and using some
Speaker 2: tricky and again very controversial math, can claim that they've
Speaker 2: canceled out most of their emissions on paper.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and yeah. So what is ICF done in Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, ICF has again worked with utilities and government agencies
Speaker 2: to produce reports looking at overall potential for RNG in
Speaker 2: certain scenarios. So they were contracted in twenty nineteen by
Speaker 2: the American Gas Foundation, another gas industry trade association not
Speaker 2: to be confused with the AGA, to look at RNG
Speaker 2: production potential nationwide. So they looked at all these different
Speaker 2: possible sources of RANG from cow manure to methane to
Speaker 2: synthetic production of RANG from energy crops and forest residues,
Speaker 2: and effectively summing all those sources up for every state
Speaker 2: in the country, found that there's this huge potential supply
Speaker 2: potential supply of RANG out there. This is, I want
Speaker 2: to be very clear, doesn't really exist today, right, This
Speaker 2: is an industry that is like largely on paper at
Speaker 2: this point, but effectively, I think the top line conclusion
Speaker 2: of that report was that ninety five percent of residential
Speaker 2: natural gas usage could be replaced with RANG. Wow, which
Speaker 2: is huge.
Speaker 1: That's huge, But it's also like a massively more than
Speaker 1: what I've seen.
Speaker 2: It's like actually more than what any like reasonable independent
Speaker 2: side studying this will say is realistic. And that was
Speaker 2: the whole point I think of the report was to
Speaker 2: show that there's this great potential if we make a
Speaker 2: lot of assumptions, you know, and one of those assumptions
Speaker 2: is that we actually want to do this and that
Speaker 2: this is a good climate solution, which a lot of
Speaker 2: independent researchers who've studied RANG have pushed back pretty strongly
Speaker 2: against the idea that this is going to significantly reduce
Speaker 2: the gas industry's emissions. There's a case to be made
Speaker 2: that if we're capturing methane that would have escaped to
Speaker 2: the atmosphere anyway, Yeah, that is preventing pollution, and that's
Speaker 2: a good thing. But this report and subsequent reports that
Speaker 2: ICF has worked on for states and for individual utilities
Speaker 2: and cities, don't just look at that narrow, that sort
Speaker 2: of narrow slice of the RANG production, that is the
Speaker 2: methane that would have escaped as pollution anyway. They look
Speaker 2: at how could we make as much of this as possible,
Speaker 2: And to make as much RANG as possible, you need
Speaker 2: to literally produce new methane. So at that point you're
Speaker 2: not talking about capturing pollution. You're talking about producing more
Speaker 2: greenhouse gases, right, some of which are inevitably going to
Speaker 2: leak to the atmosphere and compound the climate problem.
Speaker 1: Right right, Yeah, Yeah, it's so interesting. Okay, awesome, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll have you back on to talk more about RANG
Speaker 1: when when that comes together.
Speaker 2: Looking forward to it.
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you, and you can read the story on
Speaker 1: our website.
Speaker 4: Thanks Maddie, Thanks Amy.
Speaker 2: It for this week, Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Keep an eye out for that LNG episode coming soon,
Speaker 1: as well as episodes on lots of other faulty problems
Speaker 1: masquerading as solutions from the fossil fuel industry. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and we'll see you next time.