A rebound in China’s greenhouse gas emissions could be good news for US LNG exporters. The decline in China’s coal consumption for three consecutive years had fuelled hopes that the country’s carbon dioxide emissions might already have peaked in 2016. But coal use has been rebounding this year, and the Global Carbon Project has estimated that China’s greenhouse gas emissions for 2017 will be up about 3.5 per cent from last year.
Using gas instead of coal can be a way to cut those emissions, so long as leaks of methane on the route from well to burner are low, and it also helps cut local air pollution, which is a more immediate imperative. As a result, China is expected to be the world’s most important market for future gas demand growth, and last week, President Donald Trump was accompanied on his visit to China by US companies looking for a piece of the action.
Mr Trump was perhaps not the best salesman for the environmental benefits of US gas, given that in June he announced his plan to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement, and justified the move by arguing that China “can do whatever they want for 13 years”. Still, some US energy companies were able to come away from the trip with agreements, including Cheniere Energy, which exports LNG from Louisiana, and the Alaska Gasline Development Corp, the state-owned company that hopes to do the same from southern Alaska. Gas infrastructure was also a focus for the massive $83.7bn investment in West Virginia that the state said was planned by China Energy Investment Corp.