Instead of providing innovation to stop climate change, the company remarketed fossil fuels as clean fuels.

Sara Gersen is a clean energy lawyer for the Earth Right to Zero Movement and co-author of the book "Recovering Hydrogen for a Renewable Future."

This review is in response to "Clean fuels and electrification need to meet California's climate goals"; review, October 26, 2021

California is an important laboratory for climate solutions, but it is also a hotbed for companies to clean up polluting technologies and resell fossil fuels as cleaner things. 

Green bleaching is dangerous. It distracts us from working solutions and forces policymakers to approve policies that may lock us into risky fossil fuel investments. Since extreme wildfires and droughts have already occurred, we obviously cannot delay climate action. 

A textbook example of green washing is the hype surrounding hydrogen. Most hydrogen is very dirty: less than 1% of hydrogen today is produced using renewable energy. Most hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels and used in oil refining. Globally, hydrogen production emits more greenhouse gas emissions than Germany as a whole.

The hydrogen produced by splitting water atoms using renewable energy is called "green hydrogen", and it is the only type of hydrogen that really plays a role in a clean energy future. This role is limited and specific in economic sectors where we cannot easily achieve electrification, such as shipping, high-temperature industrial processes, and long-distance trucking.

Despite the opposite marketing, it does not make sense to deliver hydrogen to our homes and buildings to burn in appliances. On the one hand, piping systems and household appliances designed for fossil gas cannot safely handle large amounts of hydrogen. Burning hydrogen in household appliances also emits nitrogen oxides, which endangers family health. We certainly cannot afford hydrogen leaks in the well-known leaking gas distribution system. Hydrogen is both highly flammable and a potent greenhouse gas. 

In the field of transportation, green hydrogen can help provide fuel for long-distance trucks and other vehicles, but green hydrogen cannot compete in the field where battery-powered electric vehicles are or will soon appear. Compared with an equivalent electric car, the use of green hydrogen to power the car requires two to three times the wind and solar energy. 

Similarly, "renewable natural gas" is also driven by marketing and is often used to justify the expansion of natural gas distribution systems. However, despite its clean label, “renewable natural gas” usually comes from sources that are harmful to the environment, such as the fecal lagoons of large dairy plants. 

In addition, renewable natural gas has scalability issues. It is an inherently limited product that is marketed as California's main climate solution. The natural gas industry’s own research found that after two decades of increased supply and production, renewable natural gas can only replace 13% of the existing natural gas demand. We should remember that when natural gas companies like Southern California Natural Gas tout "clean fuels", such as renewable natural gas or hydrogen produced from fossil fuels. 

When policymakers see such statements, it's time to scrutinize them, especially when it comes from a company whose business model centers on fossil fuels.

For example: A recent decision by the California Public Utilities Commission found that SoCalGas abused customer money to oppose strict energy efficiency standards. SoCalGas used taxpayer money to launch a campaign to make California continue to rely on natural gas, "causing obvious harm to the regulatory process." 

The company paid for a climate denier to speak at an industry event and developed a strategy with fossil fuel trade groups to discuss the best way to keep inefficient gas appliances on the market. SoCalGas even created a front-line team to disrupt the democratic process in California cities, which are considering using "reach guidelines" to support the construction of modern all-electric buildings.

SoCalGas does not provide innovations to prevent the most severe forms of climate change, but instead focuses on maintaining investment in fossil fuels through a regulatory system. 

We have come up with a proven solution: electrify our transportation department and our equipment, and run all of them on a clean energy grid. Fossil fuel companies will tell us over and over again that they are part of the solution. But California's future is electric-don't let any natural gas company tell you.

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