A setback for the climate negotiations at the COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh: half a billion tons of additional liquefied natural gas (LNG) are to be transported across the seas by 2030 and burned to generate energy if the current LNG plans are implemented worldwide.

Joachim Müller-Jung

Editor in the feuilleton, responsible for the "Nature and Science" department.

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Compliance with the Paris climate target of 1.5 degrees above the pre-industrial level will thus be "undermined", predicts an international team of climate researchers who presented the current report of the Climate Action Tracker in Egypt this Thursday.

The Climate Action Tracker takes stock of the effects of political and social developments on the climate every year.

The basis for this are the climate plans of 41 countries, which currently cause almost 80 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.

The war in Ukraine and the resulting search for gas substitutes led to an "aggressive expansion" of liquid gas capacities in a crucial phase of climate protection.

"We are witnessing a massive expansion in LNG production and import capacity around the world," said Bill Hare, one of the scientists.

On all continents together, LNG capacity will increase by 235 percent by 2030.

By the end of the decade, if the terminals and gas pipelines were operating at full capacity, it would consume twice as much liquid gas as Russia exported last year.

Overall, the LNG gas capacities would then increase to almost 800 million tons per year.

This would result in an "oversupply" of fossil gas, which would ultimately increase climate-damaging carbon dioxide emissions to almost two billion tons in 2030.

Enough to permanently endanger the 1.5 degree target.

The 27th climate summit in Egypt is currently struggling to ensure compliance.

According to the report by the climate researchers, the LNG expansion plans are “incompatible” with the goal of limiting global warming, which has currently reached 1.2 degrees, to 1.5 degrees in the long term up to the middle of the century.

Europe, and Germany and Italy in particular, are singled out because the LNG plans would “far outweigh the failures of Russian natural gas.”

A short-term increase in LNG trade is also planned in India and throughout Southeast Asia.

The concern of climate researchers is growing above all because very little progress has been made in climate policy since the climate summit in Glasgow a year ago.

The results of the Climate Action Tracker state that the world is moving on the same warming path as before the Glasgow summit, given the few new ambitious climate targets in high-emission countries.

"Like last year and including the national climate plans, the emissions are still twice as high as they would have to be to meet the 1.5 degree target," said Niklas Höhne from the Berlin New Climate Institute.

The climate protection measures announced for 2030 are at most sufficient - if they are implemented 100% - to curb global warming to around 2.4 degrees by the end of the century.

Since not everything is realized, one is currently on the way to 2.7 degrees.

And if only the long-term climate neutrality plans by the middle of the century are included, warming to below two degrees - 1.8 degrees - can be achieved.

However, according to the report, the majority of these climate neutrality plans by the contracting states have so far been “without much substance and often vague”.