The Stanford Doerr School of Climate Delay Welcomes a New Fossil Fuel Funder!
(Originally sent on Aug 25th, 2023)
SoCalGas recently became the Stanford Hydrogen Initiative’s newest sponsor. SoCalGas is a gas utility serving Southern California. It controls the now-infamous Aliso Canyon gas storage field, which leaked over 100,000 tons of methane in 2015. SoCalGas’s parent company, SempraEnergy, is the 5th most climate-obstructive company in the world, according to InfluenceMap, an organization that tracks climate lobbying.
Besides stepping in to sponsor research at the Doerr School, What has SoCalGas been up to lately? Here is an partial rundown, from InfluenceMap (original documents linked on their page) and other sources:
SoCalGas opposed a 2019 bill aiming to reduce carbon emissions throughout California (AB 3232)
SoCalGas helped to set up the Californians for Balanced Energy Solutions (C4Bes), a coalition that fights building electrification throughout California, in 2019
SoCalGas opposed California’s proposed all-electric baseline, in Title 24 (California’s building energy efficiency regulation) in August 2020 comments to the California Energy Commission
SoCalGas argued that natural gas is vital for building decarbonization in comments submitted to the California Energy Commission, Dec. 2020
SoCalGas advocated to exempt compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles from mandatory compliance under California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard program in comments to CARB, in August 2020
SoCalGas submitted comments throughout 2019 and 2020 to expand the rule’s definition of “near zero” emissions to include gas-powered vehicles.
SoCalGas Backed a Lawsuit Against Berkeley’s Effort to Electrify
Shortly after it became the first city in the country to ban natural gas hookups in new construction, the City of Berkeley was sued by the California Restaurant Association. As reported in the Sacramento Bee, SoCalGas funneled millions to the California Restaurant Association, which in turn supported the utility's campaign against building electrification via litigation and PR campaigns. The effort, was a precursor to this year's manufactured outrage over gas stoves.
SoCalGas Uses Ratepayer Funds to Undermine Climate Policy
As recently reported in the Sacramento Bee, since 2019, SoCalGas funneled at least $36 million dollars of ratepayer funds into political lobbying to undermine climate policy. Ratepayers picked up the tab for astroturf campaigns, litigation attacking building electrification, and much more. An administrative judge for the California Public Utilities commission fined Sempra (SoCalGas’ parent company) $10 million in 2022 for, in the judge’s words, “profound, brazen disrespect for the Commission’s authority” in their continued use of California rate-payer’s funds for illegal lobbying.
Why would SoCalGas join the Hydrogen Initiative at the Doerr School?
SoCalGas has been a longtime member of the Stanford Doerr School’s Natural Gas Initiative. But why the new interest in the hydrogen initiative? For a quantitative and thorough exploration of the fossil fuel industry’s vision of a “hydrogen economy” and of the question “why is the fossil fuel industry so uniformly pro-hydrogen while most scientific bodies and environmental organizations so skeptical?” we direct those interested to the “Hydrogen Economy” slide deck of U VA Prof. John Bean’s NSF-funded project “We Can Figure This Out” (link here).
Tl;dr, for those who don’t want to go through a dense slide deck: most immediately, almost all hydrogen today is made from gas, so increasing hydrogen use in the short term increases demand for gas (good for their business; disaster for the planet).
In the long term, one could imagine all or most hydrogen coming from renewable sources. But even then, pursuing hydrogen for the majority of sectors is not nearly as climate-friendly as pursuing electrification. As always, the gas industry is pursuing hydrogen to preserve its profits, not the climate:
A hydrogen-based economy will still be beholden to a centralized utility. Green hydrogen infrastructure is by necessity large and expensive, meaning significant barriers to entry. While households and communities can put up their own solar/battery installations to reduce their reliance on utility-provided electricity, households will not be building green hydrogen factories in their backyard.
Hydrogen-based energy is slower to develop than electrification and will delay decarbonization for most sectors. Moving energy with electrons is far faster, cheaper, and more efficient than doing so through molecules like hydrogen. Thus, for electrifiable sectors such as mobility and buildings, the switch from fossil fuels to electricity will be faster than a switch from fossil fuels to hydrogen. Pushing for hydrogen serves as a delay tactic.
There is abundant evidence that fully converting certain sectors to hydrogen is impossible or near-impossible. For example, SoCalGas is advocating for blending hydrogen into the natural gas supplied to homes. Because hydrogen embrittles steel at sufficiently high pressures, it isn’t possible to fully replace gas with hydrogen (putting aside that hydrogen is leakier than already-leaky gas, is explosive over a much wider concentration range than gas, and has an indirect global warming potential of over 10 times that of CO2). There is no fossil-free endgame to this strategy, but pursuing hydrogen useful delay tactic, all while we still pay the utility for natural gas.
Using green hydrogen is certainly a climate-friendly way to replace the large quantity of fossil-derived hydrogen used today. Green hydrogen may also find legitimate new uses in steel and cement manufacture, long-duration energy storage, and even long-haul aviation, although start-ups are working on fully-electric steel manufacture and some have argued that superior solutions exist for grid storage and aviation and that the role of hydrogen will be marginal in these sectors (see here, and here for the grid and for aviation, respectively). For almost all other sectors, though, electrification is possible, far more efficient, and is already scaling rapidly. Electrification would mean lower profits for gas utilities and fossil fuel companies, so they are willing to fight for hydrogen if it means slowing electrification.
Stanford’s Connection to SoCalGas/Sempra:
Given SoCalGas and Sempra Energy’s ongoing efforts to stymie climate progress, efforts sometimes crossing the line into illegality, one would hope that professors and administrators at Stanford would keep SoCalGas at arm’s length, even if they take their money. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen repeatedly in past newsletters, Stanford loves getting cozy with its climate-obstructive sponsors.
Here is an partial rundown of the connections between SoCalGas and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and its predecessor, the School of Earth. The Doerr School of Sustainability houses both the Natural Gas Initiative and the Hydrogen Initiative. Though it has pretensions to the contrary, the Natural Gas Initiative is focused on continuing to burn natural gas, fully aligned with the interests of the fossil fuel companies and utilities that sell gas.
In 2019, The Stanford Natural Gas Initiative (NGI), and its relationship with SoCalGas, was written up in a special feature for the American Gas Association’s industry publication, the American Gas Magazine. The publication includes several statements that are factually challenged (from eyebrow-raisers to the laughably absurd) and that fit a narrative convenient to those in the business of selling gas. For instance:
“NGI was set up in 2015 in recognition of how important natural gas was going to become in a decarbonizing world” —Naomi Boness, Managing Director of the NGI and longtime Chevron strategist.
Reality Check: Gas is a fossil fuel, potent greenhouse gas, and leads to more warming than coal per unit energy if >5% leaks, as it often does from upstream production alone.“The benefit of having industry partners is to ensure that the research being conducted at Stanford is aligned with practical issues and problems that need solving out in the real world.” —Naomi Boness.
Reality Check: Having gas industry partners ensures that what the gas industry views as problems will get prioritized and that non-threatening research questions are asked. “How can we minimize gas leakage?” Ok. “How can we rapidly electrify to get rid of gas?” Definitely not.“We believe the billions of dollars invested in natural gas technology have an important role to play in solving climate problems. We don’t see a future where we wouldn’t need gas—it’s a staple, and it’s renewable.” –– Chris Cavanagh, Principle Program Manager, National Grid (a New York utility).
Reality Check: Gas worsens climate change. Gas is not renewable. There is no such thing as renewable gas.
The Stanford School of Earth invited SoCalGas’s “Director of Sustainability” to discuss its 2045 net zero goal. Their goal stipulates delivering gas to consumers without emitting CO2 in the delivery. This is their laughable definition of “net zero.” They do not include in their calculation the carbon emissions caused by the natural gas they sell and profit from when their customers burn the gas, emitting vast amounts of CO2.
The Stanford Natural Gas Initiative co-hosted an event on “the interplay of hydrogen and natural gas” with Energy Dialogues, LLC, a networking platform for “energy” companies. Among the speakers was Jawaad Malik, VP of Strategy and Sustainability for SoCalGas. Other speakers included the Executive VP of British Petroleum and a VP of PlugPower, a hydrogen fuel cell company, a professor, and a representative from a hydrogen company and a law firm. The scope of the conversation focused on the perspectives of companies selling gas and hydrogen (see linked report) – no green-sector views were represented. This teaches us that the fossil fuel industry, and the Doerr School, use the word “energy companies” to mean “fossil fuel and fossil fuel logistics companies.” Green energies apparently need not be included in “energy dialogues.
The Stanford Natural Gas Initiative hosted panel discussions on “Sector Coupling of the Electric and Gas Systems in North America,” “Natural Gas in a High-Renewables, Decarbonizing World,” and a “Hydrogen Workshop,” all of which which featured SoCalGas’ Senior Director of Business Development, Yuri Freedman. Shoving hydrogen into as many sectors as possible, whether or not it makes any sense, is one of the fossil fuel industry’s latest delay tactics, and Stanford’s Doerr School of Un-Sustainability is enthusiastically embracing it.