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LNG Greenwashing: Why Inaction Signals Silent Approval

Following amendments to the Competition Act in 2024, the Competition Bureau—one of Canada’s independent advertising watchdogs—recently released updated guidelines on greenwashing in the Competition Act.

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Updated 03/10/2023
New Greenwashing Guidelines in Canada

Following amendments to the Competition Act in 2024, the Competition Bureau—one of Canada’s independent advertising watchdogs—recently released updated guidelines on greenwashing in the Competition Act. A public comment period is currently open on the new guidelines (until Feb 28, 2025), making now the perfect time to revisit Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) greenwashing to outline its wide-ranging harmful impacts, and take action.

Setting Boundaries

Before diving into LNG greenwashing, let’s talk about boundaries.

We’re all pretty familiar with the importance of boundaries: they keep us safe. We also know the risks of leaving boundaries unenforced, because we’ve experienced the consequences of letting them slip. 

Those of us with cats know this very well. Set clear boundaries (such as no-go zones) and they’ll (generally) be respected. Don’t, and next thing you know, that adorable fluff ball is suddenly covered in flour and hanging from a twirling ceiling fan while AC/DC plays in the background (ok this hasn’t happened to me, but I feel like it’s probably happened to someone).

Using a more serious example, countries around the world use well-established behavioural norms and practices to uphold unwritten legal boundaries, also known as customary law.

In other words, how we respond (or don’t respond) to actions in social settings sends a message of what is and isn’t acceptable, sometimes with long-term and systemic repercussions. 

LNG greenwashing is everywhere

In 2024 we wrote about LNG greenwashing in Canada and how to report it. But LNG greenwashing isn’t just happening in Canada—it’s global, and is especially rampant in the shipping sector. Cruise companies such as Royal Caribbean and MSC are greenwashing their operations to potential customers, banks are investing heavily into LNG despite claiming to reduce their climate impacts, and even European policymakers are trying to label LNG as a sustainable investment for shipping. 

LNG greenwashing is also prevalent outside of shipping. Just a few months ago, a company called Canada Action released a batch of ads claiming Canadian LNG will reduce global emissions, which were unanimously ruled as inaccurate and misleading by one of Canada’s ad watchdogs.

This is all happening despite the broad evidence that LNG is harmful to the environment, people, and the climate.

This prompts the question: why is LNG greenwashing so common? And following the logic above, what are the consequences of poor boundaries on greenwashing? 

What we don’t know (or see) can (and does) hurt us

Looking at the shipping industry, there are a number of reasons LNG greenwashing is rampant. The main fuel utilized by the shipping sector for many years was heavy fuel oil (HFO)—fuel that releases polluting toxins when burned, including carbon dioxide, black carbon, and sulphur oxides. With a highly toxic “baseline” for historical marine fuels, it is easy to claim that LNG by comparison is a “cleaner” fuel. This is harmful because LNG is not better than HFO as its methane emissions impacts are not consistent with the zero-emission energy future we need. A similar comparison trick companies use to make LNG seem cleaner than in reality is using the 100-year global warming potential of methane against CO2; because methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas in the short-term (80 times worse than CO2 on 20-year timescales), using the 100-year timescale is misleading. 

LNG is easy to greenwash in shipping because many of its negative impacts occur separately from its burning as a fuel, throughout its lifecycle (known as “well-to-wake” in the shipping sector). At the LNG production stage, unconventional drilling (also known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking) uses extreme volumes of freshwater, and is associated with a variety of detrimental health impacts, including negative birth outcomes and lung issues. During the transport stage, LNG pipeline and port infrastructure actively harms Indigenous Peoples and nearby communities. Because these lifecycle impacts of LNG are easily hidden from its end-point as a fuel, it is easy for companies to falsely claim that LNG reduces emissions and harm over conventional fuel sources, leading to undisclosed impacts on people and the planet.

There are also key discrepancies in how we regulate and report LNG emissions in the shipping industry, and how they happen in practice. The International Maritime Organization (IMO)—international shipping’s global regulator—currently emphasizes CO2-centric decarbonization efforts. This practice has unintentionally caused a surge in methane emissions: between 2012 and 2018, methane emissions from LNG-fueled ships increased by 150 percent. Furthermore, recent findings demonstrate that international and regional regulatory bodies underestimate how much methane is leaking to the atmosphere both during operations of LNG-powered vessels, as well as further upstream in the supply chain—also known as methane slip, or fugitive emissions. This underestimation opens the door for shipping companies to claim fugitive emissions are lower than they are.

Inaction as Silent Approval

Zooming out to look across sectors over time, it is clear LNG greenwashing has become a commonly accepted practice for the fossil fuel industry and its users. LNG greenwashing no longer occurs in isolated instances, but has become a false industry “truth.”  

With a lack of clear greenwashing boundaries and consequences of breaking them, claims of LNG being clean or sustainable could leave folks with the impression that LNG is clean or sustainable when it’s not. Though we are finally starting to see action taken in these cases, this lack of boundary setting over time has put our global energy system’s zero-emission transition in a difficult position.

We don’t have to look further than Canada to see why. Coupled with extensive greenwashing has been chronic embellishment of the economic benefits of producing LNG. As a result, decision-makers who have been tricked into seeing LNG as a climate solution have allowed industry to ramp-up plans for LNG production and export. Research shows that this will hurt Canada’s economy: the global LNG market is already high-risk, with evidence that speculators are creating false demand signals; Canadian LNG will hit the global market at a time when demand is falling, dropping its market price; and the infrastructure required for LNG production, export, and use has a high risk risk of becoming stranded assets, including infrastructure linked to the shipping sector. 

Perhaps worst of all, all this investment in LNG is coming at the expense of true zero-emission energy solutions. In the case of zero-emission marine fuels, diverted resources means a delay in production, and a higher price for longer—a significant issue in a market-driven economic system. And this issue is happening around the world: investments in oil and gas, whether as subsidies or new financing, are blocking our progress on zero-emission solutions. Our lack of boundary-setting has created a system where new, but still-harmful energy sources falsely appear to be legitimate competitors with the ones we truly need.

Stifle greenwashing by eliminating fossil fuel advertisements

So what can be done? 

Folks can take action through ongoing initiatives like the Beyond Methane Pledge and petition against Royal Caribbean cruises to make LNG’s climate impacts clear and put a stop to greenwashing. People can also make a submission to the public comment period on the Competition Bureau’s new greenwashing guidelines to ensure they eliminate the potential for LNG greenwashing in Canada.

Furthermore, a simple way to help stop LNG greenwashing is to eliminate opportunities for it—something which would be achieved with a blanket ban on fossil fuel advertisements. A fossil fuel ad ban has been gaining traction recently, with health practitioners, municipalities, government officials, and even the head of the United Nations. Putting it into practice could go a long way in putting our energy system back on track by helping more people understand that LNG and all other fossil fuels are not good for us. 

Though some may see an outright ban as an intense measure, we must avoid the alternative: inaction that signals silent approval of fossil fuel greenwashing.

Blog post written by Curtis Martin. Curtis is a Say No to LNG Canada Campaigner based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. 

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