The senators wrote: “Gas certification companies currently operate in a Wild West environment.”
Washington (February 12, 2024) – Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chair of the Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety, along with Senators Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), today sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina M. Khan urging the Commission to investigate and crack down on misleading environmental claims by fossil fuel companies and gas certification programs. The senators call on the FTC to update its “Green Guides” to provide better guidance on the claims gas certification programs can legitimately make. The Green Guides have not been updated since 2012 and do not currently include any guidance for oil and gas marketing.
Over the past decade, the gas industry has engaged in a greenwashing campaign in which third-party “gas certifiers” evaluate methane emissions from natural gas production, often utilizing unreliable and inaccurate technologies and methodologies. Gas companies then misleadingly use these inaccurate evaluations to advertise their products as a clean bridge between fossil fuel and renewable energy, and charge higher prices for the purportedly “clean” gas—costs which are usually passed on to consumers.
In their letter to Chair Khan, the senators wrote, “Gas producers sometimes publicly describe their product as ‘certified,’ ‘responsible,’ or ‘differentiated’ and market it as a climate-friendly fossil fuel. But too often these green claims are false or misleading, as the methodology underlying them is opaque, the technology supporting them is unreliable, and the downstream climate effects of gas combustion are ignored… many utilities are using so-called ‘certified’ gas to falsely burnish their climate bona fides, and some charge premiums for gas bearing these frequently meaningless designations.”
The senators continued, “This greenwashing scheme demands an FTC investigation and the express inclusion of guidance for third-party natural gas certification regimes in revised FTC Green Guides. These steps will help prevent gas producers and certification companies from misleading and ripping off consumers, harming the environment, and hindering progress on climate change.”
False or misleading certified gas claims create a greenwashing effect that obscures the negative short- and long-term climate effects posed by methane gas. Studies measuring methane leakage have concluded that if gas leaks, even a little, it can be as bad as coal. These certification schemes have allowed the gas industry to justify continued expansion, while undermining climate goals of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
To better understand how the FTC addresses false or misleading gas certification claims, the senators request answers to the following questions by March 31, 2024:
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