NW Natural is linked to another overseas trip for lawmakers to learn about biogas production, something that interests the state’s biggest gas company as it faces a state mandate to cut emissions.
Three state lawmakers – Republican Rep. Virgle Osborne of Roseburg, Republican Sen. David Brock Smith of Port Orford and Democratic Sen. Mark Meek of Gladstone – will go to Denmark from April 15 to 20 to learn more about the production of hydrogen gas and biogas, a fuel created through the breakdown of organic matter. The chief of staff for Democratic Rep. Ken Helm of Beaverton – Greg Mintz – is also on the guest list. The Danish government aims to phase out natural gas for heat and electricity by 2030, and to replace it with biomethane, which is made mostly by capturing methane gas from decaying crops, plant and animal waste and using it for energy.
The tour of Danish gas facilities is the second such trip in less than a year. Seven months ago, NW Natural paid for five Oregon lawmakers to visit Denmark on a similar trip that included a NW Natural lobbyist. That lobbyist, Nels Johnson, said in paperwork filed with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission that NW Natural would not be funding this trip. Johnson sought the commission’s approval for the trip, calling it a fact-finding mission. Lawmakers will be given scholarships to attend through the Seattle-based touring company i-Sustain, a private corporation.
“Given the Oregon Legislature’s focus on decarbonization, this trip will prove hugely informative to lawmakers as they continue to think through Oregon’s decarbonization efforts,” Johnson wrote in his request to the commission, which was approved on Monday.
Johnson said in his ethics request that the i-Sustain scholarships would be funded largely by labor unions and utilities, which the ethics commission did not verify.
Representatives from NW Natural and Johnson did not respond to emails asking for more information from the Capital Chronicle. Patricia Chase, founder of i-Sustain, responded to the Capital Chronicle in an email but did not respond to a question about the company’s funding.
Environmentalists have criticized the trips. They say NW Natural is trying to convince lawmakers that biofuels could be a viable part of the company’s fuel mix even though regulators disagree. They are expensive and not well-developed in the U.S.
NW Natural faces a state mandate to cut emissions by more than a quarter by 2050. The state’s utilities regulators have told the company, along with Avista and Cascade Natural Gas, that they will not meet that target by relying solely on biogases and biomethane, which are in their infancy in the U.S., expensive to produce and controversial. Critics say biomethane promotes the growth of confined animal operations, which provide a substantial amount of manure to make the gas and are emissions intensive, and that biomethane still burns as methane, warming the planet. Other low and zero emission energy sources, such as wind and solar, do not.
Members of the nonprofit environmental group Sierra Club have called on lawmakers to stop taking the trips to Denmark, in large part because NW Natural has played a role in funding and coordinating them.
“It is outrageous that the gas industry continues to fund these misleading junkets overseas to peddle false solutions like biomethane to lawmakers and regulators,” said Dylan Plummer, an organizer with the Sierra Club, in a statement. “We are calling on public servants across the region to reaffirm their commitment to climate justice and say no to these fossil fuel funded vacations.”
Gas money
The trip to several biogas and hydrogen facilities in Denmark last September cost NW Natural about $6,200 per legislator, according to reporting from the Malheur Enterprise, and the company selected the legislators who were invited: Sen. Janeen Sollman, D-Hillsboro; Sen. Lynn Findley, R-Vale; Rep. Mark Owens, R-Crane; Rep. Bobby Levy, R-Echo; and Rep. Emerson Levy, D-Bend. Findley and Owens each received $2,500 campaign donations from NW Natural’s political action committee just days before departing on the trip, according to the Enterprise.
The upcoming April trip, titled “Decarbonizing the Gas Grid: Lessons from Denmark” is almost a carbon copy of the September trip. It, too, includes visits to several hydrogen gas and biogas production facilities, a tour of a Meta, formerly Facebook, data center, a meeting with a metal workers union and a tour of a hotel powered by geothermal energy.
Among those selected for the tour are people of considerable power when it comes to state natural resource and energy policy. Helm, Mintz’s boss, is chair of the House Committee On Agriculture, Land Use, Natural…
Read More: NW Natural linked to another Oregon lawmaker trip to tour Danish biogas