Energy Collective: We're Using Natural Gas All Wrong for the Climate

The natural and immediate inclination of emissions reduction practitioners and policy-makers is to substitute gas directly for coal in the power generation sector.  But this is a deeply flawed prescription.  For maximum advantage, we should rather use every single cubic foot of gas we possibly can to displace electricity in end uses.  Attention to this issue by policy makers can save untold gigatons of carbon emissions over the coming decades.

Natural gas is far from a perfect fuel.  Burning it creates GHG emissions.  Yet coal is far worse, and until the day is upon us when electric power systems have eliminated coal entirely, gas will play an important role in restraining its use.

Coal use is forecast by a number of international organizations to increase in the next decades, especially in large developing countries like China and India.  According to the Asian Development Bank developing Asia will increase its coal use by over 60% in the next 20 years, and the ADB forecasts that developing Asia alone will by 2035 create more carbon emissions than is believed sustainable for the entire planet, half of it from coal.

Growing recognition of the massive carbon emission consequences of such forecasts has unleashed a worldwide movement to displace coal-fired power generation with natural-gas fired generation wherever possible.

Read the full article from the Energy Collective HERE