[Greenbuilding] [eadvocates] Climate Benefits of Natural Gas May Be Overstated

[Reuben Deumling]

One thing that bothers me about the title of the article, and about much
that passes for energy policy language these days, is a confusion of the
relative and the absolute, of benefits, on the one hand, and varying degrees
of damage on the other. The extraction and combustion of natural gas offers
no climate benefits, properly understood. It is a fossil fuel, and
extracting and burning it is widely recognized to result in an unqualified
disbenefit to anything that might pass for climate stability.
Comparing its life cycle impacts on atmospheric GHG concentrations to coal's
is perfectly reasonable, but I take issue with the squishy phrasing, the
pathological avoidance of straight talk when it comes to climate-prudent
energy policies.

The spectrum of options available to us is, of course, far greater than
coal+sequestration or natural gas (why, for that matter, are we talking
about building any new power plants?) but the framing of the issue in this
article obscures that.

> The utilities are in a bind because they have to build new power plants to
> meet the nation’s demand for energy, while anticipating an as-yet-undefined
> set of federal climate and emissions regulations that they believe are
> inevitable. Do they build new gas-fired plants, which can cost $2 billion
> and take three years to bring online? Or do they wait for proven systems
> that can capture carbon from coal-fired plants and sequester it underground?
>
>
Why the supply focus? Why so unimaginative when it comes to demand? Why
assume _always_ that electricity demand is fixed, off limits, that it will
grow forever? How helpful, how realistic is that?

The truth of the matter is we would be wise to figure out how to *stop all
burning of fossil fuels as soon as possible and probably a lot sooner than
that*. Why this needs restating is a source of continuing frustration. Doing
this, figuring out how to make it happen--politically, technically,
economically, ethically, emotionally--is a big challenge, but judging from
the tenor of this article what we really need to do is figure out how to
calculate more significant figures of the coal vs natural gas difference in
climate impacts.

Reuben Deumling
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