Overreliance on Natural Gas: Risky for the Climate and the Economy

February 3, 2014 Steve Clemmer, director of energy research, Clean Energy

In last week’s State of the Union (SOTU) address, President Obama reiterated his support for climate science by unequivocally stating “The debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.” He also should be commended for highlighting the urgency of the problem as local communities are already experiencing damaging and costly climate impacts like drought, wildfires, heat waves, and coastal flooding.

But the President’s enthusiasm for increasing natural gas production and use as an important climate solution missed the mark. And like his climate action plan speech at Georgetown University last June, the President highlighted the economic benefits of increasing U.S. natural gas production, while failing to mention the economic risks of an overreliance on natural gas.

More natural gas is a bridge to a warmer world
“If extracted safely,” said President Obama, “it’s the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less carbon pollution that causes climate change.” To his credit, the dramatic shift from coal to natural gas and renewable energy has helped reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the U.S. electricity sector to their lowest levels since 1994. After all, burning natural gas to generate electricity produces about half the CO2 as coal. However, natural gas is still a fossil fuel that emits CO2 when combusted and methane when it’s extracted and distributed, contributing to global warming in the process.

A recent UCS analysis and a just released infographic show that transitioning to a natural gas dominated electricity future would not be sufficient to meet U.S. climate goals as power plant carbon emissions would barely change between today and 2050. This is because, in addition to replacing coal, natural gas generation would grow to replace aging nuclear plants and help meet the projected growth in electricity demand.


UCS Climate Risks of Natural Gas Infographic

Achieving a low carbon electricity future
To limit the worst consequences of climate change, a 2010 National Research Council report recommended an economy wide carbon budget that would cut U.S. power sector carbon emissions 90 percent from current levels by 2050. To achieve this low carbon future, we found that natural gas generation would need to peak sometime in the next 15 years and then steadily decline to well below current levels by 2050.

While different technology pathways are possible for achieving these emission reductions, we found that a pathway relying on renewable energy to provide 80 percent of U.S. electricity by 2050 and energy efficiency to reduce electricity use by about one percent per year was the lowest cost. In contrast, pathways assuming large-scale deployment of coal and natural gas with carbon capture and storage (CCS) and new nuclear plants were much more expensive and would take much longer to implement.

Reducing fugitive methane emissions
We also show that methane leakage from natural gas production and distribution reduces natural gas’s climate advantages over coal, while boosting the advantages renewables and efficiency have over natural gas. Methane is at least 25 times more potent than CO2 over a 100-year timeframe and at least 72 times stronger over 20-years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

A White House fact sheet on SOTU says the administration is taking steps to make gas production safer by developing new environmental standards for oil and gas drilling on public lands and initiating a multi-sector strategy to reduce methane emissions. While this is welcome news, even if we were able to reduce methane leakage completely, our analysis shows that natural gas would still be a problem from a climate perspective because of its carbon emissions.

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I can tell people that based upon our forward projections for Australia - combined with several conferences I have attended in the last 12-18 months in industry - the advancements made in collection and distribution of natural gas have been off the chart!

We are now able to access and distribute gas that even 10 years ago was impossible to achieve.

We are drilling deeper than every before off-shore, we are collecting gas deposits on-land in areas completely out of our reach in the past and with the advancement in seepage reduction - we are also making it safer and more economically viable from a gross margin point of view.

I am really quite positive about our continued ability to provide energy from sourcing of gas deposits well into the next 100 years and beyond.

# wrote on Feb 4^th, 2014 at 8:23pm:



We are looking at gross margins extending into 84% on our deposit sourcing right now so yes it would.

I dont know about our competitors but can't imagine it would be much different.

It's only companies of our size (the big 6 if you like) that have the capital and ability to do it. Small timer catters dont have the ability to source the gas I am referring.

Those deposits are only current projections basedon know reachable depths and current demand.
It could well extend out well beyond that.

Bear in mind when we say 100 years.
Go back around that length of time and we were not far out from using whale oil and firewood.

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Feb 4^th, 2014 at 8:14pm:

Pressure is a nonlinearity type subject: good luck with that game!!

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Feb 4^th, 2014 at 8:27pm:
So, if you can do it and make a profit, nothing else matters?

Natural gas as a ‘bridge’. Dangerous procrastination?

by Lindsay Wilson

There has been much talk of natural gas as a ‘bridge’ fuel lately, particularly due to its role in cutting US carbon emissions.

From an economic or energy security point of view this might make some sense, but in terms of climate change natural gas is a half measure that risks dangerous procrastination.

If all the coal fired power stations in the world switched to natural gas tomorrow we wouldn’t go close to stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.

Some simple carbon maths shows why we need to be more ambitious.

Carbon Emission Sources

Fossil fuels have done wonders for economic development ever since the start of the industrial revolution.  But if we want to keep on developing without toasting the planet we need to change how we get our energy.

For me, the easiest way to understand our carbon dioxide problem is to think of it in terms of ‘sources’ and ‘sinks’.

The main sources of man made carbon emissions are oil, coal, natural gas and land use change emissions.  Whilst the main sinks for carbon emissions are the ocean, the land and the atmosphere.

In the last 50 years the amount of carbon dioxide mankind has emitted has grown dramatically, due to rising fossil fuel emissions.



Man made carbon emissions have grown by 150% since 1960.

The majority of this growth has come from oil, coal and natural gas with a smaller contribution from cement production and gas flaring.  Land-use change emissions are down over the last decade because the net flux between deforestation and reforestation is slowly improving.

Carbon Emission Sinks

Once carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere it stays there for a long time. About 33% is still there after 100 years, and 20% is still in the atmosphere after 1000 years.

But when we think about where our emissions go it is simpler to look at the net change that occurs to the sinks each year.  In this way global carbon emissions are balanced by the annual absorption of the ocean, land and atmospheric sinks.

The following chart shows where our human carbon emissions have gone over the last 50 years.



The oceans have absorbed 29% of man made carbon emissions since 1960. Land sinks including vegetation, soils and humus have absorbed 27%.  Whilst 44% of carbon emissions have resulted in the growth of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.

The light blue section of this chart is equivalent to the share of annual carbon emissions that ends up in the atmosphere.  For each 7.8 Gt CO2 that remains in the atmosphere the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide rises by 1 ppm (parts per million). Between 2000 and 2009 we added an average of 15 Gt CO2 to the atmosphere each year resulting in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rising by an average of 2 ppm each year.  The growth rate last decade was higher than in any earlier decade.

Between 1960 and 2010 growing carbon emissions have caused atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide to grow from 317 ppm to 389 ppm.  If it wasn’t for the ocean and land sinks absorbing more carbon dioxide with both rising concentrations and rising emission rates we would already be pushing 500 ppm.

To stop the growth in the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations human carbon emissions would need to balanced by the sink capacity growth in the land and oceans.  To slow the acidification of the oceans we would need to do much more.

The Scale of Our Problem

Stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide is the central challenge of climate change.

We also need action on other positive forcing agents like methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and black carbon, as well as further study of aerosol and cloud management, but without tackling carbon dioxide we cannot properly address climate change.

Although the most common way to highlight the scale of this challenge is as a carbon budget between now and 2050, I find it much easier to understand by just thinking about one year.  That way I’m not thinking about 2050, I’m thinking about what needs to happen today.

I’ll use 2010 as an example.



Based on global sources of carbon dioxide in 2010 and the average sink absorption over the last decade we would need to cut global emissions in half to stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.  But in fact sinks absorption is also a function of emission rates, so this immediate cut in half would need to be quickly followed by more rapid emissions reductions to maintain stable concentrations.  If technically possible we could also stabilize concentrations by doubling the rate at which carbon dioxide is absorbed by the oceans, land or possibly by some type of technology.  But that technology is not really in existence.

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As DRAH says - Jevon's paradox in operation: As technology progresses, the increase in efficiency (in this case improvement in carbon emissions) with which a resource is used tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource. (net increase in carbon emissions) because nobody is reducing coal consumption.

Having said that, Ross Garnaud relied heavily on CCGT in his strategy. The inherent problem is with the lack of strategy, not with the use of natural gas. 

With regards to coal generation in Australia, the banks will not finance any new coal generation. The government has no say in it. It's a financial/commercial decision. Coal generation is slowly bleeding to death.  Many older power stations can't even afford proper maintenance.

lee wrote on Feb 7^th, 2014 at 10:43pm:


what....97% of CO2 is produced by nature....quick...shunt that elephant out of the room, you know as well as I do the IPCC is only interested in smacking us over for the poofteenth of a percent that humans produce.

CO2 is good, a gazzillion trees have voted and they all agree