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Is Natural Gas As Clean As We Think?

August 9, 2015

Is Natural Gas As Clean As We Think?

This week U.S. President Barack Obama took aim at the American coal industry as part of a comprehensive climate change plan to limit air emissions from what many consider the country’s worst polluter.

Under the plan, states will have until 2030 to cut CO2 levels by a third from what they were in 2005. Outside the United States, Europe is using less coal, the Canadian province of Ontario shut down its coal-fired power generation (albeit in favor of more expensive renewables), and the World Bank last week rejected the notion that coal can cure poverty.

Even coal-hungry China has banned coal-fired power plants in Beijing, finally cowing to health and environmental concerns in the smog-choked capital.

Having turned their backs on coal, many countries are looking to natural gas as an alternative power source. China is plunging headlong into building liquefied natural gas import terminals, and countries are lining up to export it, including Australia, Russia and the United States, which in 2014 approved its fourth LNG export terminal, Dominion Cove Point in Maryland.

Related: Global Oil Supply More Fragile Than You Think

British Columbia’s governing Liberal Party has staked its political future on developing LNG terminals to receive natural gas from the Canadian province’s northeast region, telling voters in the last election it would use revenues from LNG production to wipe out the provincial debt.

Part of the sales job was to characterize natural gas as a clean fuel whose use will actually help decrease global fossil fuel emissions, since nations that switch to it are typically moving from dirty coal-fired power to clean LNG.

But is natural gas really as pristine as its proponents claim?

Not according to a new report released by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in June. The report estimated the amount of gas that is leaked, vented or flared from natural gas and oil production on U.S. federal and tribal lands. It found that 65 billion cubic feet was released in 2013 – the equivalent of the greenhouse gases produced by 5.6 million cars. In New Mexico, a methane “hot spot,” was detected by NASA satellites and in one drilling-heavy part of Wyoming a town measured air pollution readings that rivaled Los Angeles.

 

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