{"id":27986,"date":"2017-11-15T07:28:59","date_gmt":"2017-11-15T12:28:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27986"},"modified":"2017-11-15T07:28:59","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T12:28:59","slug":"natural-gas-has-no-climate-benefit-and-may-make-things-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27986","title":{"rendered":"Natural gas has no climate benefit and may make things worse"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Natural gas has no climate benefit and may make things worse<\/a><\/h3>\n

Methane leaks in New Mexico’s oil and gas industry equal 12 coal-fired power plants.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A GAS FLARE AT A GAS-PROCESSING FACILITY IN NORTH DAKOTA. CREDIT: AP\/MATTHEW BROWNThe evidence is overwhelming that natural gas has no net climate benefit in any timescale that matters to humanity.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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In fact, a shocking new study<\/a> concludes that just the methane emissions escaping from New Mexico\u2019s gas and oil industry are \u201cequivalent to the climate impact of approximately 12 coal-fired power plants.\u201d If the goal is to avoid catastrophic levels of warming, a recent report<\/a> by U.K. climate researchers finds \u201ccategorically no role\u201d to play for new natural gas production.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has just published a \u201cCommentary<\/a>\u201d on \u201cthe environmental case for natural gas,\u201d that ignores or downplays key reasons that greater use of natural gas is bad for the climate.<\/p>\n

In the real world, natural gas is not a \u201cbridge\u201d fuel to a carbon-free economy for two key reasons. First,\u00a0natural gas is mostly methane<\/a>\u00a0(CH4), a super-potent greenhouse gas, which traps\u00a086 times<\/a>\u00a0as much heat as CO2 over a 20-year period.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why many, many\u00a0studies<\/a>\u00a0find that even a very small leakage rate of methane from the natural gas supply chain (production to delivery to combustion) can have a large climate impact\u200a \u2014 \u200aenough to gut the entire benefit of switching from coal-fired power to gas for a long, long time.<\/p>\n

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\"Kourtney<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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By The Time Natural Gas Has A Net Climate Benefit You\u2019ll Likely Be Dead And The Climate Ruined<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Second, other studies find\u200a \u2014 \u200asurprise, surprise\u200a \u2014 \u200anatural gas plants don\u2019t replace only high-carbon coal plants. They commonly replace very low carbon power sources like solar, wind, nuclear, and even energy efficiency, which is often overlooked as a major alternative to fossil fuels. That means even a\u00a0very low leakage rate<\/a>\u00a0wipes out the climate benefit of fracking.<\/p>\n

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Natural gas has no climate benefit and may make things worse Methane leaks in New Mexico’s oil and gas industry equal 12 coal-fired power plants. A GAS FLARE AT A GAS-PROCESSING FACILITY IN NORTH DAKOTA. CREDIT: AP\/MATTHEW BROWNThe evidence is overwhelming that natural gas has no net climate benefit in any timescale that matters to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[140,141,416,433,17023,5316,554,6146,1729,16192],"class_list":["post-27986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-climate","tag-climate-change","tag-iea","tag-international-energy-agency","tag-joe-rommnov","tag-methane","tag-natural-gas","tag-new-mexico","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-think-progress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27986"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27987,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27986\/revisions\/27987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}