Natural Gas Causing ‘Detour’ on Road to Cleaner Fuel
Natural gas is often promoted as a cleaner alternative to gasoline — a kind of “bridge fuel” between emission-heavy energy sources and zero-emission renewables like solar and wind.
But a new study casts doubt on the benefits of natural gas. Researchers from the University of California-Irvine, Stanford University and the non-profit organization Near Zero studied various parings of climate policies involving natural gas and discovered that in some cases, the use of gas would actually increase emissions from the world’s power-generation sector by as much as 5 percent.
Gas got its reputation as a “bridge fuel” because it emits only half as much carbon dioxide as coal to generate the same amount of electricity.
But recent studies of how natural gas is produced have looked at leaks of methane – a greenhouse gas – during the extraction process.
Yet because gas is cheap and plentiful, it is seen as an attractive alternative to dirtier energy sources and is gaining in popularity in the US.
That’s why Shearer,a postdoctoral scholar at UC Irvine and a co-author of a recent study, calls gas “a major detour” on the road to a lower carbon future, and says, “We find that the only effective paths to reducing greenhouse gases are a regulatory cap or a carbon tax.”
Source: oilpricecom- Natural Gas Causing ‘Detour’ on Road to Cleaner Fuel
