Though burning natural gas produces much less greenhouse gas emissions than burning coal, a new study indicates
switching over coal - fired power plants to natural gas would have a negligible effect on the changing climate.
Not exact matches
Utilities are increasingly
switching over to natural gas for electricity generation —
coal plant closures could reach a high watermark this year.
The shale oil boom has driven natural gas prices lower and
coal - fired power plants are
switching over to natural gas.
The jist of this is that we must NOT suddenly
switch off carbon / sulphur producing industries
over the planet but instead we must first dramatically reduce CO2 emissions from every conceivable source, then gradually tackle
coal / fossil fuel sources to smoothly remove the soot from the air to prevent a sudden leap in average global temps which if it is indeed 2.75 C as the UNEP predicts will permanently destroy the climates ability to regulate itself and lead to catastrophic changes on the land and sea.
Mr Stanyer also highlighted the «major impact» of industrial decline
over several decades, which had seen job losses in pottery and
coal mining and a
switch to service industries.
What I find ironic is that it is his can - do optimism that is in this case working against our ability to do something about our dependence on fossil fuels and the climate change that this dependence is resulting in, that is,
switching to alternate energy, preserving modern civilization and the world economy beyond Peak Oil and Peak
Coal, preventing climate change from becoming such a huge problem that it destroys that the world economy — and more than likely leads to a series of highly destructive wars
over limited resources.
Over the longer term, a larger and more liquid LNG market can compensate for reduced flexibility elsewhere in the energy system (for example, lower fuel -
switching capacity in some countries as
coal - fired generation is retired).
The fracking boom has transformed the electric power industry too;
coal - fired plants all
over the country have been
switching to natural gas.
Assuming a
switch of 100 TWh from
coal to renewable energy by 2030, we estimate that Germany's emissions will be reduced by around 550 Mt CO2eq
over the total forecast period.
Specifically, McCarthy and the Air Office
over which she presides gave Congress and the electric power sector false assurances that the EPA's greenhouse gas regulations would not require utilities planning to build new
coal - fired power plants to «fuel
switch» to natural gas.
As I demonstrated in the post, the U.S. has been the most successful country
over the last decade in reducing its emissions; most of that is due to fuel
switching from
coal to natural gas.
And it is true that
over the short term, fugitive methane emissions have the potential to erode most or all of the CO2 emissions benefit resulting from
switching from
coal to gas.
As such, we think that fuel
switching between CCGT plants with efficiency rates of 50 % and above and
coal plants with efficiency rates of 36 % and below will likely be sufficient to clear the EU - ETS
over 2019 - 21 (Figure 5).
For example, higher
coal prices due to carbon taxing will lead cost - minimizing power grids to more heavily dispatch lower - emitting natural gas power plants in the short run, and to
switch increasingly to zero - carbon wind and solar generation
over time.
Overall, although natural gas is a non-renewable fossil fuel that emits carbon dioxide, the cumulative emissions saved by fuel
switching over the next decade from
coal to natural gas are likely to prove far cheaper than the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in future decades.
If
over the course of 40 years the world
switched all the
coal power plants
over to natural gas, generating half as much greenhouse gas per watt - hour of electricity, then the warming would slow — but only by a small fraction.
Natural gas may have lower greenhouse gas emissions when burned than
coal, but widespread
switching over to natural gas for electricity won't have much of an impact on reducing global warming, a new study from the National