The study concluded that burning natural gas — and in particular gas obtained through fracking — was worse for the
climate than burning coal.
Energy prices will rise in the future, especially if we take climate change as seriously as it deserves; sustainable energy is more
expensive than burning coal.
In particular, she evaluates whether generating energy via the burning of wood pellets, or biomass, puts less carbon into the
atmosphere than burning coal.
That's despite that fact that many scientists disagree, and have argued that burning wood can in fact be worse for the
climate than burning coal.
They're helping to fund a wind farm in India and burning some biodiesel in the production trucks to try to precisely balance the carbon dioxide emitted from all those klieg lights with the amount avoided by generating Indian electricity from the breeze
rather than burning coal.
At a cost of less than 3 cents per kilowatt - hour, tornado energy is
cheaper than burning coal (which rings up at 4 or 5 cents per kwh) and produces no additional greenhouse gases.
Meanwhile, scientists have determined that biomass burning generates more CO2 emissions per
kWh than burning coal does, and the projected rapid growth in biofuel use will only serve to «increase atmospheric CO2 for at least a century».
According to industry experts, if coal loses out in utilities» decisions on what to build, it would be because the economics of burning gas are simply
better than burning coal.
The United Arab Emirates went so far as to suggest that oil is an environmentally friendly fuel, since it produces marginally less carbon
dioxide than burning coal.
That system, called an IGCC (for «integrated gasification combined cycle»), makes burning syngas more
efficient than burning coal directly.
If there was no leakage of methane and the other potential problems were fully controlled the exploitation of coal - seam gas would be less harmfull, environmentally, than using coal (because burning methane produces roughly twice the useable energy per tonne of CO2
released than burning coal), but burning any fossil fuels must be stopped if we are to limit the damage caused by climate change and ocean acidification.
Coal to gas: the influence of methane leakage; an interesting paper on how methane leakage from the natural gas industry could prove worse for climate
change than burning coal (and it doesn't seem to consider the leakage from coal seam gas).
Except one: generating electricity by harvesting the wind
rather than burning coal or natural gas cuts down on emissions of carbon dioxide — the primary greenhouse gas changing the global climate.
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.
About the only thing worth doing with it is probably going to be burning it like they do in Scandinavia, but that has a bigger carbon footprint per
kWh than burning coal.
No one would argue that natural gas is a carbon - neutral or even low - carbon energy source, but it's a whole heck of a lot
better than burning coal, oil from tar sands, or oil from anywhere for that matter.
The study concluded that burning natural gas — and in particular gas obtained through fracking — was worse for the
climate than burning coal.
But for those who oppose fracking, there is this: Burning the natural gas produced by fracking may be much better for the environment and public health, over the long run,
than burning coal.
Rather
than burning coal, such plants first convert coal into a combustible gas.
If enough of it leaks out before you can get it to a power plant and burn it, then it's no better, in climate terms,
than burning coal.
But David McCabe, an atmospheric scientist at the Clean Air Task Force, reports that the news is fairly good on this front: «From the best of the collective work, we believe that burning natural gas for electricity produces about 30 - 50 % less greenhouse gas
than burning coal, even accounting for the emissions of methane (and carbon dioxide) from producing and transporting the natural gas.»