WASHINGTON (AP) ― Cheap and plentiful natural gas isn’t quite a bridge to a brighter energy future as claimed and won’t slow global warming, a new study projects.
Abundant natural gas in the United States has been displacing coal, which produces more of the chief global warming gas carbon dioxide.
But the new international study says an expansion of natural gas use by 2050 would also keep other energy-producing technologies like wind, solar and nuclear, from being used more. And those technologies are even better than natural gas for avoiding global warming.
Computer simulations show that emissions of heat-trapping gases to make electricity would not decline worldwide and could possibly go up, says the study, released Wednesday by the journal Nature.
Unconventional techniques such as high-volume hydraulic fracturing and ultra-deep water drilling have increased global supplies of natural gas so much that prices are now expected to remain relatively low for years to come. That makes generating electricity with natural gas cheaper than it otherwise would be, and makes it harder for wind and solar to compete.
Five teams of experts from around the world, using five different sets of computer model simulations, looked at what would happen if natural gas ― also known as methane ― remains cheap and plentiful and nothing else changes, such as policy mandates. They all came to the same conclusion.
“It doesn’t reduce climate change,” said study lead author Haewon McJeon, an economist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Two computer models even found that when considering other factors like methane leaks, cheaper natural gas could lead to more trapping of heat by greenhouse gases, the mechanism that drives global warming. Methane traps even more heat than an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide.
But because the models differed so much on that projection, it is hard to conclude that more natural gas will worsen the problem, McJeon said.
“The scary thing about this paper is that it does make sense,” said Gregg Marland, an expert in tracking fossil fuel emissions at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Marland, who wasn’t part of the study, said the combination of leaking methane and displacing cleaner fuels is a problem.
The results are similar to an earlier study by Duke University professor Richard Newell, who used to head the federal government’s Energy Information Administration.
koreaherald@heraldcorp.com
