This article is doing something weird: it's treating natural gas as an analogue for oil (and using the rise of natural gas exploitation as evidence for continued investment in other hydrocarbon sources) when natural gas is explicitly part of the US's energy transition plan.
Is burning natural gas ideal? Absolutely not. But it's much better than burning oil or coal for electricity, and using heightened financial and generation figures for natural gas to imply that hydrocarbons as a whole aren't successfully being replaced is deeply misleading.
(A cursory scan of this author's other posts indicates that this is a general theme of theirs.)
Are there really much of a difference in terms of emissions? I would agree gas is much better than burning coal in terms of health, but it is only ~50% of emissions, not even an order of magnitude.
The main takeaway for me is that nuclear isn’t getting enough press time because the prevailing view is that renewables are so successful, which he is arguing is essentially propaganda not supported by the numbers.
A 50% emission reduction is huge, especially in the context of being able to reuse most of our hydrocarbon-compatible infrastructure. Not everything needs to be on orders of magnitude to be worth doing.
I agree that nuclear power needs to be a larger part of the story. But the author should motivate that without relying on misleading categorizations.
Gas is far better in terms of carbon dioxide, but arguably worse than coal when you factor in methane emissions.
The only real benefit of gas, IMO, is that it's easy to switch on and off quickly and has the low fixed-costs desirable for a peaker plant (unlike nuclear).
The success is based on the cost and timescales available now, not based on the past 18 years (which is that solar and wind costs have fallen massively while nuclear still seems to offer high initial estimates with a good likelihood of massive cost overruns).
Moreover recent turbines burning natural gas can be retrofitted to burn hydrogen, which will be 'green' and therefore produced by renewables, typically while over-producing electricity... providing for part of a clean backup.
Comments
This article is doing something weird: it's treating natural gas as an analogue for oil (and using the rise of natural gas exploitation as evidence for continued investment in other hydrocarbon sources) when natural gas is explicitly part of the US's energy transition plan.
Is burning natural gas ideal? Absolutely not. But it's much better than burning oil or coal for electricity, and using heightened financial and generation figures for natural gas to imply that hydrocarbons as a whole aren't successfully being replaced is deeply misleading.
(A cursory scan of this author's other posts indicates that this is a general theme of theirs.)
Are there really much of a difference in terms of emissions? I would agree gas is much better than burning coal in terms of health, but it is only ~50% of emissions, not even an order of magnitude.
The main takeaway for me is that nuclear isn’t getting enough press time because the prevailing view is that renewables are so successful, which he is arguing is essentially propaganda not supported by the numbers.
A 50% emission reduction is huge, especially in the context of being able to reuse most of our hydrocarbon-compatible infrastructure. Not everything needs to be on orders of magnitude to be worth doing.
I agree that nuclear power needs to be a larger part of the story. But the author should motivate that without relying on misleading categorizations.
Gas is far better in terms of carbon dioxide, but arguably worse than coal when you factor in methane emissions.
The only real benefit of gas, IMO, is that it's easy to switch on and off quickly and has the low fixed-costs desirable for a peaker plant (unlike nuclear).
The success is based on the cost and timescales available now, not based on the past 18 years (which is that solar and wind costs have fallen massively while nuclear still seems to offer high initial estimates with a good likelihood of massive cost overruns).
Moreover recent turbines burning natural gas can be retrofitted to burn hydrogen, which will be 'green' and therefore produced by renewables, typically while over-producing electricity... providing for part of a clean backup.
> to imply that hydrocarbons as a whole aren't successfully being replaced is deeply misleading.
But natural gas is a hydrocarbon? Replacing coal with gas isn't a replacement of hydrocarbons.