LNG Gains Ground as Emissions Fall, Study Finds
Has there been a more underrated hero in the climate conversation than natural gas? Once hailed as the darling “bridge fuel” of the Obama era, it’s now regularly flogged by environmental purists who claim that our choice is either solar panels or planetary doom. But a new study from Miami University Ohio just lobbed a pretty compelling truth grenade: switching from coal to gas is cutting carbon emissions.
A lot.
According to peer-reviewed research, greenhouse gas emissions dropped 7.5% annually as companies swapped coal for natural gas via fracking. Carbon dioxide alone fell by an even more impressive 10.5% a year. That’s not marginal—it’s the kind of statistic you could put on a T-shirt. Or, ideally, a policy brief.
“This outcome aligns with what many observers had hoped the shale gas boom would achieve,” said lead author David Lindequist, who probably deserves a round of applause and a stiff drink for daring to say something logical out loud.
And this isn’t exactly a mic drop moment for anyone who’s been paying attention. Wood Mackenzie calculated that swapping coal for gas accounted for 65% of the total reduction in US carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 to 2019, which is not surprising given gas produces 40% less nitrogen oxide and 44% less sulphur dioxide than coal per MWh. WoodMac said. That’s what success looks like when you don’t let ideology set your thermostat.
Still, somehow, even despite the Sierra Club’s long-since-forgotten support of the bridge fuel, we reached the point where the Biden administration’s energy strategy involved pausing LNG export terminals while the rest of the world begged for cleaner, more reliable fuel.
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Despite the resistance that emerged to the once popular notion of a temporary natural gas takeover, everyone agrees it works. It’s just that somewhere down the line, the fear was that it would work so well, we would be disinclined to aggressively explore renewable alternatives.
But even Doug Vine of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions admitted that natural gas expansion “almost wiped out the idea of building a new coal plant in the U.S.”
Source: Oilprice.com
