Natural gas, a bridge to nowhere?

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

I don't know. Seems to me that gas turbines would work nicely as a bridge fuel over the next 20 years if we actually extracted the methane responsibly. Let them charge our batteries on-demand and at open market prices, with renewables having full grid priority of course.

Feels to me like people don't like this term out of worry renewables won't be able to end the transition. We all know well and good that solar/wind+storage is unbeatable on economic and reliability terms. Plus that economic gap widens every day. So what's the worry?

It's not a bridge fuel, though. It's a current fuel. Remove renewables and we'd still be replacing coal with it. If you can pipe natural gas, combined cycle makes it easier and cheaper than coal to use, and the newest combined cycle just widened the gap.

 

[mspohr]

It's not a bridge fuel, though. It's a current fuel. Remove renewables and we'd still be replacing coal with it. If you can pipe natural gas, combined cycle makes it easier and cheaper than coal to use, and the newest combined cycle just widened the gap.

The problem is that NG isn't cleaner than coal when you consider methane emissions.
We should not be building any fossil fuel infrastructure since it will pollute and displace renewables.

 

[mspohr]

Australia wrestles with reality.

Trouble with gas: the Coalition is betting on the fossil fuel for recovery – but the sums don't add up

Cost plays a major part in this. Analysts at BloombergNEF found solar and wind are now the cheapest source of bulk electricity generation for at least two-thirds of the global population, Australia included.

Meanwhile, Australia’s biggest oil and gas companies, Woodside Petroleum and Santos, are under siege from shareholders concerned about the financial risk of them backing long-term investments at odds with a zero emissions world. On Thursday, more than 50% of Woodside investors supported a non-binding resolution from the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility that the company should be setting targets to not only cut its own emissions, but those that result from the gas it sells to be burned in Asia. A similar motion at Santos’s annual general meeting won 43%

 

[EinSV]

Perhaps someone from the ICCT has been reading this thread?

LNG trucks: A bridge to nowhere

LNG trucks: A bridge to nowhere | International Council on Clean Transportation

"Yes, LNG trucks can deliver a paltry climate benefit. However, the technology can lock the European Union on a pathway that is not compatible with its climate-neutrality goals. Hence, the regulatory and fiscal incentives that LNG trucks enjoy today should be revisited."

 

[brucet999]

Perhaps someone from the ICCT has been reading this thread?

LNG trucks: A bridge to nowhere

LNG trucks: A bridge to nowhere | International Council on Clean Transportation

"Yes, LNG trucks can deliver a paltry climate benefit. However, the technology can lock the European Union on a pathway that is not compatible with its climate-neutrality goals. Hence, the regulatory and fiscal incentives that LNG trucks enjoy today should be revisited."

I found the linked article confusing, since it did not tell whether the methane emissions portion of the comparisons were measured as tons of emissions or corrected for the higher GHG impact of CH4 vs CO2. If the former, then the study significantly under-weighs the greenhouse gas emissions consequences of using LNG.

Also, the text references well-to-wheel (WTW) but the charts break out emissions into TTW and WTT portions, with no attempt to define those abbreviations.

 

[mspohr]

I found the linked article confusing, since it did not tell whether the methane emissions portion of the comparisons were measured as tons of emissions or corrected for the higher GHG impact of CH4 vs CO2. If the former, then the study significantly under-weighs the greenhouse gas emissions consequences of using LNG.

Also, the text references well-to-wheel (WTW) but the charts break out emissions into TTW and WTT portions, with no attempt to define those abbreviations.

Truck to wheel?
Well to truck?

 

[jerry33]

I found the linked article confusing, since it did not tell whether the methane emissions portion of the comparisons were measured as tons of emissions or corrected for the higher GHG impact of CH4 vs CO2. If the former, then the study significantly under-weighs the greenhouse gas emissions consequences of using LNG.

Also, the text references well-to-wheel (WTW) but the charts break out emissions into TTW and WTT portions, with no attempt to define those abbreviations.

The three common acronyms are:
Well to tank
Tank to wheel
Well to Wheel

 

[mspohr]

Another example of the stupidity of fossil fuels


Glasspoint, a Shell-funded solar enhanced-oil-recovery startup, is in liquidation

The plan was to use concentrated solar arrays housed in glass greenhouses to produce steam at gigawatt scale instead of natural gas for EOR.
Oil field operators already use vast amounts of natural gas to generate steam to draw difficult-to-access oil from depleted wells via thermal EOR. This technique has been used for decades in depleted wells ranging from Middle East oil fields to Kern County, California.

The oil business uses a lot of energy to make energy. A previous GlassPoint CEO pointed out that oil companies are “heating a cubic mile of earth,” — by burning gas to create steam. The 1.7 quadrillion Btu of gas used to power thermal EOR “could power six of the largest states.”

 

[wycolo]

If methane, that the earth is or might be naturally releasing soon, is somehow captured then it *must* be burned or else put into chemical processes. So gas turbines will likely always be needed near gas fields.
--

 

[jerry33]

If methane, that the earth is or might be naturally releasing soon, is somehow captured then it *must* be burned or else put into chemical processes. So gas turbines will likely always be needed near gas fields.
--

Not in Texas, they just vent it to the atmosphere. Particularly if it's near a population centre.

 

[wycolo]

Lest the turbine whine keep us up at night.
--

 

[mspohr]

If methane, that the earth is or might be naturally releasing soon, is somehow captured then it *must* be burned or else put into chemical processes. So gas turbines will likely always be needed near gas fields.
--

No gas fields; no need for gas. Leave it in the ground.

 

[SageBrush]

Australia wrestles with reality.

Trouble with gas: the Coalition is betting on the fossil fuel for recovery – but the sums don't add up

Cost plays a major part in this. Analysts at BloombergNEF found solar and wind are now the cheapest source of bulk electricity generation for at least two-thirds of the global population, Australia included.

Meanwhile, Australia’s biggest oil and gas companies, Woodside Petroleum and Santos, are under siege from shareholders concerned about the financial risk of them backing long-term investments at odds with a zero emissions world. On Thursday, more than 50% of Woodside investors supported a non-binding resolution from the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility that the company should be setting targets to not only cut its own emissions, but those that result from the gas it sells to be burned in Asia. A similar motion at Santos’s annual general meeting won 43%

I don't really understand what is going on here. The obvious step for these investors is to invest in something else, not to tell the fossil company to not sell their product.

 

[SageBrush]

New If methane, that the earth is or might be naturally releasing soon

Fracking is not 'natural.'

 

[mspohr]

I don't really understand what is going on here. The obvious step for these investors is to invest in something else, not to tell the fossil company to not sell their product.

This amazes me, too. The fossil company only knows how to sell fossils. It needs to go out of business. Stupid to tell it to become a "green energy company". It's a bad investment. This horse is dead. Get out now before it collapses.

 

[Kenz]

Fossil fuels are a bad investment for people and the planet.
Last one out will lose the most money.
Wind and solar energy are safer, cleaner and cheaper. Cheaper Wins !

 

[mspohr]

More utilities bypassing natural gas bridge and going straight to renewables

 

[iPlug]

Millions of abandoned oil wells in the U.S. are leaking methane


The U.S. is an important part of the problem, but kudos to them and Canada for capturing and reporting this data as it is. Need several important other heavy weight countries to join and all to take serious steps to mitigate this.

As the article notes:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year recommended that U.N. member countries start tracking and publishing the amount of methane leaching from their abandoned oil and gas wells after scientists started flagging it as a global warming risk. So far, the United States and Canada are the only nations to do so.

...The governments of Russia, Saudi Arabia, and China — which round out the top five world oil-and-gas producers — did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment on their abandoned wells and have not published reports on the wells’ methane leakage.​

 

[mspohr]

Millions of abandoned oil wells in the U.S. are leaking methane


The U.S. is an important part of the problem, but kudos to them and Canada for capturing and reporting this data as it is. Need several important other heavy weight countries to join and all to take serious steps to mitigate this.

As the article notes:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year recommended that U.N. member countries start tracking and publishing the amount of methane leaching from their abandoned oil and gas wells after scientists started flagging it as a global warming risk. So far, the United States and Canada are the only nations to do so.

...The governments of Russia, Saudi Arabia, and China — which round out the top five world oil-and-gas producers — did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment on their abandoned wells and have not published reports on the wells’ methane leakage.​

Not the US
New Emails Show How Energy Industry Moved Fast to Undo Curbs

New Emails Show How Energy Industry Moved Fast to Undo Curbs

 

[iPlug]

“Not the US” would likely apply to all five top emitting countries.

However, one of the points was yes to the United States and Canada for measuring the problem to some degree and releasing that data. Does not absolve them of the responsibility to do something about it but the other three large emitting countries may be even further behind as they need to release data.

The first step to fixing a problem is recognizing there is one...