'Clean' natural gas is actually the new coal, report says: Don Pittis

Employees work next to tanks for liquefied natural gas at a factory in Xian, China in June. China is a prime customer in a worldwide LNG expansion. (Reuters)

It is clear that at the moment it is burned, methane, the main component of natural gas, is much cleaner than coal. Taking this into consideration, it has been said that one might think that a newly published report entitled The New Gas Boom should be a reason to celebrate.

And, according to the report, “clean” natural gas is actually the new coal.

Thus, the new analysis of Global Energy Monitor, a group well known in the energy circles for tracking the construction of a coal plant in Asia, is a warning, not only for the climate, but also for investors, in what it calculates as a $ 1.3 trillion US dollar risk of the global gas infrastructure.

In this way, it is understood that according to this report, instead of being a product that respects the environment that can help solve our climate problems, gas is the new carbon.

Based on the studies

It should be noted that the explosion in spending on new planned installations of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the vast majority in the United States and Canada, combined with new leakage calculations of the LNG supply chain called fugitive gas, means that the world will soon turn against gas in the same way. Thus he turned against his relative solid fuel.

In fact, it is necessary to highlight exactly what James Browning said, who is one of the authors of the report, “New studies have shown there is significantly more gas fugitive than studies showed five years ago, and the gas is also a bigger contributor to climate change than was understood “

In this way, it has been said that natural gas is seen as an attractive option for cities linked to smog, especially in Asia, which currently use coal to heat and produce electricity. In fact, until very recently, for all practical purposes, gas was seen as a continental resource. In other words, while freighters and oil tankers around the world moved coal and oil, the gas was limited to places where an oil pipeline could be built.

Even so, the drop in costs of LNG technology changed all that. Suddenly, it became possible to compress the gas into a cold liquid to be sent by specialized tankers anywhere in the world. That being the case, according to the data compiled in the GEM report, that has led to a planned LNG construction boom worth approximately $2 trillion.

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Source: Don Pittis | CBC News