MIT/Gas Industry Report Says Gas is the Way to Go
June 28th, 2010
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MIT Researchers See Natural Gas as the Choice for Lower Carbon Emissions
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are encouraging U.S. policymakers to consider the nation’s growing supply of natural gas as a short-term substitute for aging coal-fired power plants.In the results of a two-year study, released today, the researchers said electric utilities and other sectors of the American economy will use more gas through 2050. Under a scenario that envisions a federal policy aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2050, researchers found a substantial role for natural gas.
“Because national energy use is substantially reduced, the share represented by gas is projected to rise from about 20 percent of the current national total to around 40 percent in 2040,” said the MIT researchers. When used to fire a power plant, gas emits about half of the carbon dioxide emissions as conventional coal plants.
The report asserts the impact of national policies that place an economic cost on greenhouse gas emissions would, first and foremost, be a reduction in energy use across the United States. It would flatten demand in the electricity sector.
….
Gas is an option for cutting power plant emissions and addressing global warming in the short term. But the researchers warned that the gas cushion shouldn’t distract policymakers from addressing the need for nuclear power and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology for coal-fired generation.
“Though gas frequently is touted as a ‘bridge’ to the future, continuing effort is needed to prepare for that future, lest the gift of greater domestic gas resources turn out to be a bridge with no landing point on the far bank,” the report says. “Barriers to the expansion of nuclear power or coal and/or gas generation with CCS must be resolved over the next few decades so they are capable of expanding to replace natural gas in generation.”
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Economics favor vehicles run on natural gasAutomakers that take the plunge into compressed natural gas vehicles would see a significant jump in demand under a national climate policy that makes carbon dioxide emissions costly. Biofuels are expected to advance, but it’s unclear how quickly and at what cost to important food crops. But even with biofuels in the picture, MIT projects natural gas vehicles will be 15 percent of the private vehicle fleet by 2050.
New shale gas fields could reconfigure the national map of gas producers and consumers. Gas production in the Marcellus Shale and other burgeoning gas fields in the Northeast, stretching from New England through the Great Lake states, is set to rise 78 percent by 2030. Under a carbon price regime, the researchers said gas production matches increasing gas consumption.
Indeed, natural gas is cleaner and less CO2-intensive than coal, but that’s hardly setting the bar high. There really aren’t any fuels that are dirtier than coal, so damn never everything has to be cleaner.
At least they did not discount nuclear energy completely, though the full report cites nuclear power as being too expensive for near term usage and claims gas is the most economical way to go. This is a common claim against nuclear energy, which has an extremely economical full life cost profile, but tends to be capital intensive. The report didn’t appear to consider the fact that much of the cost is a direct result of regulatory policy or that natural gas generation tends to have the highest operating expenses.
A look at the entire report finds that its conclusions on natural gas are generally quite glowing and tend to ignore the darker side of things. Gas prices, it claims, could be stabilized and gas remain cheap. Yet historically, natural gas prices have been as volatile as oil and sometimes worse. The report also includes statements concerning the future of US natural gas production, painting a rosy picture of natural gas in the US being a fuel with many decades of supply remaining. It gives only a brief mention of the fact that this estimate is based on the presumption that non-conventional sources of gas are included in production, despite the fact that these have proven, thus far, to be significantly more difficult to effectively tap than conventional gas reservoirs.
As it stands, the US is already a major net importer of gas, although primarily from Canada. The demand for gas in North America has lead to an increasingly thinly stretched production capacity in both Canada and the United States. Demand has forced the use of extremely sour gas fields in Canada, which are both dirtier than conventional gas fields and are far more dangerous. At the same time, increasing use of natural gas for power generation has begun to push the capacity of pipelines and may soon require expensive upgrades of the North American natural gas transmission system.
As North American natural gas supplies become more and more stretched, the world supply of natural gas is increasingly becoming dependent on Russia and the Middle East. Natural gas reserves in Qatar have made it one of the richest countries in the world, and additional supplies in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan and the United Arab Emirates have come to dominate the world natural gas markets. Still, Russia remains on top as the biggest producer and exporter of natural gas. It is becoming increasingly clear that North America consumption of gas cannot continue to increase without becoming dependent on these countries for imports.
Yet the report, with its rosy picture of unconventional gas reserves and generous estimates of current supplies is quite silent on this issue as it is on the price volatility of gas and the environmental impacts of recovery of natural gas.
Why is this?
A quick look at the citations of the report finds a disturbing number of individuals with vested interests involved. Damn near every person cited as an “advisory committee member” was the CEO of a major energy interest, including the CEO of Hess Corporation, a major producer of oil and gas and Sempra Energy, the parent company of Southern California Gas and Sempra Pipeline and Storage company.
Yet the most telling statement can be found in the document’s “Forward and Acknowledgments” section:
Finally, we are very appreciative of the support from several sources. First and foremost,
we thank the American Clean Skies Foundation. Discussions with the Foundation led
to the conclusion that an integrative study on the future of natural gas in a carbon-
constrained world could contribute to the energy debate in an important way, and
the Foundation stepped forward as the major sponsor. MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI)
members Hess Corporation and Agencia Naçional de Hidrocarburos (Colombia)
provided additional support. The Energy Futures Coalition supported dissemination
of the study results, and MITEI employed internal funds and fellowship sponsorship
to support the study as well. As with the advisory committee, the sponsors are not
responsible for and do not necessarily endorse the findings and recommendations.
That responsibility lies solely with the MIT study group.
It appears that the “American Clean Skies Foundation” was the major contributor to this publication. And just who is the American Clean Skies Foundation, you ask?
They are a nonprofit foundation with the stated mission: “to educate the public about the environmental benefits of using natural gas as well as wind, solar and other renewables to replace sources of energy that cause more pollution and add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.” They are also funded almost exclusively by the Chesapeake Energy Corporation, the second largest producer of natural gas in the US. Not only that, but the foundation’s chair is Aubrey McClendon, the CEO of Chesapeake Energy.
Now if that isn’t a transparent and obvious example of a “front group” I don’t know what is!
This entry was posted on Monday, June 28th, 2010 at 8:27 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Enviornment, Nuclear, Obfuscation, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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June 28th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
Tell me, why isn’t Greenpeace running TV ads with the young happy family enjoying a days outing when suddenly the camera turns to a hijacked aircraft making a dive into the LNG carrier?
While I in this sort of mood, I also invite Kit P to tell us how showing that this report was backed by gas interests is unethical as he did elsewhere when this report was reviewed by another blogger.
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June 28th, 2010 at 9:17 pm
..and now to follow the thread
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June 28th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
I suppose any industry has the right to fund research in their favor if they want, but I bet if there were an energy report and it was funded by the nuclear industry there would be an uproar.
But yea, gas is cleaner that coal. That is no saying much for sure.
I think the idea that the US has limitless gas for years to come is unrealistic. Most new gas production is coming from the mid-east and how does that help anything? we are already dependent on them for oil.
Also, it’s not mentioned here but the report was very big on CNG vehicles and I just don’t see it. They have been around for a long time and still they are so inferior to gasoline that it seems they are going to probably be pretty limited to stuff like city busses and maybe delivery trucks but not cars I don’t think. It has been tried and it won’t cut it as gasoline does.
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June 28th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
The notion that natural gas is plentiful and free for the taking in North America is absurd. Just look at the kinds of recovery now going on. The low hanging fruit has all been tapped and some of it exhausted which is why they’re going deeper and into less high quality reserves.
It’s not like we’re running out of gas, but we sure are not up to our eyeballs in it either. We do need it for things and I think right now, the supply can hold reasonably well as long as the demand is kept within some reasonable constraints, but if it gets to the point where it starts to really replace coal in the United States it could be a big issue. There are already pipeline and field operators saying that they have concerns about keeping the supply going with increased demand and what with the whole debockle over building gas in to replace Nanticoke, I’m sure we’re going to be feeling the supply crunch more then less.
I don’t know how gas managed to pull this act about getting people to think it’s super plentiful and cheap when anyone can look at the gas fields in west Canada and see that it’s not necessarily any better than oil in terms of what you need to do to get at it with the supply we have.
Then for those with short memories 1998-2002 or so, which would be roughly ten years ago, it was actually cheaper to burn oil than gas and home owners were going to oil heat for saving money. Ten years is not so long and really it is not exactly a stretch to say that gas prices, fickle that they are, could easily creep above oil again in the next few years. Pinning our power generation on oil would be idiotic and gas really is not a lot better, all things considered.
Now remember one other thing: the United States used to be an exporter of oil until circa the 1960’s. Oil used to be produced from Texas and California and other areas in quantities enough to satisfy demand in the country and have enough left to export. Oh how times have changed. Do you want to make the same mistake and end up importing natural gas from the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Russia?
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June 28th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
DV82XL said:
Please do yourself a favor and let it go. Your “mood” is causing you to look like a fool.
Do you really have nothing better to do with your time than to badger someone across threads?
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June 28th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
Anonymous said:
Kit, you’re a loser. Really, do you think we can’t see through your ‘anonymous’ disguise?
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June 28th, 2010 at 11:16 pm
Finrod said:
It seems like the obvious conclusion that Anonymous would actually be KitP, but as I have access the the logs and IP addresses, I’ll just say that in this cirucmstances, “Anonymous” is actually someone else and not KitP. Anonymous is someone who has commented here before by a different name but not by the name KitP
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June 28th, 2010 at 11:35 pm
In the near term (20 years) the 2% or so of natural gas (methane) that leaks has 75 times the GHG effect as CO2 making NG a worse climate pollutant than coal.
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/44113
Since the MIT study was subsidized by Big Oil. its no wonder the leakage factor was accidentally omitted.
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June 28th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
Similarly, I have a plan to reduce my cooling bill. It involves the Texas Legislature setting caps on daytime temperatures. We should be able to phase out triple digit temperatures by 2015, and reduce highs to under 95°F by 2020.
Then I will further reduce dependence on my central air conditioner by placing trays of ice about the house with table fans blowing on them.
To take advantage of the surplus of natural gas, I will run my domestic gas service through an expansion chamber, which I will then couple to a heat exchanger to take advantage of the adiabatic cooling if the gas. (After this, I will either vent or flare the gas outside the house.)
With these measures in place, I expect to see a substantial reduction in my air conditioning use.
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June 28th, 2010 at 11:52 pm
drbuzz0 said:
Oh. Well, my apologies to ‘Anonymous’ for mistaking him for Kit P. However, DV82XL’s antagonism is well-justified in this case. Kit P has indeed avoided justifying his fairly serious accusations against Rod Adams, and deserves to be put on the spot about it.
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June 29th, 2010 at 12:19 am
Anonymous said:
Not really, I consider troll abatement a civic duty of all netzins, and at any rate the ones I do hunt across threads wind up looking like fools more often than I do, as I’m sure you know ‘Anonymous’
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June 29th, 2010 at 12:30 am
I googled Kit P. It seems that this individual is even worse than it would seem here. Kit P likes to talk about the virtues of coal burning, for example.
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June 29th, 2010 at 12:33 am
Uh I thought we wanted electricity use to RISE because it would be a good replacement for dirtier energy for transit and heat and that kind of thing.
How do they think they will make it fall? Just an assumption that energy everywhere will be in less demand.
I guess this could be done if the price were riased high enough. It would just price consumption out of the market to some extent.
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June 29th, 2010 at 12:56 am
DV82XL said:
Got a link? I’m now morbidly fascinated by his logic chain.
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June 29th, 2010 at 1:27 am
matthew said:
Here you are. See the comments thread:
http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2010/06/mit-study-partly-financed-by-natural.html
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June 29th, 2010 at 1:36 am
Finrod said:
huh. He’s not really very good at this, is he?
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June 29th, 2010 at 1:47 am
drbuzz0 said:
In the immortal words of Shaggy: It wasn’t me.
seth said:
Errr, surely it was subsidised by “Big Gas”?
Am I the only one who gets seriously concerned by anyone who feels the need to cite “Big [IndustryName]? Is this phrase in wide use on the other side of the pond, or is it restricted to use by over-enthusiastic green / conspiracy fruit loops as it is in Europe?
Genuine question, I just want to make sure I’m not judging Seth harshly.
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June 29th, 2010 at 5:16 am
I’mnotreallyhere said:
Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, etc. are constructs of the crazies. Unfortunately, those monikers are gaining far too much ground in common American lexicon. I think most people use them loosely just to refer to a powerful industry, but I fear that too many people allow them to conjure images of a cabal gathered around a confence table in Dr. Evil’s lair.
I won’t judge people for using those terms in passing, but I will encourage them not to.
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June 29th, 2010 at 6:25 am
Shafe said:
Hmmm, but now I’m stuck wondering whether you’re telling the truth or lying on behalf of Big Shafe…
While chasing up this whole story of Methane and its apparently high multiplication factor of Greenhouse Gas-ness I came across the entry for Nitrous Oxide – it’s a fair few times more nasty than Methane and clocks at 298 times CO2 over 100 years.
Given that Nitrous Oxide is indeed the stuff used in Nitrous boosting (Nos) for street racing, I’ll shortly be putting up a petition to stop the eco-terrorist Vin Diesel from making Fast and Furious 5.
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June 29th, 2010 at 7:18 am
Whoa, now. Be careful about going after N20. As much as I’d like to see Vin Diesel go down, you would also be putting the squeeze on Reddi-Wip. Are you willing to do that?
And I’m not just defending Reddi-Wip because I’m the Chairman and CEO of Shafe’s Processed Dairy Foods (a wholly owned subsidiary of Global Shafe Enterprises, of which I’m also Chairman and CEO) nor because I chair the Board of Directors of the Gas Propelled Cream Product Council.
By the way, have you seen my new YouTube video exposing what Big Pharma doesn’t want you to know about naturally curing diabetes through whipped-cream colonics?
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June 29th, 2010 at 9:33 am
Shafe said:
To be fair, the fairly obvious practices of OPEC give some justification for the term Big Oil.
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June 29th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Big Conspiracy is paying me to make fun of conspiracy theories. Honest.
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June 29th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
I’mnotreallyhere said:
Well, nitrous oxide used in automotive racing is not necessarily released in much quantity. When injected into the combustion chamber, the gas decomposes into nitrogen and oxygen. This does two things that are useful: it increases the volume of the gas, thus providing more power directly and it enriches the atmosphere with oxygen, thus allowing more fuel to be burned.
If it’s done properly, not a lot of nitrous should make its way intact out the tail pipe.
Now you want to know who is really the problem? Dentists! They let patients inhale that stuff and then just exhale it into the atmosphere.
Sure, it can make getting a cavity drilled downright enjoyable, but what if the future generations? What of the earth? what of the CHILDREN???
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June 29th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
I’mnotreallyhere said:
Meh, that’s nothing. Sulfur hexafluoride is ~22 800 times more powerful than CO2 over the first 100 years, and nitrogen trifluoride 17 200 times more powerful than CO2 over the same period.
I ascribe the curious lack of discussion about these potent greenhouse gasses to the evil machinations of Big Solar, which uses these gases in thin film manufacture…
Yeah ok, “small solar”, but I still get to call them evil right?
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June 29th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
drbuzz0 said:
That is nothing! for many years, the dental-industrial complex ™ and big teeth ™ have been conspiring to polute the purity of our precious bodily fluids.
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June 29th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Gordon said:
My god, not with fluoride??? Say it ain’t so!
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June 29th, 2010 at 7:39 pm
[...] Depleted Cranium » Blog Archive » MIT/Gas Industry Report Says Gas … [...]
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June 29th, 2010 at 7:42 pm
matthew said:
I’ll grant you that. I had in mind a smokey room full of fat guys in cowboy hats yucking it up about all the patents they’ve suppressed for 100mpg cars and engines that run on water.
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June 29th, 2010 at 8:32 pm
It is very simple. The author of this blog appears to have read the report and among other conclusions he came to this conclusion:
“Yet the report, with its rosy picture of unconventional gas reserves and generous estimates of current supplies is quite silent on this issue as it is on the price volatility of gas and the environmental …”
The author of this blog suggests a reason might be the participation of the natural gas industry.
If we in the nuclear industry do a good job of building new nukes and produce electricity cheaper than coal, then the NG industry is going to have a glut of $5/MMBTU gas. The fate of the US nuclear is in the hands of the US nuclear.
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June 30th, 2010 at 1:28 am
Kit P said:
That’s not entirely true. Like every other industry, nuclear energy is also in the hands of the government. As they stand, regulations stifle the industry and, unless I’m mistaken, make it pretty much impossible for nuclear energy to get cheaper than coal (others here would know better). This sort of obfuscation plays into the maintenance of those regulations. I don’t have a problem when genuine research informs policy, but this does not look genuine.
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June 30th, 2010 at 2:22 am
drbuzz0 said:
That’s just what Big Vin pays you to say.
(In case you’re genuinely unsure, I did a sizeable chunk of my engineering degree on the IC engine but I can’t be arsed to get into technicalities about running rich or lean and optimised mixing and all that guff.)
(And I secretly love both Vin Diesel and the Fast and Furious films.)
Soylent said:
I know, but I couldn’t link Sulphur Hexafluoride to Vin Diesel as easily – I mean, I could have made up one of those ridiculous “Vin Diesel facts” and simply claimed that he farted it. Which would be patently untrue, Vin Diesel’s bowel activity is monitored carefully by the UN lest he let one rip and violate several chemical weapons treaties.
Shafe said:
Sadly I’m a whole Atlantic Ocean away from any Reddi-Wip conspiracy. Perhaps “Big Ocean” doesn’t want me to know the truth about curing AIDS and SARS through the consumption of delicious cream-based desserts.
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July 8th, 2010 at 12:40 am
It’s also worth noting that extracting gas from shale requires the use of a process called “hydraulic fracture” which is believed to ruin water supplies and create explosion hazards.
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