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Natural gas is not slightly better, it's significantly better than coal for climate. Emissions are about half as much as coal per kWh. Switching from coal to na

Natural gas is not slightly better, it's significantly better than coal for climate. Emissions are about half as much as coal per kWh. Switching from coal to natural gas has probably reduced America's CO2 footprint more than all new renewable generation combined. In the short term and without cheap storage, renewables just cannot scale compared to natural gas.

bradbot 6y ago
Does this take into account the amount of methane released from burn off and leaks?
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  No. When you consider those it's about as bad as coal. Even at half coal, 490 gCO2-eq/kWh is tremendously incompatible with a climate solution. All the gas companies are trying to greenwash and say they're the perfect partner for renewables but they're terrible high-carbon fossil emitting beasts. Still way better than coal on the deaths-from-air-pollution metric. But not a reasonable or good option. We need to stop celebrating the transition from coal to fracked gas and get on with actual low carbon energy like solar, hydro, nuclear, wind. Nuclear being the best of those :)
sunstone 6y ago
Actually renewables can scale very well by covering much more area and thereby averaging out the wind and solar fluctuations across the country. The technology for achieving this is High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) a technology that has also been rapidly getting cheaper along with renewable technologies because its costs are driven by semiconductor technologies getting cheaper every year.
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  Permitting transmission lines will get much, much harder with scale needed to do what you're saying. With nuclear you don't need to build vast new storage and transmission, or cover the landscape with energy harvesters.
  - cycomanic 6y ago
    With nuclear you still have to cove rthe landscape with nuclear powerplants, uranium mining pits (people like to forget these because they are not in their backyard) and nuclear storage (which is still an unsolved solution). Then there is the problem that nuclear is terrible at anything but baseload, so you still need gas turbines for reacting to load. Everytime this is brought up nuclear proponents say research in new nuclear power generation will solve all of it. But they have been saying this for decades while renewable are there and all the solutions for its downsides exist.
    - eru 6y ago
      You are not exactly 'covering the landscape'. See https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_161.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_161.shtml for some of the math for the example of Britain. See the calculation starting on this page https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_166.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_166.shtml > Land use > Let’s imagine that Britain decides it is serious about getting off fossil fuels, and creates a lot of new nuclear reactors, even though this may not be “sustainable.” If we build enough reactors to make possible a significant decarbonization of transport and heating, can we fit the required nuclear reactors into Britain? The number we need to know is the power per unit area of nuclear power stations, which is about 1000W/m2 (figure 24.10). Let’s imagine generating 22 kWh per day per person of nuclear power – equivalent to 55 GW (roughly the same as France’s nuclear power), which could be delivered by 55 nuclear power stations, each occu- pying one square kilometre. That’s about 0.02% of the area of the country. Wind farms delivering the same average power would require 500 times as much land: 10% of the country. If the nuclear power stations were placed in pairs around the coast (length about 3000 km, at 5 km resolution), then there’d be two every 100 km. Thus while the area required is modest, the fraction of coastline gobbled by these power stations would be about 2% (2 kilometres in every 100). The book also has sections about the economics of clean up. About fast breeder reactors and thorium designs.
      - ljf 6y ago
        Isn't the economics of clean up that the government pays? Is there anywhere in the world where the private operator of a nuclear power plant if covering all their own costs for clean up and decommissioning? Genuine question - I am well aware I could be wrong. My understanding is that nuclear is always about energy independence - not cheap energy. (Don't get me wrong, the sooner we remove coal, biomass, wood and gas from our energy mix the better.)
jellicle 6y ago
Nope. Most natural gas is produced by fracking; the fracking process produces great amounts of excess methane which is released into the atmosphere; fracked natural gas is approximately as bad as, or may even be worse than, coal.

bradbot 6y ago

Does this take into account the amount of methane released from burn off and leaks?

acidburnNSA 6y ago
No. When you consider those it's about as bad as coal. Even at half coal, 490 gCO2-eq/kWh is tremendously incompatible with a climate solution. All the gas companies are trying to greenwash and say they're the perfect partner for renewables but they're terrible high-carbon fossil emitting beasts. Still way better than coal on the deaths-from-air-pollution metric. But not a reasonable or good option. We need to stop celebrating the transition from coal to fracked gas and get on with actual low carbon energy like solar, hydro, nuclear, wind. Nuclear being the best of those :)

sunstone 6y ago

Actually renewables can scale very well by covering much more area and thereby averaging out the wind and solar fluctuations across the country. The technology for achieving this is High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) a technology that has also been rapidly getting cheaper along with renewable technologies because its costs are driven by semiconductor technologies getting cheaper every year.

acidburnNSA 6y ago
Permitting transmission lines will get much, much harder with scale needed to do what you're saying. With nuclear you don't need to build vast new storage and transmission, or cover the landscape with energy harvesters.
- cycomanic 6y ago
  With nuclear you still have to cove rthe landscape with nuclear powerplants, uranium mining pits (people like to forget these because they are not in their backyard) and nuclear storage (which is still an unsolved solution). Then there is the problem that nuclear is terrible at anything but baseload, so you still need gas turbines for reacting to load. Everytime this is brought up nuclear proponents say research in new nuclear power generation will solve all of it. But they have been saying this for decades while renewable are there and all the solutions for its downsides exist.
  - eru 6y ago
    You are not exactly 'covering the landscape'. See https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_161.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_161.shtml for some of the math for the example of Britain. See the calculation starting on this page https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_166.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_166.shtml > Land use > Let’s imagine that Britain decides it is serious about getting off fossil fuels, and creates a lot of new nuclear reactors, even though this may not be “sustainable.” If we build enough reactors to make possible a significant decarbonization of transport and heating, can we fit the required nuclear reactors into Britain? The number we need to know is the power per unit area of nuclear power stations, which is about 1000W/m2 (figure 24.10). Let’s imagine generating 22 kWh per day per person of nuclear power – equivalent to 55 GW (roughly the same as France’s nuclear power), which could be delivered by 55 nuclear power stations, each occu- pying one square kilometre. That’s about 0.02% of the area of the country. Wind farms delivering the same average power would require 500 times as much land: 10% of the country. If the nuclear power stations were placed in pairs around the coast (length about 3000 km, at 5 km resolution), then there’d be two every 100 km. Thus while the area required is modest, the fraction of coastline gobbled by these power stations would be about 2% (2 kilometres in every 100). The book also has sections about the economics of clean up. About fast breeder reactors and thorium designs.
    - ljf 6y ago
      Isn't the economics of clean up that the government pays? Is there anywhere in the world where the private operator of a nuclear power plant if covering all their own costs for clean up and decommissioning? Genuine question - I am well aware I could be wrong. My understanding is that nuclear is always about energy independence - not cheap energy. (Don't get me wrong, the sooner we remove coal, biomass, wood and gas from our energy mix the better.)

jellicle 6y ago

Nope. Most natural gas is produced by fracking; the fracking process produces great amounts of excess methane which is released into the atmosphere; fracked natural gas is approximately as bad as, or may even be worse than, coal.