4 ms·

Doesn’t burning methane seem a bit unfortunate when it comes to climate change?

• pydry 4y ago
  Not especially. It's carbon neutral. In general there's no point, it's just an illustrative example of the horrendous economics of nuclear power. It might be a good idea to generate some gas if we one day have wind/solar producing >100% of consumption and all the batteries/pumped storage are fully charged. That'd be a nice problem to have, truth be told. Currently, wind and solar rarely produce more than current demand, ever. Natural gas averages about 40% of our electricity supply and rarely if ever goes to zero even on the sunniest windiest days. Every MWh produced by wind or solar is just another MWh where we dont have to burn gas.
  • hedora 4y ago
    Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Current systems leak enough to make it infeasible in the mediun term.
    • ben_w 4y ago
      The chemical process for turning H2 into methane doesn't have to be the final act, similar processes can make longer chain hydrocarbons. But right now, even though I learned about this over 22 years ago in my GCSEs, I think most people only even know about the Sabatier process because Musk wants to use it on Mars for ISRU.