2 ms·

> This notably doesn’t even come at the expense of decarbonization. The existence of cheap natural gas as backup lets you take advantage of cheap renewables wit

> This notably doesn’t even come at the expense of decarbonization. The existence of cheap natural gas as backup lets you take advantage of cheap renewables without worrying too much about harder problems like batteries. Powering a factory with gas causes fewer emissions than running it off coal. Powering a car using a mix of gas and renewables generates radically fewer emissions than running it off gasoline. There is obviously a margin at which this ceases to be true, but it’s not the margin we are currently operating on. > Europe, meanwhile, didn’t actually quit fossil fuels by banning fracking. It just imported the gas from Russia instead.

palata 3y ago
> The existence of cheap natural gas as backup lets you take advantage of cheap renewables without worrying too much about harder problems like batteries. Which is actually a good way to fail with renewables: "let's make renewables that fundamentally depend on fossil fuel". > Europe, meanwhile, didn’t actually quit fossil fuels by banning fracking. It just imported the gas from Russia instead. Yes, that's a problem. Europe should work on degrowth in order to depend less on fossil fuels.