REGULATORS DEBATE IMPACT OF NATURAL GAS ON EMISSIONS

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
2/8/13

State utility regulators and industry stakeholders this week appeared to disagree on the true impact of the natural gas boom on the country’s emission reductions goals. During a Feb. 4 meeting at a National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners conference this week in Washington, D.C., state public utility regulators discussed whether recent coal-to-gas fuel switching in the country’s electricity sector has been as effective as a nationwide cap-and-trade system in reducing carbon emissions. Some regulators, including Barry Smitherman, the chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission, was quick to sing the praises of natural gas. “Natural gas is good, and we have a lot of it,” he said plainly, and perhaps half jokingly, but he later suggested: “the increased use of natural gas in America has led to reduced CO2 emissions … Why isn’t the answer just to convert the rest of the planet to using more natural gas and call it victory?” He said the availability of cheap natural gas has pushed Texas’ CO2 emissions levels down to 1993 levels.

But other regulatory commissioners suggested that switching from coal to gas alone is not going to be enough to get countries like the United States to reach their ultimate emissions reduction goals. “Natural gas is absolutely a great transition fossil fuel, but it alone can’t get us to the generally accepted 2 degree Celsius goal,” said Maryland Public Service Commissioner Kelly Speakes-Backman. Armond Cohen, executive director of the Clean Air Task Force, said that while natural gas fuel-switching is beneficial in that it can help jumpstart the decarbonization of the electricity sector, it can only ever be a “partial” solution to mitigating emissions because it still emits greenhouse gases. “The science out there suggests that the atmosphere isn’t going to leak a whole lot of CO2 for quite a while, so if we converted every coal unit on the planet to natural gas, you’d get something like a 50 percent reduction [in emissions], but you’d only get about halfway there,” he said.

Cohen instead stressed the benefits of installing carbon capture and storage technology onto natural gas generating units as a way to dramatically decrease emissions, but he also expressed concern that unmitigated natural gas generation like what is being built today is driving away investment in low-carbon energy technologies. “One of the other problems with the dominance of gas right now as a climate strategy is that it’s scaring away a lot of investment into things like CCS and advanced nuclear and renewables,” he said. “We’ve got to aim higher if more advanced technology, and gas is certainly a bridge, but there are other things out there beyond it.”