Climate change, global warming, and CO2 emissions are all hot topics of an energy intensive world. Fossil Fuels live at the center of the debate with many people calling to an end of the fossil fuel era and the coal and gas companies that mine them. These groups and activists push for greener and cleaner fuel sources like wind, hydro, and solar. They idolize the evolution and implementation of electric vehicles and carbon neutral footprints that have effective dates long after most of us reading this will be deceased. They don’t have real, tangible, or impactful goals that are both attainable and realistic. There is however one initiative that can achieve these far-fetched dreams, and the winner is…Natural Gas.
Natural Gas displacing coal for power generation has lowered CO2 emissions by 525 million metric tons annually in the US. With roughly one third of the worlds power generation coming from coal, representing 14.8 billion metric tons CO2, and roughly 91% of coal-fired power plants operating outside the US, the fastest, most reliable, and most proven way to sustain green/clean energy worldwide is Natural Gas and LNG exports. LNG exports to developing countries using coal for power generation would allow for CO2 emission reductions that exceed electric vehicle models by more than 50%.
In the US, switching from coal to natural gas has been the equivalent of electrifying 190 million cars (70% of the total number of cars in the US today). Since the age of electric cars, total electric sales are projected at 31.1 million by 2030. To put it into perspective, electric vehicles over the next 10 years would only accomplish 15% of what the natural gas industry did from 2005-2019. Keeping in mind that the only metric applied here is purely power generation switching from coal to natural gas. The US model is more than proven. US natural gas producers continue to go the extra mile to responsibly extract our natural gas and certify the gas as clean and green.
In closing, as stated by EQT’s president Toby Z Rice, “Natural Gas is the biggest green initiative on the planet and it’s not even close.” When you look at the size and scale of the overall problem it is clearly an international issue and only one model can make timely and impactful changes, and it is natural gas.[1]
[1] https://marcellusdrilling.com/2021/12/eqt-officially-responds-to-sen-warren-re-corp-greed-lng-exports/
