Drilling for natural gas near Pinedale, Wyoming. Photo from Creative Commons by World Resources Institute/flickr
Joel Kirkland of ClimateWire: "Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are encouraging U.S. policymakers to consider the nation's growing supply of natural gas as a short-term substitute for aging coal-fired power plants.
"In the results of a two-year study, released today, the researchers said electric utilities and other sectors of the American economy will use more gas through 2050. Under a scenario that envisions a federal policy aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2050, researchers found a substantial role for natural gas...."
MIT Energy Initiative: The Future of Natural Gas
Conclusions, page 36:
"The outlook for gas over the next several decades is in general very favorable. In the electric generation sector, given the unproven and relatively high cost of other low-carbon generation alternatives, gas could well be the preferred alternative to coal.
"A broad GHG pricing policy would increase gas use in generation but reduce its use in other sectors, on balance increasing gas use substantially from present levels.
"International gas resources are likely less costly than those in the U.S. except for the lowest-cost domestic shale resources, and the emergence of an integrated global gas market could result in significant U.S. gas imports.
"The shale gas resource is a major contributor to domestic resources but far from a panacea over the longer term. Under deeper cuts in CO2 emissions, cleaner tech- nologies are needed. Gas can be an effective bridge to a lower CO2 emissions future but investment in the development of still lower CO2 technologies remains an important priority."
Global natural gas supply, fig. 2.2 from p. 7 of report: "...although resources are large, the supply base is concentrated, with an estimated 70% in only three regions: Russia, the Middle East (primarily Qatar and Iran) and North America. Political considerations and individual country depletion policies play at least as big a role in global gas resource development as geology and economics, and will dominate the evolution of the global gas market."
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