Globally, natural gas is the fastest growing fossil fuel. One of the biggest developments has been a rapidly expanding market for liquefied natural gas, or LNG, an energy-intensive product that allows energy companies to ship gas overseas. Australia has tripled its LNG exports since 2013, the report says, and is now the largest exporter. The U.S. recently opened five new LNG terminals and has been pushing to expand exports further. Several countries opened new import facilities to buy that gas last year in Asia and the Americas. This booming market is sending down gas prices in many developing countries, driving new demand. Another concern is that all of this new infrastructure—an LNG terminal can cost billions of dollars to build—will make it far more difficult to cut emissions years from now, when investors will be expecting returns from these projects.
Natural Gas Rush Drives a Global Rise in Fossil Fuel Emissions: Often talked about as a ‘bridge fuel’ to renewable energy, natural gas and LNG are instead boosting fossil fuel use, a new study shows.
Nicholas Kusnetz, Inside Climate News, DEC 3, 2019
A surge in natural gas has helped drive down coal burning across the United States and Europe, but it isn’t displacing other fossil fuels on a global scale. Instead, booming gas use is fueling the global growth in greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford University and other institutions.
In fact, natural gas use is growing so fast, its carbon dioxide emissions over the past six years actually eclipsed the decline in emissions from the falling use of coal, the researchers found.
Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are also failing to cut emissions fast enough, the report says, as much of their growth has provided new energy supplies instead of displacing fossil fuels.
The findings of the study, published Tuesday, support those from other recent studies that found the world is continuing to rely on fossil fuels—including coal—to meet growing energy demand, even as renewable energy sees soaring growth.
“Globally, most of the new natural gas being used isn’t displacing coal, it’s providing new energy. That’s the key interaction, and that’s true for renewables even,” said Rob Jackson, a professor of Earth system science at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and the report’s lead author. “We need renewables that displace fossil fuels, not supplement them.”
Jackson’s paper, published in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters, is one of three included in Global Carbon Project‘s annual update on the global carbon budget.
They show that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are expected to grow by 0.6 percent this year. That would be significantly slower than last year, when emissions grew by 2.1 percent. But it would mark the third straight year of growth, after three years of stable emissions. The assessment does not include the methane emissions released by producing and shipping fossil fuels.
Each year of growth makes it harder and more expensive to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6°F) from pre-industrial levels.
Supplementing Rather Than Supplanting
Natural gas presents a particular challenge. In the U.S., coal use has fallen by half over the past 15 years, and the biggest reason for that is the expanded use of natural gas, Jackson said. This year, wind and solar power are responsible for only one-sixth of the drop in coal use. This decline in coal power generation is the main reason U.S. emissions are expected to fall by nearly 2 percent this year, and why they fell by an annual average of nearly 1 percent over the previous six. A similar trend has occurred in Europe, where the decline of coal has, in some cases, been even sharper.
These shifts are also being used by the oil and gas industry and its supporters in government to argue in favor of drilling for more gas, not less. Supporters often refer to natural gas as a “bridge fuel” between higher-emitting fossil fuels and renewable energy, but some industry executives have instead begun calling it a “forever fuel”—one they see continuing to grow for decades to come.
Globally, natural gas is the fastest growing fossil fuel. One of the biggest developments has been a rapidly expanding market for liquefied natural gas, or LNG, an energy-intensive product that allows energy companies to ship gas overseas. Australia has tripled its LNG exports since 2013, the report says, and is now the largest exporter. The U.S. recently opened five new LNG terminals and has been pushing to expand exports further. Several countries opened new import facilities to buy that gas last year in Asia and the Americas. This booming market is sending down gas prices in many developing countries, driving new demand. Another concern is that all of this new infrastructure—an LNG terminal can cost billions of dollars to build—will make it far more difficult to cut emissions years from now, when investors will be expecting returns from these projects.
Jackson warned that much of this growth is supplementing coal power generation, rather than supplanting it. In Japan, the vast majority of new gas imports since 2010 have replaced nuclear capacity lost after the accident at Fukushima, for example.
“I have strong concerns about the pace of our natural gas build-out in the United States and globally,” Jackson said, “because those facilities will be producing pollution for many decades.”
Oil, Cars and China’s Coal Problem
Coal has continued to hang on in China, India and much of the developing world. This year, the report says, coal use is expected to increase by nearly 1 percent in China, helping drive the country’s emissions growth of about 2.6 percent.
China now accounts for half of global coal consumption, and a recent report by the Global Energy Monitor found that the country has plans to build a slate of new coal plants that would match the capacity of all the coal power generation of the European Union.
A separate report, by BNEF, found that coal power generation in developing nations reached a new high in 2018. The report also found a decline in new investment in clean energy.
When it comes to oil, even the slight decline in use in the U.S. expected this year won’t be enough to counter growth in China, India and the developing world, Jackson’s study found. Most troubling, he said: There’s little indication that growth in oil use will end soon.
Americans consume 16 times more oil than people in India, and six times more than those in China, and both nations are set for huge increases in vehicle use. In China, the number of cars has quadrupled since 2007, and the vast majority are fueled by oil. While Chinese people bought 1.1 million new electric cars last year, or more than half the global market, they also bought 22 million new fossil-fueled cars.
‘We Haven’t Turned the Corner Yet’
Jackson and his colleagues project that emissions will continue to grow next year, as an expanding economy will lead to increasing energy use.
“The main issue is the carbon intensity of global energy production is the same today as it was in 1990,” Jackson said.
While a handful of countries have begun to decarbonize their energy systems, by dramatically increasing the use of renewables while also improving efficiency, there’s been little progress globally.
“It’s shocking in a way,” Jackson said. “I believe that wind and solar and renewables will help us turn the corner. We haven’t turned the corner yet though.”PUBLISHED UNDER:NATURAL GAS AND FRACKINGCOALOIL SPILLS/PIPELINESCLIMATE CHANGE
Nicholas Kusnetz is a reporter for InsideClimate News. Before joining ICN, he ran the Center for Public Integrity’s State Integrity Investigation, which won a New York Press Club Award for Political Coverage. He also covered fracking as a reporting fellow at ProPublica and was a 2011 Middlebury Fellow in Environmental Journalism. His work has appeared in more than a dozen publications, including Slate, The Washington Post, Businessweek, Mother Jones, The Nation, Fast Company and The New York Times.
Nicholas can be reached at: nicholas.kusnetz@insideclimatenews.org. PGP key: http://bit.ly/2k5fncn
Natural gas drives record CO2 emissions in 2019
dpa/AFP/File / Christophe Gateau
Authors said that a dip in coal was offset by increases in emissions from oil and especially natural gas
Global carbon emissions boosted by soaring natural gas use are set to hit record levels in 2019 despite a decline in coal consumption and a string of countries declaring a climate emergency, researchers said Wednesday.
In its annual analysis of fossil fuel trends, the Global Carbon Project said CO2 emissions were on course to rise 0.6 percent this year — slower than previous years but still a world away from what is needed to keep global warming in check.
In three peer-reviewed studies, authors attributed the rise to “robust growth” in natural gas and oil, which offset significant falls in coal use in the United States and Europe.
“We see clearly that global changes come from fluctuations in coal use,” said Corrine Le Quere, from the University of East Anglia, an author on the Carbon Budget report.
“In contrast the use of oil and particularly natural gas is going up unabated. Natural gas is now the biggest contributor to the growth in emissions.”
Atmospheric CO2 levels, which have been climbing exponentially in recent decades, are expected to hit an average of 410 parts per million this year, Le Quere said.
That’s the highest level in at least 800,000 years.
The report will make for further uncomfortable reading for delegates gathered at UN climate talks in Madrid, with the warnings from the world’s top climate scientists still ringing in their ears.
Last week the UN said global emissions needed to fall 7.6 percent each year, every year, to 2030 to stand any chance of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C (2.6 Farenheit).
With just 1C of warming since the industrial era so far, 2019 saw a string of deadly superstorms, drought, wildfires and flooding, made more intense by climate change.
The UN said Wednesday that the 2010s was almost certain to be the hottest decade on record and as many as 22 million people could be displaced by extreme weather this year.
– ‘Urgency not sunk in’ –
AFP /Carbon emissions from fossil fuels
The authors pointed out 2019’s rise in emissions was slower than each of the two previous years.
Yet with energy demand showing no sign of peaking even with the rapid growth of low carbon technology such as wind and solar power, emissions in 2019 are still set to be four percent higher than in 2015, the year nations agreed to limit temperature rises in the Paris climate accord.
While emissions levels can vary annually depending on economic growth and even weather trends, the Carbon Budget report shows how far nations still need to travel to drag down carbon pollution.
“Current policies are clearly not enough to reverse trends in global emissions. The urgency of action has not sunk in yet,” said Le Quere.
She highlighted anticipated emissions falls of 1.7 percent in the US and Europe as the power sector continues its switch away from coal.
The most polluting fossil fuel saw its usage drop by as much as 10 percent in the two regions this year, the report said.
But such savings were offset globally by the likes of India and China, the biggest overall emitter, and specifically by an increase in energy from natural gas.
“Compared to coal, natural gas is a cleaner fossil fuel, but unabated natural gas use merely cooks the planet more slowly than coal,” said Glen Peters, research director at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research.
For Joeri Rogelj, lecturer in Climate Change at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, the small slowdown in emissions growth this year “is really nothing to be overly enthusiastic about”.
Without drastic and sustained reductions, he said, “it is clear that we are not only continuing to make climate change worse, we’re doing it at a pace faster than ever before.”
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DecanChronicle, Dec 2019: Natural gas is now the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions world wide. That means fracked gas (because 95% of gas is fracked) is now the number one threat to the climate.
Washington: Global carbon emissions boosted by soaring natural gas use are set to hit record levels in 2019 despite a decline in coal consumption and a string of countries declaring a climate emergency, researchers said Wednesday.
In its annual analysis of fossil fuel trends, the Global Carbon Project said CO2 emissions were on course to rise 0.6 percent this year — slower than previous years but still a world away from what is needed to keep global warming in check.
In three peer-reviewed studies, authors attributed the rise to “robust growth” in natural gas and oil, which offset significant falls in coal use in the United States and Europe. “We see clearly that global changes come from fluctuations in coal use,” said Corrine Le Quere, from the University of East Anglia, an author on the Carbon Budget report.
“In contrast the use of oil and particularly natural gas is going up unabated. Natural gas is now the biggest contributor to the growth in emissions.” Atmospheric CO2 levels, which have been climbing exponentially in recent decades, are expected to hit an average of 410 parts per million this year, Le Quere said.
That’s the highest level in at least 800,000 years. The report will make for further uncomfortable reading for delegates gathered at UN climate talks in Madrid, with the warnings from the world’s top climate scientists still ringing in their ears.
Last week the UN said global emissions needed to fall 7.6 percent each year, every year, to 2030 to stand any chance of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C (2.6 Farenheit). With just 1C of warming since the industrial era so far, 2019 saw a string of deadly superstorms, drought, wildfires and flooding, made more intense by climate change.
The UN said Wednesday that the 2010s was almost certain to be the hottest decade on record and as many as 22 million people could be displaced by extreme weather this year. The authors pointed out 2019’s rise in emissions were slower than each of the two previous years.
Yet with energy demand showing no sign of peaking even with the rapid growth of low carbon technology such as wind and solar power, emissions in 2019 are still set to be 4 percent higher than in 2015, the year nations agreed to limit temperature rises in the Paris climate accord.
While emissions levels can vary annually depending on economic growth and even weather trends, the Carbon Budget report shows how far nations still need to travel to drag down carbon pollution.
“Current policies are clearly not enough to reverse trends in global emissions. The urgency of action has not sunk in yet,” said Le Quere. She highlighted anticipated emissions falls of 1.7 percent in the US and Europe as the power sector continues its switch away from coal.
The most polluting fossil fuel saw its usage drop by as much as 10 percent in the two regions this year, the report said. But such savings were offset globally by the likes of India and China, the biggest overall emitter, and specifically by an increase in energy from natural gas.
“Compared to coal, natural gas is a cleaner fossil fuel, but unabated natural gas use merely cooks the planet more slowly than coal,” said Glen Peters, research director at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research.…Tags: global warming, climate change, ecosystem
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Electrek, Dec 2019. It’s natural gas that’s driving up carbon emissions this year.
Authors of the Global Carbon Project attributed this year’s rise in emissions to natural gas and oil growth, which offsets the falls in coal use.
“We see clearly that global changes come from fluctuations in coal use,” said Corrine Le Quéré, from the University of East Anglia, an author on the Carbon [Project] report.
“In contrast the use of oil and particularly natural gas is going up unabated. Natural gas is now the biggest contributor to the growth in emissions.”
“Compared to coal, natural gas is a cleaner fossil fuel, but unabated natural gas use merely cooks the planet more slowly than coal,” said Glen Peters, research director at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research.
Yesterday, the Natural Gas Supply Association, a trade association that represents Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Cabot, and Southwestern Energy, unanimously announced that they are in favor of a carbon tax. The Houston Chronicle says the association “broadly supports putting a price on carbon while also eliminating existing regulations on carbon and delivering revenues not to government but directly to American consumers.”
**
As methane concentrations increase in the Earth’s atmosphere, chemical fingerprints point to a probable source: shale oil and gas, according to new Cornell University research published today (14 August) in Biogeosciences, a journal of the European Geosciences Union.
The research suggests that this methane has less carbon-13 relative to carbon-12 (denoting the weight of the carbon atom at the centre of the methane molecule) than does methane from conventional natural gas and other fossil fuels such as coal.
This carbon-13 signature means that since the use of high-volume hydraulic fracturing — commonly called fracking — shale gas has increased in its share of global natural gas production and has released more methane into the atmosphere, according to the paper’s author, Robert Howarth, the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology at Cornell University in the US.
About two-thirds of all new gas production over the last decade has been shale gas produced in the United States and Canada, he said.
While atmospheric methane concentrations have been rising since 2008, the carbon composition of the methane has also changed. Methane from biological sources such as cows and wetlands have a low carbon-13 content — compared to methane from most fossil fuels. Previous studies erroneously concluded that biological sources are the cause of the rising methane, Howarth said.
Carbon dioxide and methane are critical greenhouse gases, but they behave quite differently in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide emitted today will influence the climate for centuries to come, as the climate responds slowly to decreasing amounts of the gas.
Unlike its slow response to carbon dioxide, the atmosphere responds quickly to changes in methane emissions. “Reducing methane now can provide an instant way to slow global warming and meet the United Nations’ target of keeping the planet well below a 2-degree Celsius average rise,” Howarth said, referring to the 2015 Paris Agreement that boosts the global response to climate change threats.
Atmospheric methane levels had previously risen during the last two decades of the 20th century but levelled in the first decade of 21st century. Then, atmospheric methane levels increased dramatically from 2008-14, from about 570 teragrams (570 million tons) annually to about 595 teragrams, due to global human-caused methane emissions in the last 11 years.
“This recent increase in methane is massive,” Howarth said. “It’s globally significant. It’s contributed to some of the increase in global warming we’ve seen and shale gas is a major player.”
“If we can stop pouring methane into the atmosphere, it will dissipate,” he said. “It goes away pretty quickly, compared to carbon dioxide. It’s the low-hanging fruit to slow global warming.”
The research published in Biogeosciences was funded by the Park Foundation and the Atkinson Center.
Robert W. Howarth. Ideas and perspectives: is shale gas a major driver of recent increase in global atmospheric methane? Biogeosciences, 2019 DOI: 10.5194/bg-16-3033-2019
European Geosciences Union. “Fracking prompts global spike in atmospheric methane, study suggests.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 14 August 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190814090610.htm>.
If you want an overview of how natural gas is extracted and used, watch this video from Student Energy:
Coal’s enormous cost on health
The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed to weaken regulations on mercury emissions and fine particulates from coal-fired plants.
Six economists said that the EPA’s proposed rollback ignores healthcare costs. Weakening regulations could save coal plants a few billion dollars total, while costing the public tens of billions in healthcare costs.
“Instead of weighing all the costs against all the benefits, the EPA is cherry picking,” said Yale University’s Matthew Kotchen, who released a report on the agency’s proposal with the other economists. “They pulled the biggest public health benefit off the scale.”
Several of the authors of the report, including Kotchen, were on the EPA’s Environmental Economics Advisory Committee that was part of the agency’s independent science advisory board for 25 years.
The authors are now on the External Environmental Economics Advisory Committee, an independent group that says it provides nonpartisan advice on EPA programs.
Where’s the nuclear waste go?
Germany will close all seven of its nuclear power plants by 2022. But where will the waste go? Or more specifically, where does one store 28,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste for 1 million years?
France supports nuclear energy as green energy, but Germany opposes it. This very real quandary might have something to do with that stance. As we previously wrote in Electrek, “Nuclear has no scientific evidence for waste treatment, and that’s why it was not initially included.”
Germany decided to close all of its plants after Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011.
Spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants are currently being stored in containers in temporary storage sites across the country, where they can cool down, which will take decades because they’re so hot.
Germany wants to locate a permanent nuclear cemetery that would be at least 1 km underground. The location must be extremely stable geologically — no earthquakes or water flow.
Once the storage location is chosen, it will be sealed sometime between 2130 and 2170.
Here’s the mind-blower from CNN:
Communications experts are already working on how to tell future generations thousands of years from now — when language will be completely different — not to disturb the site.
