By Brett Wilkins
September 12, 2024
Last I heard LNG was cleaner than coal… because that’s what the industry wanted me to believe.
Reuters, 2020: Cleaner but not clean - Why scientists say natural gas won’t avert climate disaster
In January 2020, the American Petroleum Institute (API), a powerful lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, launched its “Energy for Progress” advertising campaign.
One of the things LNG has over coal is that it’s very easy to turn off and on in case cheaper sources aren’t producing enough. LNG plays much better with renewables and coal also produces ton of pollution and particulate matter. It’s the lesser of two evils when there are no methane leaks.
Methane leaks will still punch the climate in the gut so any leaks are unacceptable and all methane gas needs to be accounted for.
Both obviously need to be replaced with renewables and large cost efficient energy storage. Hydrogen is attractive since energy doesn’t degrade over time, pumped hydro for weekly to monthly high quantity and power, flywheels/lithium batteries to stabilise the grid frequency, heat storage with district heating for households and redux flow batteries with massive containers for winter/summer differences.
Should we take LNG jobs to support coal jobs? Oh, wait, nevermind, if coal went full production overnight they’d only add about 10,000 jobs to the USA because of how heavily automation has been developed for coal mines.
LNG is terrible, and instead of letting coal die a gradual death with some degree of economic stability everyone got to go for a rollercoaster ride cultivating “bridge fuels”
