This guy feels enviros are responsible for trying to minimize nat gas in the future energy picture. This is making nat gas a bad investment. He says enviros originally liked the nat gas idea as a bridge, but now it looks like there is enough nat gas to form a humongous bridge lasting "200 years". Therefore he says enviros now blocking nat gas (in favor of wind solar). I do not know about that, but I do agree that the shale gas finds and nuclear incident have been game changers, causing some stress and need for reshaping in enviro policies. Natural Gas Is a Sucker (bet)
the 200 year bit is dubious. Case in point, we had 600 yrs of coal in the 1970's. Fast forward to the present and we're down to about 200 - 250 years... in ~40 years. The same thing is going to happen w/nat gas. Esp considering that NG is used in all sorts of non-energy processes... fertilizers, oil refining (esp tar sands), all sorts of other industrial process... and NG is the fastest growing source of electricity... A lot like coal was in the 1980's. It won't take very long to hammer that 200 yr number down. If we added transportation into the mix... that number gets really small, really fast I'd wager. I also found them to be spewing all manner of shite about the cost of wind powered transportation. The equivalent of $10/gal? That's absolute rubbish. They completely pulled that number out of their collective arse. makes you wonder about the rest of the "analysis" if they're so far off the mark on that point.
Known natural gas reserves (wikipedia): 190,163,119,460,000 meters^3. Equivalent kilowatt-hours: 2.0 x 10^15 kWh. World energy usage (2008): 1.3 x 10^14 kWh/ year is 15.5 years.
Ha ha...yes I was going to mention the $10 wind comment, but glad you did. You were supposed to say fossil fuels true cost is $20/gal so the $10 wind is a real bargain.
Why do you think the first word in "analysis" is ANAL??? "Figures don't lie...but liars do figure." (often attributed to Samuel Clemens otherwise known as Mark Twain.)
...but that Wiki has to be outdated. You know, nat gas industry had been building pipelines to USA from Canada and Alaska and all kinds of LNG import projects got cancelled at considerable expense because so much nat gas here now. So its been quite a game changer for energy industry (the shale gas). Some of the TV commercials were saying 100 yr supply...that's when I first came to grips myself with the magnitude of it. Caught me by complete surprise.
You mean this? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124104549891270585.html 2,200 trillion cubic feet is 6.16 x 10^13 cubic meters. added to the original estimate (i.e. assume none of it was included) = 2.51 x 10^14 cubic meters. 2.66 x 10^15 kWh (rather than 2.0 x 10^15) = 20 years (rather than 15.5) The hundred years assumes current demand. If the idea is to use it in place of other fuels, current demand is completely irrelevant.
Oh sure. enviros can't get anybody to stop using oil, but they can stop people using natural gas? Simple supply and demand couldn't have anything to do with the price of course...
Ha ha. I was in a rush, the other point seemed more important to get into the public record. When you compare the cost of petrol to the cost of wind (notice I didn't say "price") their "analysis" is even more absurd.
You are the first person I have seen that assumed we wanted to replace all of energy with natural gas. How about increasing the use of natural gas 50%? That would leave that calculation at 70 years, and the calculation seems like a very low ball one knowing our current researves and likely technology improvements. Add in biogas, add in substituion of menthanol converted to methane and you get a much longer time frame. Remember city gas used to be made from coal, we aren't going to run out of natural gas and other methane sources in 20 years, or 50 years, or even 100 years.
What else is meant by a bridge fuel. We replace oil, coal, and nuclear, and increased demand with natural gas, while we get the solar, wind, tidal, etc. infrastructure up and running. If something else is meant, then nevermind. [No, I don't seriously expect that that would be what actually happens] you mean 20 years / 50% = 40 years? Or something else. Those trillions of cubic feet are a huge guess. I added them all in, and assumed that NO U.S. natural gas was included in the world figure. And I didn't include any of the energy necessary to extract it. Nor any increase in energy demand. Which makes it outrageously high ball. Making gas from coal is worse than just burning it, which is what were trying to avoid in the first place. Biomass is a separate argument. Just because we can turn other things into natural gas, doesn't mean we have more natural gas. Someone was already counting those things as other energy sources.
I agree with you on that point. Low nat gas cost could be considered counter-productive to more wind energy, for example.
I've got no dog in this hunt, other than getting the facts out. I never fully understood the bridge fuel idea. But.... if we replace obsolete coal power plants with cc gas and wind, which is what we are doing, we can create less polution and extend it for a long time. We can even use some to run some cars and trucks instead of oil. We should accelerate the decline of coal use, especially in inefficient old plants. Eventually gas will decline and will need to be replaced. 50% increase means we increase natural gas consumption to a level 50% higher than today's consumption of natural gas in the united states. That puts US known reserves at around 70 years. I expect this will grow. The US can also import more natural gas from Mexico and Canada in the future. I think your outrage will prove wrong. The US was supposed to be a bigger importer of natural gas today, the article was about how that trend has ended. We haven't looked everywhere. The US does not plan to export natural gas. There are however some plans to export coal to china. Actually gas from coal is exactly the first step in an IGCC power plant. They are a great deal more efficient and lower polluting than the pulverized coal plants. So no its not an awful thing, and yes it is being done today. Its not such a bad thing to build CC gas plants now instead of fuidized bed or IGCC coal.
Gotta get me a dog too, so I can get into that hunt. >Actually we may now export gas too, maybe. I'm shocked if coal was not already heading over there. >You got me thinking that CCS makes more sense for IGCC too.
I recall reading that 2010 exports of coal to China were greater than total US demand. I could be misremembering though. They were certainly large.
My dog loves the wind and water. She's in the hunt for more wind power U.S. Natural Gas Summary Yes we export and import gas. Our net imports less exports were 2.6 trillion cubic feet last year, they have been falling. on coal http://www.eia.gov/coal/review/coal_exports_imports.cfm we do export to china, mis spoke, we have potential plans to export a great deal more. Half of our coal exports are to Europe. I just brought up exports to china to get in the fossil fuel discussion. If your goal to get rid of natural gas burning is to produce less co2, but you export the coal to china, we still get co2. Not much of a point, or a thought, but .... ok foot out of mouth now. We should build more wind, sun, geo, and natural gas and decrease coal. We can sell the coal
I thought your dog liked water too (Hydro?). Well I agree with your power plan. I have long been a nat gas fan. I heard on Cramer last nite something about a HBO documentary on Marcellus gas sounded like it was critical. I am sure there are some problems need to be addressed.
I seriously doubt this is the reality.. there is so much more gas on the continental shelf yet to be explored (Alaska, Chesapeake bay, etc), and this is w/o tapping into methane clathrate. here is some info on Clathrate To Production « Musings from the Chiefio
