Getting smarter about natural gas
It is becoming clearer that natural gas is not
a “bridge” fuel, nor is it complementary to renewable energy for electric power
generation. Rather, in the past two
years natural gas has emerged as a political and industrial juggernaut propelled
by those seeking to exploit public interest in clean energy in an attempt to
position the oil and gas industry to dominate electricity generation.
When the Getting
Smarter about the Smart Grid paper was published in November 2012, the
picture was different. Natural gas was
seen as a traditional cleaner-burning fossil fuel, and one that could be used
in small/medium scale “peaker plants” to eliminate baseload generation and
compensate for the variability of wind and solar. However, two major changes have emerged since
that time.
One change is that advanced inverter, storage,
and smart grid/microgrid control technologies have dramatically improved the
ability of distributed (e.g., rooftop) solar PV to deal with variability
without the need for peaker plants. The second
change has been the proliferation of the environmentally dangerous practice of
“fracking” and the related toxic political alliances and dependencies that have
developed among public officials, utilities, and oil and gas interests—a change
not foreseen two years ago.
Additionally, mounting evidence is showing that any benefit from natural
gas in atmospheric CO2 reduction may be more than negated by the
chronic leakage of “fugitive” methane in the course of drilling, extraction,
transport, and storage.
Natural gas never played a significant role in
the paper, but it was mentioned in passing as one possible alternative to coal
and to baseload generation. With
distributed (community and rooftop) solar PV having now attained cost parity
with fossil fuels, and with its advancing ability to deal with solar variability,
it now makes sense to revise my analysis and recommendations in Getting Smarter about the Smart Grid to
delete even a passing reference to natural gas as a viable alternative.
Dr. Tim Schoechle
—Boulder, Colorado, November 2014
References:
Joel Dyer, Matt Cortina, and Elizabeth Miller. “Who
killed the vote on fracking: why Colorado’s anti-fracking measures were not
supported by Democrats and environmental groups.” Boulder Weekley, October 2, 2014
Diane Cardwell. “Solar and Wind Energy Start to
Win on Price vs. Conventional Fuels”, New York Times, November 23, 2014
Judee Burr, Lindsey Hallock, and Rob Sargent. Star Power: The growing role of solar energy
in America. Environment America Research & Policy Center, November,
2014.