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Howarth found that LNG’s total emissions are between 24 and 274 percent more than coal’s, depending on how the LNG is transported.
Horrific.
We’re making the same mistake now as we did after the Iraq War. During/after that war, there was a massive push to decrease US reliance on Middle Eastern oil. That was great, but unfortunately, most of the effort centered on domestic oil production, including fracking, which is even nastier than conventional oil production. We should have been building out and transitioning to renewables instead.
Now we have the same basic problem: Europe has realized it can’t rely on Russia for its fossil fuels and is now greatly increasing consumption of LNG, which is even nastier (for climate emissions) than conventional fossil fuels, even apparently coal, which I didn’t know was possible. That’s insane!
Let’s learn from this and build as much wind, solar, and other renewables as quickly as possible.
EU 2023 LNG imports have been below 2022 imports. That is still a massive increase compared to 2021, but that was to be expected. Maybe even more important the natural gas price is falling extremely quickly. It halved over the last year. LNG is more expensive then other transport methods of natural gas, so it is the first to be cut.
I think it’s super weird that we are suddenly even attempting to call LNG environmentally friendly, it has always been a mess
The one positive point is that methane-burning power plants can be spun up in under an hour whereas coal plants usually need a week to power up. If the vast majority of power comes from solar/wind/batteries and gas is only used as (secondary) backup, this may make sense.
Fossil marketing pretty successfully tries to eradicate the caveats and nuances from the discussion of course.
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Woah there, we say ‘differently formed babies’ now buddy
I don’t think anyone was actually buying that right?
The only people pushing for LNG were the oil companies selling it. Which, I mean, come on, we know better than to believe a word that comes from them.
For those that don’t know natural gas is a think tank tested way to brand methane. Natural gas is methane. They are the same thing. When you hear natural gas think “methane” because that is what natural gas is. For some reason “natural” makes you think it’s a perfectly fine and good thing, but that’s just good ol’ propaganda that you believed because you didn’t know any better.
Petroleum is also “natural”. It forms naturally, in nature, all by itself, and it combusts if you light it on fire. It’s so natural we can’t make it ourselves that’s why we drill wells several miles down and then inject compressed fluids at insane pressure to fracture the rock formations that natural petroleum is trapped in.
The problem is that methane is significantly worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, and if you burn methane, it breaks down into CO2. So when you hear “Clean burning natural gas” you are being spoon fed bullshit. It’s not clean burning, it’s lighting methane on fire to produce the same greenhouse gas they want you to think they’re cutting down on.
Ok, but why are we comparing coal that somehow doesn’t have to be transported against LNG that does. Can coal be teleported or something?
Mostly because the US has huge coal deposits but fairly limited coal exports. A lot of the discussion about LNG is whether it makes sense to use it to displace same-country coal extraction & use vs ship in LNG from far away.
Great, thanks! Why doesn’t the chart show costs of transportation of coal via ship as well? Do you have a link for the study mentioned in the graph by chance?
It doesn’t show those because the US isn’t about to start large-scale coal exports.
The preprint is linked in the article
Coal, oil, gasoline, propane, natural gas, biodiesel, wood fired stoves, candles, its all the same; molecules made up of a bunch of carbon bonded together. Add heat and oxygen and the bonds break in order to bond with oxygen, creating co2 or carbon monoxide and releasing heat. Its always gonna emit a shit ton of greenhouse gases, the entirety of the fuel is being turned into one.
Wood takes atmospheric carbon to grow though, so it’s not a net addition. The carbon taken from the ground does increase the carbon in the atmosphere.
The carbon in the ground took atmospheric carbon too. Ancient plants and animals eating those plants. All of it is a matter of carbon being sequestered in a solid state or burned into a gaseous state.
Sure but the issue is that sequestered carbon from millions of years ago is being released. In the short term carbon from trees is comparatively neutral. There could be an issue if you start using firewood in a non sustainable way, however at the current scale it doesn’t seem to be the issue.
Burning trees does not grow trees. It just releases greenhouse gases.
You know we farm trees, right?
Is burning trees part of it? This is like eating a bunch of pizza to lose weight, because you can exercise it off. The pizza is only hurting your ability to lose weight, and burning trees is only hurting our ability to reduce greenhouse gases. You can grow trees without burning any.
No point. Its the diversified old-growth forests we need to protect. Planting more trees without achieving that is pointless. There is not enough wood-burning for heat and/or fuel happening to make a difference vs what we do grow though, as the vast majority of what we do grow goes into construction.
You want to stop indigenous peoples burning wood for heat and cooking? How about we stop paying them to burn down rainforests for farms and ranches first. If we can accomplish that, cracking down on campfires becomes a pointless endeavor.
Well you cant grow concrete
I can’t even find the quote you’ve “replied” to in this thread, and it deffinitely was not myself who said it …
It’s not all the same, partly because gases leak and may cause more damage than CO2.
Sus
Edit so coal has been deemed the absolute worst energy bearer for combustion but suddenly there’s a report that the somewhat better natural gas is dirtier?
