MIT Says Natural Gas Best To Lower Carbon Emissions

eldavojohn writes "This week MIT released a comprehensive, hundred-page report entitled 'The Future of Natural Gas' that outlined the many scenarios the United States faces when aiming to reduce carbon emissions. From the New York Times recap: 'The scenario goes like this, according to MIT: Nuclear power, renewable energy, and carbon capture and sequestration are relatively expensive next to gas. Conventional coal is no longer a major source of power generation in the United States. "Natural gas is the substantial winner in the electric sector: The substitution effect, mainly gas generation for coal generation, outweighs the demand reduction effect."' Will this urging help to produce a policy shift from renewable energy (like wind) to natural gas for the United States?"

Comments

Not a good answer. We need solar or fusion.

[LurkerXXX]

That's nice and all, but you should keep in mind how lots of places in the U.S. get their natural gas these days. Through phracking.

It's not a good thing. There are huge environmental concerns. Flamable drinking water, Neurotoxins and other poisons in drinking water. There's even a movie about it.

Summary is BS

[Enigma2175]

TFS says:

Conventional coal is no longer a major source of power generation in the United States.

I call shenanigans. Coal is the #1 energy producer in the US. The US gets 30% of it's power capacity and nearly 50 percent of it's produced power from coal. I would love for that to be different but that is the current state of affairs and it is unlikely to change soon since the US has large coal reserves and it is much cheaper to produce power using coal than any other current fuel.

Re:Who paid for the report?

[SteeldrivingJon]

The report is from the MIT Energy Initiative, which counts among its members: BP Technology Ventures, Saudi Aramco, Chevron, Total, Hess.

The Board of Advisors includes: "Tony Hayward Group Chief Executive, BP p.l.c."