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

In agreement on hazards of wind power

[Latent Heat]

Because in the words of John Rowe, CEO of electric power generation company Exelon and a "believer" in the need to reduce carbon emissions, "Wind is a natural gas play."

Owing to the intermittent nature of wind, the need for 100% backup of generating capacity, and the ability to provide at most 20% of total electricity, wind is a way to in effect get an extra increment in efficiency in a natural-gas based electric power generation economy. As such, you can ascribe to wind power all of the evils you ascribe to natural gas production, only, about 20% less.

Re:Summary is BS

[daveime]

Yes, because the primary concern when discussing potential fuel sources the the next millenium is deciding where to put the fucking apostrophe.

Have you got nothing better to do with your time ?