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Friday, June 25, 2010

MIT says natural gas will continue to displace coal

A new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has good news for the natural-gas industry and dire predictions for coal. The report released today projects "Natural gas will provide an increasing share of America’s energy needs over the next several decades, doubling its share of the energy market to 40 percent, from 20 percent," Matthew L. Wald of The New York Times reports. "The increase, the report concluded, will come largely at the expense of coal and will be driven both by abundant supplies of natural gas — made more available by shale drilling — and by measures to restrict the carbon dioxide emissions that are linked to climate change."

The report does project a dimmer future for natural gas over the long term if President Obama is successful in passing his recommended stricter regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. The authors concluded, "although lower in carbon than coal, natural gas is still too carbon-intensive to be used under such a target absent some method of carbon capture," Wald writes. The report was financed in part by natural-gas industry group the American Clean Skies Foundation.

The report was part of a series on energy resources, including others about nuclear power and coal, and "is the result of a two-year effort by 14 prominent energy experts, led by Ernest J. Moniz, an MIT professor who is a former undersecretary of energy," Wald writes. "T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oilman, said that the study paid too much attention to the electricity sector and not enough to using natural gas as a substitute for gasoline and diesel in transportation," Wald writes, while Gregory C. Staple, chief executive of the ACSF, concluded "There is no longer any doubt that we have the capacity to repower our electricity sector and move away from dirtier fuels." (Read more)

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