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Page added on January 16, 2012
MIT says natural gas could hurt renewables
A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that the glut of natural gas, coming from newly-developed shale fields in the U.S., has the potential to damage development of renewable energy.
MIT News quotes Dr. Henry Jacoby, co-director emeritus on MIT’s joint program on the science “people speak of [natural] gas as a bridge to the future, but there had better be something at the other end of the bridge. ”
Jacoby authored a report on The Future of Natural Gas.
The study, the MIT News report said, ” found much of what we already knew — which is a good thing — that shale makes a big difference. It helps lower gas prices, it stimulates the economy and it provides greater flexibility to ease the cutting of emissions. But it also suppresses renewables.”
Natural gas production has boomed in the U.S. in the last five years as new technologies have enabled producers to unlock large deposits of gas not only in Texas and Louisiana, but outside the traditional U.S. energy belt in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York.
But because natural gas is a favored fuel for electricity generators, it is a threat to wind energy. Natural gas could also be a competitor to biofuels such as biodiesel as trucking companies have experimented with natural gas-powered engines.
At the same time the development of non-corn fed ethanol and other biofuels has come more slowly than envisioned in guidelines written into the 2007 Renewal Energy Standards bill, which calls for half of the 36 billion gallons of renewable transportation fuel to come from non-corn feedstocks by 2022.
The federal government acknowledged at the end of last year that target production for noncorn biofuels would not be met this year.
Meanwhile a new venture funded by Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, Clean Energy, has just announced plans for its first network of natural gas dispensing stations at Pilot/Flying J truck stops along major highways.
John Deutsch, who served as Undersecretary of Energy in the 1970s, said in a recent MIT lecture “over the last couple of years I’ve realized that what’s happening with unconventional natural gas [shale] is the biggest energy story that’s happened in the 40-plus years that I’ve been watching energy development in this country.”
Iowa has a substantial interest in the future of renewables, with 41 corn ethanol plants and 13 biodiesel plants, as well as the nation’s second-largest wind electric generating capacity.
Much of the planning for renewable energy, including extensive research at Iowa State University, was prompted by concerns about the lack of cleaner fuels as alternatives to coal and crude oil. Natural gas, while being a fossil fuel and with some emission i ssues, is considered the cleanest burning traditional fossil fuel.
4 Comments on "MIT says natural gas could hurt renewables"
SOS on Tue, 17th Jan 2012 1:54 am
Gas fired power plants should be built near the wells. This would eliminate the need for expensive and unreliable wind generators.
BillT on Tue, 17th Jan 2012 2:25 am
SOS, yes, you logic is accurate, but, most areas do not have the electrical grid to distribute the electric produced. When you throw in upgrading existing towers and lines, you may be doubling the cost of start up, and the electric would be too expensive.
Of course, temporarily plentiful natural gas will shut down some renewable sources that are not profitable without government (taxpayer) money.
DC on Tue, 17th Jan 2012 4:09 am
Any sensible person would take subsizied wind power, over subsidized frak gas any day. NG low prices and the ‘glut’ are a transient condition at best, or outright fraud at worst. Demand is low becasue the consumption economy is in the tank. So what ‘solution’ do you want? Increase consumption, so depletion rates are increased to the max again? Invest in dead ends like Nat-gas rigs so the Just-in-time made in china ecomomy can last a little longer?
Frak gas is more heavily subsidized than wind, but wind power doesnt give people cancer, make water flamable or inject diesel, benzene and who knows what else into the ground for the sake of oil companies bottom lines.
And that Pickens is still a fool. Only an amerikan status-quo industrialist would push Nat-gas as some sort of savior for amerikans love of oil
Kenz300 on Tue, 17th Jan 2012 9:20 pm
The oil and coal industries have the world economy backed into a corner. They will do their best to keep it that way. They enjoy their wind fall profits. Capitalism only works when there is competition. Monopolies are bad for the consumer.