Just for the record, gas is neither clean, green or sustainable
Let’s start with the basics: “natural gas” should actually be called methane, based on its composition, but was given that name because consumers perceive it as less harmful. In fact, it’s a fossil fuel, a hydrocarbon that for years the oil industry has sold as “cleaner” than coal, diesel or gasoline.
The reality is that it’s a greenhouse gas, and is extremely harmful to the environment, during its extraction and production, transport and processing. In fact, methane is about thirty times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere over a 100-year period, while methane leaks are also constant and occur at various stages of its supply chain, from wellhead emissions during drilling and extraction, as well as during transportation and distribution.
Now, a paper published in Environmental Research Letters establishes scientifically what we have long known: that so-called natural gas is no cleaner an energy source than coal or oil. The study, which focuses on real-world methane leakage rates (ranging from 0.65% to a mind-boggling 66.2%), takes into account the full life-cycle emissions of the gas, and concludes that greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas can equal or even exceed those of the most polluting fossil fuel, coal.
