By Robert Bradley Jr. – February 2, 2022
“History of rhyme. Natural gas as part of an environmental solution goes back more than thirty years. “
John Kerry stated One thing was obvious last month to the American Chamber of Commerce: natural gas must be the “bridge fuel” for the “energy reset” away from fossil fuels. “Gas will be critical to the transition,” Biden’s climate envoy said.
But if we move too fast and too far with too much and build the infrastructure in 30 and 40 years, with a plan to be able to use it for 30 or 40 years without a decline – if it does The reduction is great. If you can shoot 100% and it’s affordable then that’s great. But we don’t do that.
Forget the warnings. Wind, solar and battery power are in short supply, and oil, natural gas and coal are causing shortages worldwide. This is not a collision but a roadblock – the reset needs to be headed reliable and stay away unreliable with consumers making calls and taxpayers neutral.
Biden has beseeching OPEC and Russia to open more oil extraction points. Recent Administration praise LNG in Europe’s time of need. Meanwhile, EU ministers are debating whether to bring natural gas (and nuclear) is “green” in the pure zero mission. Natural gas is barely dead, and eco-authoritarian planners are on the political fringes – voters.
Back to Ken Lay / Enron
Environmental groups almost all reject natural gas for reasons of methane/CO2 release (see below). But this was not the case more than thirty years ago.
Right after James Hansen put global warming on the front page, Ken Lay’s Enron energizes the gas industry to jointly wage a transformative crusade against coal (and soon oil) climate. Lay’s early work is described in Enron Ascending: The Forgotten Years:
Chapter 7 (p. 329)
With relatively less CO2 Emissions more than oil and especially coal, the natural gas industry is on the right track. The American Gas Association has sold environmental groups on a “bridge fuel” alternative strategy. Club Sierra explains: “Our effectiveness depends on how the industry responds. The World Resources Institute has raised its view: “We believe that discouraging the use of natural gas is bad energy policy, economically detrimental, and damaging to the environment.”
The National Coal Association has labeled such thinking as “short-sighted,” while the nuclear group the American Council on Energy Awareness complained of being excluded from the discussion. This is coal with gas.
With new environmental regulations under the Clean Air Act of 1990, as well as a political interest in tightening existing standards and expanding the list of pollutants, Lay… encourages[ed] electricity executives to “go beyond Clean Air compliance” with gas replacement replacing coal. This means some combination of “natural gas co-firing, gas conversion or new gas combustion capacity” [that] will hedge the risk that bidders face due to potential CO2 emissions limits or future taxes. ”
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Ken Lay delivered a compelling climate message for both sides of the political divide. To Republicans, he emphasized the no-regret strategy of using natural gas to tackle climate change: “While we have completed our global warming study, we I have a substantial opportunity to mitigate one of the main causes of global warming without paying any economic penalties. For Democrats and allied environmentalists, Lay has gone further. “Global climate change is… potentially… a terrible problem,” Lay replied in an interview.
“I don’t know of any evidence for a growing accumulation of greenhouse gases — and especially CO2 emissions — in the atmosphere having any — and I mean any — beneficial effects on the globe and our humanity,” repeated Lay elsewhere.
Lay’s climate alarmism is opportunistic, self-serving, and intellectually inferior. There have been important arguments against this ecological threat, as there have been about the population bombing in the 1960s and the resource famine in the 1970s. A vast literature exists across the globe. positive ecological and economic benefits of higher concentrations of CO in the atmosphere2 for plants and wood, such as that coal-funded Greening Earth Society document. But Ken Lay was not in the mood to think about a new weapon against energy enemies.
Lay was politically and socially flexible in his quest for a mighty Enron. In time, he will confess to the opportunism presented by the global warming meme. “If there’s one thing that’s impressed me over the past decades, it’s that when the environmental community defines the number one priority, something happens,” he remarked in 1997. “Not always. whatever is good – which is something”.
Chapter 7: (p. 343)
With his academic background, a novel strategy to split the fossil fuel industry in three, and skillful lobbying by pragmatic environmentalists, Lay has dressed up as an energy expert. and great thinkers. While other energy executives think about the upcoming quarter and year, Lay’s message has a more lasting, social quality. sound to make him different.
Lay declared: The Oil Age is coming to an end. Natural gas will be the bridge between the fossil fuel era and the renewable energy era. “I would guess that, within a century or so, we will see a large portion of our total energy needs being served by renewables,” says Lay. A complete transition to 100% renewable energy is forecast in the next 200–300 years.
But was Enron’s architect an energy oracle – or a pseudo-philosopher divinely promoting his profits? Ken Lay has certainly read Christopher Flavin, who has the most profound thoughts on environmental energy activists. Flavin’s books and pamphlets advocating a government-led transition to renewable energy are worth investigating. But the expert of Worldwatch assumption more than justifiable his fossil fuel alarm theory. His attorney-like brief did not carefully consider opposing views. His annotated work is acclaim, not true scholarship.
Bridge Fuel: MIT Research (2011)
The fuel-natural gas demand strategy is still in place in 2010/2011, although environmental groups have already started to kick in. “Natural gas can act as a ‘bridge’ fuel for a low-carbon future“Stated an article in American Science. a report on a two-year, 287-page study from MIT, The future of natural gas (2011). ClimateWire’s Joel Kirkland report:
The MIT team of researchers led by Ernest Moniz, a physics professor and director of MIT . Energy Initiative. Moniz’s name often floats around Washington when it’s time to choose another energy secretary. A major sponsor of the report is America’s Clean Sky Organizationa Washington research group created and funded by the natural gas industry.
It is the coal-to-gas in the electricity sector – and also a step towards natural gas-powered vehicles.
Automakers involved in vehicles powered by compressed natural gas will see a significant increase in demand under national climate policies that make carbon dioxide emissions costly. Biofuels are expected to grow, but it remains unclear how quickly and at what cost for key food crops. But even with biofuels pictured, MIT predicts natural gas-powered vehicles will make up 15 percent of private vehicle fleets by 2050.
But a decade later, natural gas won’t be the flavor of the month anymore – until the current energy crisis…. “Natural gas is a bridge to nowhere” (Energy Transition: January 7, 2021): “Natural gas is joyfully referred to by proponents as a ‘bridge fuel,’” notes Paul Hockenos:
But this was thinking ten years ago – and it’s no longer valid. The rapid pace of technical progress in renewable energy-based systems – and dramatic reductions in costs – coupled with new research into the gas’s harmful methane emissions have created a New light, less optimism for natural gas.
These developments raise questions about natural gas projects still being financed by the EU, which intends to raise its 2030 greenhouse gas reduction target to 55%, from 1990 levels. This will put the EU on the path to achieving climate neutrality by 2050”.
And so the debate continues….
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