Coal and Natural Gas

To summarize a conversation that is happening in the comment to my post called Bans on Fracking:

Senior energy analyst Glenn Doty supports fracking insofar as every kilowatt-hour of energy that doesn’t come from natural gas will come from coal, which is far worse environmentally, and he foresees this situation remaining in place for at least 30 years.

BreathOnTheWind writes: Some fear most the obverse of this, that every GWh not produced by coal will be produced by natural gas, leaving no place for renewable energy development. ….The only way we should be developing natural gas is with a close tie to supporting the development of renewable resources. The life support should anticipate and promote the transplant. …. perhaps some requirement that for every MMbtu produced so much renewable energy must also be produced.

Here are a couple of additional ideas:

Glenn’s “30 years of coal” is based on a linear descent in terms of its percentage in the grid-mix.  I’m not a fortune-teller, but I find it impossible to believe that this migration is going to be linear.  In fact, given the rapidly changing overall economics of energy, I see a tipping point happening very soon at which point we’ll see exponential growth of solar and wind energy, and a corresponding decay of coal.  This, of course, is the theme of “Bullish on Renewable Energy.”

Breath’s viewpoint implies the existence of a bunch of things that don’t exist, in the U.S., at least, starting with an energy policy.  I really don’t see the problem with a country like ours putting a stick in the ground to the effect that we’re phasing out fossil fuels, starting with coal, at the maximum practical rate.  But we’re extremely unlikely to see that happen, especially with Republicans controlling both houses of congress.  As I wrote the other day, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is doing everything in his power to overturn our federal government’s limits on power plant pollution.  From our “Union of Concerned Scientists”:  First, (McConnell) told state officials to ignore the federal rules. Now he’s pushing a bill to let even the most polluting states “opt out” of the rules altogether.  

The good news is that fossil fuels are going away regardless of how many congressmen the oil companies buy, as I explained here.