Gas is always treated as eco-friendly fuel. The U.S. has ever expected to use gas to get rid of pollution caused by coal. Because of total of carbon dioxide released by burning coal is two times of gas.
However, a new research points out that widely using low price gas may not reduce carbon emission in the U.S. Gas may hinder using cleaner renewable energy sources such as wind energy and solar energy.
Steven Davis, joint author of paper and the energy scientist of University of California, Irvine said, “Although there is a lot of available
low price gas, gas will not contribution to against coal pollution. On the contrary, it may have negative impacts on renewable energy.” The research has already been published on recent Environmental Research Letters.
In the paper, based on cost, technical operability and other factors, authors expect the prospect that the U.S. will use hybrid energy in the future. To some extent, they borrow the forecasts of American gas supply in the future which come from 23 experts in academe, industrial community and financial community. Then, research use optimal model to analyze those data.
The result shows that until 2055, widely using gas will have little use for reducing greenhouse gas emission. Gas will compete with renewable energy or even take place of the latter. Moreover, amount of methane is discharged when building gas infrastructures. As a kind of greenhouse gases, effect of methane is 120 times of carbon dioxide.
