How Important Is Natural Gas To A Low Carbon Future?
Mark Mills, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s engineering school, recently tried to answer that question in a presentation to the Energy Equipment and Infrastructure Alliance’s (EEIA) Association Council. (The Metals Service Center Institute is a member of EEIA).
Mills discussed how natural gas is critical to a low carbon energy future and said the implications for wind and solar and their substantial environmental costs that must be better understood as America’s fuel mix evolves.
For example, readers might not know that:
- A single wind farm of only 100 megawatts has more tonnage of non-recyclable plastics in the blades than the world’s entire supply of recyclable plastic straws; and
- If you replace all the uses of natural gas and coal on the U.S. electric grid, it would only reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by less than six percent.
Want to learn more? Mills’ presentation is streamed here and program slides documenting his points are available here.