Natural Gas- Fuel for the 21st Century

by Vaclav Smil

  Another set of factors include direct and indirect competition arising from the development of other energy sources and from environmental concerns. Will there be a widespread acceleration (along the German model) of wind and solar generation (based on new, larger, superior turbines and on appreciably high PV panel efficiencies) that would be substantial enough to affect demand for natural gas used to produce electricity? Or will these renewable sources be boosted by diffusion of new promising methods for medium- to large-scale electricity storage that would enable to bank cheap generation during sunny and windy spells and use it at times of peak demand and during night? Will we see a relative success, or yet another failure, in commercializing hydrogen-powered vehicles? Japanese automakers are now particularly eager to develop a new market and are willing to take a long view and incur substantial initial losses (Ohnsman, 2013).

  Will evolution and adoption of environmentally benign hydraulic fracturing, combined with success in limiting water contamination and fugitive methane missions in the US shale gas extraction, make shale gas a highly appealing (even if, in many countries, relatively expensive) choice? Will China, the world’s largest consumer of coal with commensurately severe air pollution problems, be forced to accelerate its transition from coal to natural gas, or will its progress be relatively slow? Even more importantly, will a sudden reacceleration of global temperature rise—after a relatively lengthy pause, with the global average up by only 0.04°C/decade since 1998 (Tollefson, 2014; Figure 8.6)—lead to an unprecedented quest for less carbon-intensive fuel?

  Figure 8.6 Global warming pause.

  Political uncertainties may be no less important. Will Russia pursue a path of economic stability and cooperative foreign relations or will its behavior remain problematic, affecting its relations and trade with the EU and its position as a global supplier of energy? What will be the course pursued by India under new management? If steered right, the country could begin to rival China in its demand for all kinds of resources. What will the continuing destabilization and fracturing of the Middle East (I cannot assume the opposite, a sudden resolution of multifaceted problems besetting the region) do to the global supply of hydrocarbons.

  As greater uncertainties arise and new possibilities open up in more distant future, an analogical list looking at resource, technical, economic, environmental, and political factors that might become important in long term, namely, between 2025 and 2050, could be much longer, even after leaving out speculations about new technical breakthroughs (such as inexpensive small-scale GLT and easy and safe recovery of methane hydrates). In a few decades, many national trajectories, bearing on the global market for natural gas, should become clearer, and here are just a few terse paragraphs, with items given in no particular order as it is impossible to attach relative impact weights and occurrence probabilities to individual changes and events.

  For the United States, still the world’s most important economy, will it be an arrival of a new equilibrium as a more thoughtful, less wasteful power concerned about quality (of life, of civil society, of the global environment) rather than obsessed with growth and quantity? For Russia will it be economic success or failure (made worse by demographic and health problems)? And its evolving role in the global economy (with possibilities ranging from moving close to the EU to an uneasy state reminiscent of the Cold War era) will determine the extent of its remaining vast resources reaching foreign markets. Russian failures could be compounded or greatly compensated for by changes in Iran. The end of Iran’s theocracy and the country’s successful transition to a modern society would strengthen long-term stability of global natural gas supply. And will China’s continuing rise improve or further worsen its relations with great powers and neighbors, or will it weaken and leave the country still far short of really modern society? And will the EU carry on, implode, or become largely irrelevant as mass migrations and rise of Asia further reduce its prospects?

  What will be the ultimate fate of nuclear electricity generation: will it prove definitely too costly and too risky, or, finally, will it see a long-ago promised renaissance? Of course, should we be able to master reliable, affordable and environmentally acceptable recovery of methane hydrates, neither the fates of nuclear industry nor declining conventional oil production would matter that much: commercial hydrates would amount to a truly revolutionary departure. And progress in the creation of hydrogen economy (be it based on inexpensive solar achieved through new technical breakthroughs or, to be really frivolous, by success in fusion) would change the entire global calculus of energy supply and demand.

  Natural gas is an excellent fossil fuel whose many inherent advantages guarantee its increasing use; much like all other energy sources, its greater use also has its share of drawbacks and complications, be they technical, financial, or environmental. And in the game played by the rules of dynamic global energy market, it is still, and in foreseeable future it will remain, nothing more than one of several key cards. This means that a more accurate characterization of the coming decades of changes in global fossil fuel composition would be not the age of gas but the era of rising natural gas importance. And the nature of the complex energy system subjected to these changes is such that during the first half of the twenty-first century, it will be, inevitably, an evolutionary rather than revolutionary shift: definitely not an age of brass but also, most likely, not a golden age.

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