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https://medium.com/@sarahmiller_22747/natural-gas-is-bringing-down-big-oil-5790b2ec35b9>
"Natural gas has fallen off a cliff towards international obscurity over the
nearly two years since Russia invaded Ukraine. Conventional wisdom has long
been that natural gas would be the longest-living of the three main fossil
fuels, with coal use dying off first, followed by oil, and gas benefiting from
its lower carbon-emissions count to go on being used nearly to the mid-Century
“net zero” deadline.
No longer. The International Energy Agency (IEA) that sits atop the heap of
international supply-demand prognosticators has made it official: Natural gas
demand may edge up ever so slightly for a few more years, but by 2030 latest,
it will be in decline. In fact, the IEA now expects demand for all three fossil
fuels to peak by 2030, with gas going first, ahead of oil and coal. That’s the
ever-cautious IEA view, and it expects a the subsequent decline in fossil fuel
use to be slow. Peak demand for all fossil fuels is coming sooner because solar
is spreading faster, and that peak will come sooner still if economic growth is
slow or even non-existent. The new order among the fossil fuels has more
complex reasons.
Who cares if international gas sales decline sooner than coal, you may ask? One
answer is the big oil and gas companies that bet heavily on natural gas as a
slightly less carbon-emitting fuel that would extend their ability to profit
from fossil fuel production even as oil demand shrinks. Gas was a huge part of
some of these companies’ life-support structure. Another loser is Russia, which
will leave a lot more “stranded” natural gas in the ground. Different companies
and countries profit from coal sales.
Whether this will mean more or less climate-convulsing CO2 and methane in the
atmosphere depends on the net effect of a tradeoff between more solar sooner
and more coal-fired electricity for longer. It’s a good news-bad news story
that I think will have a positive net emissions outcome. But no one knows."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
