Why is natural gas important

In industry, natural gas delivers big emissions reductions, and can also provide significant savings when manufacturers switch from oil to LNG in areas that previously had no access to natural gas, due to its cost advantage over oil. Natural gas is used in industry in a variety of applications, and its GHG benefits will depend on the application. For road transport natural gas provides a large GHG advantage: An exact measure of methane emissions, attributable to different sources is difficult to accurately measure and allocate with existing technologies, but ongoing innovation efforts are continuously improving their state of the art and our ability to better quantify emissions.

The body of knowledge in this area is evolving, improving our understanding of methane emissions and their sources, as well as the quality and quantity of available data. Natural gas combustion is highly efficient, so in its end-use applications of providing energy for cooking and heating, fueling transport, and producing electricity, the associated methane emissions are insignificant. However, some methane emissions can occur earlier in the value chain during extraction, production, transport, and distribution.

Its greenhouse gas effect is stronger in the short term, which makes it a more potent short-term climate forcer than CO 2. However, it also has a much shorter mean life in the atmosphere — only So, the key climate impact of methane is on short-term temperature fluctuations, while CO 2 is the key driver of long-term climate impacts, due to its very long life.

Sustainability: Electricity Reliable Partner for a Secure and Sustainable Generation Mix A renewables and natural gas generation mix provides for secure, responsive, and reliable electricity supply portfolio. When it comes to investment decisions in capital-intensive generation assets, the goal is to minimize risk, maximize return, while ensuring energy security, access, and reliability of supply for the consumers.

Natural gas and renewable projects both have associated investment risks, as any large, long-term energy asset. Interestingly, the risk profiles of renewables and natural gas generation technologies are practically mirror opposites, which makes these two types of generation sources a perfect match. So, together, renewables and natural gas form a strong and balanced electricity investment.

The illustrative matrix shows risks associated with hypothetical natural gas left and renewable energy right plant Responsive, Flexible, and Clean Electricity Generation Resource Natural gas delivers the least lifecycle GHG emissions per kilowatt-hour of generated electricity when compared to other fossil fuels.

Paired with carbon capture and storage technology, natural gas GHG profile is comparable to renewable sources, while it does not produce any particulate matter and sulphur oxide emissions, unlike coal, or oil. According to the IEA, gas-fired power plants have technical and economic characteristics that make them a very suitable partner for a strategy favouring the expansion of variable renewables. Natural gas-powered generation is highly flexible and responsive.

It can reliably provide a variety of valuable flexibility services to electric system operators, from capacity to operating reserve, and regulation. At higher rates of renewables generation, grid flexibility services become more and more essential, and natural gas generators are the ideal technology to provide this flexibility.

Natural gas is responsive. It is able to ramp up and down quickly and operate at low utilization rates for grid balancing, while also being available to increase generating load and provide on-demand capacity. With ongoing innovation efforts, the industry will continue to improve the responsiveness of the natural gas units even further. Low-Emission Source of Reliable Power Natural gas in electricity generation is an environmentally friendly fuel and has significant ecological and environmental advantages over other fuels, resulting in cleaner air and higher productivity.

Sustainability: Transport Clean Fuel for Road Transport Natural Gas, used as vehicle fuel, delivers significant environmental and ecological benefits by reducing GHG emissions and drastically cutting pollution. Even larger benefits can be achieved by switching older fleet vehicles to new CNG vehicles would result in significant air quality benefits. Clean Fuel for Marine Transport and Shipping LNG used as a marine fuel offers notable GHG advantages over conventional fuel oil and modified diesel, while also eliminating harmful exhaust pollutants.

LNG as a marine fuel also offers substantial advantages over traditional marine petroleum fuels in local pollution emissions reduction. It meets the stricter environmental regulations controlling air pollution from ships by the International Maritime Organisation IMO and regional air quality controls.

Using LNG will reduce harmful air pollutants significantly below all current and proposed emissions standards — switch to natural gas will immediately result in these reductions and persist for the life of the vessel. It burns cleanly and efficiently, providing for a safe and comfortable environment within homes and businesses Its highly efficient combustion ensures minimum waste and low GHG profile.

It is accessible, affordable, and reliable. Sustainability: Health What is Air Pollution? Air Pollution Air pollution is the presence of certain solids, liquids, or gases in the air, which can harm people or environment. In high concentrations, it can be detrimental to human health. Pollution is responsible for 6. It is the fourth-largest human health concern, after blood pressure, diet, and smoking.

Pollutants occur both naturally and from human activity anthropogenic ; however, the latter is a significantly larger culprit, as most air pollution results from energy and industry. PM is linked to major detrimental health impacts. Size is an important factor in determining health impacts — the smaller the particle, the more dangerous it is. Coarse Particles are between 2. Fine Particles are smaller than 2. The adverse health impacts of PM10 are less severe than those of the fine particles; however, there is a longer history of data on PM10 and even today many cities lack the equipment to monitor outdoor concentrations of PM2.

Black carbon, a particular type offine PM, is formed by the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and bioenergy, and is a short-lived climate pollutant SLCP. Other Anthropogenic Air Pollutants Sulphur Oxides SOx : Raw coal and oil contain sulphur, which causes SOx to be released into the atmosphere with combustion, unless there is a pre-treatment process that removes the sulphur.

SOx pollutants are damaging to health and environment, as well as being a precursor to the formation of secondary particulate matter. Nitrogen oxides NOx : nitrogen oxide NO and nitrogen dioxide NO 2 result from high-temperature combustion, largely in transport and electricity generation, or from the oxidation of NO to NO 2 in the atmosphere.

NO 2 is a toxic gas and can lead to the formation of particulate matter and ozone. Carbon monoxide CO is a colourless, odourless, toxic gas that comes from the incomplete combustion of fuels. Ammonia NH 3 is released in relation to agricultural and waste management activities; once in the atmosphere ammonia reacts with oxides of nitrogen and sulfur to form secondary particles. At high concentrations, ozone is a pollutant and a SLCP. Heavy Metals resulting from industry, power generation, waste incineration and Mercury mainly from burning coal.

Household Energy and Health Around 3 billion people cook and heat their homes using open fires and simple stoves burning biomass wood, animal dung and crop waste and coal. Over 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to the household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels. Air Pollution is a Leading Global Cause Premature Deaths Air pollution is the fourth largest cause of premature death in the world, after blood pressure,diet,and smoking.

Natural Gas is a clean burning fuel and does not produce toxic PM emissions. Household pollution caused 4. This mortality burden is disproportionately born by the developing world, especially for household pollution, due to lack of access to clean cooking and heating energy.

India and China is where over half of premature deaths occur, for both indoor and outdoor pollution. Globally, the deaths attributable to ambient air pollution have been on the rise. Globally the total number of deaths from PM 2. However, two regions have shown improvement. Both these regions experienced coal to gas in the same period. While other factors, including transport emissions and fuel efficiency standards played a significant role in this positive outcome, the fuel switch from coal to gas has likely contributed, as natural gas is free of most toxic pollutants emissions, while coal is a major source, along with biomass and other solid fuels.

At low-income levels, households tend to be heavily reliant on solid biomass as in many developing African and Asian countries the use of which usually leads to undesirable exposure to particulate matter, a leading cause of premature deaths.

However, this would require governments and international community to step up and support the development of infrastructure, as well as commercializing new technologies development to bring the costs of access down.

While infrastructure investments are costly, the social and economic benefits associated with reduced pollution, avoided deaths, and increased productivity make them worthwhile.

Evolution of Global Reserves by Region The supply of natural gas is secure, accessible and affordable for the foreseeable future. Natural gas is a fuel that performs strongly on security of supply considerations: There are sufficient global deposit volumes to meet projected demand. Deposits are geographically diverse. Access is greater than it has ever been with the advances in LNG shipping technologies and evolving business models.

At the end of , proven reserves were about trillion cubic metres tcm , equal to around 60 years of production at current output rates.

Shale has been visibly growing, while the conventional base is slowly reducing. One way to transport natural gas is by cooling it and turning it into liquefied natural gas, or LNG. The U. Energy Information Administration says that, in its liquid state, the volume of natural gas is "about times smaller than its volume in its gaseous state.

Building bridges. Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is seen by some as a bridging fuel, but what does that mean? And that's where gas really comes in as a bridging fuel: it is clean, and it can provide base load power. Energy Insight. Uses of natural gas: what is natural gas used for?

But how do we use it exactly? What is natural gas used for? Electricity We can generate electricity with natural gas — with steam turbines and gas turbines. Heating Almost half of all U. Uses of natural gas If we want to highlight a few specific uses of natural gas for most consumer types, we should ask a really simple question.

Cooking We can use natural gas directly to cook. Water heating Yes, we use it to make our rooms warm — but water, too. Natural gas heats faster than electricity, and costs less. Air conditioning The 1 cooling method is air conditioning. Lighting a fire There are a lot of applications of natural gas for homes. But what is natural gas used for in different commercial industries? Who uses natural gas and for what purposes? According to EIA , the commercial sector uses natural gas to heat buildings and water to operate refrigeration and cooling equipment to cook to dry clothes to provide outdoor lighting as a fuel in combined heat and power systems In plain English, the use of natural gas in commercial buildings is similar to its use in homes.

Conclusion Natural gas is one of the most common sources of energy.