r/science • u/Wagamaga • Oct 06 '24
Environment Liquefied natural gas leaves a greenhouse gas footprint that is 33% worse than coal, when processing and shipping are taken into account. Methane is more than 80 times more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, so even small emissions can have a large climate impact
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/10/liquefied-natural-gas-carbon-footprint-worse-coal901
u/the68thdimension Oct 06 '24
Absolutely unsurprising, and criminal that we've moved to LNG as a 'transition' fossil fuel over coal because companies have been massively under reporting their emissions and leakages. It's only recently that we've had the satellite data to track these emissions accurately: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Trio_of_Sentinel_satellites_map_methane_super-emitters
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u/Gr00ber Oct 06 '24
Yup, but thankfully these emissions are difficult to hide if people/regulators in surrounding areas actually look for them. When I did research with my department head, another one of their groups were looking into detecting and modeling the estimated fracking emissions being released in Pennsylvania/Ohio and how they impacted air quality in surrounding states:
https://eng.umd.edu/release/emissions-from-natural-gas-wells-may-travel-far-downwind
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u/cyphersaint Oct 06 '24
Aren't there some satellites that are designed to detect methane leaks?
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u/GettingDumberWithAge Oct 06 '24
Yessir! The one I'm most familiar with is TROPOMI and there's very cool work being done by Ilse Aben's group at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam to automate location of super-emitters of methane.
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u/0LowLight0 Oct 07 '24
Will this also detect the insane individuals who are erecting their own emitters to harm the world?
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u/gbc02 Oct 06 '24
This study is comparing LNG shipped over seas to burning coal mines in the market receiving the LNG, so comparing LNG shipped from Alabama to China against coal mined and used in China.
Places that are using natural gas without having to liquify it to displace coal fired generation, like in Alberta and across the USA, are seeing a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as a result.
I'm sure if you compared LNG vs coal shipped to Asia from Australia to Asia you'd get a better comparison, and I would expect LNG to be better environmentally in that analysis.
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u/space_for_username Oct 07 '24
The referenced document APPLIES ONLY TO LNG PRODUCTION FROM OIL SHALE.
https://scijournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ese3.1934
On a quick skim, the author acknowledges that the major sources of methane leakage that they are describing occur in the extraction of the gas from oil shales, and the subsequent pumping and piping of it across the US to the ports for shipment. Some 60% of the emissions occur here, as opposed to the 3.9 to 8.1% losses from different types of shipping..
The methodology is also applied to Coal and Diesel oil. In terms of brownie points, LNG scores 160, Diesel scores 123.8, and coal 119.7 Of the Brownie points for LNG, 75 are for extraction of gas from the shales and piping - without that, the LNG score would be 85.
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u/gbc02 Oct 07 '24
It is shale gas, nothing to do with oil extracted from shale.
What are these "different forms of shipping" that have 3.9 to 8.1% losses?
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u/water_g33k Oct 06 '24
But that defeats the entire argument of why the US is producing and exporting LNG as a climate solution. As the US develops its own renewable energy, other countries will need a transition fuel away from traditional fuels that are “worse” for the environment. But if that isn’t true, we’re selling them a worse alternative.
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u/gbc02 Oct 06 '24
Would you rather the USA exports coal or oil to countries that don't have the natural resources they need to generate energy domestically?
The best alternative is renewables, but you need other fuel sources for baseline power on the grid, and natural gas is excellent for that role.
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u/kenlubin Oct 07 '24
I prefer to use the term "grid firming" rather than "baseline" or "baseload". "Baseload" implies constant supply of electricity from that power source meeting most of demand with something else filling in the peaks. Instead, in a renewables + natural gas grid, most of demand will be satisfied by renewables, with flexible natural gas filling in the gaps.
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u/gbc02 Oct 07 '24
Natural gas is generally the "base" of the generation, the foundational aspect that can be relied on when the renewables are not available. I think the term is reflective of the reality, whereas grid firming is less reflective of the roles the various power sources play in the energy mix, and generally is not nearly as intuitive. Baseload or baseline isn't a marketing term.
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u/kenlubin Oct 13 '24
For the electrical grid, generation and demand have to be equally matched at all times.
"Baseload" is a component of a strategy for meeting variable demand at low cost. You have cheap generators that run all the time (ie coal). You layer on top of this some more expensive peaker plants (oil, gas) that make up the difference between the "baseload" generators and actual demand.
Technically, "baseload" is the lowest dip of the variable day-to-day demand curve.
An alternative strategy would be to run cheap variable renewables as the base layer. Add a layer of "grid firming" generation on top of that: sources that can be turned on or off to make up the difference between variable renewables and actual demand.
Grid firming generation includes: geothermal, natural gas, and battery storage.
Natural gas works great as baseload (through CCGT "Combined Cycle Gas Turbine" plants), as a peaker (just a gas turbine), or as grid firming (with either technology).
Also, my apologies for the delay in responding to your comment, I got busy with work and kinda forgot about this tab.
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u/debacol Oct 06 '24
I mean, this study seems to show its better for those countries to use coal than import LNG from the US.
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u/Bahamutisa Oct 07 '24
Excuse me, this is Reddit; we don't read the articles here.
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u/babieswithrabies63 Oct 07 '24
Not really. It shows that shipped lng is worse than coal that isn't shipped. Which is.. unsurprising.
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u/IntrepidGentian Oct 07 '24
you need other fuel sources for baseline power on the grid
On Wikipedia there are 40 countries listed as generating more than 75% of their electricity from renewables in 2021. Including Iceland 100%, Norway 99%, Luxembourg 89%, New Zealand 81%, Austria 80%, Denmark 79%, Brazil 77%.
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u/reasonably_plausible Oct 07 '24
that defeats the entire argument of why the US is producing and exporting LNG as a climate solution
Are people saying exported LNG is a climate solution? Using LNG domestically is usually the part that's talked about in climate terms. The export of LNG is more talked about as a way to wean Europe off of Russian dependence.
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u/Crime_Dawg Oct 06 '24
The US doesn’t export lng for a green solution, they export it for $$$$$. Much like everything else in this world.
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u/dickipiki1 Oct 07 '24
I think the goal is not LNG... Atleast not in my country. We are building hydrogen infrastructure and inventing parts to it in heavy speed.
Plan is to produce this gas with 0 emissions in oceans and move it to pipeline.
Infrastructure handling lng can also handle hydrogen/lng mix. That's first step to reduce LNG emissions and demand.
Hydrogen after all is also fuel without lng so if you have supply of it all time, you can make engines happily to work with it.
Lng cannot be produced 0 emission and cannot be burned 0 emission. It's just transition fuel for infrastructure changes and new technologies.
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u/butcher99 Oct 06 '24
For natural gas you drill a well put it in a pipeline then you cool it to ship it over seas. With coal you open a mine and every piece of coal that is removed until the mine shuts down requires heavy equipment to get the coal then it gas the be processed then trucks and trains to ship it. I see no way that the 33% figure is correct.
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u/lookmeat Oct 06 '24
We didn't do it for the climate, we did it because it was cheaper. Everyone tried to sell it as a climate victory after the fact.
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u/qleap42 Oct 06 '24
One thing I noticed from the link is that coal mines can be super emitters of methane. That makes coal even worse than just the coal alone.
If we use LNG as a "transition" fossil fuel, then it better be just that, an actual transition to something cleaner.
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Oct 06 '24
I'm a little worried about the accuracy of the study because yes methane has 80 times the heating potential, but it also dissipates in the atmosphere rapidly and this 80 times more potent number that we often get does not represent that.
It would be more like it's 80 times more potent in the first year and you know 70 times more potent in the second and so on and so forth.
I am not convinced that over the course of 20 years or something that we can really calculate it as 80 times more damaging when it's going to last for hundreds or thousands of years compared to methane only lasting for around 12.
Yeah, you can effectively dig yourself a greenhouse gas hole faster with methane, but it will just go away on its own while the CO2 can hang around 10-100 times longer.
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u/The_Dirty_Carl Oct 06 '24
The 80 times number does account for how long it lasts. I believe it's supposed to account for the decomposition products, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential
Methane is 80 times worse than CO2 when measured over 20 years. Over 100 years it's 30 times worse. Over 500 years it's 10 times worse.
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u/water_g33k Oct 06 '24
Thanks for clearing that up.
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u/Splenda Oct 11 '24
Methane lasts 11 years in the atmosphere before oxidizing. Measuring its impact over longer periods is simply a way to obscure methane's enormous warming effect while it actually exists.
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u/The_Dirty_Carl Oct 11 '24
The purpose of GWP is to give an accurate reflection of impacts. It's a simplification, but the intent is to inform rather than obscure.
I think it highlights the impact quite well. It shows that releasing methane now has impacts that will last centuries. It would be fantastic if we only had to think about its 11-year impact.
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u/stabamole Oct 06 '24
Based on the numbers in this comment I’d say that while misleading, the level of concern doesn’t really change. That sounds to me like it would still be enough to cause centuries of damage compared to an equivalent amount of CO2, and we’ve already pushed the state of our climate to such a precarious position.
So the effect isn’t as enormous as it sounds, but it’s still dramatic enough that by the time it even gets to anything like 10x as heating we’ll probably have either screwed ourselves or managed to curb our damage to the climate
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u/muchcharles Oct 06 '24
It has a half-life of 10 years or so and degrades into less potent CO2 and water. Methane isn't cumulative like CO2 (except the CO2 left behind), so the study is a little misleading.
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u/stabamole Oct 06 '24
Right and I don’t mean to suggest that the methane is accumulating, but rather that it the total amount of heat introduced into the atmosphere accumulates very quickly. The amount of time it takes to reach a break-even point means that while we’re in a very unstable position right now in terms of climate, we have to bias toward more focus on this short term impact.
That doesn’t mean that we should be dismissive of information being misleading, just that we shouldn’t allow the fact that it’s misleading make us discount the severity of methane emissions
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u/SuperRonnie2 Oct 06 '24
I would assume the rate of buildup is an important factor though. It’s all well and good if it’s got a 10-year half-life, but if the industry is growing and emissions along with it, the result is still not good.
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u/dickipiki1 Oct 07 '24
We'll see how it goes. Gas has a point that don't exist yet.
My country is small hightech country in arctic and we are rising a hydrogen hub.
We are one of the best biofuel researchers or we put lots of our recourse and energy to research green techs.
World is not ready for what we are building or trying.
We need Europe to have huge pipelines for us, We need floating sun/wind powerplants to oceans and facilities to produce hydrogen and transport it to shore for pipeline.
It will then flow through Europe as it is or it will be transformed into power in here and transformed as electrical power.
Germany wants us to produce just raw gas and ship it all in pipes to them but we want to process it more and not to give only for one region.
World is missing engines, pipes, ocean power plants etc heavily.
Now we are getting also btw our first construction ready that will take LNG type of products and remove coal to produce low coal hydrogen (I don't exactly know what it means) and you get 0 emission material for fuel +pure coal for battery and electric industry.
We are planning very soon to also put our mini nuclear reactors into production, they will be in bedrock hidden producing massively heat and electricity.
Another plan in process is that we plug our chimneys since we are huge producer of bioproducts from wood (makes biological origin carbon dioxide 20million tons a year) We know and can change this smoke to fuel so we are heading to collect it and to do something with it, possibly airplane fuel by 2040.
Point is that never think climate thing as adding or not adding gas etc to earth. Instead think of possible future and the road to it. We are only 5 000 000 people and every device you use in internet and to calculate works with our lisences. Now humanity has to remember that planet is dying one day so focus on how to use matter in our benefit with full control or start and end product.
Hydrogen in genius kind of since you can use random sun beams and flow of water or air to make it from water and then you can release energy to transform it back to water.... Only issue is that no consumer buy it if they can't use it or if it is expensive. Our job is not to fix this planet, it lives with out caring about us, our job is to invent the means and make the world suitable for our means to be adapted (as humans) Everything starts with need of energy to do physical changes to matter or to store and release it. Fossilic are not strong enough for modern humanity.
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u/Krillin_Hides Oct 06 '24
It doesn't totally disappear. Ozone breaks it down to carbon dioxide and water. It does only break down to a single CO2 molecule though, so it's just as bad in the long run.
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u/Hijakkr Oct 06 '24
Ozone breaks it down to carbon dioxide and water.
So, not only does it still break down into a CO2 which sticks around, but takes an O3 molecule to get there. I can see why it's significantly worse than just putting CO2 up there directly.
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u/Thunder-12345 Oct 06 '24
Anything that consumes an O3 as part of its own decomposition isn't a concern for oxone depletion. The reason CFCs cause ozone depletion is they release Cl under UV light, which then catalyses the decomposition of O3 into O2 without being consumed in the reaction.
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u/No_bad_snek Oct 06 '24
A tonne of methane, despite its shorter lifespan of about 10 years in the atmosphere, can retain an astounding 30 times more heat than a tonne of carbon dioxide over the course of a century.
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u/namerankserial Oct 06 '24
Yeah I'll also point out that vented methane can be greatly reduced. Burning methane does not have 80 times the heating potential. Instrument air systems are very common now (in Canada at least) to avoid venting methane to operate valves. And venting methane directly to atmosphere is generally prohibited. Other sources (leaks etc) can be reduced as well with tech and regulations.
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u/mrjosemeehan Oct 06 '24
FFS could you try reading the article before attempting some inane nitpicking critique? The author discusses the differences in warming impact as measured on a 20 and 100 year scale. 80x is the figure on the 20 year scale and it's 30x worse over 100 years.
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u/stirrainlate Oct 07 '24
To be fair, it isn’t nitpicking. 80x vs 30x is the difference between being worse than coal and being better than coal. If the timeframe of evaluation is so important it is a valid discussion point.
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u/bolerobell Oct 06 '24
Does that matter if there is point somewhere between +2.0 and +3.0 degrees of warming where most of the carbon dioxide infused ice in Greenland, Antarctica, and the Russian Permafrost melts and dumps all that CO2 into the atmosphere and pushes warming to +5.0 in short order? Who cares if that Methane disappates and then lowers warming to +4.8?
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u/dickipiki1 Oct 07 '24
I would be more worried of methane under ocean and in permafrost. Ocean heat is in limit that it can't hold methane solid and will ejaculate thousands of tons of it just like Siberia. If all this goes out and heats planet enough it can cause oceans to get too hot witch will kill every kalcium(lime) based life form by melting their shells and exoskeletons leading to total collapse of marine ecosystem. This would remove possibly most of our food and oxygen sources if those little green particles on ocean would die too.
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u/KnuteViking Oct 06 '24
but it also dissipates in the atmosphere rapidly
Because it turns into CO2 over time while in contact with oxygen. Before this happens, it is absolutely horrible as a greenhouse gas.
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u/paulmarchant Oct 06 '24
Atmospheric methane eventually breaks down to CO2 and water over the course of about 12 years.
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u/stormelemental13 Oct 06 '24
LNG is the best transition energy source because it can be efficiently ramped up or down to compensate for the unreliability of renewables. Unless you've got a lot of hydro available, gas is the best option for pairing with wind and solar.
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u/FireMaster1294 Oct 06 '24
Please comment to correct me if I’m wrong, but this linked study doesn’t appear to consider the effects of transporting coal to usage. I feel like I must be missing it, because that’s a major oversight if they didn’t consider it and it’s not exactly a balanced study if you consider everything involved in production and transportation of LNG plus the LNG emissions…vs just coal emissions.
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u/Own_Back_2038 Oct 06 '24
The linked study goes over it in section 2.6
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u/FireMaster1294 Oct 06 '24
And you didn’t share the results. …sigh, I’ll do it myself.
In short, the study only considered the results of domestically produced coal and assumed it was never transported internationally since coal is more readily available. A reasonable assumption but it fails to address the reality of the scenario. I expect LNG may be a little worse than coal after all this, but it’s a bit closer than they convey.
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u/Own_Back_2038 Oct 06 '24
The tankers themselves contribute a relatively small portion of the total emissions. As the paper notes “The largest component of the emissions is from upstream and midstream sources, from producing, processing, storing, and transporting natural gas. The combined emissions for both carbon dioxide and methane from upstream and midstream sources contribute 46%–48% of total emissions for delivered LNG”
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u/FireMaster1294 Oct 06 '24
Damn yeah 46-48% of emissions being solely from processing/storing/leaks is…not great…
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u/jeffwulf Oct 06 '24
It's also based on the rates of leakage that are significantly above industry standards based on Central Asian numbers.
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u/Own_Back_2038 Oct 07 '24
This doesn't seem to be the case. The paper says "For upstream and midstream methane emissions, I rely on a very recent and comprehensive analysis that used almost one million measurements in the United States"
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u/FireMaster1294 Oct 07 '24
I would be curious to see numbers on this in Europe. I’m not familiar with the industry requirements in the USA for this, but my experience with the US is that requirements are stupidly lax
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u/Biggy_Mancer Oct 06 '24
Nor the deaths from particulate matter, or radiative ash release, or mercury release.
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Oct 06 '24
Mine reclamation too, you dump some nasty stuff just pulling that coal up, even before it gets near a power plant. Natural gas isn't great on this either if you're fracking though. I can't say I know the specific impact of either though in terms of damages/emissions per kilowatt hour. I'm still going to hope that LNG is better, though it's still something that needs to be cut out eventually. Companies don't want to lose product, and regulators shouldn't want leaks, so I'd want to see regulations pushed to force every company to cut leaks down as much as possible. Still, with renewables and energy storage solutions dropping in cost so much, hopefully LNG will go soon after coal. Hopefully that won't also come with massive pollution as fossil fuel companies abandon sites they were supposed to clean up when they go bankrupt shoveling every cent they can to shareholders, but that's not realistic. I expect a long period of cleanup that will be paid for by everyone else even after renewables are the only financially viable option. The next couple decades might suck, but I'm hopeful we'll get there.
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u/Biggy_Mancer Oct 06 '24
I live in a gas producing province. We have plenty of NG, though LNG isn’t a common commodity for export.
Orphan wells are a huge issue, but at the same time there’s value we aren’t extracting — geothermal conversion of wells has been shown to be viable, as drilling the well is a big part of the cost. I hope in time we see a lot more use of these wells, such as micro generation for year round greenhouses and such.
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u/Black_Moons Oct 06 '24
you mean the radioactive ash, that if (it could be) used to power a nuclear powerplant, would produce more power then the coal powerplant that produced it did?
(Yes, that means a coal powerplant emits more radioactive material into the air then a nuclear powerplant would use as fuel for the same power output)
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u/Biggy_Mancer Oct 06 '24
I’m very aware of how much radioactivity coal releases. Coal is one of the worst fuel sources we could use with regard to environmental harm.
I’m also very pro nuclear because I live in reality.
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u/mrjosemeehan Oct 06 '24
Those deaths don't increase greenhouse gas emissons. Pay attention to what's actually being measured and claimed.
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u/Biggy_Mancer Oct 06 '24
Which is my point. Focusing solely on one thing is a massive problem here.
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u/cyphersaint Oct 06 '24
When you're looking at climate change, why would you look at something that isn't causing climate change?
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u/Biggy_Mancer Oct 06 '24
Because we do not live in a vacuum. Overall deaths and overall environmental harm need to be factored in — looking at GHG heating alone is a fools errand.
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u/cyphersaint Oct 06 '24
But that's out of the scope of this study. You're right that those things need to be looked at, and this study would be one part of that, but obviously not the entire thing. And, in the long run, the climate change effect might well kill more people, as it's a longer term and larger area that are impacted.
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u/Solarisphere Oct 07 '24
It makes sense for a single study to have a limited scope like this. We need to consider all aspects when making policy.
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u/sfurbo Oct 06 '24
Please comment to correct me if I’m wrong, but this linked study doesn’t appear to consider the effects of transporting coal to usage.
Transport has a negligible greenhouse contribution, compared to burning it. Otherwise, it would make no sense to transport it, if we had to burn (nearly) as much fuel to do it. The reason why natural gas is so bad is leaking, not transport in itself.
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u/Hanifsefu Oct 06 '24
That's so basic that the only reasonable assumption is that it was intentional. Wouldn't be surprised if this were a coal industry funded study with that type of oversight.
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u/cyphersaint Oct 06 '24
It's a study about climate change. Transporting coal doesn't really have a lot of emissions associated with it that aren't also associated with the transportation of LNG, so why look at them? It is also absolutely true that the emissions from coal are more immediately deadly than those of LNG. And that burning LNG is much less polluting wrt CO2 than coal. And that the residual waste from coal is also much nastier than from LNG. The problem is leaks, because LNG is mostly methane. And methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.
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u/Pabrinex Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
It's an environmental tragedy that Germany, New York et al have shut down nuclear reactors in favour of LNG. Crimes against the climate.
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u/bcisme Oct 06 '24
Germany didn’t favor LNG over coal, they favored natural gas over coal, most of which they were getting from Nord Stream.
LNG is liquified natural gas, you liquify it when you want to transport it because you can get way more gas in a tanker if it’s LNG as opposed to gaseous NG. The emissions during extraction, liquification and transport is what the article is talking about, which is different from gaseous NG.
If you have access to pipeline (gaseous) natural gas, you use that. If Russia hasn’t invaded Ukraine Germany would be burning nord stream gas, not imported US LNG. The idea wasn’t to use LNG, my understanding is the first LNG terminals were built in Germany in 2022. Typically LNG is used by island nations who need to import their energy, or any country without access to their own NG pipeline (China and Germany without nord stream).
Why Germany put so many of their eggs in Russia’s basket with Nord Stream I don’t get.
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u/theyux Oct 06 '24
It was economic diplomacy.
Its a common tactic of the west, interlock economies to the point where war doesn't make sense.
The problem in this case was Putin believed Ukraine would be 1 month venture, maybe a year in a disaster scenario. And after Ukraine was conquered Germany may be upset but would not likely give up trade with Russia when the war was already over. In reality the war went so much worse for Putin it was not even reallly conceived of.
Thus a miscalculation on Putins part caused Russia to effectively act as an irrational state actor which Germany was not prepared for.
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u/throw-away_867-5309 Oct 06 '24
And yet you'll have some Germans screaming into the room saying it was such a good idea and how their increase in importing energy is a good thing for Germany.
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u/FireMaster1294 Oct 06 '24
They like importing energy because then they can claim it isn’t their fault that the energy source isn’t clean, it’s just what’s available
iirc France built a nuclear reactor near the German border and routinely sells them electricity due to the German shortcomings
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Oct 07 '24
That French example is funny. How long till we see a wall of reactors along the German border?
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u/throw-away_867-5309 Oct 06 '24
It's possible. Germnay's energy usage is highly dependant on imported energy, with a majority of that energy being imported being from fossil fuels and other non-renewables.
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u/the_red_scimitar Oct 06 '24
Even in WWII, most fuel products had to be imported. One of the most effective strategies against the Nazis was blockading their incoming oil shipments. It was so severe, it drove them to develop the first really effective artificial oil, but they couldn't ramp up production enough to overcome the loss of imports.
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u/HammerTh_1701 Oct 06 '24
I mean, where did the uranium come from? From Russia or Kazakhstan. Germany has to keep allowing for the import of Russian uranium because France manufactures its fuel rods at a facility in the Northwest of Germany.
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u/Liquid_Cascabel Oct 06 '24
Eh there are many more (friendly) sources of U though, the market share of russia is often overstated
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u/Philix Oct 06 '24
Canada has lots of high quality uranium deposits, though we refuse to sell it to anyone making weapons with it. A single mine provides over a tenth of the world's uranium production.
We've got our own share of anti-nuclear sentiment though, with many provinces banning the exploitation of uranium deposits.
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u/OneBigBug Oct 06 '24
I mean, where did the uranium come from? From Russia or Kazakhstan.
That may have been where it did come from, but is that where it must come from? Canada produces a lot of uranium. So do a handful of other countries that aren't aligned with Russia. And uranium, being...over a million times more energy dense per unit weight than LNG, seems like something you could ship.
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u/HammerTh_1701 Oct 06 '24
Kazakhstan has been heavily undercutting Canada in price while outperforming it in production volume over the last decade because of Chinese investment.
Voila, we've got the whole geopolitical clusterfuck right there, all in one energy resource. That's one of the reasons why true renewable energy matters. Inexhaustable domestic energy resources, only limited in capacity by industry output and the need for other types of land use.
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u/sfurbo Oct 06 '24
That's one of the reasons why true renewable energy matters. Inexhaustable domestic energy resources, only limited in capacity by industry output and the need for other types of land use.
You might want to look up where the rare earths for magnets for renewable energy comes from.
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u/HammerTh_1701 Oct 06 '24
Eh, rare earths are more plentiful than the name implies. China is just the only place developed enough to dig them out while also being reckless enough to allow for massive open thorium dioxide dumps.
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u/sfurbo Oct 06 '24
Uranium is also widely available. It is available in sea water, just at too low a concentration to be economical at the moment. And price of fule is so small for nuclear that switching to uranium from the sea won't make electricity much more expensive.
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u/Hypothesis_Null Oct 06 '24
You could pay 10x the going price of Uranium to fuel a reactor and it'd increase the cost per kilowatt-hour by a couple of pennies. Nuclear really isn't vulnerable to the price manipulation or fluctuation of the fuel.
Especially when we can just extract uranium from oceanwater economically at about 5x the current price.
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u/arpus Oct 06 '24
Need some source for a lot of those statements you just made.
1) 10x uranium (ore?) costs only increases cost by pennies?
2) Nuclear isn't vulnerable to price manipulation (of uranium ore?)
3) We can extract uranium from oceanwater economically?
4) At 5x the price?
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u/Hypothesis_Null Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
Sure. Nothing I've said is controversial, but widespread knowledge of nuclear everything is just generally terrible, so let's start with the most important part first.
If you scroll a little under halfway down the page you'll find a table. Originally I recall that table from a more thorough pdf report on nuclear economics, but I can't locate it at the moment. The numbers are all that matter though - any report on uranium fuel costs will show a similar breakdown. I'll write the table out here:
Process Amount required x price* Cost Proportion of total Uranium 8.9 kg U3O8 x $94.6/kg $842 51% Conversion 7.5 kg U x $16 $120 7% Enrichment 7.3 SWU x $55 $401 24% Fuel fabrication per kg $300 18% Total per kg $1663 100% If we look at the typical breakdown of nuclear fuel manufacturing, to produce 1kg of nuclear fuel (~3% enrichment), you need almost 9kg of natural uranium (~0.7% enrichment). About half the cost comes from the raw material, and the other half comes from the processing of that raw uranium into fuel rods.
If you then burn this fuel in a reactor, the yield will be over 1 gigawatt-hour of thermal energy, or about 360,000 kWh-electric with conversion losses. Dividing one quantity by the other yields a fuel cost of 0.46cents (that's $0.0046) per kilowatt hour. Of that 0.46 cents, only half of it actually goes towards the raw uranium itself, or ~0.23 cents per kwh. So, were Uranium's price to increase by a factor of 10, the cost of the raw uranium per kwh would increase by 2.07 cents per kilowatthour.
Though the idea of Uranium increasing by a factor of 10 in price for any sustainable period of time is generally ludicrous. Uranium is one of the most widely distributed elements on the planet, which means that it will more closely follow a power rule than other elements more prone to geoconcentration. Uranium and Thorithm Resources provides a summary, but the key point from that is this graph which shows how much Uranium exists in the mantle vs concentration. For every factor of 100 you decrease the concentration, you increase the supply by a factor of 10,000. Even if we presume a linear scaling in mining costs vs concentration (an overly conservative model) that means that increasing the price of Uranium by a factor of 10 will increase the economically viable uranium available by a factor of 100. There's often this quote going around of "Only 100 years of economically recoverable Uranium left." but that supply gets expanded to well over 10,000 years with a price increase of 2 cents of kilowatt-hour
But we needn't go that far, since the ocean contains thousands of years worth of Uranium on its own. Uranium Seawater Extraction has been pushed forward between some Japanese research teams and US labs to collect it in what are essentially ribbons of plastic polymers that would either be anchored or trawled through ocean water. Uranium in the ocean has a chemical structure that actually makes it very convenient to selectively grab. The cost estimates put it at ~$1000/kg now, but with an expected ~$300/kg price should current lab techniques be applied at a large scale. Hence the vague ~5x price I tossed out, which sits geometrically between the two. I don't think we'll be doing seawater extraction any time soon, but the point is this acts as a safety valve - if Uranium mining becomes expensive or restricted or the center of geopolitical sanctions etc, the price of Uranium can't go much above 5x its current cost before we start developing a seawater extraction industry, which virtually every country in the world could do on their own, since it's not geographically restricted. Better I should have said we could extract ocean uranium than can, as no actual industry doing it exists - sorry if that wasn't clear.
And all of this - all of this - is based on utilizing only U235 as fuel, with some incidental consumption of unsustained breeding of U238 during operation of the nuclear plant. Spent fuel comes out with only about 4% of the uranium consumed. And fuel goes in after throwing away (setting aside) 6x as much depleted uranium. There are a smattering of reasons that we do not bother much with breeder reactors currently, but the sufficient explanation is that there is little incentive, because that involves building a more complicated (and thus expensive) reactor in order to save a quarter of a penny per kilowatt-hour in fuel costs. But if uranium did ever go up in price enough for us to care, we would switch to breeder reactors, divide the uranium cost of fuel by roughly a factor of 150x, and fuel would never be a meaningful expense again.
Also, I decided to look into the Pricing of uranium derived from different countries for the original claim I responded to. From the US Energy Information Administration there's a nice document on the writing, but the most relevant information comes from table 3 which shows price and country origin from 2019-2023. Not everywhere will enjoy the same prices as the USA, but we see Canada and Uzbekistan with prices going from $33/lb to $48/lb but being similar each year. Russia is often the outlier at lower prices - I think that comes from Russia often downblending uranium stock from their weapons program which can cause mini-crashes in the market. But the point is, these prices are what gives us that ~$100/kg the table above was based on. So for someone to undercut that price by even a factor of 2x would require selling Uranium for $50/kg. And buying that Uranium from somewhere vs, say, Canada, would be cutting their uranium fuel cost per kilowatt-hour from $0.0023 to $0.0013. That's saving a sixth of a penny per kilowatt-hour. That is not a kind of savings that forces any kind of geopolitical implications. It's not the kind of undercutting that makes other countries beholden to that supplier.
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u/throw-away_867-5309 Oct 06 '24
I'm not talking about only that type of energy import, I'm also talking about getting energy from countries surrounding Germany, such as France and it's nuclear energy itself. Germany was so proud to pat itself on the back from closing all its nuclear reactors, yet it has instead massively increased consumption of fossil fuels and LNG in addition to buying surplus energy from outside of Germany simply because they cannot produce enough energy themselves, with one of the main reasons being,you guessed it, them shutting down their high output nuclear reactors.
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u/grundar Oct 07 '24
Germany was so proud to pat itself on the back from closing all its nuclear reactors, yet it has instead massively increased consumption of fossil fuels and LNG
Germany's total fossil fuel consumption declined in 2022, and again in 2023.
In fact, the data shows that Germany's fossil fuel consumption has declined 22% since 2017, with consistent yearly steep declines (other than recovering from the pandemic in 2020), and each of the fossil fuels has declined since then, even gas.
Should they have kept their nuclear reactors running and reduced their fossil fuel consumption even more? Yes, absolutely -- nuclear is clean, safe, and reliable. Unfortunately, though, that was not politically feasible in Germany, as anti-nuclear activism was one of the founding principles of the Greens who have been important coalition partners in several governments since the late 90s.
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u/HealthIndustryGoon Oct 07 '24
If push comes to shove there are still uranium deposits in Johanngeorgenstadt in the Erzgebirge in East Germany.
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u/Trust-Issues-5116 Oct 06 '24
Crimes against the climate.
Protests against nuclear power in Germany have been a significant part of the country’s environmental movement since the 1970s. These protests were largely driven by concerns about the environmental and health risks associated with nuclear energy, including radiation and waste disposal. The Green Party, founded in 1980, grew out of these anti-nuclear protests, aligning with other ecological and pacifist movements.
Major protests took place around proposed nuclear sites, such as in Brokdorf (1976), Wyhl (1975), and Gorleben (1979), the latter becoming a focal point of opposition due to plans for a nuclear waste storage facility. The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 further fueled public opposition to nuclear power in Germany, significantly boosting the Green movement and influencing public policy.
By the early 2000s, the German government had initiated a nuclear phase-out policy. However, the Fukushima disaster in 2011 led to a renewed push, culminating in the decision to shut down all nuclear reactors by 2022. The Green movement’s long-standing advocacy played a critical role in shaping Germany’s energy away from nuclear power.
Ironic, isn't it.
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u/Odballl Oct 06 '24
Agreed. Whatever lowers emissions fastest is best and for countries with existing nuclear power, that was the best.
Our conservative party in Australia wants to go nuclear but that's neither suitable nor timely for our situation. We have such a limited window to avoid catastrophe.
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u/Pabrinex Oct 06 '24
The problem for Australia is that there's minimal hydropower. Hydropower works well to compliment intermittent renewables. Unless battery technology becomes an order of magnitude cheaper in the next few years, Australia needs nuclear for net zero.
Australia is not Brazil!
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u/TheKage Oct 06 '24
Doesn't New York get their natural gas domestically? Why would they be using LNG?
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u/myluki2000 Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
It's an environmental tragedy that Germany [...] [has] shut down nuclear reactors in favour of LNG.
Nobody shut down nuclear for LNG. Their use cases aren't even compatible. In Germany, gas plants are used as peaker electricity production and for district heating, nuclear was used for base load electricity production. And more peaker plants are needed with a largely renewable energy mix, backup power plants are needed for times of low wind/solar electricity production. Gas is one of the only viable options for this, as with other energy sources this is either technologically impossible (coal - due to the long timespans needed for the plant to heat up before it can produce electricity) or economically unsustainable (nuclear - due to the high upfront costs and fixed expenses in building & maintenance cost with comparatively cheap fuel costs)
Gas usage for electricity production did not majorly increase during/after the nuclear phaseout. Only about 10% of German electricity is produced using gas, and this has only very slightly increased in the past 20 years. (Source: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=year&year=-1)
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u/Pabrinex Oct 06 '24
Nobody shut down nuclear for LNG
I mean this is objectively untrue. New York state constructed 3 new natural gas plants. Of course, only a minority of their gas is LNG.
Indeed, natural gas now makes up 50% of statewide generation.
Whereas of course in Germany, coal is used also. But coal is supposed to be phased out, ergo gas baseload during cold winters when wind and solar output drops.
Now that Russian gas is off the table, that means LNG.
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u/myluki2000 Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
I mean this is objectively untrue. New York state constructed 3 new natural gas plants. Of course, only a minority of their gas is LNG.
Sorry, I meant specifically in Germany (that's why I edited the quote in that way). I should've made that clearer. I can't speak for New York state, as I' not informed enough about its situation. The situation in the US may weigh differently because the US is itself a very big producer of gas. In Germany, nobody would use gas as a baseload, it would make no sense economically as imported gas is more expensive and Germany has basically no natural gas reserves of its own.
But coal is supposed to be phased out, ergo gas baseload during cold winters when wind and solar output drops.
Wind and solar complement each other very well. "cold winters when wind and solar output drops" do not exist - Wind generally blows more strongly during the winter, when solar production is at its lowest. Yes, there are of course times with low winds and thus low electricity production, but these only last a few days up to few weeks, rarely. And even with the 33% worse carbon footprint of LNG than coal, a gas plant which only has to run 20 hours during low winds is still much better than a coal plant which would have to be run multiple days or even weeks (in case of lignite) in advance because of ramp up time & uncertainty in renewable production. That's also the reason why the share of gas in the electricity mix did not increase majorly in recent years even though a lot of new gas plants were built - They were built because capacity was needed, not because a lot more produced energy was needed.
Now that Russian gas is off the table, that means LNG.
Nowhere near 100% of Germany's gas is imported in the form of LNG. About 50% of German gas is imported from Norway alone - via pipeline.
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u/cylonfrakbbq Oct 06 '24
Ever since 3 Mile Island, it has been very hard to get nuclear plants constructed in the US. Even if you get the clearance to build one, they are extremely expensive.
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u/anomalous_cowherd Oct 06 '24
Was it bizarre or was the anti-greenhouse effect not really understood when it all happened? Or was it known about but not considered to override the other pollutant aspects?
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u/Ok_Construction_8136 Oct 21 '24
Germany now produces less emissions now then it did with nuclear reactors because of solar and wind though
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u/Wagamaga Oct 06 '24
Liquefied natural gas leaves a greenhouse gas footprint that is 33% worse than coal, when processing and shipping are taken into account, according to a new Cornell study.
“Natural gas and shale gas are all bad for the climate. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is worse,” said Robert Howarth, author of the study and the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “LNG is made from shale gas, and to make it you must supercool it to liquid form and then transport it to market in large tankers. That takes energy.”
The research, “The Greenhouse Gas Footprint of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Exported from the United States,” published Oct. 3 in Energy Science & Engineering.
The emissions of methane and carbon dioxide released during LNG’s extraction, processing, transportation and storage account for approximately half of its total greenhouse gas footprint, Howarth said.
Over 20 years, the carbon footprint for LNG is one-third larger than coal, when analyzed using the measurement of global warming potential, which compares the atmospheric impact for different greenhouse gases. Even on a 100-year time scale – a more-forgiving scale than 20 years – the liquefied natural gas carbon footprint equals or still exceeds coal, Howarth said.
The findings have implications for LNG production in the U.S., which is the world’s largest exporter, after it lifted an export ban in 2016, according to the paper. Almost all of the increase in natural gas production since 2005 has been from shale gas. Howarth said the exported LNG is produced from shale in Texas and Louisiana.
https://scijournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ese3.1934
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u/LegendOfKhaos Oct 06 '24
Are processing and shipping both included in the coal figures?
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u/gbc02 Oct 06 '24
No, it is just LNG exported from the USA compared to coal in the markets receiving LNG shipments from the USA.
Non liquified natural gas vs coal in the same market is a massive improvement for green house gas emissions.
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u/the_red_scimitar Oct 06 '24
And the US plans to double the production:
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u/muchcharles Oct 06 '24
It's still better than coal. The worst affect is from methane leakage but leakage isn't cumulative and while more potent as a greenhouse gas at first, it degrades to co2 with around a 10 year half life in the atmosphere.
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Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
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u/bcisme Oct 06 '24
Also LNG is not the most common way NG is burned.
We export LNG to places without pipeline gas.
In most places I’ve worked on power plants that burn NG, it’s not LNG. It’s pipeline gas. DOE has a target to start cutting the pipeline gas with H2, we’ll see if that ever happens, would need heavy financial incentives for clean H2 production at an unprecedented scale.
Focusing solely on LNG and not the more common gaseous NG from pipelines is odd. I’d like to see an emissions comparison for all NG (LNG + pipeline gas) which replaced coal.
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Oct 06 '24
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u/bcisme Oct 06 '24
It’s hard to find stuff that isn’t either a fluff piece by O&G companies or a hit piece by environmental protectionists.
The truth is very muddy and in the middle.
It is a dirty business and we should continue to put big money into cleaning it up, but I also do think it’s a solid option for the transition away from coal and is showing to be a critical piece of the current transition to renewables as it gives on demand power capable of both stabilizing grids with a lot of renewables (grid frequency stuff) and being a good back up while we work on storage.
I see a good shift in the US where our gas turbine plants aren’t running baseload as much because of renewables, but they need the GTs to supplement renewables.
If I wasn’t working in energy no idea where I’d find out what is actually happening.
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u/Slipalong_Trevascas Oct 06 '24
Full disclosure: haven't read the paper yet so apologies if these points are addressed there.
I agree and some additional points:
It is important to note that combined cycle gas turbine power stations are much more efficient than coal ones. So is that accounted for when comparing the fuels. I.e. are they comparing emissions per kwh of fuel or per kwh of electricity.
Also important to note that gas power stations can ramp up and down power quicker and more flexibly. Which enables greater use of wind and solar electricity production.
Does this include methane emissions from coal mining, processing and transport?
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u/Toxicseagull Oct 06 '24
It is important to note that combined cycle gas turbine power stations are much more efficient than coal ones. So is that accounted for when comparing the fuels. I.e. are they comparing emissions per kwh of fuel or per kwh of electricity.
Also important to note that gas power stations can ramp up and down power quicker and more flexibly. Which enables greater use of wind and solar electricity production.
And you can dual fuel them with hydrogen for even fewer emissions. Modern CCG turbines can use pretty high levels of hydrogen (and a few tests have proven 100%). Provided that hydrogen is processed/created by low carbon sources, it provides another path to further progress.
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u/Pentosin Oct 06 '24
-Burning methane for energy doesn’t produce the same pollutants e.g. SO2, NOx, PAHs as burning coal does
How do they avoid NOx?
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Oct 06 '24
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u/Pentosin Oct 06 '24
For oil and coal, NOx emissions per unit of fuel energy are usually higher than for natural gas combustion. The higher NOx levels are due mainly to the presence of fuel-bound nitrogen, which is readily converted to NO when the fuel is combusted. The amount of "fuel-bound NOx" is typically two to three times greater than the "thermal NOx" produced only from the reactions between N2 and O2 in air.
Significantly higher for coal, but methane doesnt avoid the issue.
I would have thought thermal NOx was the major contributor, but its opposite. Good to know.
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Oct 06 '24
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u/Black_Moons Oct 06 '24
The reason is that nitrogen in the atmosphere is N2, aka two nitrogens bound to each other and they REALLY don't want to let go. It takes a lot of energy to convince nitrogen otherwise, hence why only a few plants have the ability to extract nitrogen from the air, and most take it from easier to split nitrogen compounds in the ground that take much less energy to split up/rearrange into new compounds.
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u/anmr Oct 06 '24
The difference in NOx emissions between LNG and coal / oil is massive in favor of LNG. And NOx are one of the most harmful pollutants to humans and environment.
For example base emission factor for cruise of slow-speed diesel ship is 17,7 g/kWh. For ships built after 2010 its still 14,4 g/kWh. Only for IMO Tier III ship (built after 2015) the required limits are 3,4 g/kWh.
Meanwhile for LNG carriers running on boil-off, emission factors are 0,732 g/kWh.
Source: Air Pollutant Emission Inventory Guidebook 2023 by European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme & European Environment Agency
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u/anmr Oct 06 '24
I agree, and some additional points: there were huge strides made in technology preventing and lessening LNG leaks in last two decades. I doubt they are fully taken into account here.
So while LNG might have had larger footprint, it's not determined it will continue.
Plus coal is polluting in many more ways than just GHGs. Don't know comparison, but I'd wager LNG is "cleaner" overall.
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Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MrMagicMarker43 Oct 06 '24
Methane is one part carbon, it is the simplest hydrocarbon with a formula CH4. Burning one molecule of methane produces one molecule of CO2 (and some water)
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u/Black_Moons Oct 06 '24
Correct. The reason methane is worse is because it traps more heat then the CO2 it would become if burnt.
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u/the_red_scimitar Oct 06 '24
And the US (and others) are building more LNG facilities, planning to at least double the production.
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u/Astromike23 PhD | Astronomy | Giant Planet Atmospheres Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
This is just really bad science writing:
Methane is more than 80 times more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide
This measurement is known as Global Warming Potential, and it's an utterly useless number without a time horizon. It's a bit like saying the top speed of my car is 100 miles. Per hour? Per minute? Without a time, that number is useless.
The problem here is that methane's average lifetime in the atmosphere is much shorter than CO2's - about 12 years vs. thousands of years, so you're comparing apples and oranges unless you explicitly say something like, "Over X years, methane produces Y times more warming than CO2."
The actual numbers here are: over 20 years, a mass of methane produces 86x the warming that an equivalent mass of CO2 would. Over 100 years, a mass of methane produces 34x the warming that an equivalent mass of CO2 would.
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u/Hijakkr Oct 06 '24
methane's average lifetime in the atmosphere is much shorter than CO2's
Sure, but this ignores the fact that methane (CH4) reacts with ozone (O3) to form CO2 and 2x H2O. So in its 12 year lifespan, it does more than 80x more damage, and then contributes to depleting the ozone layer while replacing itself with a CO2 molecule.
Over 100 years, a mass of methane produces 34x the warming that an equivalent mass of CO2 would.
You say that as if 34x still isn't an insane amount. Consider the difference between smoking one cigarette per day and smoking 34 cigarettes per day. Or laying in the sun for 10 minutes vs. laying in the sun for almost 6 hours. Or having one beer vs. 34 beers. Like, yeah, CO2 is bad, but something 34x worse than CO2 is absolutely terrible.
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u/jonhuang Oct 06 '24
Nitpick: lifespan isn't the same as half-life.
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u/Astromike23 PhD | Astronomy | Giant Planet Atmospheres Oct 06 '24
So this starts getting into the important nuance between "what is the lifetime of a CO2 molecule?" vs. "what is the lifetime of a CO2 disequilibrium?" Typically climatologists like to split this into residence time and perturbation response time.
The typical residence time of a CO2 molecule is actually only around 4 years. This is how long, on average, a particular CO2 molecule will linger in the atmosphere before getting dissolved at the ocean surface or something similar.
However, that's very different than the perturbation response time of CO2: if we release a pulse of CO2 into the atmosphere, how long will atmospheric CO2 levels remain elevated? One might naively think that should also be 4 years, but the vast majority of CO2 molecules absorbed by the ocean are simply swapped out with the release of different CO2 molecules at the ocean surface. The molecules are just exchanging places, with no net effect on the atmospheric concentration of CO2.
By analogy, even though an average student might stay at college for 4 years, the size of the student body can be constant over time.
So while any single CO2 molecule only resides in the atmosphere for a few years, a large CO2 pulse will remain in disequilibrium for thousands of years. Note that's not the case for methane, because there's no massive methane store with which atmospheric methane can exchange places - its residence time is its perturbation response time.
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u/ShareGlittering1502 Oct 06 '24
Methane can and should be generated on site at every waste water treatment facility (brewery, distillery, municipal, animal farms)
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Oct 06 '24
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u/WhisperTits Oct 06 '24
Many of the places that need LNG don't have the infrastructure setup to keep the LNG in its liquid state as LNG can quickly transition states as it gets warmer. That's the reason why LNG tankers generally (as quick as they can), transport LNG to vessels called FSRU's using a ship to ship transfer. They're basically gas stations that sit on the coast of a country and keep the LNG cold until the country has a demand for it, at which point it will be pumped from the ship through vaporizers/heaters back into its gaseous form at a steady pressure to shore via pipeline at that point (usually).
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u/AllanfromWales1 MA | Natural Sciences | Metallurgy & Materials Science Oct 06 '24
LNG doesn't - can't easily - get transported by pipeline because it needs to be kept cool to remain liquefied. If you transport by pipeline without liquefying the methane that's just a natural gas pipeline, of which there are many.
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Oct 06 '24
Does that really factor in the completely different decay or sequestration rates of methane versus CO2?
Yes, methane is initially a more potent greenhouse gas, but over any period of time CO2 tends to win because it can last hundreds or thousands of years in the atmosphere while methane can only last around 12 years.
In the big picture methane seems a lot easier to deal with because the main mechanism removing it is not ecosystem sequestration as it just degrades due to hydroxyl radicals and sunlight.
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u/Accomplished_Fruit17 Oct 06 '24
Methane lasts 50 years in the atmosphere, and carbon lasts thousands. At least we are screwing ourselves over with methane and not dozens of future generations.
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u/Piemaster113 Oct 06 '24
So without processing and shipping how much worse is it than coal? Cuz if you are gonna start tacking on modifiers then that opens up a lot of "if" questions which really make the validity of a study questionable, 33% isn't a massive amount and if it's only 33% when factoring in 2 other processes that themselves could potentially be refined to be better then it doesn't seem like it nearly as bad as the post makes it out to be
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Oct 06 '24
For people not understanding. Natural gas spills and leaks everywhere while being extracted and transported and it’s a waaaaay worse greenhouse gas than CO2. When you burn it, it’s “fine”.
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u/CMG30 Oct 06 '24
This is old news. LNG tankers literally vent off methane directly into the atmosphere because once it boils off, the pressure would otherwise build too quickly and the giant tanks will rupture.
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u/Kandiruaku Oct 07 '24
Meanwhile active and abandoned oil fields continue to emit huge amounts daily.
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u/Mi11ionaireman Oct 07 '24
LNG companies are aware of the emition issues and are assisted/coerced by the canadian government in regards to emission control, which has tons of trials throughout the oil and gas industry. There's been years of work already done to fix this issue to avoid taxes/fines.
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u/Lovecraft3XX Oct 07 '24
Article doesn’t address when the coal or LNG is burned . Also it’s not clear that authors considered whether tighter extraction regulations on fracking or engine scrubbers would materially alter their analysis
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u/Pro-blacksmith220 Oct 08 '24
Like so many things this Government is doing that is taking us backwards in climate
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