Natural Gas Harms US Economy And Won’t Solve Rising Electricity Demand
The post Natural Gas Harms US Economy And Won’t Solve Rising Electricity Demand appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com. Remember the era of cheap natural gas? Yea, that world is gone. Utilities and tech companies may be clamoring to build new gas-fired power plants to meet rising energy demand, but no matter how much they envision gas as a solution, there’s no escaping gas’s expensive, bad-for-the-climate reality. Anyone harboring the illusion of low-cost gas is operating as if it’s still 2015. “I think people have in their minds that gas is a cheap way to generate power”, said Rich Powell, CEO of trade group the Clean Energy Buyers Association. “New build natural gas is not a cheap way to generate electricity.” Today, gas’s economics are facing pressure on two fronts: Supply chain bottlenecks and workforce shortages have made it nearly impossible to source equipment for new gas-fired power plants in the near to medium term while also raising the costs of those plants. And gas as a fuel is becoming more expensive as global demand for liquified natural gas intensifies and the United States exports more of the fossil fuel instead of keeping it within our borders to meet American demand. The shale revolution did usher in an era of cheap gas that reshaped the U.S. energy landscape, with gas overtaking coal in electricity generation around 2016. However, in recent years, new natural gas plants have constituted a small share of new capacity additions to the overall U.S. electricity mix. Capacity additions by year, from 2017 to 2024. U.S. Energy Information Administration In fact, since the 2018 surge, nearly every megawatt of new generation added to the grid has been clean energy—96% of new power in 2024 and 85% in 2023. That’s largely because for more than half a decade, renewables have been the cheapest sources of new electricity. The majority of the world’s new electricity built in 2023…
The post Natural Gas Harms US Economy And Won’t Solve Rising Electricity Demand appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.
Remember the era of cheap natural gas? Yea, that world is gone. Utilities and tech companies may be clamoring to build new gas-fired power plants to meet rising energy demand, but no matter how much they envision gas as a solution, there’s no escaping gas’s expensive, bad-for-the-climate reality. Anyone harboring the illusion of low-cost gas is operating as if it’s still 2015. “I think people have in their minds that gas is a cheap way to generate power”, said Rich Powell, CEO of trade group the Clean Energy Buyers Association. “New build natural gas is not a cheap way to generate electricity.” Today, gas’s economics are facing pressure on two fronts: Supply chain bottlenecks and workforce shortages have made it nearly impossible to source equipment for new gas-fired power plants in the near to medium term while also raising the costs of those plants. And gas as a fuel is becoming more expensive as global demand for liquified natural gas intensifies and the United States exports more of the fossil fuel instead of keeping it within our borders to meet American demand. The shale revolution did usher in an era of cheap gas that reshaped the U.S. energy landscape, with gas overtaking coal in electricity generation around 2016. However, in recent years, new natural gas plants have constituted a small share of new capacity additions to the overall U.S. electricity mix. Capacity additions by year, from 2017 to 2024. U.S. Energy Information Administration In fact, since the 2018 surge, nearly every megawatt of new generation added to the grid has been clean energy—96% of new power in 2024 and 85% in 2023. That’s largely because for more than half a decade, renewables have been the cheapest sources of new electricity. The majority of the world’s new electricity built in 2023…
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