Natural Gas and Climate Change

Introduction

Boone Pickens, American businessman and energy theorist, was the first, in 2012, to talk about natural gas as bridge fuel to a future far less dependent on oil.

In 2014 the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in the report “Climate Change 2014 – Mitigation of Climate Change”(IPCC 2014), seems to accept the argument in favor of gas by saying: “GHG emissions from energy supply can be reduced significantly by replacing current world average coal-fired power plants with modern, highly efficient natural gas combined-cycle power plants or combined heat and power plants, provided that natural gas is available and the fugitive emissions associated with extraction and supply are low or mitigated.”

In recent years there have been several gas advocacy initiatives promoted by major players in the sector and as many arguments of the detractors of this proposal. Among these are the American geoscientist J. David Hughes and, the Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology at...