Full Title: Dispatching Direct Use: Achieving Greenhouse Gas Reductions With Natural Gas in Homes and Businesses
Author(s): Richard Meyer
Publisher(s): American Gas Association
Publication Date: November 1, 2015
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
This document serves as a resource to companies, policymakers, and other stakeholders to advance direct use of natural gas in homes and businesses as an emissions reductions tool.
Encouraging the increased use of natural gas by replacing electric or oil appliances with natural gas models can achieve significant carbon emissions reductions and should be considered among the suite of greenhouse gas emissions reduction tools.
The opportunities for emissions reductions in buildings through the direct use of natural gas is well established in technical literature but often goes unrecognized by decision makers. This case rests on two facts. First, natural gas is a low-carbon fuel relative to coal and oil and can be used as a substitute. Second, the production and delivery of natural gas into buildings is much more efficient than grid-delivered electricity, which is still fossil-intensive with heavy losses at the power plant and though transmission lines. Even as the grid mix becomes cleaner during the coming years, natural gas direct use will remain a viable emissions reduction strategy.