Balancing the Benefits and Costs of Natural Gas

Modeling results in the MIT Future of Natural Gas Study released in June of last year suggested that the US could make major progress in the next two decades towards achieving a 50% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 – a real reduction, no offsets or other creative and questionable mechanisms –largely through two actions: reduced energy consumption, and switching from coal to natural gas in power generation. The study also concluded that simply by utilizing surplus Natural Gas Combined Cycle capacity from existing units in lieu of coal generation, the US could achieve a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions… [more]