The Big Green Hype – Natural Gas Vehicles
By Jim Beacon
February 22, 2009How ‘green’ are natural gas-burning cars, truck and buses?
If you want to stay focused on the single biggest threat to the world today — the runaway emission of the greenhouse gas Carbon Dioxide (CO2) — then calling natural gas a ‘green’ fuel for cars, trucks and buses puts you into a very fuzzy area.
Yes, in some ways burning natural gas is cleaner than burning gasoline or diesel (and much cleaner than burning coal) but in a vehicle engine it only reduces the emission of the CO2 by 25%. And while a 25% reduction in CO2 emissions is better than doing nothing, compared to the truly sustainable green energy technologies now available, burning natural gas in hundreds of millions of cars and trucks doesn’t offer any real hope of pulling us out of the climate change death spiral we are in. And the cost to retrofit all those vehicles would be tremendous.
But, hey… right now there is a big push on in corporate America to re-label everything as ‘green’ — even SUVs, offshore oil-drilling platforms and coal-fired power plants! Before the term and the vital concept behind it are completely swamped and rendered meaningless in the public mind under a tidal wave of media hype, it is important for everyone to start insisting on full disclosure when they see the G-word used. It is particularly vital for the media to be responsible in using the term and so far that has very often not been the case.
Here’s an example of what I mean: The online version of the Los Angeles Times publishes a blog called Greenspace and it has posted some good articles, but one recent piece caught my attention because I felt the author’s application of over-enthusiastic green zeal tended to distort the true nature of natural gas as a vehicle fuel.
Here’s an excerpt… the extra emphasis is mine:
It pays to drive green
4:17 PM, December 8, 2008
<… snip …>
An additional 100 of the near-zero-emission LNG trucks are earmarked for deployment to the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in the coming months.
The largest delivery of LNG trucks in the nation’s history was made by Daimler Trucks North America under a partnership involving the Environmental Protection Agency, the California Air Resources Board, the Southern California Air Quality Management District and California Cartage Co.
“Each tractor will reduce the use of imported oil by 500 barrels per year,” Daimler Trucks President and CEO Chris Patterson said in a statement. <… snip …> “…that reduces our dependency on foreign oil by more than 116,000 barrels annually.“
Arrival of the clean rigs will help the ports meet stricter California emissions standards expected in 2010.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2008/12/it-pays-to-driv.html
It was the heavy emphasis on “green driving” and “zero-emission” and “clean rigs” in the piece that bothered me. The danger of using green terms and phrases so casually in a story like this is that you help convince the public that natural gas is truly ‘green’ in all respects. Sometimes half-truths, myths or self-serving corporate propaganda gets passed on. That can end up encouraging decision-makers to put a lot of public and private money into infrastructure dedicated to converting vehicles to natural gas. That’s precious time, money and resources which would be better put towards deploying those truly sustainable alternative fuels which emit no greenhouse gas at all (or any other pollutants for that matter).
Replacing some oil burning — and particularly coal burning — with natural gas can be worth doing in some cases, but a wholesale conversion of millions of vehicles to burn natural gas will not seriously address climate change and people should not be mislead into believing it will.
Thus example is hardly the worst case of excessive green zeal/green hype in the media, but it is symptomatic of the casual nature of modern reporting and demonstrates how often the whole story not covered and how important facts can be conveniently left out. Facts like these:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/coefficients.html
OK, the chart above does show that burning natural gas is better than burning oil or coal — particularly in the area of some visible pollutants which can cause health problems. But it also shows that, as a true ‘green fuel’ for vehicles, natural gas is far from ideal in the all-critical greenhouse gas department.
And then there’s the twist: The green hype around natural gas is always accompanied by the ever-popular battle cry that it will “free us from dependence on foreign oil!” That line really helps clinch the deal and makes natural gas sound like a premier green alternative. Oh yeah? Check this out:
Worldwide Natural Gas Reserves - 2008 - source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/nat_gas.html
It turns out that, besides having most of the oil, those folk in the Middle East and Russia also have 2/3 of all the natural gas in the world! So much for getting out from under foreign dependence. No, changing over millions of our vehicles and service stations in order to use natural gas for an automotive fuel really does not make much sense if you look at all the cards.
But…
There is a better way to use Natural Gas:
We retrofit the 600 coal-fired electric power plants in the U.S. to burn natural gas instead of coal. This has ALREADY BEEN DONE to several power plants around the country. It is a cost-effective conversion. By using natural gas this way, we could very quickly achieve a whopping 56% reduction in the C02 emissions from our existing power plants! That would be about a 25% reduction in total U.S. emissions. It could easily be done over the next ten years and would cost much less — and do more immediate good — than any of the other large-scale proposals I’ve seen.
Source: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/energy_in_brief/electricity.cfm
Converting coal plants to burn natural gas is obviously a much better use for the stuff compared to burning it in cars and trucks. We could even go one step further with the power plants and trap the CO2 before it leaves the smokestacks and inject it back into the ground, something that is not possible with vehicles. This would not be a permanent solution to our future electricity needs, but it would make a real dent in the emission problem and give us a little breathing room while we ramp up our truly sustainable solar, wind, water and nuclear power generating capabilities.
Natural gas can play an important role in transitioning our society to a sustainable future, but please, let’s not allow anyone to claim it is a long-term solution to climate change — or that it offers a truly ‘green fuel’ for our vehicles.
We are running out of time to fix the future. When it comes to the cars of the future, we simply can’t afford to be diverted down yet another hydrocarbon dead-end street.
— Jim Beacon
PROJECTIONS to 2030 -- The line for "Coal" is GOING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION -- the world needs to get it nosediving down quickly!
Filed Under: Climate Change, Conservation, Electric Cars, Energy, Green Hype, Media & News, Solar Power, The Politics of Green, Transportation
cyber rainbow :
June 15th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
some reduction is better than no reduction. since only 10% of the electricity will be green and renewable by 2010, the green jobs in a green economy are the hype.
Jim Beacon :
June 16th, 2009 at 12:37 am
Yes, any and all reduction is better than nothing — including the small amount every individual can achieve by changing to CFL light bulbs, driving less, etc. which really mounts up when you multiply it by billions of individuals. But as I pointed out at the end of my blog, there are MUCH BETTER ways to use natural gas to reduce CO2 emissions than to burn it in automobiles.
If we want to avoid the rapidly approaching global catastrophe we have set in motion, we must have large-scale emission reduction pushed by industry and government *working together* to get the most bang for our buck in the shortest period of time possible. And green jobs are anything but hype, as a new report from the widely-respected PEW Research Center and Charitable Trusts Organization shows:
The “clean-energy economy” grew 9.1 percent over the last decade to a total of 777,000 jobs in 2007. That compares favorably to the old economy “job engine” of the fossil fuel sector which totaled 1.23 million jobs in 2007.
The report pointed out that 80% of the PRIVATE venture capital investments in 2008 were in the clean energy and energy efficiency sector. You add that to all the government money which is going to be pumped in, and green jobs in the green economy are very real.
Green collar jobs are projected to catch up and surpass the fossil fuel sector over the next 20 years They will keep growing while the fossil fuel sector will be shrinking and, of course, the crude oil and natural gas really *will* be running out by then. Crude oil and natural gas are both long-term dead-end resources because we have already used up most of the Earth’s supply over the past 100 years. It’s time to get serious about moving on to something else if we want a better tomorrow and a better economy for the future.
What the world is doing right now is creating the green economy from the ground up. It’s taking time and it certainly needs to happen faster, but it is happening. Clean energy is the only sector of our economy that continued to grow during the very tough past year (most other sectors saw negative growth last year). And clean-energy employment is projected to grow 200% to 300% faster than any other industrial sector going forward. More important, these green collar jobs are home-grown and home-based — they cannot be sent overseas — and the long-term need is so great, they will still be around 30 years from now (if we don’t blow it).
This is the area that young people who are looking to start life-long careers should be headed towards.