Natural gas is green and hugely beneficial economically

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed into law late last month a bill defining “green energy” as “… any energy generated by utilizing … hydrocarbons which, when combusted for the purpose of electricity generation meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards set by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under the authority of the Clean Air Act, and shall include: (a) Energy generated by nuclear reactors. (b) Energy generated using natural gas.”

That definition is a bit odd, in that the NAAQS are defined as ambient atmospheric concentration levels of given pollutants, and not as emissions levels for a given pollutant used in power generation. But for purposes of this discussion, it matters not. It is far more amusing to note the feigned outrage that followed immediately from all the usual left-wing suspects. A good example is DeSmog, for decades a determined ideological opponent of fossil energy: “… the state’s overreliance on gas and reticence to adopt solar and wind energy has led to high costs, an unreliable grid, and toxic air pollution that threatens the climate and public health.” That the DeSmog leftists can argue with a straight face that it is fossil-fired power generation that yields “an unreliable grid” is supremely entertaining (see the electricity generation capacity factors in Table 1b, and the Spain and Portugal blackout of April 2025).

With respect to the “toxic air pollution” argument, it always is useful to ask the eternal question: Compared to what? Nitrogen oxide emissions per megawatt-hour of coal power generation is 1.6 pounds. For natural gas power generation: 0.6 lbs. For sulfur dioxide, the respective figures are 1.8 lbs. and 0.4 lbs. Note that these emissions levels for both fuels are trivial: For 1995-2023, sulfur dioxide emissions from U.S. electricity generation have declined 96%, and the figure for nitrogen oxides is 90%.

But, scream the climate alarmists, “What about carbon dioxide emissions?” Coal-fired generation: 2257 lbs. per MWh. Natural gas-fired generation: 976 lbs. per MWh. More broadly, ignore the ubiquitous propaganda that CO₂ is a “pollutant.” It is not. CO₂ is not “carbon,” and it is not a pollutant, in that a certain minimum atmospheric concentration of CO₂ — generally assumed to be about 150-200 parts per million — is necessary for most plant life. (CO₂ concentrations now are about 425 ppm.)

Moreover, rising atmospheric concentrations of GHG have yielded important benefits — examples are planetary greening, increased agricultural productivity, increased water use efficiency by plants, and a large reduction in net mortality from heat and cold — even as there is virtually no actual evidence that such rising concentrations have engendered adverse climate impacts. Instead, the “climate crisis” argument is driven by the incorporation in the numerous Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate models of one specific scenario — “representative concentration pathway 8.5” — that is essentially impossible. IPCC in its Sixth Assessment Report (Table 12.12) concedes implicitly that there is no such crisis, as every predicted adverse effect of increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases is driven by RCP8.5, with respect to which IPCC notes (p. 238)  that “the likelihood of high emissions scenarios such as RCP8.5 … is considered low…”

There also is the argument, repeated endlessly, that “methane is more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.” That is true in a laboratory experiment; it is not true in the actual atmosphere, for two reasons. First, methane has an atmospheric half-life of about ten years, while for CO₂ it is a century or hundreds of years or more. Accordingly, whether a ton of methane emissions is a “more powerful” GHG than a simultaneous ton of CO₂ emissions depends crucially upon the assumed time horizon. Muller and Muller demonstrate that “… the short 8.6-year half-life of methane in the atmosphere rapidly mitigates its effect as a cause of global warming.” They conclude that “At all plausible leakage rates, with a focus on legacy warming, it is preferable to produce electricity from modern natural gas generators rather than from the current average coal plants.”

Even that analysis overstates the radiative forcing (warming) impact of methane at current atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ (again, about 425 ppm). van Wijngaarden and Happer demonstrate that “The net [warming effect] from [methane] and CO₂ increases is about 0.012° C [per] year. Proposals to place harsh restrictions on methane emissions because of warming fears are not justified by facts.”***

Let us not forget the adverse environmental effects of wind and solar power, studiously ignored by the opponents of fossil fuels: heavy-metal pollution, wildlife destruction, noise and flicker effects, massive land use and degradation of vistas, landfill problems, and on and on.

And there also are the enormous costs of renewable power compared with fossil electricity. When we include the costs (all in in year 2024 dollars per MWh) of backup generation ($132.65, for the most part, natural gas turbines) needed to avoid service interruptions, the Energy Information Administration cost estimates are as follows. Combined-cycle natural gas: $44.95. “Ultra-super critical” coal: $92.98. Nuclear: $99.31. Photovoltaic solar: $173.72. Onshore wind: $177.93. Offshore wind: $286.29. Unconventional power is not competitive, and the past efforts to force a shift toward wind and solar electricity has yielded substantial economic harm.

Cheaper and more reliable power supplies are an economic boon, and the increased production of fossil energy represents an increase in national wealth. Can it possibly be the case that the environmental left does not understand that for an advanced economy more wealth means more resources for environmental protection? Or do they not care? The use of natural gas yields a number of other subtle economic benefits, an example of which is increased competition in the wholesale power market: Natural gas pipelines are a competitor to long-distance transmission lines.

Back to Governor Landry: The description of him as “a major booster of the state’s petrochemical industry” is balderdash. He is instead a classic example of a politician holding a wet finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing, as illustrated by the fact that while Attorney General, he intervened and joined as a plaintiff in forty-three lawsuits by several parishes, dating back to 2013, accusing the fossil energy producers of having caused the long-term land erosion problem in Louisiana.

That too is balderdash: The U.S. Geological Survey reports as follows: “Natural processes alone are not responsible for the degradation and loss of wetlands in the Mississippi River delta plain. The seasonal flooding that previously provided sediments critical to the healthy growth of wetlands has been virtually eliminated by construction of massive levees that channel the river for nearly 2000 kilometers; sediment carried by the river is now discharged far from the coast, thereby depriving wetlands of vital sediment.”

The eternal truth is that natural gas is green indeed, and hugely beneficial economically. We should never forget that the fracking/horizontal drilling revolution was the result of capitalism and private property rights, and not the machinations of various politicians.

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***Van Wijngaarden and Happer: “For current concentrations of greenhouse gases, the radiative forcing at the tropopause, per added CH₄ molecule, is about 30 times larger than the forcing per added carbon-dioxide (CO₂) molecule. This is due to the heavy saturation of the absorption band of the abundant greenhouse gas, CO₂. But the rate of increase of CO₂ molecules, about 2.3 ppm/year (ppm = part per million), is about 300 times larger than the rate of increase of CH₄ molecules, which has been around 0.0076 ppm/year since the year 2008. So the contribution of methane to the annual increase in forcing is one tenth (30/300) that of carbon dioxide. The net forcing from CH₄ and CO₂ increases is about 0.05 [watts per square meter per year]. Other things being equal, this will cause a temperature increase of about 0.012 C° [per] year. Proposals to place harsh restrictions on methane emissions because of warming fears are not justified by facts.”