Natural Gas – green or not?

Found an interesting post on a Oil and Gas industry blog today discussing the merits of [tag-tec]natural gas [/tag-tec]and whether it is “green” or not.

Here is a quote from that blog:

Natural gas has recently made it into the spotlight, and for good reason: it’s clean burning. And in this post-industrialist era, that’s more than important. Green energy is a term for environmentally friendly, renewable sources of power and energy. Although natural gas doesn’t quite fit the definition of [tag-ice]green energy[/tag-ice] (it is a finite resource and produces some carbon dioxide), it has recently garnered significant U.S. attention. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Natural gas burns more cleanly than other fossil fuels. It has fewer emissions of sulfur, carbon, and nitrogen than coal or oil, and it has almost no ash particles left after burning. Being a clean fuel is one reason that the use of natural gas, especially for electricity generation, has grown so much and is expected to grow even more in the future.”

While it is certainly true that natural gas is cleaner than many other forms of traditional fuels that run our world it is not without its own problems. It is coming from the same sources as our oil supplies. it has to be extracted and shipped. This can be expensive, cause pollution of its own, and like oil the natural gas we rely on could run out in time. It is just a cleaner version of oil that makes the big industry a tidy profit but which has limited supplies over the course of time.

While we should encourage use of it in the world we cannot allow ourselves to be fooled into thinking natural gas is a our alternative fuel supply forever.