MIT Study Recognises Importance of Natural Gas as Bridge to Future

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has completed a two year study which examined the scale of U.S. natural gas reserves and the potential of this fuel to reduce greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. Undertaken by the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), the study concluded that natural gas will play a leading role in reducing GHG emissions over the next several decades.

The findings, summarized in an 83-page report, were presented to lawmakers and senior administration officials in Washington.

“Much has been said about natural gas as a bridge to a low-carbon future, with little underlying analysis to back up this contention. The analysis in this study provides the confirmation — natural gas truly is a bridge to a low-carbon future,” said MITEI Director Ernest J. Moniz in introducing the report.

The study found that there are significant global supplies of conventional gas. How much of this gas gets produced and used, and the extent of its impact on greenhouse gas reductions, depends critically on some key political and regulatory decisions.

Some of the study’s key findings:

• The United States has a significant natural gas resource base, enough to equal about 92 years’ worth at present domestic consumption rates. Much of this is from unconventional sources, including gas shales. While there is substantial uncertainty surrounding the producibility of this gas, there is a significant amount of shale gas that can be affordably produced.

• Globally, baseline estimates show that recoverable gas resources probably amount to 16,200 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) — enough to last over 160 years at current global consumption rates. Further, this global resource figure, excluding the U.S. and Canada, does not include any unconventional gas resources, which are largely uncharacterized in the rest of the world.

• In order to bring about the kind of significant expansion in the use of natural gas identified in this study, substantial additions to the existing processing, delivery and storage facilities will be required in order to handle greater amounts and the changing patterns of distribution (such as the delivery of gas from newly developed sources in the Midwest and Northeast).

• Environmental issues associated with producing unconventional gas resources are manageable but challenging.

In the transportation sector, the study found a somewhat smaller role for natural gas. The use of compressed or liquefied natural gas as a fuel for vehicles could help to displace oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but to a limited extent because of the high cost of converting vehicles to use these fuels. By contrast, making methanol, a liquid fuel, out of natural gas requires much less up-front conversion cost and could have an impact on oil usage and thus improve energy security, but would not reduce greenhouse gases.

From the report comes one recommendation directed toward the transportation sector: remove policy and regulatory barriers to natural gas as a transportation fuel.