Globe and Mail: Time to seize a prosperous future fuelled by natural gas
Which fossil fuel is the largest generator of greenhouse-gas emissions and toxic smog? If you answered coal, you’re right. Coal produces half of all global carbon-dioxide emissions and almost all toxic smog.
China burns almost as much coal as the rest of the world combined. Between 2005 and 2013, new coal-fired power plants in China added one and one half times the entire consumption of the second-place coal consumer, the United States. Economists predict that by 2040, China’s power-generation needs will be 50 per cent larger than today. That would drive energy-related global greenhouse-gas emissions from coal to more than 60 per cent, negating most, if not all, of the reduction efforts of other countries. But there’s a much more urgent problem facing residents of Chinese and other coal-dependent cities across the developing world. Burning coal emits smog-producing nitrogen and sulphur oxides that, together with lung-clogging particulates, are knocking decades off of peoples’ lives.
Fortunately, there’s an historic opportunity to change this dire picture. Compared with coal, natural gas produces half the carbon dioxide, less than a third of the nitrogen oxide and just one per cent of the sulphur dioxide, with virtually no particulates.