Archived copies of the article: web.archive.org ghostarchive.org archive.today
The paper says:
The six-region weighted average is 2.95% (95% CI 2.79%, 3.14%), or roughly three times the national government inventory estimate
According to the US Energy Information Agency, there are about 3 million miles (4.828 million kilometers) of natural gas pipes (link), I’d be shocked if the majority of the methane doesn’t come from many small leaks during the transportation process, especially since the article says they have a harder time detecting small leaks with current equipment.
Considering that methane is about 100 times more potent as a greenhouse gas as CO2 although it doesn’t last for as long (link), we should be banning natural gas wherever possible and fast. Some industries still need gas, but the if we combine the 15.3% residential, 11.3% commercial (non-manufacturing), and 44.1% for electricity production, that amounts to 70.7% of natural gas consumption that should be relatively simple to replace with renewable energy sources. For industrial gas consumption, this would be a case by case basis, but I’d wager there will be plenty of industry that could drastically reduce it as well, but I’m not an expert.
(Link for gas consumption data)
Edit: typo
The 15.3% residential mostly doesn’t need to exist at all. Residential natural gas, at this point, is just unnecessary and bad for consumers. It’s more expensive than modern electrical over appliance lifecycles in nearly all cases for nearly all appliance categories. And I easily include gas ranges – as someone who cooks a lot, they are worse. They are just worse. The time spent cleaning them alone justifies saying electric is better, not to mention the way they heat your home, fuck with your air quality, and take forever to heat things compared to induction or even modern resistive ceramic.
Some commercial operations probably do need it. It would be VERY hard to get enough amps to run an electrified commercial kitchen, for example. Not impossible, but very hard.
Heavy industry does still rely a lot on gas, but it can also tolerate the cost of specialty hookups/storage solutions in a way that residential and maybe even light commercial can’t. But as companies like Rondo and other industrial heat storage solutions continue to prove viable while also being cheaper and more resilient, I’m skeptical that even heavy industry has much need for it long-term.
Really, the only ‘sensible’ counterargument for deleting fossil gas from the grid is that the removal process will be VERY painful, often regressively. There’s a death spiral that will happen in the transition days that will cause the remaining gas consumers to see the prices skyrocket as the utilities lose their customer bases – and many of those consumers may not be able to afford electrification. This isn’t really an argument against ending fossil gas, but it does add cost to the process since we need to have a safety net in place to help those people. You will be seeing this argument more and more in the coming years, bought and paid for by the same gas industry that brainwashed 3 generations into thinking gas cookers are superior, though.
You could of course do the transition in a planned, neighborhood-by-neighborhood manner, subsidizing people who can’t afford to make the switch. Doing that lets you decommission infrastructure as neighborhoods get off gas, and avoids that price spiral for the remaining few stuck on it.
Exactly. Gas makes no sense in the home. It’s worse than induction in every way, it’s bad for the air quality in the home as you’ve said, it is dangerous if not properly maintained, risking a deadly leak, it heats the house and everything… And slower than even modest induction stoves. The government could subsidise an induction stove for the people during the phase out process.
As for the commercial stuff, I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to replace 99% of the gas with electrical, remember that commercial doesn’t include manufacturing, just services and stuff. It won’t be easy, but well worth it.
For industrial, it will probably be impossible to completely remove it, but as you said, there are great innovations that we could probably reduce that drastically. I didn’t count that in the 70.7% thing in my comment though, that was just residential, power, and commercial since I don’t have any clue how fast and how much of the industrial gas consumption can be replaced in the near future.