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Comment by JoeyBananas | Hacker News Reader

Natural gas is environmentally friendly compared to coal. People who demand zero carbon solutions ultimately do more harm than good.

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But...coal is already on its way out - and quickly. Why label the next worst source green when the previous emissions "tall pole" is already nearly extinct?

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

It is on the way out, but there are several economies in Europe (such as Poland) where coal is the dominant energy source (I think it's around 70% in 2021). Even in Germany, where it's significantly lower, it's around 25% (lignite + anthracite), and I'm concerned that number might be stubborn -- it even went up in the last year. Combined cycle natural gas plants can pretty much cut in half the ghg emissions of power generations, which in my mind is a victory. I think it makes sense for the time being to bless investment in natural gas as long as it is replacing coal or petroleum-generated power.

The other thing to consider is that as EVs become way more widespread, the demand for electricity will go beyond current usage and that power needs to come from somewhere. It think it's unclear that renewables will be able to scale up fast enough. The GHG savings from going from a petroleum-powered car to an EV car powered by natural gas-generated electricity is still substantial.

Poland will never use gas as more than of a supplement since this means complete dependency on Russia.

Right, my comment was ignoring the geopolitcal constraints -- which are, um, substantial. But, there is an LNG terminal in Świnoujście that will soon(ish) be upgraded to process 8.3 billion cubic meters per year of LNG, which from what I understand is about 50% of Poland's current natural gas demand. There are also plans to connect to a pipeline system that has access to Norwegian gas. I think if we are making like 20-year plans it's reasonable to assume access to more natural gas with fewer Russia dependencies. Obviously if we could skip this whole stage and go right to renewables and better storage that would be great, but there is at least some potential for gas.

>50% of Poland's current natural gas demand

Current is the keywoard. Nothing close to replacing ~25GW of coal capacity. Not to mention future demand from electric vehicles.

compared to coal, most are. but is it more env friendly than solar or wind? i think not.

People really still say this shit in 2022. Our goal should be negative carbon solutions, net zero is a holdover until we figure out how to actually do that.

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