Liquefied natural gas carbon footprint is worse than coal | Hacker News Reader

Liquefied natural gas carbon footprint is worse than coal

phys.org

40 pointsbikenaga18 comments

I feel like the headline is incredibly misleading, because the actual study is about the exporting of LNG, not simply the use of it.

Its an important point, with the conclusion being that the LNG export market isn't sustainable when GHG emissions are accounted for. The good news is that the demand for LNG exports from the US appears to be on the decline. The bad news is that renewables, batteries, and transmission must ramp much faster to destroy demand for this shipped energy in the markets currently importing and consuming LNG. Coal is rapidly on the decline, natural gas will be right behind it (hopefully, based on manufacturing and deployment rates).

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-lng-export-do... ("Reuters: US LNG export dominance tested as Europe's demand wilts")

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61683 ("EIA: The United States was the world’s largest liquefied natural gas exporter in 2023")

> The countries that imported the most U.S. LNG were the Netherlands, France, and the UK, with a combined 35% (4.2 Bcf/d) of all U.S. LNG exports. LNG imports increased in the Netherlands after the Gate LNG regasification terminal was expanded and two new floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs) were commissioned. Germany began importing LNG in 2023 when three new FSRUs were commissioned. We expect another four terminals (three of which are FSRUs) to come online between 2024 and 2027.

Due to the EU pricing GHG emissions, this is likely to update and send price signals against LNG consumption (based on updated LNG emissions impact information available).

> The bad news is that renewables, batteries, and transmission must ramp much faster to destroy demand for this shipped energy in the markets currently importing and consuming LNG.

It's not simple. If a country/company has made capital investments in LNG procession or consumption (say an LNG electric power plant), they will want to get their returns on that investment. If the prices of renewables are much lower than LNG, then, those plants will not be able to sell their electricity, and go bankrupt.

But that doesn't mean a loss of the capitalists. Many global south countries have built plants using foreign loans that will need to be paid whether the plant produces or goes bankrupt. So many countries will attempt to keep these LNG plants going for as long as possible.

It’s true, and unfortunate for unsophisticated investment into fossil fuel assets that will likely end up stranded.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01356-y

Arguably, but the resolution is in the first paragraph. When it comes to energy and emissions the whole situation must be taken into account. For example, a country like Germany that bet big on renewables needs natural gas to buffer the volatility, and ever since the Russian invasion they rely a lot more on LNG. That said, coal ouput can't be quickly regulated like natural gas, so the situation is even more complicated.

> Arguably, but the resolution is in the first paragraph.

True, but how many people read articles versus responding to just the headlines?

It's visible even on HN.

And seemingly also process of liquifying it seems bad. So you are better off likely not doing it, but just using it as straight up natural gas.

NG is L'd for the purposes of moving it where there aren't pipelines to just move it as NG.

So export and LNG are nearly synonymous.

The actual takeaway from this research is that the upstream methane emissions for natural gas extraction are the big factor in whether it is better or worse than coal for GHG impacts.

Their numbers demonstrate that even transporting it large distances with engines that leak methane, it's those upstream leaks that dominate.

Luckily we're getting better and better at monitoring those leaks, hopefully this will shift gas production away from areas with high methane leakage (e.g. Russia) towards countries that pay attention to this stuff (e.g Norway) and generally incentivize industry to do better.

Misleading headline: Some LNG is worse then coal. Or maybe on average across the world?

Sweeping statements are just not that helpful.

Study: https://scijournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ese3...

Is this the same LNG used as fuel in some cars? Wondering because the comparison here is coal rather than oil.

I once drove a shuttle that ran on compressed natural gas from the airport, but liquefied sounds more demanding to handle.

Very very few LNG cars and trucks out there, as filling infrastructure is limited compared to CNG. In US it's something like 2% of total CNG+LNG fleet.

Interviewed with a midwestern company doing CNG truck conversions and building fueling infrastructure back in 2014/15. Diesel prices coming down crushed them, and they sold off the majority of their fueling station biz in 2019, to focus on renewable CNG from dairy & hog farms.

I was confusing it with LPG. The huge majority of buses and taxis around here run on it, which is a big percentage of traffic on the road. A decade ago it was 100%, now most new replacements are electric but it will take at least another decade until the existing LPG fleets are entirely replaced.

You may be thinking of LPG, which is a mix of propane (three carbon atoms) and butane (four carbon atoms) and it's a liquid under reasonably low pressures. LNG is pure methane (one carbon atom) and you have to cool it to -163 degrees C to make it liquid. I don't know of any land vehicles that would use LNG as a fuel. Normally it's just transported in enormous LNG tankers by sea to import (regasification) terminals and then fed into the grid. The comparison with coal is quite apt, because one of the main selling points of LNG is that it displaces coal in terms of power generation and as an industrial feedstock.

There's also CNG which is compressed natural gas, and that's (largely) methane but it's a pressurized gas not a liquid. That is sometimes used in heavy goods vehicles.

You're correct, I was thinking of LPG.

LNG is currently important for the politics of decarbonization, not so much for its engineering or economics. The war in Ukraine happened, and Putin's natural gas threat to the EU was (partially) countered via LNG deliveries from the US.

The only thing worse than a fossil fuel is a fossil fuel from Russia. An article about LNG that doesn't consider this aspect might be disingenuous.

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