While both coal and gas play important roles in our energy future, and there is another agenda to regulate coal-fired power plants out of existence, the claim is contrary to the well-accepted fact that the greenhouse gas impacts of burning natural gas are less than coal.
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As mentioned above, higher coal prices support nat gas prices by allowing for a higher coal-to-gas substitution price.
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The agency also suggested that high coal prices combined with a drop in natural gas prices saw nations replace coal with less polluting gas-powered electricity generation.
This amounts to more than 20 times more for subsidies in terms of average electricity generated by coal and natural gas, while coal produces 50 times more U.S. electrical power than wind.
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Firstly, the utility companies are very likely to revert back to coal fired power generation from gas fired as soon as the gas prices get past coal prices on per BTU basis.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) puts it at around 37tcm of recoverable reserves, two-thirds of which is shale gas and the rest tight gas and coal-bed methane.
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Tomorrow the International Energy Agency will announce that Europe has shifted from clean natural gas to dirtier coal as U.S. coal, displaced at home by shale gas, floods the European energy market.
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It owns 200 miles of gas pipelines and operates coal-bed methane gas wells in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming.
The proposal lumps gas turbines and coal boilers into the same source category, and it holds coal power plants to a CO2 performance standard that nearly all natural gas combined cycle plants and exactly zero commercial coal power plants can meet.
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Not according to a new econometric study that concludes no more than 20% of existing coal generation is likely to switch over to gas, even if the Environmental Protection Agency drives up the cost of coal generation and gas prices stay at their current, low rates indefinitely.
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The demand for gas in power gen is increasing (coal to gas switching has been significant, and most new fossil power plants will be gas-fired).
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While the plunge was more abrupt with Patriot, comparable coal credits have also seen sharp declines amid historically low natural gas prices and a regulatory environment that is pushing a coal-to-gas transition.
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Industry insiders describe the commercialization of gas hydrates as similar to the development of coal bed gas resources.
For some time now utilities, faced with falling gas prices and the prospect of stricter environmental regulation, have been favouring gas over coal anyway.
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We will be making gas from coal and importing cheap liquid natural gas from South America.
Natural gas is a cleaner fuel than coal and crude oil and is becoming increasingly important with governments across the world encouraging the production and use of natural gas over coal and crude oil for energy generation.
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Importing fossil fuel is one solution, but the environmentally minded Swedes are unhappy about the greenhouse-gas implications of burning more coal, oil and natural gas.
Occurrences of flammable tap water, if not the result of existing gas transport pipelines, can be explained by totally unrelated gas leaks that occasionally occur around coal beds, which are far closer to the surface than natural gas deposits.
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For example, the first phase of the EU Emissions Trading program, which contained several design flaws that have since been rectified, has already been found to have reduced emissions by around 100 million tonnes of CO2 mostly by forcing a shift of load from coal to gas power plants and providing an incentive for inefficient coal plants to improve the thermal efficiency of their boilers.
Such fuels include natural gas, methanol (which can be produced from anything with carbon in it, including natural gas and coal) and ethanol (which can be generated from sources other than corn, particularly as cellulosic technologies come on stream).
The category includes petroleum, natural gas liquids, ethanol, biodiesel, coal-to-liquids and gas-to-liquids, and as you can see, the gap narrows between liquids and coal, but coal remains the second energy source to power the world.
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Meanwhile, America has recently reversed a steady decline in domestic gas production, thanks to new technology that allows firms to tap previously inaccessible gas trapped in coal, shale and some types of sandstone.
Shell aims to combine coal gasification with gas-to-diesel technology in an alliance with coal miner Anglo American.
Natural gas is becoming more cost-competitive with coal, but conservatives want the market, not politicians and bureaucrats, to determine when it makes sense to produce more electricity from natural gas rather than coal.
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On the demand side, as per Hersh, coal fired electric generation is being replaced by natural gas, as evidenced by coal market share being reduced from fifty percent to roughly forty-four percent over the past two years.
But gas could play a bigger role: there is a third more gas-powered than coal-fired capacity available.
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Originally they were derived from coal-tar, the black viscous waste product left over from distilling coal for gas.
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Many coal companies such as Alpha Natural Resources and Peabody Energy Corporation are mulling over the fate of coal as consumption has continued to decline in the U.S.. Natural gas has undoubtedly given coal companies a run for their money since prices began to slide last year.
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The problem, as the government sees it, is that Britain's fast-fading coal industry is rapidly losing its biggest customers, as electricity generators switch from coal to gas.
But those utilities are now coming around, noting that the price of natural gas is on par with that of coal, and that they will mostly construct gas plants for the foreseeable future.
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