Researchers have found the prospects for natural gas to serve a “bridge fuel” for lowering carbon emissions are limited. Dr. Christine Shearer, John Bistline, Mason Inman and Steven J. Davis of the University of California – Irvine’s Department of Earth System Science write natural gas alone is incapable of bringing about “a significant reduction in future CO2 emissions within the US electricity grid.”

In a study published in Environmental Research Letters the authors go a step further, concluding “abundant natural gas may actually slow the process of decarbonization, primarily by delaying deployment of renewable energy technologies”:

“Increased use of natural gas has been promoted as a means of decarbonizing the US power sector, because of superior generator efficiency and lower CO2 emissions per unit of electricity than coal. We model the effect of different gas supplies on the US power sector and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Across a range of climate policies, we find that abundant natural gas decreases use of both coal and renewable energy technologies in the future. Without a climate policy, overall electricity use also increases as the gas supply increases. With reduced deployment of lower-carbon renewable energies and increased electricity consumption, the effect of higher gas supplies on GHG emissions is small: cumulative emissions 2013–55 in our high gas supply scenario are 2% less than in our low gas supply scenario, when there are no new climate policies and a methane leakage rate of 1.5% is assumed. Assuming leakage rates of 0 or 3% does not substantially alter this finding. In our results, only climate policies bring about a significant reduction in future CO2 emissions within the US electricity sector. Our results suggest that without strong limits on GHG emissions or policies that explicitly encourage renewable electricity, abundant natural gas may actually slow the process of decarbonization, primarily by delaying deployment of renewable energy technologies.”