Natural Gas Overtakes Nuclear as Environmentally Friendly Fuel for Utilities

July 8th, 2011 by Glenn Meyers

NATURAL GAS OVERTAKES WIND AND NUCLEAR AS THE TOP “ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY” TECHNOLOGY – BUT UTILITY EXECS STILL PREFER NUCLEAR

A recent Black & Veatch survey of utilities concerning their fuels of choice shows that natural gas has overtaken nuclear as the preferred environmentally friendly fuel.’

The rise for natural gas represents a significant change from previous years dating to 2006, where nuclear energy has ranked in the top spot.

The decline in rank for nuclear energy indicates respondents’ rising concern about nuclear waste disposal and cost. The recent earthquake in Japan and ongoing difficulties at the Fukoshima Daiichi nuclear plant in controlling spent nuclear fuel rods and radioactive waste have had a negative impact worldwide. In addition, a majority of investor-owned utilities (IOU) respondents and municipalities believe that shale gas will remain available at a reasonable cost.

The survey reports on the views of the utility industry on a number of topics, ranging from renewables, traditional energy, nexus of water and energy, smart grid, and public policy.

The high regard for natural gas comes in spite of growing environmental and water safety concerns about chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process – commonly called fracking – used to obtain gas that is found deep underground in shale formations. Black & Veatch concludes that the rise in demand for natural gas from shale resources to generate power will continue to increase over the next decade.

With new EPA air quality regulations now in place, it is expected the government will continue its push to invest near-term in emissions-control equipment on coal plants. This concern for clean air is likely to accelerate the retirements of many coal-fired units in this country.

The Black & Veatch survey offers these salient points:

Prepare for a “significant” increase in your electric bill over the next five years
Coal will remain part of the future energy mix
Aging infrastructure is now top operational concern
Lack of national energy policy impedes investment in new technology
Water and nuclear safety dominate top environmental concerns
Natural gas overtakes wind, solar and nuclear as the top “Environmentally Friendly Technology”
Water management viewed as a “Potential Game Changer” and Energy Storage gaining momentum
Lack of understanding and funding represent greatest obstacles for Smart Grid implementation
Electric Vehicles will impact utilities’ annual load over time.
The United States’ competitive position in the renewable energy technology market is at risk

More will be reported on these issues on future dates.

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Tags: Black & Veatch, Fracking, Fukoshima Daiichi, hydraulic fracturing, utility survey for fuels of choice

About the Author

Glenn Meyers is a writer, producer, and director. Meyers was editor and site director of Green Building Elements, a contributing writer for CleanTechnica, and is founder of Green Streets MediaTrain, a communications connection and eLearning hub. As an independent producer, he's been involved in the development, production and distribution of television and distance learning programs for both the education industry and corporate sector. He also is an avid gardener and loves sustainable innovation.

http://twitter.com/parlorfix Sandy Miguel

May be the case. But what do you think about California’s decision to release trucks that use natural gas? There’s a thousand of those trucks. http://youtu.be/zHUy3092lGg
http://thegreengadgets.com Triany

although we can use natural gas as our fuel, but it will take years to get it clean. Since natural gas emits CO2 as its which is blamed for causing global warming, so there’s a need to develop advanced methods and technologies.

While both of them are being developed, it make sense to boost our abundant and renewable energy first to take over natural gas duties.
Publicistas Marketeers

Although natural energy has taken over in terms of environmentally friendly, businesses and consumers need to realize that solar energy is actually the future. Natural energy will eventually run out and with graphs showing that solar energy will become cheaper then natural and nuclear energy in a few years, we need to transition into it. We are destroying our planet with all of these natural sources of energy and businesses are too blinded by money to realize that renewable energy like solar is a step in the right direction for our planet.

Lookmaan Ismail
http://www.Angelpoints.com
- Anonymous
  
  Agreed!!
  
  The faster we transition to solar, wind, & other renewables, the better. The
  Nat Gas detour isn’t worth it, I think.
Matt

Except that Natural Gas is not Clean! It’s a mess to get out of the ground, it’s difficult to harness and hold from farms and it still produces CO.
- Anonymous
  
  totally agree.