Hello all! This is Cynthia from THINK-TEAM!
I hope you are doing great wherever you are.
In this occasion, I want to discuss a little bit about one of fossil fuels, natural gas.
Natural gas has been considered as the cleaner fuel compared to coal and oil, as shown in the figures below. There has been efforts from the government of Indonesia to improve the production capacity and the infrastructure of natural gas so that this resource can be utilised optimally.
Figure 1. Indonesia's Electricity Generation from different sources (Source: IEA)
Figure 2. CO2 emission from fossil fuel combustion (Source: IEA)
If you notice, despite the increasing use of natural gas taking over oil consumption, the CO2 emission from natural gas is still lower compared to the other fuels.
Natural gas actually consists of mainly methane or CH4 around (70-90%) while CO2 is only around 0-20%. Hence, natural gas still poses risks of GHG emission if there is leakage which is sometimes hard to monitor during its production process (e.g., fracking). As you maybe aware that methane is one of the GHGs whose contribution is around 22 times more than CO2.
Here is more explanation why natural gas is doubtfully cleaner in terms of climate change impacts.
After watching the video, do you think natural gas is cleaner option? Please let me know your opinion in the comment below 😊
It's cleaner option with many side notes, a lot of things we have to consider such as the maintaining and extracting process of natural gas. The thing is, reduction & efficiency are better to do :)
Natural gas is a "cleaner" option compared to firewood for indoor house pollution and to coal for outdoor pollution -- climate change.
When I stayed in Australia and studied sustainable energy, in all courses they said that coal phase-out would be needed and natural gas as an energy option was a better option. That's why they had gas pipes in all areas. They have more and less strict people in the environment sector. Some said they need to change into biogas by utilizing the current gas pipe, while others said they only need to change from coal to natural gas.
I've heard about a project shifting "clean energy" to "green energy" for this reason, not sure if it is a better name either
Based on the video, I think natural gas is a cleaner option but considering higher risk and the infrastructural cost and maintenance, it may produce more indirect pollution and emission