If you have to burn a fossil fuel for power or heat, natural gas should
be the first choice. Energy specialist Ian King makes the case for liquefied
natural gas from British Columbia.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: natural gas is a worse climate
villain than coal. It’s a bridge fuel to nowhere. British Columbia should stop
trying to become a supplier of liquefied natural gas to the rest of the world.
It’s a familiar refrain, usually heard coming from green activists and
the think tanks that support them. They’ll pump out occasional flurries of
commentaries, flush with rhetoric and carefully picked factoids.
At first glance, the arguments seem compelling — until you take a second
look. Even from a distance, the arguments against LNG don’t hold up.
If you haven’t the time to go deep, simply consider the fuels’ lifecycle
emissions.
University of Calgary professor Adebola
Kasulu and colleagues analyzed Canadian LNG using a variety of studies of
natural gas emissions over its whole life cycle. They included emissions from drilling, production, shipping, to burner
tip. In every case, LNG had a lower CO2 equivalent impact than coal.
Even using the most pessimistic models, including one from a very harsh
critic of natural gas, LNG had at least 25% fewer emissions. Most
scenarios had much better results.
So what goes into British Columbia's LNG’s advantage?
BC‘s initial LNG exports will be shipped from LNG Canada
in Kitimat. Like all the world’s large LNG plants, it’ll use gas
turbine power — but with major emissions advantages over its international
peers.
Industrial turbines thermal efficiency
has increased close to 40% over the last few decades. LNG Canada can
take full advantage of those improvements. Chilling natural gas takes less
energy in cool, cloudy Kitimat than in Western Australia or Texas. By some
estimates, Kitimat’s
climate advantage means one third less energy is needed to get gas to -162
degrees Celsius on the North Coast than it would in Australia.
Taken together with incremental improvements in process efficiency, LNG Canada
has the foundation to achieve its goal of being the world’s least CO2-intense
large-scale LNG plant.
Howe Sound’s Woodfibre LNG will rely on electric
drive rather than burning its own gas. BC’s nearly zero-emission hydropower
ensures it’ll outclass almost any LNG export plant you can name. It
may not be as large as LNG Canada, but its contribution is still
valuable.
In the Peace River country, emissions reduction and electrification is
happening in the gas fields that will supply the feed for LNG. New
processing plants, where impurities are removed and heavier hydrocarbons are
extracted from the raw gas, are choosing electric power over gas. BC‘s carbon
tax has played a part in shifting the sector to electrify, as has a build-out
of electrical infrastructure in the Peace.
While critics have raised concerns over fugitive methane emissions, BC
has responded with tighter regulations. New wells and plants will be built to
tougher standards, inspected three times a year for leaks.
Some
producers are already going beyond the government’s goals. Shell, the lead
partner in LNG Canada, estimates its methane leakage is 0.1%. Their new wells
in the Groundbirth area west of Dawson Creek have replaced gas-emitting
pneumatic controls with electric ones. Other players are taking similar
approaches to keep that methane where it belongs: in the sales pipeline.
Some of BC‘s LNG foes, notable the Canadian Centre for Policy
Alternatives, have taken to portraying coal in a relatively positive light in
their attempts to demonize gas. It’s a monumentally silly pose.
In their world, coal can be mined, shipped easily, with scant fugitive
emissions, and little fuel needed to get the stuff from mine to power plant.
Not so fast.
To deliver the same energy as a ton of LNG takes 2.5 tons of
Powder River Basin coal. That’s two and a half times the mass to move from the
Rockies to the Coast, and then across the Pacific – no formula for saving fuel.
Coal is worse than LNG in other ways. Aside from CO2, coal has
far more sulphur, mercury, and particulate emissions than gas — even with
smokestack scrubbers and filters.
From BC‘s perspective, gas has a giant advantage. We produce it, and we
benefit from royalties and income taxes from the sector. Our government can
make sure our producers live up to their claims of being as clean as they say
they are. None of that happens with Wyoming coal.
Liquefied natural gas is no cure-all for the climate challenge humanity
faces. No one part of the evolving energy mix is. Gas offers a ready substitute
for coal in regions that have few choices in keeping their grids up.
If you have to burn a fossil fuel for power or heat, natural gas should
be the first choice.
Ian King is an instrumentation and control specialist whose work takes
him all over northeastern British Columbia and northwestern Alberta. Originally
from Vancouver, he now lives in Taylor, BC, at Mile 36 of the Alaska Highway.
The view from his "office" is always changing, and that's just how he
likes it. Follow him on Twitter at @IanKing.
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