MIT says natural gas could hurt renewables

MIT says natural gas could hurt renewables

A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that the glut of natural gas, coming from newly-developed shale fields in the U.S., has the potential to damage development of renewable energy.

MIT News quotes Dr. Henry Jacoby, co-director emeritus on MIT’s joint program on the science “people speak of [natural] gas as a bridge to the future, but there had better be something at the other end of the bridge. ”

Jacoby authored a report on  The Future of Natural Gas.

The study, the MIT News report said, ” found much of what we already knew — which is a good thing — that shale makes a big difference. It helps lower gas prices, it stimulates the economy and it provides greater flexibility to ease the cutting of emissions. But it also suppresses renewables.”

Natural gas production has boomed in the U.S. in the last five years as new technologies have enabled producers to unlock large deposits of gas not only in Texas and Louisiana, but outside the traditional U.S. energy belt in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York.

But because natural gas is a favored fuel for electricity generators, it is a threat to wind energy. Natural gas could also be a competitor to biofuels such as biodiesel as trucking companies have experimented with natural gas-powered engines.

At the same time the development of non-corn fed ethanol and other biofuels has come more slowly than envisioned in guidelines written into the 2007 Renewal Energy Standards bill, which calls for half of the 36 billion gallons of renewable transportation fuel to come from non-corn feedstocks by 2022.

The federal government acknowledged at the end of last year that target production for noncorn biofuels would not be met this year.

Meanwhile a new venture funded by Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, Clean Energy, has just announced plans for its first network of natural gas dispensing stations at Pilot/Flying J truck stops along major highways.

John Deutsch, who served as Undersecretary of Energy in the 1970s, said in a recent MIT lecture “over the last couple of years I’ve realized that what’s happening with unconventional natural gas [shale] is the biggest energy story that’s happened in the 40-plus years that I’ve been watching energy development in this country.”

Read the rest here: http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2012/01/16/mit-say...

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Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

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(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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