Canadian Natural Gas

[Mathgod]

Figured we should talk about this in a separate thread instead of continuing to derail the inflation thread...

Some have suggested that by exporting Canadian natural gas to developing countries around the world, we would be helping to substantially reduce global CO2 emissions. Sounds interesting, and though I'm not exactly convinced right now, I'm open minded and willing to listen. So those who support this idea, please explain what kind of emissions reductions we'd be looking at, and how all this would work.

[Kickazzflames]

Right now when it comes to world emissions, if Canada somehow managed to find the technology and implement the infrastructure that allowed for zero emissions we would still hardly make a difference when it comes to the rest of the world.

However, had we focused on LNG 20 years ago and built the plants and pipelines required.. we could have been changing the world emissions in a different way. If we had the capacity to create and ship LNG to the rest of the world we could massively reduce the amount of emissions by getting other countries off their reliance with coal. Unfortunately we are far behind in this and for Canada to become a world leader in this it would take a ton of investment, time and to somehow get through insane regulatory hurdles these days.

The way Canada is right now, I don't see this being realistic with the current regulations. However, I think if Canada was serious at this, there could be an appetite in foreign investment to fast track it, but again, most are shying away from any kind of investment in new projects within the Oil and Gas Sector. A project could be fully approved and still get shutdown at any time.

P.S. I don't have any numbers or data so the above is mostly my opinion.

[Fuzz]

https://www.volker-quaschning.de/dat...ez/index_e.php

[opendoor]

So the methane is on top of the C02 for natural gas? So even with only 1% methane leakage, it's basically on par with a coal plant in overall GHGs when it comes to generating electricity?

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by opendoor

So the methane is on top of the C02 for natural gas? So even with only 1% methane leakage, it's basically on par with a coal plant in overall GHGs when it comes to generating electricity?

That's the suggestion, yes.




https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2020-11/documents/methane.pdf


Estimates are in the 1-2% range.

[opendoor]

I suppose the upside is that methane is much shorter lived in the atmosphere, so it's less of a super long-term issue. But that doesn't help us in the next 100 years or so.

[Fuzz]

The thing with methane though, is it has a half life of 9.1 years, so if it is used as a transition fuel, it's not having an impact for as long. It's also measured in ppb in the atmosphere, not ppm like CO2, so it's a much smaller percent, even though it has a higher greenhouse effect.

[GGG]

That also ignores the methane released in coal production which currently is 5-10% of methane emissions in the US

[GGG]

In terms of scale

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...ons-180978355/

The worst 5% of power plants account for 73% of emissions. Switching them to gas would lower emissions by 30%. So you could lower power sector emissions by 22%.

Power sector accounts for something like 20%???? Of total emissions so say 4% reduction in C02

[Table 5]

I recently returned from a trip to Mongolia, a beautiful country with welcoming people, a bustling and growing economy... and where much of the cooking and heating is still done with coal. Their capital Ulaanbaatar (about the size of Calgary) is littered with smoke stacks, traffic congestion is insane, my tap water had a brown tinge, and the air had a noticeable acidic bite to it. I had a headache the entire time I was in the city... I can just image the long-term health impacts it has on their local population. If there's ever a city that truly deserves to declare a "climate emergency", it is it.

They have no natural gas in Mongolia. Needless to say, helping it to transition even partially to the most basic form of natural gas would be a massive difference maker, both in terms of environmental impact and basic quality of life. If we in the west truly want to make a global impact, these are the types of places we need to be sending our capital and expertise.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by Kickazzflames

Right now when it comes to world emissions, if Canada somehow managed to find the technology and implement the infrastructure that allowed for zero emissions we would still hardly make a difference when it comes to the rest of the world.

You don't just get to label all the emissions to make the crap our houses are filled with as "Chinese". Those are our emissions too.

[opendoor]

Natural gas in Mongolia is already sort of happening. Russia is planning a pipeline to China through Mongolia that will also supply Mongolia. And Australia has a gas company working there as well.

That said, even though they're using coal for basically all of their heating and electricity generation, our emissions per capita are still 50% higher than theirs are. Even tackling the relatively low hanging fruit for Canada (electricity generation in Alberta and Saskatchewan, shift to EVs, move more to heat pumps vs. natural gas) can make a pretty significant difference with virtually no impact to our standard of living.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Natural gas in Mongolia is already sort of happening. Russia is planning a pipeline to China through Mongolia that will also supply Mongolia. And Australia has a gas company working there as well.

That said, even though they're using coal for basically all of their heating and electricity generation, our emissions per capita are still 50% higher than theirs are. Even tackling the relatively low hanging fruit for Canada (electricity generation in Alberta and Saskatchewan, shift to EVs, move more to heat pumps vs. natural gas) can make a pretty significant difference with virtually no impact to our standard of living.

One thing to keep in mind for both China’s number and ours is we polute for export. The emissions from the oil sands should be tied to the end users of the oil when comparing emissions between countries.

Agree that getting off coal in Alberta and Sask is easy low hanging fruit. Even just replacing with gas saves you emissions and provides modern backup power to expanding renewables.

[Brewmaster]

I think the best explanation I've seen of this came from the largest natural gas producer in the US, who published this presentation in the spring: Unleashing U.S. LNG

The concept would be the same in Canada, but unfortunately it's unlikely the infrastructure could ever get built here.

[Torture]

The problem with LNG is that, yes, it can help in the short term, but it doesn't get us as far as we need to go to decarbonize. Building out LNG infrastructure can displace emissions from coal, but it also likely locks in a certain level of carbon emissions or you have stranded assets.

A commonly heard claim from oil and gas boosters is that Canada should export more liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a climate solution by replacing coal as a source of power generation in other countries.

The Government of Alberta's own Canadian Energy Centre, the so-called war room, points to LNG as a tool for emissions reductions, going as far as to state that "growing Canadian LNG exports is necessary if the world is to meet its Paris commitments of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius."

These claims are at best misleading.

Under the right conditions, additional LNG can reduce power sector emissions but only if there is sufficient existing coal-based generation to substitute. Otherwise, the new supply of natural gas ends up displacing lower-emitting sources such as renewables or nuclear.

This makes LNG only a short-term opportunity. By the 2030s, additional LNG becomes a problem for a world that is cutting emissions to meet its climate goals. It would either create stranded assets out of costly new LNG export terminals or lock in emission growth that takes us in the wrong direction on climate change.

In other words, investing in new LNG infrastructure means either committing to carbon emissions or putting in a lot of money only to abandon infrastructure before its designed lifetime.

LNG can help in the near-term. There is significant coal-based generation remaining in the world today that could be substituted by natural gas. However, in a 1.5-degree or 2-degree compatible world — as is called for under the Paris agreement — all coal-based generation would be replaced by natural gas or renewables by 2030 or 2038, making the coal-to-gas transition argument moot.

To remain on a Paris-compliant pathway, the world would need to replace these natural gas plants with lower-emitting generation. This effectively creates an expiry date for the use of LNG as a climate solution.

Even this best-case scenario ignores serious infrastructure challenges. For example, places that would benefit the most from a coal-to-gas transition — like India with its large fleet of young coal power plants — are also the places most likely to not have the physical infrastructure such as pipelines to support a shift to gas.

However, in a 3-degree "business as usual" scenario, where the world fails to deploy the additional renewable energy required, LNG can continue to help displace coal-fired generation.

In short, LNG expansion makes a below 3 C increase more likely and a 2 C or below increase less likely. Warming above 2 C will result in dramatically worse consequences for Alberta and the world.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...blem-1.6480377


Abstract from the paper:

The shift from coal to natural gas in the power sector has led to significant reductions in carbon emissions. The shale revolution that led to this shift is now fueling a global expansion in liquefied natural gas (LNG) export infrastructure. In this work, we assess the viability of global LNG expansion to reduce global carbon emissions through coal-to-gas switching in the power sector under three temperature targets—Paris compliant 1.5 °C and 2 °C, and business-as-usual 3 °C. In the near to medium term (pre-2035), LNG-derived coal-to-gas substitution reduces global carbon emissions across all temperature targets as there is significantly more coal power generation than the LNG required to substitute it. However, we find that long-term planned LNG expansion is not compatible with the Paris climate targets of 1.5 °C and 2 °C—here, the potential for emissions reductions from LNG through coal-to-gas switching is limited by the availability of coal-based generation. In a 3 °C scenario, high levels of coal-based generation through mid-century make LNG an attractive option to reduce emissions. Thus, expanding LNG infrastructure can be considered as insurance against the potential lack of global climate action to limit temperatures to 1.5 °C or 2 °C. In all scenarios analyzed, low upstream methane leakage and high coal-to-gas substitution are critical to realize near-term climate benefits. Large-scale availability of carbon capture technology could significantly extend the climate viability of LNG. Investors and governments should consider stranded risk assets associated with potentially shorter lifetimes of LNG infrastructure in a Paris-compatible world.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/1...48-9326/ac71ba

[PeteMoss]

Well Ontario is shutting down a nuclear power plant in the next few and having to bring on a lot more natural gas in the near future. So buckos for us.

[opendoor]

Isn't keeping those nuclear plants online insanely expensive? I recall reading that the power generated from them costs about 2-3x what it does from other sources.

Anyway, I'm far from an expert, but wouldn't the following give us pretty clean and reliable power:

• invest in much better inter-provincial transmission
• build out a ton of solar/wind power generation in the regions where you get the best bang for your buck and where fossil fuels are used for electricity (i.e. in places like Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, etc.).
• use those renewables to supply as much daytime power as possible to those provinces as well as neighboring provinces
• that would theoretically allow dams in places like BC, Manitoba, and Quebec to be run at reduced capacity when solar and wind are covering some of the load, which would allow reservoirs to fill. Then when solar and wind aren't producing, power generated from hydro can cover some of the load in the non-hydro provinces
• use existing gas plants to fill in where required.

I don't know, maybe there isn't enough existing hydro to make that feasible. But while nuclear is good, it's pretty expensive and not very flexible; you can't move output up and down to account for changes in demand very easily like you can with most other sources. I wouldn't be closing down plants, but I also don't know if I'd be investing tens of billions of dollars in a bunch of new ones either unless it looked like the only option.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by opendoor

I don't know, maybe there isn't enough existing hydro to make that feasible.

Due to geography and population distribution, it's likely easier (and more profitable) to export electricity south to the US. Almost all of Hydro-Quebec's focus has been trying to get new pipelines transmission lines to New England and New York.

And I'm not sure there is all that much excess supply during high demand periods in the winter; during a cold snap in January Quebec hit record usage of over 40 GW.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montr...tion-1.6322688

[woob]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Isn't keeping those nuclear plants online insanely expensive? I recall reading that the power generated from them costs about 2-3x what it does from other sources.

Anyway, I'm far from an expert, but wouldn't the following give us pretty clean and reliable power:

• invest in much better inter-provincial transmission
• build out a ton of solar/wind power generation in the regions where you get the best bang for your buck and where fossil fuels are used for electricity (i.e. in places like Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, etc.).
• use those renewables to supply as much daytime power as possible to those provinces as well as neighboring provinces
• that would theoretically allow dams in places like BC, Manitoba, and Quebec to be run at reduced capacity when solar and wind are covering some of the load, which would allow reservoirs to fill. Then when solar and wind aren't producing, power generated from hydro can cover some of the load in the non-hydro provinces
• use existing gas plants to fill in where required.

I don't know, maybe there isn't enough existing hydro to make that feasible. But while nuclear is good, it's pretty expensive and not very flexible; you can't move output up and down to account for changes in demand very easily like you can with most other sources. I wouldn't be closing down plants, but I also don't know if I'd be investing tens of billions of dollars in a bunch of new ones either unless it looked like the only option.

Your optimism that the provinces would work together for their own greater good is admirable.

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by accord1999

Due to geography and population distribution, it's likely easier (and more profitable) to export electricity south to the US. Almost all of Hydro-Quebec's focus has been trying to get new pipelines transmission lines to New England and New York.

And I'm not sure there is all that much excess supply during high demand periods in the winter; during a cold snap in January Quebec hit record usage of over 40 GW.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montr...tion-1.6322688

Ontario needs more power in the summer while Quebec peaks in the winter. They are pretty good match in terms of peak demand.

Quebec could also produce way more than they do now if there was demand/contracts.

The main issue is that the nuclear plants in Ontario generate a ton of jobs that if you shut them down and bought energy from Quebec - you'd lose.