It brings up other questions, though. Is there a coal commodities market? Do coal spot and futures prices change in real time? If not, why not?
If coal demand plummets, will coal prices drop too? Couldn’t this potentially keep coal (even with, someday, carbon costs attached) cheaper than gas, and thus first in the “dispatch order?”

First, if I understand your position correctly, you’re advocating for the use of natural gas-fired power generation as a way to “quickly reduce coal generation and achieve massive greenhouse gas emissions reductions.” In particular, you’re advocating for more intensive use of existing, under-utilized NG-fired power plants.

[JR: As one one of many ways. It's all in my earlier posts, especially part 2.]

But I’m simply not convinced that it would, in fact, achieve “massive emissions reductions.” To reach that conclusion, we’d have to see a comparative, cradle-to-grave analysis of greenhouse gas emissions used to power NG vs. coal-fired power plants — from exploration and production, processing, transmission, and distribution of NG and coal, to com the combustion of NG and coal. At present, your posts continue to focus on the reduced GHGs at the point of combustion (e.g., 50-60% less) but don’t address full life-cycle emissions.

[JR: Not sure why people post critiques based on speculation that could be answered in 60 seconds on google. Full life-cycle looks to be at least 50% reduction (see here, and note the coal plant is supercritical PC, which is NOT the plant gas would be replacing, so you can probably add 10% to the number in that analysis for typical coal plant. Also, by doing massive efficiency like W-M, you don't actually increase gas production, just switch its use, while slashing coal use, so I'm not sure how much of the CH4 emissions should even count. And, of course, it is a much more short-lived GHG.]

I do think that natural gas can play an important role and I wouldn’t in the slightest be surprised if NG is in fact less dirty than coal. But the question is by much, especially relative to our ability to constrain total GHG emissions as close as possible to 350 PPM. And, based on what I know, I just don’t see it as a “gamechanger.”

[JR: I have explained what I mean and so we disagree.]

And, while mountaintop mining for coal is, unequivocally devastating and horrific, this is cold comfort to the farms, ranches, and landscapes that have been devastated by industrial-scale NG development. Let’s remember that the problem isn’t coal, or oil, or NG — it’s our continued dependence on dirty fossil fuels. All of them. They served a purpose decades ago, but that purpose has run — or is near running — its course.

[JR: No. The problem is GHGs.]

Second, I think the use of the term “gamechanger” is, from a framing perspective, quite dangerous and unhelpful. While your position re: NG is actually fairly conservative, I anticipate that it will be exploited. And much of the environmental community — as attested to by RFK, Jr.’s piece — rhetorically states that NG “impacts can be mitigated by careful regulation” but I have yet to see a huge push in that direction.

[JR: Again, we disagree. And again, NG impacts < < coal impacts. Not even in the same league.]

A very possible scenario is the NG industry latching onto its “gamechanger” role and using that role to squash any sort of push for “careful regulation” by castigating them as “impediments to low-cost NG production.” The environmental community will thus be put in a difficult position as being seen in opposition to a climate “gamechanger.” This suggests to me the need to properly frame the issue right from the get go as a “potentially important means of transitioning away from coal and towards efficient use of clean energy, like wind and solar.” As writers with considerable political acumen, I hope you see this distinction. But at present, these posts seem too much like boosters for NG, not its careful, defined, limited, and temporary use.

[JR: You're getting desperate here. NG is already largely unregulated at national level, though more so a state level. So nowhere to go but up.]

So, third, if we’re going to use NG as a “bridge” fuel, let’s make sure the bridge is as well built and short as possible. You’ve indicated that you see NG-fired power generation as critical for the next few decades. Well, how do we actually make sure that it doesn’t gain a foothold and, in fact, become a permanent fixture, with political lobbyists willing to defend its place in our economy? And what type of careful regulation are we talking about? Let’s put these questions — and their answers — on the table, *now*, so that it’s abundantly clear what we mean by using NG as a transition/brig fuel. The concept, at present, remains ill-defined.

[JR: Except for that pesky thing called W-M, and its shrinking caps, which is what these posts are all about. Try again.]

Some suggestions:

1. The NG industry has to inventory and report their GHG emissions to federal/state regulators;

2. Federal/state regulators develop and enforce (with a citizen watchdog role) regulatory measures designed to break down structural barriers currently undermining the deployment of existing, cost-effective GHG reduction measures applicable to NG exploration, production, processing, transmission, and distribution (the NG industry would often rather buy new leases than improve the efficiency of existing operations, which are often sold/traded to other companies);

3. We figure out some way to include the NG’s upstream and midstream elements within the fold of the cap & trade system (remember, much of the existing upstream and midstream infrastructure may not actually fall within the cap & trade system at present because it is made up of hundreds of thousands of “small” emission sources that, nonetheless, are collectively significant) which could be quite helpful because of all the existing, off-the-shelf, and negative cost GHG reduction measures for NG which would reduce the cost of compliance with the cap;

[JR: Uhh, that's what domestic offsets are for!]

4. We collectively advocate for responsible, “do it right” principles, like ensuring that the sweetheart regulatory rollbacks provided by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to bedrock laws like the Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Water Act, and National Environmental Policy Act are eliminated; and:

5. We keep the NG industry out of our most special, important, and sensitive landscapes — our municipal watersheds, core wildlife habitats, wilderness-quality lands, etc. — not only because these are essential in their own right but because they are essential to our collective ability to withstand the impacts of a deteriorating climate.

If you give these guys an inch, they’ll take a mile.

Respectfully,
Erik S.G.

[JR: Sounds like you a good plan for your work in the next several years! Go for it. My focus remains avoiding catastrophic global warming.]

NG prices are linked somehow to oil prices:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/ngw/ngupdate.asp

It’s good to have people supporting nuclear, but

1) the costs that we know about are too high;
2) we don’t know what the other (safety, security) costs are; there is no market to value them;
3) my conservative side really, really dislikes putting so much concentrated power into fallible, human hands.
It is concentrated physical, economic, bureaucratic, and political power. And it raises a huge red flag: why do no conservatives raise these fundamental conservative concerns about nuclear power?

You wrote:

“Since 2007, the discovery of vast supplies of deep shale gas in the US, along with advanced extraction methods, have created stable supply and predictably low prices for most of the next century. Of the 1,000 gigawatts of generating capacity currently needed to meet national energy demand, 336 are coal-fired. Surprisingly, America has more gas generation capacity – 450 gigawatts – than it does for coal.

However, public regulators generally require utilities to dispatch coal-generated power in preference to gas.”

There are several challenges.

1. Recognition of the existence of “vast supplies of shale gas” does not mean that the gas is sitting in a warehouse somewhere just waiting to be burned. There is a lot of drilling and hydrofracing left to do to extract that gas.

2. That gas is not free. It is already owned by someone who will expect to make a great deal of money if they risk the capital investment required to make it available.

3. Public Utility Commissions work for consumers and have traditionally worked to protect consumer interest by pushing electric power utilities to dispatch the lowest operating cost generation first. They do not push coal for coal’s sake; it is quite a bit cheaper per unit of heat (measured in millions of BTU’s.) Even with very low natural gas prices like those available today, when there is a bit more supply than there is demand a million BTU’s of gas cost more than 2 times as much as a million BTU of coal.

4. A major portion of the natural gas fired capacity is in “peaker” units that are not very efficient and not designed for continuous economic service. They start up fast, but they also consume a lot of high quality, high cost fuel per unit electricity produced.

Sure, methane is cleaner than coal, but for many years the tobacco industry tried to tell customers that “lite” cigarettes burned cleaner than the alternative.

I’m okay with people who honestly market methane – even when they use the more market friendly term of “natural” gas. It is a useful fuel that is less damaging than its fossil fuel competitors.

I am not okay with those who claim that “nothing’s worse than coal”, yet put lots of time and effort into keeping zero-carbon, heavy metal fission out of the conversation as a potential tool in the fight against carbon emissions.

Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast

Rockfish – your skepticism is valuable, and provides more impetus to develop the cleanest energies: efficiency, wind, solar, etc. Changing the “dispatch order” requires no capital cost. The goal simply remains shutting down coal plants as quickly as possible. Then shut down oil use and production. Then natural gas.

Sorry, but that sounds to me an awful lot like the voice-over of a coal or oil industry commercial telling how “recent discoveries” and “advanced extraction methods” mean a tiny tiny little bit of offshore drilling or strip mining will be the answer to our energy needs.

And why is it that NG suppliers have never been able to provide long term price stability? Why is there now a “glut” when a couple of years ago there was a price spike?

The “dispatch order” is mandated by regulators, I assume, to force utilities to use the cheapest fuel first and not gouge their customers on price. So, all the free carbon permits being given away by WM may make coal more expensive in 5 or 10 years, but the massive demand increases proposed for NG will drive prices up and soon make coal cheaper again anyway.

Then there is the dilemma of sunk costs. Having converted all our power plants to NG, there will be great pressure to extract more, and permit ever greater environmental havoc in doing so, because we have made massive investments in that fuel. You claim that coal can be easily converted to gas, but what can gas be easily converted to? Not wind, solar or geothermal.

Again, I think this is selling our souls to the devil for a few tons of CO2 reduction.