> We will have to get the energy from somewhere. The only viable alternative on that scale that I can see is nuclear energy, but given current panic mood about it, does not seem very likely. If not, are we ready to seriously cut energy consumption and accept the accompanying life standards drop? I don't think so.
Easy answer: natural gas. It's already a bigger source of electricity than nuclear, and it'll inevitably play a large role in the grid in the future as it neatly solves the dispatch problem (renewables can't really be controlled, but NG plants can be dispatched at a moments notice to make up for lost capacity).
I agree that gas is more clean then the coal, but speaking in context of carbon emissions, does it really change that much? It's still burning hydrocarbons.
- thus, you can calculate approximately how much energy is stored in each of the above fossils per mole of carbon dioxide:
- methane = 4CH = 1640 kJ / mol CO2
- petrol = 2CH + CC = 1170 kJ / mol CO2
- coal = CH + CC = 760 kJ / mol CO2
This is obviously a gross simplification, but hopefully you'll see the outline of why gas is much cleaner than coal. Methane, since it's a gas, also burns much cleaner than liquids or solids since you can better mix the fuel with oxygen, so methane tends to produce much less particulate matter, soot, and other products of incomplete combustion.
EDIT: spenrose below has a great point about uncombusted methane in the atmosphere. Methane is a NASTY greenhouse gas, so it's absolutely worth taking into account how natural gas production affects methane levels in the atmosphere. Namely, there was a worrying metastudy a few months ago about how natural gas production is quite leaky, which has nontrivial greenhouse gas considerations: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/february/methane-leaky-ga...
The burning creates about half the CO2 as coal does. Unfortunately unburned methane is a worse GHG in the short term (when it matters). That said, old coal plants are much worse than the best new coal plants, so the regulations are important.
There's a lot. From a health perspective, PM is way worse for human health than carbon dioxide. Here's two EPA fact sheets and a well-cited article:
http://www.epa.gov/airquality/particulatematter/health.html
http://www.epa.gov/region7/air/quality/pmhealth.htm
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969799...
> We will have to get the energy from somewhere. The only viable alternative on that scale that I can see is nuclear energy, but given current panic mood about it, does not seem very likely. If not, are we ready to seriously cut energy consumption and accept the accompanying life standards drop? I don't think so.
Easy answer: natural gas. It's already a bigger source of electricity than nuclear, and it'll inevitably play a large role in the grid in the future as it neatly solves the dispatch problem (renewables can't really be controlled, but NG plants can be dispatched at a moments notice to make up for lost capacity).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Unite...