The White House's renewed campaign to battle climate change with a fresh emphasis on alternative sources may have an unintended consequence — it could tap new demand for natural gas, according to NBC News.
President Obama's clarion call to reduce carbon emissions, an effort dubbed by critics as a "war on coal," actually may be pushing utilities toward using natural gas.
"We are transitioning more coal plants to natural gas and shuttering some completely," Quinlan Shea, vice president for environment at electric utility group Edison Electric Institute, told NBC News.
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Shea predicted power companies will shutter about 20 percent of their existing coal plants, regarded as an unwelcome source of greenhouse gases, in the next few years. "Generally we're encouraged by natural gas, and economics dictate that smaller, older coal plants be shuttered ... and be replaced by natural gas. A lot of that is happening right now."
The World Coal Association reported that 41 percent of power plants globally depend on coal, with cleaner-burning natural gas a distant second at 21 percent. Natural gas production is viewed with suspicion by some environmentalists, however, who fear the effects on groundwater supplies of its fracking extraction technology.
The Energy Information Administration reported natural gas prices have recovered since hitting record lows last year.
"Natural gas prices have a tendency to be pretty volatile," James Hempstead, a power and utilities analyst at Moody's Investors Service, told NBC News. "If natural gas prices spike up ... it will have a dampening effect on consumers' ability to pay rates."
Costs to utilities, including new environmental mandates, "means that there will be additional costs and investments they need to make into their plants," he said, which could be transferred to consumers in the form of higher electric rates.
T. Boone Pickens, chairman and CEO of BP Capital, an energy-focused hedge fund, wrote in a weekend column in The Dallas Morning News that state governments are doing more to promote U.S. energy independence than the federal government is.
He said 22 state governors have banded together to support initiatives such as purchasing natural gas vehicles for their state fleets, while adjusting taxes, regulations and laws to put natural gas on an even footing with imported diesel.
"Today, an 18-wheeler can go coast-to-coast and border-to-border along America's 'Natural Gas Highway' with liquefied natural gas refueling facilities all along the way in spite of the inaction of, and impediments thrown up by, the federal government," Pickens wrote.
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