Practical Sustainability: A Guide to a More Sustainable Life by Robert Brinkmann

Author:Robert Brinkmann [Brinkmann, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030737825
Google: TbQ6EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2021-11-15T23:17:26.341953+00:00

Top producers of crude oil

Amount (Mt)

Top consumers of petroleum products

Amount (Mt)

United States

745

United States

760

Russia

560

China

617

Saudi Arabia

545

India

224

Canada

268

Russia

136

Iraq

232

Saudi Arabia

106

China

195

Brazil

102

United Arab Emirates

183

South Korea

102

Brazil

146

Canada

101

Kuwait

144

Germany

96

Iran

137

Mexico

80

Natural Gas—The Clean Fuel? In recent decades there has been a major initiative to use more natural gas around the world because it is perceived as a much cleaner fuel than petroleum and coal. Indeed, when burned in power plants, natural gas releases around 50 times less carbon dioxide than coal. For many years, scientists and energy planners have developed a wide range of uses of natural gas because of its far cleaner emissions when compared with oil or coal.

Natural gas was not always such a popular energy source. For decades, natural gas was seen as a problem that oil producers needed to manage. It is found associated with petroleum and could not be as easily stored or moved as petroleum. Thus, it was often burned off as a byproduct. The same was true in other settings, such as in landfills or sewage treatment plants, where natural gas is a noxious byproduct of natural decomposition processes. It is only recently that we are finding ways to collect the vast amount of natural gas available from ancient reserves and from decomposing materials.

While it was not widely used in the past because it was seen as a nuisance, new questions about the use of natural gas come into play in our modern era due to its impact on our climate. As was noted in Chap. 5, methane is 25 times more powerful of a greenhouse gas as is carbon dioxide. Thus, one molecule of methane does the same amount of negative work to change our climate as one molecule of carbon dioxide. As a result, more and more climate scientists are raising alarm bells around the extraction, distribution, and use of natural gas.

Over the last few decades, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has been used to extract petroleum and natural gas from tight underground reserves. Extreme pressures exerted in the subsurface by fracking fluids crack the rock to release the energy sources. Of course, in such situations, some of the natural gas is released into the atmosphere where it can start to help to heat our atmosphere. The same thing also happens when natural gas or petroleum is extracted under normal extraction procedures involving traditional pumping. Fracking and regular oil extraction have an array of environmental challenges. However, this new challenge, the emission of natural gas into the atmosphere, is emerging as a critical issue for managing our climate challenge.

Once natural gas is extracted from the ground, it is moved around in a vast global network of pipelines. These pipelines may eventually lead directly to power plants, homes, or other locations where it is burned to create heat or electricity. This network is also supported by natural gas tanks which are transported by truck, rail, or ship. Anywhere along this supply network leaks can occur that do damage to the atmosphere. Recent research has demonstrated that there are over 600,000 leaks in the US pipeline system

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