I don’t think it’s really fair to say it’s harm reduction— it causes a LOT of future harm (via emissions) to reduce prices now. If the issue is people not being able to pay for heat, can’t we address that with social welfare programs?
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Yes of course, but not viable nationally in the US. Coal to combined cycle natural gas plants is ½ the CO₂, less PM, NOx, SOx, etc. It’s also better for matching renewables production.
The harm being reduced here was that people could not afford to heat their home. That's a real harm, but it's something we can fix with better welfare programs (without touching energy supply at all). There is no energy shortage in the US severe enough that people should be freezing.
You don't accept that NG is less bad than burning coal? You are of course right that nuclear and renewables would have been a better investment than killing poor people in the war on terror, but converting plants to burn gas has an ROI of like 3 years while the other options are in the decades.
I don't think NG is clearly better than coal. Burning it emits less CO2 than coal, but it's very hard to measure how much methane leaks during mining/transit-- I suspect companies are under counting. Methane is worse than CO2 but stays in the atmosphere for less time. I don't think it's a slam dunk.
But my point is that the 'harm reduction' here is that people could not afford to heat their homes. We can address that in one day, just pass a law to make heat free for poor people. If we want the harm reduction that's cited in the paper, that's all it would take.
True! I wish the political climate would allow for such an obvious solution at any level of government, but any intervention at the national level pragmatically requires neolib fuckery.
I agree that natural gas is probably less bad than coal, but imo spending effort to shift the industry to that instead of solar/wind/nuclear is a mistake. I see it as just another way for companies to delay transitioning that needs to happen asap. The LCOE for solar/wind are pretty good these days.
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The Allam Cycle may be viable with CO₂ capture (i.e. not a complete scam). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allam_power_cycle