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Maguire: US gas-fired energy boom will have major emissions benefits in 2024.

In 2024, the United States' gas-fired electricity stations released over 1 billion tons of CO2 in one year. This is a record for the largest gas consumer and producer in the world.

According to Ember, the 1.003 billion tons of emissions is a 3.6% increase from 2023 and a 40% increase in emissions from gas-fired electricity generation since 2015.

These numbers are large but they lack context. The discharge from the U.S. coal-fired stations last year was just over 620 million tonnes, a new record low because of the lowest coal-fired electricity generation ever recorded.

The lower coal production totals show that the U.S. electricity system has made significant reductions in overall pollution, even though gas emissions are on the rise.

COAL VS CLEAN

The reduction in coal usage has resulted in a total increase of only 0.5% from 2023, to 1.64 billion tonnes, but a decrease of 19% from 2015.

This is despite the fact that total electricity production will reach a record high in 2024.

The rapid growth in clean energy generation, including solar, wind and hydro assets, has helped to meet most of the increase in consumption over recent years.

The total clean electricity production was 35% greater in 2024 than it was in 2015. This is primarily due to the nearly eightfold increase in solar power and a more-than-doubling of output from wind farms.

Fossil fuels are still the mainstay of U.S. electricity generation, providing just over 58% last year.

The fossil fuel share was 73% natural gas, and 26% coal.

The power companies plan to further reduce coal consumption over the rest of the decade while adding renewables to their generation mix in order to keep up with the demand for electricity.

Power suppliers will also become more dependent on natural gas in the future, especially to balance systems when intermittent energy production from renewable sources is not enough to meet overall demand.

GAS FIX

Ember reports that over 30 U.S. States rely on gas to meet 30% or more their electricity requirements.

Gas is used in 13 of these states to generate 50% or more electricity. Nine additional states rely between 15% and 30% on gas.

According to Global Energy Monitor's report, there are also nearly 50 gas-fired power plants in the U.S. that are either under construction or pre-construction, with a total capacity of around 30,000 megawatts.

Natural gas is a major component of the U.S. energy system, and will continue to be so for many decades to come.

This means that the overall emissions of natural gas in the U.S. are also expected to continue increasing.

Some of these gas plants are being used to replace coal power stations that have been in operation for an average of 45 years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

This means that even though more gas capacity is coming online, some of the most polluting coal plants in the U.S. will be shut down over the same period. This should help to cap overall fossil fuel emissions even as the U.S. energy system becomes ever gassier.

These are the opinions of the author who is a market analyst at.

(source: Reuters)