Asserting the climate benefits of the coal-to-gas shift across temporal and spatial scales

Katsumasa Tanaka (), Otávio Cavalett, William J. Collins and Francesco Cherubini
Additional contact information
Katsumasa Tanaka: National Institute for Environmental Studies
Otávio Cavalett: Norwegian University of Science and Technology
William J. Collins: University of Reading
Francesco Cherubini: Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Nature Climate Change, 2019, vol. 9, issue 5, 389-396

Abstract: Abstract Reducing CO2 emissions through a shift from coal to natural gas power plants is a key strategy to support pathways for climate stabilization. However, methane leakage in the natural gas supply chain and emissions of a variety of climate forcers call the net benefits of this transition into question. Here, we integrated a life cycle inventory model with multiple global and regional emission metrics and investigated the impacts of representative coal and gas power plants in China, Germany, India and the United States. We found that the coal-to-gas shift is consistent with climate stabilization objectives for the next 50–100 years. Our finding is robust under a range of leakage rates and uncertainties in emissions data and metrics. It becomes conditional to the leakage rate in some locations only if we employ a set of metrics that essentially focus on short-term effects. Our case for the coal-to-gas shift is stronger than previously found, reinforcing the support for coal phase-out.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0457-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:9:y:2019:i:5:d:10.1038_s41558-019-0457-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-019-0457-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().