In 2015, 195 countries met in Paris to sign a global agreement to cut carbon emissions.
In 2015, 195 countries met in Paris to sign a global agreement to cut carbon emissions. A key part of that plan is reducing the amount of coal burned to create power. Now, a decade later, coal consumption has plummeted. South Korea and Germany have eliminated coal power altogether. But in this rush to ditch the dirtiest fuel, climate-conscious countries could be making one big mistake.
In much of the world, the best alternative to coal is natural gas, a fossil fuel that releases less carbon. Getting more countries to use gas will reduce emissions in the short term. But that switch comes with an unintended consequence. In a new paper, Bård Harstad, a professor of political economy at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Katinka Holtsmark, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Oslo, show that natural gas exports have the effect of discouraging investments in renewable energy. Ultimately, that will increase carbon emissions over the long term, a dilemma the authors call “the gas trap.”
“The gas trap means that countries that are very climate-concerned might increase gas production even more,” Harstad says. “The more they care about climate change, the more they try to outcompete coal. But the outcome of this well-intended action is a reduction in the investments of renewables and, ultimately, more emissions.”
Read more at: Stanford University
Photo Credit: Benita5 via Pixabay
