Is gas an alternative to fossil fuels?

Fossil gas is often touted as the ‘cleaner’ or ‘greener’ of the fossil fuels as it produces fewer emissions, but this is very misleading.  

Fossil gas is still a fossil fuel, just like oil and coal, and it should not be considered a ‘light’ alternative to the others. Scientific studies keep showing that energy from fossil gas can be as climate-damaging as that from coal. Methane, which is its key component, is a highly potent greenhouse gas, around 86 times worse for the climate than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period and responsible for around 30% of global temperature increase.  

The climate impact of fossil gas is extremely difficult to address, largely because of methane leaks. These leaks occur across the fossil gas supply chain, from extraction to transport and distribution into neighborhoods, and even when the fossil gas is burned. Companies across sectors and countries significantly underreport their methane emissions. And although detection has improved, nearly 90% of even the largest leaks detected by satellites still go unaddressed. 

And fossil gas is not just bad for the climate, it's also bad for health and for nature, as leaks and gas combustion at power plants and in homes cause regional and indoor air pollution. 

As well as being wrongly portrayed as less climate damaging than other fossil fuels, fossil gas is often talked about as a ‘transition fuel’, a better alternative to use in the interim as we transition to renewables, or as a necessary source of energy when renewables need back up. 

But once again, this is a very misleading narrative. Ultimately, it is still a fossil fuel. Infrastructure lead times and companies’ obligations to glean long-term financial value from new projects mean that investing in fossil gas infrastructure will never just be ‘for the interim’. New fossil gas projects lock in carbon and methane emissions for decades, slowing down and locking out the truly cleaner and cheaper energy option – renewables.  

They also divert investment away from cleaner alternatives like battery storage and demand-side flexibility, which can significantly reduce reliance on fossil gas in the power mix. This would also make electricity more affordable.  

Fossil gas is more expensive than renewables 

The wholesale price for electricity produced by renewables is cheaper than electricity produced by fossil fuels. Renewables produce electricity at near zero operating costs when the wind and sun are freely available. In contrast, fossil gas is expensive, meaning electricity produced from it is expensive as well. A power system that relies more heavily on fossil gas electricity translates directly into higher power bills and greater exposure to volatile prices for consumers. 

And fossil gas is bad for energy security 

Fossil gas currently makes up a large proportion of the energy market – but as we have seen in recent years with conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, it is also very vulnerable to supply-chain disruption and price shocks, making relying on it a bad bet for energy security. 

Renewable energy is generally much less affected by conflict, particularly when it is based around a decentralised model where a significant amount of energy is generated by a network of smaller-scale, geographically-distributed infrastructure. 

What about so-called 'low carbon' gases, like hydrogen? 

Other fossil gases, notably hydrogen, are being marketed by the gas industry as ‘clean’, 'low-carbon', and soon-to-be widely available alternatives to fossil fuels. Governments across the world are weighing up how much of a role hydrogen will play in our future energy mix. 

There are many shades of hydrogen, including grey hydrogen – produced by splitting apart methane and creating carbon dioxide as a byproduct – or blue hydrogen – which captures and stores that carbon dioxide. But these still release large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.  

Carbon capture and storage is also too costly and complex to be a credible near-term climate solution. And while the fossil gas industry is increasingly promoting these 'low-carbon' gases as a climate solution, it is at the same time lobbying to weaken standards which could reduce their climate impact. 

Another shade of hydrogen is green hydrogen – produced from renewable electricity with low associated carbon emissions. Green hydrogen may sound promising, but it is unclear whether it will be available at a reasonable cost and at scale in the near future. Green hydrogen production also creates environmental and human harms of its own, much of which will be outsourced as Europe imports the gas.  

For these reasons, if we are to use green hydrogen, it should be used only for priority, hard-to-abate sectors (sectors where reducing carbon emissions is technologically or economically difficult), and only when it is the least harmful way to meet an energy demand that cannot be avoided. 
 
Essentially, producing and burning hydrogen – no matter the shade – will in almost all cases be more expensive and less efficient than simply electrifying the activity instead. 

Hydrogen therefore cannot be used as an excuse to continue deploying mass fossil gas infrastructure. Doing so risks diverting attention and resources from genuinely clean alternatives like wind and solar power, which are not only better environmentally, but also are a better bet for energy security.  

Companies say we will still need oil and gas in the future – is that true? 

While small amounts of fossil fuels may be needed in future as a back-up, they can never be the main energy source we rely on if we are to secure a sustainable future, despite what some fossil fuel companies say. Gas is another fossil fuel and fossil fuels do huge amounts of damage to people and planet.  

In addition to this, developing new oil and fossil gas fields is never being done ‘just in case’, because doing so expands our supply of fossil fuels, locks in their use for years to come, and can even drive up demand.  

What role does plastic manufacture play in oil and gas lock-in? 

Another lesser-known contributor to potential fossil gas lock-in is the production of plastics. 

Facing the prospect of declining demand for their main product, fossil gas producing industries use plastic as their plan B. 

Plastics are produced almost entirely using the byproducts of fossil fuel extraction. Shale gas, a type of fossil gas, contains a high rate of natural gas liquids which are used as feedstock for plastic production.  

If a substantial portion of the supply of fossil gas wasn't being used to produce chemicals to make plastics, the fossil gas boom would have been economically unviable. However, the construction of plants went way beyond what was needed to meet the existing demand and we now have oversupply.  

This means we are using fossil gas to produce far more chemicals than we need to make plastic. 

As a result, plastic is excessively cheap, making it near impossible for more sustainable alternatives (such as reusable packaging) to compete. So, the production of plastic continues to grow (our global plastic production has doubled in the last two decades alone) and a vicious cycle of excessive plastic production locks in the extraction and processing of fossil gas.