Will The Compressed Natural Gas Trend Pan Out:

For decades, the US has been aware of the need to develop alternatives to oil and coal for domestic energy production. Lately, natural gas has been looking like a viable energy source. The idea seems to be that natural gas burns cleaner than petroleum, and definitely cleaner than coal, and so might represent a source of clean energy over the next century or so. Natural gas is also relatively abundant, and the US has a competitive advantage in its extraction and processing. Calls have been made for massive state investment in developing this resource as well as the massive national infrastructure needed to make natural gas the successor to oil and coal. In reality, the issue is far more complicated than natural gas promoters claim.

The first problem with a switch to natural gas as a major energy source for the country is that it will require a major retooling of the nation's energy grid. This is already being tried in some places with limited success. A total rewiring of the energy and transportation networks—think of the filling stations alone that would have to be rebuilt almost from scratch—is a costly step that many in the utilities field are reluctant to undertake for anything less than a permanent solution.

Whatever else may be said about natural gas, it isn't a permanent fix. The fundamental issue here is that the problems driving energy production away from other fossil fuels—pollution, extraction hazards, limited supply—are all present with natural gas, and a switch would only ease the problems rather than solve them.

Another issue is incentives. While solar and wind power are very well positioned for a distributed network of wind farms and individual homes, natural gas extraction requires just the centralized, top-down hierarchy of energy that Congress rejected with the breakup of Standard Oil. Individual homeowners can't extract natural gas as they can catch solar energy. Small communities won't be able to drill for gas the way they can farm the wind. While this would seem to suggest a more distributed network is called for, perhaps built on top of the already-existing electrical grid, it flies in the face of a political trend toward greater centralization. Unfortunately, the very strengths of wind and solar are what make them weak in terms of a general changeover—their distributed, democratic effect on the power supply.

So, what's to be done? While individual states are experimenting with natural gas, and environmentalists stage a fighting retreat over methane seepage and the danger of fracking, natural gas continues to be adopted in a hole-and-corner sort of way. This is precisely the way a national energy strategy cannot work. Look for natural gas to make further inroads here and there while failing to make serious headway against other centralized sources such as coal and oil. In time, there might be a serious discussion about the future of US energy production.

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