Dear Mr. Suplee,

I just read your November 17 piece in the Washington Post on the problems with a hydrogen-powered car. I can’t disagree that this technology still has a long way to go and may end up being a tailpipe dream. But as someone who clearly approaches these issues with a rational scientific perspective I thought you might be interested in another technology that has been developed to strip hydrogen from natural gas without generating the “copious emissions of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide” associated with the traditional steam reformation technology.

It is a technology developed by a Canadian company, Atlantic Hydrogen, that uses a plasma-arc process to drop carbon out of the natural gas stream as a solid. Earlier this year I visited their facility to look at a demonstration project and came away impressed.

The company’s focus is not on producing pure hydrogen for hydrogen fuel cells but on enhancing the hydrogen content  of natural gas stream to produce a natural gas product (Hydrogen Enriched Natural Gas – HENG) with lower CO2 and NOx emissions. The process itself produces hydrogen without producing CO2 emissions. Here is their website, which includes a paper describing the process and an interesting video.

For the record, they are not a full member of the American Gas Association and neither the association not I have a financial interest in their business.

Also I would like to thank you for addressing the issue of energy loss from energy conversion. That is something that is rarely addressed in the media and can be a source of frustration when discussing energy efficiency issues. At AGA we have been trying to get recognition of this issue because it tends to favor use of natural gas appliances.

While the norm is to look at appliance efficiency and ignore all upstream energy conversion losses, recently the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science studied the issue and recommended that the Department of Energy move to measuring appliance energy efficiency on a full fuel cycle basis.

Attached is their recommendation along with slides we use to illustrate the issue and a joint statement we recently entered into with the Natural Resources Defense Council supporting full fuel cycle energy efficiency measurement.

Thanks again for your thoughtful article.

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Many people have heard conflicting numbers regarding the supply of natural gas in the United States. Most everyone who knows about U.S. natural gas supply would agree that the U.S. has abundant supplies of natural gas. So why the confusion? It’s because the natural gas industry uses different numbers, for different reasons, to describe supply. My bottom line: Someday the U.S. may stop using natural gas because something better may come along. But when that happens, I believe there will still be huge quantities of natural gas lying beneath U.S. lands and waters.

10 Years of Supply: Sometimes people are referring to “proved reserves” of natural gas. The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s latest estimate of proved reserves of dry natural gas in the U.S. is 237,726 billion cubic feet – enough to supply current U.S. demand for about 10 years. http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/data_publications/crude_oil_natural_gas_reserves/current/pdf/table01.pdf

Proved reserves look something like inventory, what you have discovered and know you can produce if you go ahead and drill it. The U.S. usually has around 8 to 10 years of proved reserves.

80 Years of Supply: Another way of looking at natural gas supply is to look at the U.S. natural gas resource base. The natural gas resource base can mean all natural gas that exists or, more commonly, all natural gas that is currently technically recoverable. Technical recovery also usually implies that the gas can be recovered economically. This is where we see the big differences in numbers. The 2007 report of the Potential Gas Committee of the Colorado School of Mines determined that in 2006 the U.S. had a natural gas resource base of 1,525 Trillion cubic feet of natural in the U.S. (about an 82 year supply).

Thousands of Years of Supply: Does this mean that in 82 years we will run out of natural gas? No. It means that with today’s technologies and in today’s market we may have an 82 year supply. But there are mind-numbing quantities of natural gas that we do not count today. It is likely that the next report of the Potential Gas Committee will find that we now have much more natural gas because of the relatively recent perfection of drilling technologies that will allow the production of huge quantities of U.S. natural gas from shale. But even gas from shale may be a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering quantities of frozen natural gas that are in and around the United States. This is regular natural gas that is frozen because it is under pressure in the waters of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf. This frozen natural gas is called methane hydrates or methane clathrates and we currently do not have the technologies in place to produce this natural gas from the OCS. However, methane hydrates are also found in Alaska and northern Canada beneath the permafrost. Recently experimental wells have been drilled and some natural gas from methane hydrates have been produced with today’s technologies.

When you look at natural gas from methane hydrates, the numbers are staggering. It has often been said that the energy from the methane hydrates in the U.S. vastly exceed the energy found in all the coal, oil and conventional natural gas in the U.S. combined. One estimate of U.S. methane hydrates is 200,000 Trillion cubic feet – close to 9,000 years of supply at current U.S. consumption levels.

So how much natural gas do we have in the United States? The realistic answer depends on technology and economics.

http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/bin.asp?CID=12527&DID=208645

http://fossil.energy.gov/programs/oilgas/publications/methane_hydrates/MHydrate_overview_06-2007.pdf

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While natural gas supplies 23% of U.S. energy (about the same as coal) and 23% of world energy, there are two concerns that have created skepticism regarding the prospects for natural gas in the 21st century and beyond. Both are misplaced.

Can Natural Gas Power the World for Centuries to Come? The first concern goes to natural gas supply. The concern regarding supply originated in the 1970’s, a time when federal law required that natural gas production be price regulated. The result of that misguided effort were shortages that had nothing to do with the supply of natural gas in the ground and everything to do with the price that producers were allowed to charge to get that natural gas out of the ground. The price deregulation of natural gas production has led to an interesting development – the more natural gas we produce, the more natural gas we find that can be produced. Unconventional sources of natural gas that were once deemed impossible to produce now make up almost half of the natural gas we produce today. As we look to the 21st century and beyond, we now face the surprising reality that the future supply of natural gas in North America is almost un-measureable – and that it may well exceed the energy content of coal and oil combined. Much of that huge supply is in the form of frozen natural gas – methane hydrates. While many persons have assumed that methane hydrates could never be produced economically – as was once said of much of the other sources of natural gas currently powering our economy – the U.S. Geological Survey recently announced that it had produced methane hydrates in Alaska using conventional natural gas drilling technologies. While this development does not mean that we will see methane hydrates supplying any significant portion of U.S. natural gas supply in the next 10 to 15 years, it does mean that we need to think about a future North American natural gas supply that might last for many centuries.

What About Greenhouse Gas Emissions? This leads to the second concern regarding natural gas. Is there a role for a fossil fuel in a low-carbon future where the world seeks to reduce carbon emissions 80% below current levels? I believe that natural gas can and should be a major energy source in that low carbon future. Here’s why.

1. Today – Leading in Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction. While greenhouse gas emissions increase worldwide, natural gas utility customers have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions down to 1990 levels at the same time the number of customers has increased substantially. Natural gas distribution sector customers have largely achieved the goal today that president-elect Obama set for the U.S. economy for 2020. Pretty surprising for a fossil fuel.
2. Tomorrow – Poised to Continue Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Replacing higher greenhouse gas-emitting electric water heaters with high efficiency natural gas water heaters and replacing lower efficiency home and business heating appliances with high efficiency natural gas appliances will continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To make that happen faster, we need increased federal tax credits and other programs to encourage moving to lower carbon footprint heating technologies.
3. Further into the 21st Century – A Natural Gas Low Carbon/Zero Carbon Future? All fossil fuels confront the need to reduce carbon emissions. But natural gas starts with a number of significant advantages:

1. It emits 45% less CO2 than coal and 30% less CO2 than oil.
2. It is composed primarily of clean hydrogen – natural gas (methane) consists of four hydrogen atoms and only one carbon atom.
3. Natural gas can be turned into hydrogen today.
4. With additional research and funding, it seems quite conceivable that the carbon in natural gas could be captured economically and much of the future economy could be fueled by hydrogen from natural gas.

What do you think?

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