Skip to Content
Home | news | Articles

Articles

Green and Clean Gas

Ohio Republican representative Troy Balderson, whose district sits atop the region’s massive oil-shale deposit, has introduced a H. Res. 1148 — a statement of accumulated truths and smart policy directions that has the added appeal of being an eye-poke at climate extremists — to formally recognize U.S.-produced natural gas as “an affordable and ‘green’ energy,” coupling its environmental upside with the central role natural-gas use and development should have in growing the America economy. The world’s, too.

Like many a formal resolution, it’s heavy on the “whereas-es.” Here are a few from Balderson’s proposal that connects the dots between natural gas and environmental cleanliness:

Whereas, since 2005, two-thirds of the power sector greenhouse gas emissions reductions are a direct result of the switch to natural gas;

Whereas, because of increased innovation and technology in the natural gas industry, United States methane emissions were 10 percent lower in 2020 compared to 2005, despite the United States increasing production of natural gas by nearly 100 percent between 2005 to 2020;

Whereas, according to the Energy Information Administration, using natural gas to generate energy results in fewer emissions of nearly all types of air pollutants, including carbon dioxide, compared to other fossil fuels . . .

The resolution would also commit America to an “‘all of the above’ approach to meet United States energy needs,” declares “natural gas is necessary for the United States to be energy independent,” and directs the Biden administration to “support United States production of natural gas and natural gas infrastructure and identify and remove barriers to the production of natural gas.”

Good luck with that. Still, the resolution comes as a smart, compact, one-stop-shopping declaration on why a commonsense policy on natural gas would please just about anyone (including Mother Nature) not bound to some dishonest ideology.

Click here to view the original story published by the National Review. 

The latest