Natural Gas Impact

Natural gas is a clean-burning source of energy that is used for heating, cooling, electricity generation, creating indispensable materials (such as steel and concrete) and more.

Nowadays, natural gas environmental impact is a debatable topic for scientists.Natural gas has a pretty good reputation among fossil fuels. While burning this fossil fuel, it emits much fewer greenhouse gases than oil or coal. But we cannot say it is environmental-friendly: it is just less polluting.

How does natural gas affect the environment?

Natural gas environmental impact is based on 3 pillars:
Drilling and extraction Transportation Burning and consumption

Drilling and extraction:

Drilling a well can affect wildlife and land use. With this intervention, local ecosystems could collapse: breaking migration patterns, pollute rivers and streams, causing erosion of dirt and pollutants are all side-effects of natural gas extraction. Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) can cause earthquakes and it overburdens the local water sources. This technique is part of the gas industry that an environmental protection agency would ban as soon as possible.

Transportation:

Building an infrastructure to transport the gas from the wells to natural gas power plants is also a polluting process. Laying pipelines can cause habitat fragmentation and cross key areas from the perspective of nature. Gas leaks from pipes can cause big environmental trouble in the groundwater levels (and even on the surface).

Burning and consumption:

Natural gas is the most environmentally friendly fossil fuel because it burns cleaner. In power plants, natural gas emits 50 to 60 percent less carbon dioxide (CO2) than regular oil or coal-fired power plants. It also emits greenhouse gases with a lower life cycle into the atmosphere. However, combustion also releases methane and lowers air quality.