Natural gas will displace coal in power generation. Getting natural gas into the transportation fleet is harder. It works best for vehicles that work from centralized fueling facilities like trucking fleets or buses and cabs. That is happening. Before it can make big inroads beyond that, infrastructure is going to need to be developed.
Today, natural gas now outstrips coal as the leading provider of electricity in America. If this is as big as people believe it is, natural gas will soon be powering trucks and marine ships. Maybe even standard commercial cars that people use at home through compressed natural gas, other gas to liquids. The potential is there for more energy independence by America and a reliance on cleaner fuel - natural gas emits half as much as coal, in terms of carbon emissions. That's a real bounty.
One of the industries we follow very closely is the trucking industry. They would love if today there was an option for them to run their fleets on natural gas, because of the price disparity between oil and refined diesel - which they almost exclusively run on now - and natural gas.
Relative to oil, however, natural gas is very cheap and very attractive. And I think that natural gas in emerging markets is very attractive. There is very little natural gas infrastructure in places such as China, where there is tremendous demand for natural gas.
We've recognized that natural gas would be the fastest-growing of the conventional fuels: oil, natural gas, coal. And so, we see the important role that natural gas will play globally and, more importantly, the important role it will play in the U.S. in terms of meeting future energy demand.
Through Duke Energy's strong balance sheet and electric generation expertise, and Piedmont's understanding of natural gas markets and proficient operations, the combined company will be well-positioned for a future that may require additional natural gas infrastructure and services to meet the needs of our customers.
Natural gas emits only half the carbon dioxide of coal when burned, but if methane leaks when oil companies extract it from the ground in a sloppy manner - methane is far more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide - it can wipe out all the advantages of natural gas over coal.
Natural gas is the best transportation fuel. It's better than gasoline or diesel. It's cleaner, it's cheaper, and it's domestic. Natural gas is 97 percent domestic fuel, North America.
There's no question that natural gas is a lot better than coal or oil, in the sense that natural gas produces less carbon per unit of energy produced.
Not only are utilities switching from coal and oil to gas, but also trucking, schoolbuses, garbage trucks, and even taxi fleets.
The blockade against American natural-gas exports needs to be lifted, and the war on coal needs to be ended, so that, instead of being wasted to replace perfectly good coal-generated electricity, our natural-gas exports can be expanded even further.
Because America is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. We have the world's largest reserves of natural gas, and the world's most sophisticated production and storage facilities, by a wide margin.
The natural-gas industry is screaming for new markets, and there are only two sectors where these can be found: transportation and power generation.
First of all, the idea that natural gas is better than coal is a lie, especially when it comes to fracking for natural gas. It is a lie that was bought into by a lot of Democrats and a lot of environmentalists because I think they wanted to have a win against something; against coal.
Compared to coal, which generates almost half the electricity in the United States, natural gas is indeed a cleaner, less polluting fuel. But compared to, say, solar, it's filthy. And of course there is nothing renewable about natural gas.
What I want is natural gas to be a bridge to a cleaner energy future, not a dam against a cleaner energy future, not a dead end. To get this right, to get the most out of it, we not only have to make sure we exploit natural gas in a clean way - it's a challenge - but we also have to make sure that we are instilling and implementing all the incentives to win solar, nuclear energy efficiency that will make them continually competitive with natural gas in the future.
We do have serious energy needs for the country, we are aware that natural gas is especially in demand because of its air quality benefits: 90 percent of new power plants have been natural gas-powered.