Natural gas is about to become the world’s biggest green energy source
Mark Whittington
When politicians who are alarmed about climate change think about green energy, they tend to be fixated on solar and wind power. However, thanks to a recent merger announced between NET Power and Rice Acquisition Corp II, natural gas is about to become the leading source of green energy, supplanting solar and wind.
NET Power has developed a new natural gas power plant technology called the Allam cycle. Conventional natural gas plants burn natural gas to heat water, which then turns the turbines that generate electricity, emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. An Allam cycle plant uses the carbon dioxide to turn the turbines and then sequesters it for sale to customers that use the CO2 for everything from fuel to building materials to food. NET has successfully run a test plant in La Porte, Texas, since 2018.
Rice Acquisition is a decarbonization solutions special-purpose acquisition company. Its merger with NET will create a new, publicly traded company called NET Power Inc.
NET already has six Allam cycle power plants, each capable of generating 300 MWs of electricity in various stages of development — four in the United States, one in the United Kingdom, and another in Germany. The company believes that the sky is the limit as far as how many power plants it can build — perhaps thousands. It anticipates being able to replace older, more polluting power plants with its newer, nonemitting models.
Ironically, the company notes that a provision of the much-maligned Inflation Reduction Act contains tax incentives for the kind of carbon capture technology it is preparing to unleash on the world. The provision may be one of the few good things about the Inflation Reduction Act.
The advent of natural gas as a true green energy source will upend the politics of climate change and energy production. Hitherto, the Biden administration and some countries in the European Union have sought to limit the production of fossil fuels because they emit greenhouse gasses. However, governments around the world that are chasing a renewable green energy dream will no longer have an excuse to do so once the NET emission-free plants come online.
Green New Dealers such as Bernie Sanders may label carbon capture, along with nuclear power, as a “false solution,” but NET Power is about to prove them all wrong. Natural gas power plants have advantages that wind and solar lack. They run 24/7, night or day, rain or shine, windy or calm, without any need for battery storage. Natural gas power uses less land than wind and solar farms do. Solar and wind have hidden environmental costs, from the difficulty of recycling fiberglass turbine blades to the effects on wildlife of utility-scale wind and solar arrays.
Emerging energy technologies such as carbon capture are more likely to address the problem of climate change than resorting to “renewable energy” by government fiat. The free market, with perhaps some indirect government incentives, will more likely lead to a world in which the energy we need to operate a technological civilization can be generated without emitting greenhouse gasses.
Carbon capture will not be the only energy technology of the future. New, safer nuclear power plants will be in the mix. The development of a new magnet at MIT and the recent breakthrough at Lawrence Livermore point the way to clean, limitless fusion energy in the coming decades.
The Green New Dealers want to impose a future of limits on all but the very wealthiest. Their excuse is that such a future is necessary to save Earth from a climate catastrophe. But one suspects the real reason is that rationing energy is a way for them to control people and maintain power.
Fortunately, private companies and the engineers and scientists who work for them are working to thwart the plans of people such as Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). The Green New Dealers despise free markets, but the same economic system that has brought such prosperity to the world is going to solve climate change and the energy crisis forever.
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Mark Whittington, who frequently writes about space and energy policy, has published a political study of space exploration titled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond, and, most recently, Why is America Going Back to the Moon? He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.