On the climate benefit of a coal-to-gas shift in Germany’s electric power sector

Methane emissions along the natural gas supply chain are critical for the climate benefit achievable by fuel switching from coal to natural gas in the electric power sector. For Germany, one of the world’s largest primary energy consumers, with a coal and natural gas share in the power sector of 35%...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2021-06, Vol.11 (1), p.11453-11453, Article 11453
Main Authors: Ladage, Stefan, Blumenberg, Martin, Franke, Dieter, Bahr, Andreas, Lutz, Rüdiger, Schmidt, Sandro
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/4077/4082
704/106/694/682
Carbon dioxide
Coal
Electric power
Emissions
Greenhouse gases
Humanities and Social Sciences
Methane
multidisciplinary
Natural gas
Natural gas supply
Petroleum industry
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Supply chains
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Methane emissions along the natural gas supply chain are critical for the climate benefit achievable by fuel switching from coal to natural gas in the electric power sector. For Germany, one of the world’s largest primary energy consumers, with a coal and natural gas share in the power sector of 35% and 13%, respectively, we conducted fleet-conversion modelling for reference year 2018, taking domestic and export country specific greenhouse gas (GHG)-emissions in the natural gas and coal supply chains into account. Methane leakage rates below 4.9% (GWP 20 ; immediate 4.1%) in the natural gas supply chain lead to overall reduction of CO 2 -equivalent GHG-emissions by fuel switching. Supply chain methane emissions vary significantly for the import countries Russia, Norway and The Netherlands, yet for Germany’s combined natural gas mix lie with 
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-021-90839-7