[afransen]

Two major technological breakthroughs have made natural gas a very cheap alternative for power -- the fact it can take coal offline, seriously lowering emissions, is a bonus.

1. Liquified-natural gas (LNG) tankers now chill the natgas, ship it across seas, then re-gassify to pipe it to users. Natgas used to be a regional product, it's now a global product.

2. New drilling and 'cracking' techniques have allowed gas companies to access resources that used to be too small or too broken up to tap economically.

Assuming they make all their new plants Cogen as well, this is by far the greenest, cheapest, and most flexible power alternative we have -- barring major advances in solar or wind power technology.

Depending on the cost of fuel and carbon emissions, I think natgas will continue to be a highly desirable fuel source if nothing else but because it is highly dispatchable. Renewables will likely become cheaper than coal eventually, with scale. But making renewable energy dispatchable is a somewhat costly challenge. I'm sure it's a hurdle we'll surmount, but natgas will be quite useful until we get there.

 

[Therion]

I think the costs of building natgas plants need to take into consideration future productions declines (10+ years). There's only so much of that stuff in the ground. The so-called shale-gas discoveries seem to be producing wells that are quite short-lived. I'm not convinced natgas will stay cheap for very long, although the coming next down-leg in the recession will keep it cheap for a little bit. Perhaps even long enough to justify building natgas plants. Hard to say for sure.