The United States used over 4 trillion kWh of electricity in 2023. The lion's share of that power came from burning natural gas. This critical resource enabled water heating, cooking, industrial process heat, and of course electricity that powered the economy and our communities. Yet burning this methane gas also releases carbon dioxide, which many seek to eliminate as a negative production externality.
How can we keep our lights on if natural gas provides 40 percent of our power and its byproduct must be phased out? The answer is not to phase out natural gas at all, but to transform it.
Decarbonizing natural gas likely calls to mind some process of burning methane and capturing its emissions at the source. But this isn't transformational at all and it is costly and inefficient. The change on the horizon is pre-combustion carbon capture.
Rather than think of natural gas (CH4) being burned and then decarbonized, innovators are producing point-of-use hydrogen by decarbonizing the natural gas to produce C and 2H2 - that is physical carbon and hydrogen gas. While many methods exist, one increasingly popular method is that of thermal methane pyrolysis. This uses heat to decompose the methane molecule and decarbonize the natural gas, enabling the carbon to fall away and be collected (and later sequestered in the ground or sold as a valuable product) while the hydrogen can be sent into the furnace or other combustion chamber that would otherwise burn natural gas.
The benefits of this energy evolution are clear, but deserve emphasis. With this method of decarbonization, we can continue to rely on natural gas, fully remove its carbon, burn clean hydrogen, and avoid all the negative production externalities associated with traditional carbon capture, hydrogen production, hydrogen transportation and storage, and more. The future of natural gas looks very similar to the present - it can be collected and sent through its existing network of pipelines all the way to industrial users and electricity generators. Only, before it is burned, it can be decarbonized to produce hydrogen at the point of use, on demand, virtually emission free.
If we wait for centralized hydrogen hubs to take shape, we may spend years or decades only to have hydrogen produced through means that burden and strain our existing networks. Currently, green hydrogen requires vast amounts of new electricity demand to be met with renewable power, which must be installed and its electricity transported through new transmission infrastructure. It is a poor electricity solution that depends in part on new electricity. Power generators seeking to decarbonize (particularly with hydrogen) can more effectively achieve this through distributed natural gas decarbonization methods.
What is more, the distant future where centralized hydrogen production is up and running will still require a vast network of new and specialized storage tanks, transport vehicles, and pipelines. Each of these will face challenges and limitations, such as acquiring permits and land use. For the natural gas pipeline network, these challenges are long since settled and gas flows daily. Allowing that gas to maintain its course, leverage all the existing infrastructure, and decarbonize at its end use is the path of the future.
This may be the year that the electricity sector, industrial and commercial process heat users, and other power-hungry industries turn to natural gas to meet their increasing demand and reduce emissions. Unlike prior years, the embrace of natural gas is not for its relatively lower emission rate compared to coal, and thinking of methane as a "bridge fuel" can be retired. Instead, natural gas can change the decarbonization landscape by delivering all the power demands the sector can ask for by simply converting it to hydrogen before combustion.