While it is well-known that Americans conserve electricity more than, for example, Canadians, and that CO2 emissions from energy productions have plummeted to 20 year lows without raising prices, an environmental group and scholars from UC Irvine and Stanford University are saying that won't last - they believe that unless people can't afford electricity generated by fossil fuels, expansion of cleaner energy sources, such as wind and solar, will be harmed.

Bereft of expensive subsidies and mandates, solar is not ready and wind never will be. Solar clearly needs more basic research and natural gas, long touted by environmental groups, seems to be the ideal bridge for Americans, since lobbyists for environmental groups make sure nuclear is kept out of circulation. 

Recently proposed rules by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rely heavily on the substitution of natural gas for coal to lower carbon emissions by 2030 - the Obama administration wants to get rid of coal, which is already producing emissions back at early 1980s levels.

"Natural gas has been presented as a bridge to a low-carbon future, but what we see is that it's actually a major detour. We find that the only effective paths to reducing greenhouse gases are a regulatory cap or a carbon tax," said lead author Christine Shearer, a PhD in sociology doing a post-doctoral fellowship in the department of earth sciences at UC Irvine. 

Writing in Environmental Research Letters, the authors use their own computer model to simulate the effect of high and low gas supplies on the U.S. power sector. Coal-fired plants, still the nation's largest source of power, still produce vast quantities of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas polluting the Earth's atmosphere.  

Previous environmental efforts have tried to claim methane risks due to natural gas but the new estimate says that the overall climate benefits of gas are likely to be small anyway - because its use delays the widespread construction of low-carbon energy facilities, such as solar arrays. Their model does not factor in how poorly solar actually does after two weeks in use. By simulating up until 2050, they find that high gas usage could trim emissions by 9 percent of boost them 5 percent.

Shearer and co-authors conclude that greater use of gas is a poor strategy for clearing the atmosphere.

"Cutting greenhouse gas emissions by burning natural gas is like dieting by eating reduced-fat cookies," said Steven Davis, assistant professor of Earth system science at UC Irvine and the study's principal investigator. "It may be better than eating full-fat cookies, but if you really want to lose weight, you probably need to avoid cookies altogether."