Carbon

In California generally and for Edison International’s Southern California Edison Co. (SCE) utility particularly, the future role of natural gas in power generation is dwindling in response to a long-standing state water ban causing the closing or repowering of coastal gas-fired plants and more recently from the state’s aggressive climate change policies. Reliability needs, however, will keep some gas-fired generation in the mix for some time.

Following on a number of headline-grabbing attacks on oil companies’ climate change policies in 2015, American Petroleum Institute (API) President Jack Gerard’s remarks to kick off 2016 suggest the lobbying group’s rhetoric is evolving to recast the role of fossil fuels — and natural gas in particular — in the climate debate.

With implications for the future volumes of natural gas used for electric generation, the state of Washington and a California public sector utility are the latest to push for reducing coal use and enacting a carbon tax.

After two weeks of negotiations in Paris, representatives of nearly 200 nations, including the United States, India and China, entered into an agreement to reduce global carbon emissions.

As President Obama attends an international summit on climate change in Paris, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) accused the president of ignoring “America’s oil and natural gas renaissance,” and said he should do more to promote hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and natural gas development around the world.

The sales outlook for natural gas in Canada’s chief producing province brightened Sunday when the Alberta government unveiled a new carbon emissions-reduction policy hitting coal-burning power plants and using a light hand on gas-burning oilsands production.

Fossil fuel companies, particularly those focused on U.S. projects, are risking up to $2.2 trillion of investments over the next 10 years by pursuing projects that may be uneconomic in the face of international action to limit climate change, the Carbon Tracker Initiative (CTI) warned Wednesday.

Even skeptics cannot deny the impact climate change is likely to have on markets moving forward, according to a recent report published by BlackRock Investment Institute.

Representatives from some of the nation’s leading power generators and one of its largest grid operators continue to tout the benefits of natural gas, but they cautioned that the fossil fuel faces challenges, and it won’t be the only fuel source for electricity in the coming decades.