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In recent years, natural gas has emerged as an attractive source of energy in the U.S., mainly thanks to new technologies that have allowed access to natural gas from shale rock. While natural gas offers many advantages - a large domestic supply, more-efficient combustion than petroleum and coal, and lower C02 emissions than petroleum and coal - it also has drawbacks. Natural gas has a lower energy density than other fossil fuels, which complicates its transport and storage, produces more C02 than renewable energy sources, and will require expanded infrastructure.
Recognizing that for all that is known about natural gas, there is more that is unknown, the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) convened a meeting of geoscientists, economists, and other natural gas experts from academia, government, and nongovernmental organizations to discuss the potential (enablers and barriers) of a methane-based economy. They considered the issues of supply, demand, and environmental health and public safety.
"In the U.S., we don't really understand much about energy: where it comes from, the scale of demand, or the benefits and challenges of producing different kinds of energy," says Scott Tinker, Director of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the Univ. of Texas at Austin and the State Geologist of Texas. "I don't know where things will stand 50 years from now, but I do know that, like today, we are still going to be looking for sources that are affordable, accessible, reliable, and sustainable," Tinker says. "Those tenets will drive the energy mix, whatever it turns...