A coal industry trade group tossed natural gas under the bus in a blog post calling for more development of carbon capture technologies to limit global carbon emissions, noting that U.S. carbon emissions increased in 2018. The spike comes amid an ongoing trend in power plants switching to gas fuel.
Count on Coal, backed by the National Mining Association, said in an Oct. 9 blog post that relying on natural gas to limit carbon emissions at the cost of crippling the coal industry and idling thousands of coal miners "has proven to be not much of a climate plan." Instead, the post argues that energy breakthroughs, like the electric vehicle revolution, are needed.
Because of the shift from coal to gas for power, natural gas is now a leading contributor to carbon emissions, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration indicates, although gas emits roughly half the carbon of coal on a per-unit basis.

In-fighting within the fossil fuel sector is not unprecedented. At the beginning of the shale gas revolution, Chesapeake Energy Corp.'s founder, the late Aubrey McClendon, was famous for his scathing criticism of coal, even going as far as to contribute to the efforts of anti-coal environmental groups.
The Count on Coal post, however, marks a shift in how the coal industry is talking about climate concerns. Much of the industry's focus has been on fighting regulations in the U.S. that were designed to limit carbon dioxide emissions. And overseas, the coal industry has pitched coal as the solution to bringing countries out of poverty while not mentioning the impact on the environment.
Count on Coal lashed out at natural gas for ignoring environmental concerns surrounding hydraulic fracturing, the production technique that has produced a glut of cheap gas available to power plants. "Why debate the environmental merits of fracking when you can step on the head of the coal industry to prove your value in a carbon-constrained world?"
Research and development into carbon capture is needed to achieve global emissions reductions, Count on Coal said. With the right developments, carbon capture can clean up emissions from the power sector, as well as heavy industry.
"We need replicable solutions that tackle emissions both here in the richest nation on earth and in nations still struggling to pull millions out of crippling poverty," Count on Coal said.
The natural gas industry's biggest trade group's response was to reiterate the 50% less carbon statistics: "Natural gas emits half the carbon that coal does, and as a result, switching from coal to natural gas in electricity generation has saved about 500 million tons of carbon dioxide since 2010," American Petroleum Institute spokesman Reid Porter said. "Natural gas has helped drive emissions to their lowest level in a generation, and continues to be the leading edge of climate progress."
