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Good news for gas from new fugitive methane numbers / Alan J. Krupnick and Nathan Richardson, Common Resources, September 16, 2013http://common-resources.org/2013/good-news-for-gas-from-new-fugitive-methane-numbers/Is the shale gas boom good or bad for climate? It largely depends on methane. Methane, the primary constituent of natural gas, is a double-edged sword in climate terms. It burns much cleaner than coal—about half of the CO2 emissions and far less of most other pollutants for the same energy output. But released directly into the atmosphere it’s a much more potent GHG than CO2, at least over the short term. This leads to a pretty simple prescription: burn all the methane you pull out of the ground. But it is probably impossible to prevent all leaks, so the advantage of natural gas over coal, and its prospects as a “bridge” fuel, depend on exactly how much “fugitive” methane emissions occur. Estimating real world emissions is very hard, and has been surrounded by controversy. At something a bit over 3% emissions of total methane production, natural gas no longer beats coal in GHG terms (though this, too, is controversial, and depends on assumptions and policy goals)...