Renewable natural gas as climate-neutral energy carrier?

Natural gas is a potent greenhouse gas but remains an attractive energy resource for a good number of reasons. Because complementing the use of natural gas with carbon dioxide capture and storage yields several drawbacks, producing synthetic natural gas instead could be an interesting alternative. Methanation is an established and well-known process, and with atmospheric carbon dioxide as input it could deliver a climate-neutral energy carrier, which we refer to as renewable natural gas. At present, however, methanation is exceedingly costly. In this paper we try to answer two main questions:... Mehr ...