Where did gas go wrong? Part 2
In Part 1, we concluded that the industry had allowed itself to become indistinguishable from coal in the minds of consumers. In Part 2, we’re going to dig a little into how this happened, and how we may learn from this as we move forward.
I started my career working for ExxonMobil Gas Marketing in London in September of 2001 - an auspicious month by any measure. I remember going to the window on the second Tuesday of my professional life and looking up. I remember the urgent work to make sure our disaster recovery plans were in good order (they weren’t) and effective (also not). Facing the market through this period, which shortly thereafter included the turmoil induced by the end of Enron & TXU, to name a couple of high profile casualties, was fascinating.
We also had our fair share of environmental protests in those days - St Catherine’s House (on the corner of Aldwych and Kingsway near Covent Garden, overlooking the Australian High Commission - ironic, given the moves I have made since) was boarded up every May Day; we were all instructed to wear civvies, hide our security badges and leave by lunchtime.
I recall chatting with a Friends of the Earth fundraiser in Covent Garden one day, and suggesting that they may not be interested in my money - they might consider it dirty because I worked for ExxonMobil. They replied that as long as it wasn’t Esso, it was fine. Go figure.
The “Stop Esso” campaign was in full flight, gleefully describing the then-CEO Lee Raymond as “The Darth Vader of Global Warming”. It’s a good line. Being the Darth Vader of anything has to be pretty cool - I wish I had kept the flyers they were handing out. It’s certainly memorable.
As an industry, we responded with our usual cool, logical, dispassionate prose. After all, we are geologists, technicians, engineers, financiers… you know, serious folk. People know that we know what we’re talking about. (Straightens monocle and removes pipe from mouth for just long enough to say) “Now look here…”
We talk about gas as a great transition fuel as we move from ‘fossil fuels’ to renewables. We talk in gentle terms about gas being a great partner for renewables. We talk about serious stuff, seriously, scientifically - after all, we’re the experts so people should believe us.
So let’s break this down semantically. A transition - we see transitions of power, we transition from one job to another, between awake and asleep, between the bridge and the chorus… all things that happen within a comprehensible time frame. “Partners” implies something approaching equality - sure, you get senior partners and junior partners - but with some notable exceptions like Simon & Garfunkel, most partnerships imply similar contributions.
Starting with “Transition”. Local transitions have been happening since the industrial revolution (for example, I’ve written here about my experience in Newcastle previously), but in general, in a global frame of reference, there have been no energy transitions - only additions, additions that have lifted billions out of poverty. What is talked about as ‘the’ energy transition now is genuinely unprecedented, and is going to take decades. Use of the word ‘transition’ creates an unattainable expectation of speed, and that we know what the end state we are transitioning towards looks like.
Now for Partnerships. Gas is not the partner for renewables. It’s the underwriter that means that they have a snowball in hell’s chance of making it onto the grid at any scale, never mind enough scale to become even vaguely equal - which they are not yet, not even with batteries. It’s the insurance policy that allows us to experiment with the future without losing the farm. It’s the thing that has your back and is reliable enough to make sure you won’t freeze in Europe this winter.
I believe we have undersold our message, perhaps speaking more to our rational selves than we have to the voting public. We need to swing for the fences. I’m not a communications professional (and if you are, please feel free to steal and apply some polish), but here’s my pitch:
Natural gas is the best energy choice we have - able to be deployed quickly, cleanly, at a scale that makes a difference and enables humanity to continue lifting developing countries out of poverty without causing coal smog. It’s the thing that means we even have the choice to develop new technologies that will enable us to move beyond hydrocarbon combustion - but this may take decades. Until then, anything other than a broadly gas-first philosophy is the reckless pursuit of a currently unattainable virtue, likely at the cost of real human suffering.
As for the development of new technologies… well, that’s the next subject on my list.
AB