White House officials defend natural gas

Two senior White House officials have defended natural gas as part of the administration’s energy and climate change policies.

John Podesta, Special Advisor to the president, and John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, have both reacted against recent criticism by some environmental groups about the administration’s backing of increased natural gas use.

Podesta told reporters: ‘If you oppose all fossil fuels and you want to turn that switch off tomorrow, that is a completely impractical way of moving towards a clean energy future’. He elaborated that immediately cutting out all fossil fuels from any strategy was ‘sort of an impractical suggestion.

Holdren said: ‘The basic story on methane, including from the LNG sector, is that the emissions are definitely big enough to be worth reducing, but they’re not big enough to imperil the advantage that natural gas has over coal as a way to generate electricity’. Holdren also indicated that the White House is working in plans to address methane leaks in the natural gas life cycle chain, including in older pipes and in the extraction process.

The Obama administration has been supportive of natural gas as an alternative to coal and other carbon based fuels. The above outlined comments by White House officials are indicative of the administration’s future plans for leveraging American natural gas for energy and climate change policy goals.

Adapted from a press release by Emma McAleavey.

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