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What is Natural Gas?
While you might use natural gas every day, chances are you aren’t particularly familiar with this useful but mysterious substance. What is it exactly that brings that lovely flame to your burner and the warm water to your shower?
Natural gas is a mixture of hydrocarbons formed from the fossil remains of ancient plants and animals. It is mostly composed of methane, but also includes the other hydrocarbons ethane and propane. The fuel that is piped to you may also contain other gases like nitrogen, helium, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, and water vapor.
Natural gas is safe (non-toxic, non-carcinogenic), clean (non-corrosive, minimally polluting to soil and water) and reliable (supplied through underground pipes that rarely lose service during a storm). We get most of our natural gas from gas and oil wells, with smaller quantities in such forms as synthetic gas, landfill gas, and coal-derived gas.
While gas burns hotter and brighter than other fossil fuels like coal and oil, it spews none of the messy smoke and soot that these tend to release. As a result, natural gas is a very popular fuel choice. According to the American Gas Association, natural gas companies provide service to more than 70 million residential customers around the country, delivering gas to customers through a safe and efficient two-million-mile underground piping system.
About a quarter of the energy used in the U.S. comes from natural gas, one third of which powers residences and commercial enterprises. Another third is put to industrial uses, and the final third assists in production of electric power. Natural gas vehicles are on the rise.
Gas is a relatively clean way to power our lives. Gas burned in power plants does produce nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide, but in smaller quantities than the result of burning coal or oil. Methane, which is a greenhouse gas, is released into the air when natural gas is not totally burned, and can also be leaked during transportation or from faulty equipment. Compared to the greenhouse gas impact of burning dirtier fossil fuels, however, natural gas is an earth-friendly option.
Interesting factoid: Since methane is odorless and colorless, gas companies must add an odor to keep customers safe from leaks. A chemical called mercaptan is added to give the gas its distinctive rotten-egg-like smell.
With safe, reliable, sustainable energy increasingly in demand, natural gas is at the forefront of satisfying our energy needs.
Photo: Jasonwoodhead23 via Flickr
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Learn About Your Carbon Footprint
There’s much talk nowadays about reducing your carbon footprint. But it often isn’t clear how to go about doing so. Change your light bulbs? Take shorter, colder showers? What about switching to natural gas?It turns out that the average natural gas home emits 46 percent less carbon dioxide than the average all-electric home. Natural gas is the cleanest-burning fossil fuel, putting off 117,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per billion BTU of energy input, compared to 164,000 pounds and 208,000 pounds from oil and coal respectively. As such, gas offers a distinctly greener way to satisfy your energy needs than other types of energy.
If you want to calculate your own carbon footprint or compare the carbon emissions of gas and electric heating elements for your home, check out this handy calculator. If you need to make some changes, look for tips in this eco-action list for your home to find out how to make some positive changes.
Calculating the carbon footprint of household appliances is a tricky business. In 2009, the National Academies of Sciences recommended that the Department of Energy (DOE) use full-fuel-cycle measurement, which accounts for energy consumed in producing and distributing fuel along with energy used to operate appliances. Measuring this way offers a more complete and accurate picture of energy use, since it considers the energy spent to produce, generate, and transport the fuel to the point of use.
Full-fuel-cycle measurements are useful because they allow consumers to measure the total energy efficiency of their homes by incorporating all the energy costs involved. If an electric water heater is 90 percent efficient, it seems like a good bet compared to a natural gas water heater that is only 65 percent efficient. But a full-fuel-cycle measurement would tell a homeowner that electricity production and distribution involves energy losses as high as 70 percent to 75 percent, while the generation and distribution of gas involves losses of only about 10 percent. This compete measurement makes the natural gas water heater look like a greener choice after all.
Measuring this way may seem like a no-brainer, but there has long been debate over this question. However, the majority of the members of the committee that wrote the National Academies report supported a gradual switch to full-fuel-cycle measurements. The DOE has proposed to adopt this method of measurement in 2012 and was commended for doing so by the American Gas Association (AGA). Stakeholder comments and questions are currently being reviewed by the DOE in preparation of a final policy ruling. If adopted, the full-fuel-cycle method will provide consumers with a more accurate way to measure and compare energy and greenhouse gas emissions across products and equipment they use in their homes.
Photo: stevendepolo via Flickr
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Space heating with Natural Gas
Now that Old Man Winter has breezed into town, it’s more important than ever to make sure your home can keep him at bay. While central heating is a great way to heat up the whole house, there’s also something to be said for a more targeted approach to staying warm. There are plenty of advantages to natural gas space heating.
Space heating can help homeowners get the most out of those non-central spaces like garages, basements, and sunrooms. It is inefficient to heat a basement centrally, for example. “Many people try to heat a basement from their central furnace because that's a simple way to do it,” said Jeff Oliver, National Heating Solutions Manager at Rinnai America Corporation. “But . . . the basement is a completely different environment, so a form of space heat would allow you to centralize the thermostat and the source of heat in that space.”
Sunrooms are also unique environments, usually requiring less heating than the main house. Garages, for their part, should be heated to according to how they will be used. “With space heat, a lot for the determining factor is how you want to use that space,” said Oliver.
As to which kind of space heater will work best, it depends on the type of space and the BTU need of the space. An electric space heater, for instance, probably can’t heat a big basement or garage.
Oliver recommends the Rinnai wall furnace, a fully modulating gas furnace, which some people use as a supplemental heater to their main living space. A much more expensive option is a modulating central furnace with a zoned system.
Any kind of modulating gas-fired unit will create a more comfortable environment than an electric space heating solution. Electric heaters’ main advantage is the lower initial cost. However, gas heaters offer a lower cost of operation over time.
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