Anna Forrester
ICF International worked with Advanced Energy Economy to look into the capability of the U.S. natural gas pipeline system to align with the Environmental Protection Agency‘s Clean Power Plan, Natural Gas Intelligence reported Thursday.
Carolyn Davis writes the analysis report says the pipeline can keep up with power generation needs as the proposed CPP calls for a 30-percent decrease in carbon emissions by 2030.
The team conducted the study in response to concerns that states will turn to gas-fired generation to comply with CPP capacity requirements, the report said.
ICF researchers used the reference case, basic CPP case and low-gas-price CPP case scenarios for the study, Davis reports.
She notes that pipeline projects in the Marcellus and Utica shales are lined up in the next five years to expand the capacity of the U.S. gas infrastructure.
“These planned projects are sufficient to meet both the anticipated growth in gas demand in the reference case (that is, demand growth not related to the CPP) as well as the incremental demand in the CPP cases,” the research report stated.
