A Bridge to Where? Tracing the Bridge Fuel Metaphor in the Canadian Media Sphere

This paper examines how Canadian media have discussed the role of natural gas in climate change mitigation from 2016 to 2019. It also explicates different stakeholders' varying stances on the environmental impacts of North America's ongoing “shale gas boom,” as manifested in their conflicting attitudes toward designating unconventional gas as a bridge to a low-carbon future. The data in question consist of 99 articles published by Canadian media sources, all of which included explicit references to either “bridge fuel” or “transition fuel.” Through a qualitative thematic analysis, I found that more than half of the articles adopted the conventional definition of bridge fuel. Meanwhile, there are three less common, yet noteworthy interpretations arising out of the rest of the articles, which conflict with each other in terms of their views on the relationship between unconventional gas and greenhouse gas emissions reduction. Overall, the fact that bridge fuel references only appeared in a fraction of Canadian environmental and energy news reports during the target period suggests the issue's peripheral status in the Canadian media sphere. Given this situation, the paper ends by calling for more knowledge mobilization efforts to raise public awareness of the controversial factors underlying expanding unconventional gas production and consumption.

Big Oil and Climate Regulation: Business as Usual or a Changing Business?

There is a long and continuing debate in the literature on corporate political power about whether businesses that advocate public-interest regulation do so for strategic political reasons or because they anticipate economic gains. Previous research on Big Oil’s strategies in climate politics has largely converged on the first view, arguing that global majors feign support for moderate carbon pricing largely to prevent the adoption of more drastic and costly policies. In contrast, this article argues that Big Oil’s growing stake in natural gas expansion is its economic motive for supporting favorably designed carbon pricing. The article finds that policy, technology, and energy market changes have paved the way for a shift toward natural gas and that a moderate carbon price, by triggering coal-to-gas switching, supports the realization of a gray transition in which “Big Gas” can expand its market share at the expense of coal and become a major bridge fuel next to renewables. Our findings underscore the importance of studying the competitive rivalry that underpins evolving industry demands for climate policy and regulation.

Only the instantaneous global warming potential is consistent with honest and responsible greenhouse gas accounting

This paper presents a simple model to describe the impact on global warming of methane (natural gas) when used for energy production. The model is used to estimate the near-term effect of energy policies based on natural gas as a bridge fuel. The results make it clear that the commonly employed global warming potential of methane with a 100-year time horizon has the following problems: 1: it produces misleading results; 2: is inconsistent with meaningful tracking of greenhouse gas emissions; and 3: is incompatible with the precautionary principle.

Will Australian liquefied natural gas demand soar under the 21st Annual Conference of the Parties (COP21) targets?

The ambitious 21st Annual Conference of the Parties (COP21) targets of over 200 countries to limit global warming require a significant reduction in green house gas (GHG) emissions by signatories; these reductions will require major shifts in the way that countries think about their supply mix. Although renewables are often the primary focus of emissions reductions, the role of natural gas in GHG emissions warrants consideration. Gas is ‘triple A’: affordable, abundant and available. It is also lower in GHG than other fossil fuel alternatives. The future success and price stability of liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects is intrinsically linked to the success of natural gas as a bridge fuel to a lower carbon future; although there was initial optimism about the potential of natural gas as a bridge fuel under COP21, further analysis shows that forecast demand for natural gas and LNG in new policy scenarios is likely lower than original forecasts, placing Australian producers’ existing and future projects in a challenging position; moving down the cost-curve where possible is the best way to ensure resilient demand even in a slower growth future environment.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

Since the oil embargos of the 1970s, the fossil fuel industry and allied energy interests have helped manufacture a variety of discursive narratives that an alternative energy revolution is on the horizon which will someday replace conventional fuels with clean, renewable, noncarbonized sources of energy. A closer inspection of the industry’s investments and rhetoric, however, suggests that they are currently investing most of their historic profits in creating a future largely driven by unconventional fossil fuel dependence, intensive hydraulic fracking, and the continued control of the energy sector by essentially the same transnational corporations that control the market today. This article offers a critical analysis of the historical roots of our fossil fuel dependency, some of the key socioenvironmental threats associated with the emerging Third Carbon Era, and the myriad dangers associated with a future based on unconventional energy development, hydraulic fracking, and other “extreme energy” technologies. Focusing on the growing social and ecological impacts of natural gas fracking as a case in point, particularly its myth as a “bridge fuel” to a clean energy future, it is argued that these energy trends represent yet another “New Species of Trouble” in the Risk Society of late modernity.