From conventional to renewable natural gas: can we expect GHG savings in the near term?

Abstract

Abstract Displacement of fossil fuels by forest bioenergy can contribute to climate change mitigation by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, GHG savings are not realised until the avoided fossil emissions offset the loss of atmospheric carbon (C) that would have been sequestered if the biomass was not used for bioenergy (i.e. time to C sequestration parity). We estimated the potential for mitigating GHG emissions and the timing of these atmospheric benefits when substituting conventional natural gas (NG) with renewable natural gas (RNG) produced from different forestry feedstocks within three Canadian provinces, and assessed the uncertainty among these estimates. We calculated the GHG balance of RNG using the alternative fate of biomass and the use of NG as base-case scenarios. Immediate to long-term time to C sequestration parity was typically in the order of residues burned