The "Golden Age of Gas" could be over before it began. The phrase was coined seven years ago by the International Energy Agency (IEA), when it envisaged a world where gas could overtake coal before 2030, and potentially muscle out renewables and nuclear (WGI Jun.8'11). Producers that shared its optimism shifted more of their portfolios to gas and talked up its role as the ideal bridge to a lower-carbon future, looking to new markets in South America, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia. But as the IEA admitted in a global energy investment report last week, "sentiment on natural gas being the 'fuel of transition' in the global energy mix has cooled down rapidly over the past two to three years" (p8). It is simply too expensive. While nuclear operators are in trouble, cheap coal is still going strong in many regions, particularly Asia. And far from being muscled out by gas, increasingly low-cost renewables are making inroads at gas' expense.
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