Almost a billion people in the world today have no access to electricity and nearly three billion have to cook with fuels that produce toxic fumes in their homes.
Indoor air quality still represents a large part of the premature deaths attributable to air pollution, yet another reason why we need to urgently tackle the issue.
As the cleanest burning fossil fuel, natural gas has a key role in providing reliable and cleaner energy to all. Even in the most developed markets, affordability and reliability of clean energy is a key issue and switching to natural gas offers an enormous opportunity.
Gas continues to play a vital role towards an economically and environmentally sustainable energy future, a recent report by International Gas Union (IGU) has shown.
Last year, LNG continued to play a key role in improving air quality in key markets such as China and India.
It produces less than 10% of the particulates and 50% less GHG than coal when used in power, 21% less than fuel oil in transport and above 95% efficiency when used to heat homes. The industry continues to improve measurement and reduction of emissions across the full LNG value chain, noted Joe M Kang, president, International Gas Union.
Global LNG trade increased further in 2019, reaching 354.73mn tonnes, an increase of 40.93mn tonnes since the end of 2018. This constitutes an increase of 13%, a sixth year of consecutive growth.
Significantly, Qatar managed to maintain its position as the largest liquefied natural gas exporter in the world (at 77.8mn tonnes) in 2019, International Gas Union (IGU) said in its ‘2020 World LNG Report’.
Qatar LNG expansion plan is progressing towards final investment decision (FID) and those capacity additions could re-position Qatar as the market with the largest liquefaction capacity globally,” IGU noted.
The global LNG trade growth was on the back of increased exports from the USA, Russia and Australia as well as Algeria and Egypt. Asia Pacific and Asia again imported the most volumes in 2018, together accounting for almost 70% of global LNG imports.
Furthermore, 70.8mn tpy of liquefaction capacity was sanctioned, and 41.8 MTPA in capacity was brought on-stream in 2019, mostly from Russia, Australia and the US.
Interest in LNG as a marine fuel increased with the IMO 2020 regulations coming into force at the start of 2020, which will help reduce emissions, improve efficiency and trigger cost benefits.
While the industry has invested in infrastructure ahead of demand, continued investment in the coming years will aid the adoption of LNG as a marine fuel.
Gas continues to deliver security of electricity supply critical to the growing share of renewable energies.
Access to energy remains a critical enabler to keeping people safe, connected and informed in such times and the industry plays a critical role in making sure that the lights are on, homes are heated, hospitals and industry keep running and essential goods are transported without disruption.
This has added relevance at a time when the world is struggling to manage the growing global impact of coronavirus.
from Gulf Times https://ift.tt/2YnZ6Dr
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