Gas wins | Runner up: Nuclear

The more diverse the range of commercial, industrial, and residential processes an energy source can drive, the more versatile that energy source is. Only about 20% of global energy goes toward electricity production. The remaining 80% fuels machines that mine, drill, pave, fly, cut, heat, pump, and perform many other functions.

Among the different energy sources we’re considering, natural gas is the most versatile. In fact, modern life wouldn’t be possible without it. Natural gas provides the feedstock used to make fertilizers, medicines, computers, building materials, and thousands of everyday products. Currently, there are no alternatives to natural gas for making feedstock that are cost competitive at a mass scale.

Natural gas is also capable of producing the heat that’s required for industrial processes that remove moisture, separate chemicals, create steam, treat metals, and melt plastics. Fertilizer, steel, plastic, glass, ceramics, and cement all require high temperature industrial heat. Not all energy sources are capable of producing the needed temperatures. Wind and solar, for instance, don’t produce heat, and using the intermittent electricity they produce for industrial processes is cost prohibitive. So even if we figured out how to produce all our electricity from the sun and wind, we still would need other energy sources to power all the machines and processes that don’t use electricity.

Large nuclear plants produce heat as well as electricity, and the heat from large nuclear plants can be used for district heating systems for homes and businesses, desalination to convert seawater into freshwater, and some industrial processes. Small nuclear plants operate at higher temperatures than large nuclear plants and can be used for industrial processes at oil refineries, factories, and chemical plants. This gives small nuclear plants a versatility edge over large ones. 

Whatever energy sources we use to generate electricity, we’re going to continue to need natural gas for the foreseeable future to generate heat for industrial processes, and to provide the feedstock for the products that enable modern life. Some politicians and environmentalists have called for an end to all fossil fuel use. But when we examine the facts about fossil fuel use, it’s hard to take their calls seriously. The people who are calling for a sudden end of fossil fuels either don’t understand the essential role that fossil fuels play in modern life or they are choosing to ignore the facts. In the one case, we have to question their qualifications, and in the other, we have to question their motives.