Cleantech's bridge fuel': natural gas positioned between traditional and alternatives.

• Author: Lewis, David
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION

CLEANTECH AND NATURAL GAS IF READING THAT SENTENCE makes your blood pressure rise, just hang in and read on. Because sometimes things work out. If they do this time, the two energy sources could go together like PCS in a pod.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"There is a handful of ways that you can look at natural gas as fitting into the clean technology space," says Tom Dougherty, attorney with Rothgerber Johnson & Lyons LLP and leader of the firm's Energy and Infrastructure Practice Area.

"The simplest one is just looking at natural gas as a lower-emission source for energy, so on the electricity side you have zero emission sources at one end solar, wind, nuclear and everything goes up front there. If you look at fossil fuel sources the traditional sources of coal, oil and natural gas, then natural gas is generally accepted as being the cleanest of those three."

And it turns out that natural gas and cleantech can work together nicely.

"Natural gas-fired power plants have the advantage of being able to turn on and off very quickly and come up to power very quickly." Dougherty says. "There are a lot of people looking at the role of Ural gas generation as a means to help integrate renewable resources, particularly wind and solar, which are highly variable."

Let's say for instance your solar power plant is enjoying a pleasant, sunny day dowm in the San Luis Valley, producing 100 percent or its power capacity. Alas, a threatening black Cloud heaves into view.

At that moment, "You want to have some ability to quickly fill that gap with alternative generation, and that's where natural gas-fired generation has the advantage of being able to ramp up very quickly."

If you think about it, some power plants basically are jet engines mounted on the ground. "They all have the advantage of being able to turn on very quickly and bring them to power, so they have that benefit of being able to help integrate variable generation such as wind and solar."

Nor is teaching natural gas and cleantech to work together to generate electricity the duo's only potential utility...