How are you proposing to replace the 33% of our current energy we receive from natural gas in the state? Further how do you propose to keep up with the forecasted increase in demand for power when the Pacific Northwest Utilities Committee is already saying we do not have enough new energy coming along to meet that demand and we are already looking at power restrictions not to mention affordability for low income residents.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/surge-in-electricity-demand-poses-tricky-path-ahead-for-pnw-utilities-report-shows/

From the article "New generation, transmission and storage is important, as is speed, Hirsh said, but utilities across the region must balance that work with its responsibilities to protect the natural environment and cultural resources. Power providers are also likely to combine these new projects with a few strategies to keep demand low, Hirsh said. This will probably include campaigns to conserve energy and upgrade to more efficient appliances and also “price signals” (read: higher energy bills)."

What if restricting access to natural gas actual harms more people than allowing them to keep using it as an energy source?

To speak to the sign-holder on the far right: young people have been demanding a real solution for generations now. The old people you're demanding come up with a solution now were probably once young people demanding a solution, much like you are doing today.

Demanding somebody else fix the problem has been a popular stance, particularly among idealistic youth, for a long, long time. To date such demands have yielded little.

"Natural Gas" (methane) was rebranded a few years back as the "bridge fuel" that was "cleaner" than coal, and would help us transition to renewables. The good thing about that was that it has basically driven the abandonment of coal as a generating source, as it's cheaper and much more nimble than coal (you can't really throttle back a coal generation plant, thus a lot of power is wasted. The same is true of nuclear)

The bad thing about this is that part of the reason that LNG is so much cheaper is that it's not very well regulated.

Renewable and storage technology is growing by leaps and bounds and appliances are becoming more efficient than ever before. I don't really see a need for NG in our future, and I support the work of these young people.

Government is there to protect "the economy."

"The economy" is the modern definition of "corporate profits".

Tragedy dear, are you saying that young people shouldn't speak up? That seems rather defeatist. And just how are they supposed to "fix" this problem?

And I take exception with your assertion that activism has yielded little results. Perhaps you are young and don't remember life before smog regulations and the EPA.

@5: I am saying that we are not short on demands for solutions. We have plenty of those. What we are short on is solutions.

It's true that there was historically a lot of progress on environmental regulation with the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, addressing ozone depletion, etc. Those stand to this day as testimony to what good governance can accomplish when people are motivated to change (and also, testimony to how hard subsequent generations will fight to roll back that sort of progress when they forget how bad things were.)

But global carbon output has been increasing steadily, with one slight downturn during the peak of pandemic lockdowns, for as long as you and I have been alive. Even as awareness of the problem has grown generation by generation. To say it has proven a difficult problem to solve is an epic understatement.

So it's all very well to demand enough non-polluting carbon-neutral energy to power the world right now, but who is in a position to accede to this demand? They are demanding a thing that doesn't exist yet.

I guess we've gone straight from climate change denialism to climate change fatalism.

I just wonder why someone like Tragedy of the Commons is motivated to go on this comment thread and put out such a misleading representation of reality as this: "So it's all very well to demand enough non-polluting carbon-neutral energy to power the world right now, but who is in a position to accede to this demand? They are demanding a thing that doesn't exist yet."

Nobody is realistically demanding that we are go 100% carbon-neutral tomorrow. But in the major industrialized nations, we've made major strides to shift to renewable energy and we're positioned now to make much greater strides so long as we keep up the political pressure. To say that activists are demanding something that doesn't exist flies in the face of all the economies of scale that have come into existence with renewable energy and other fossil fuel alternatives in recent years.

Tragedy of the Commons, something tells me that you'll be wanting to get the last word on this. Be my guest. I've got better uses of my time than going down a rabbit hole of sophistry.

Anyway, well said by Catalina @3 and @5.

Thanks for a great write about this hideous fracked gas refinery in Tacoma. WA state is also the 5th largest oil refining state and Tacoma exports oil products to 15 other states. Now we also have the first LNG refinery on the west coast. Puget Sound Energy did NOT abandon expansion plans however. The withdrew the application with the city of Tacoma, but went permit shopping and immediately applied with the Army Corps of Engineers. No doubt they will approve. Up to 74% of all that LNG would be barged through the Salish Sea according to Puget Sound Clean Air Agency - who approved all this in the first place, ignoring most basic climate science. That's about 135,050,000 gallons of pure minus 260 F methane barged about each year. Seattle would get much of that. LNG is not a Tacoma problem, it hits the entire Sound and neighboring communities. This from the Seattle Times: https://archive.is/ROnKL#selection-3143.0-3143.330

@3: "The bad thing about this is that part of the reason that LNG is so much cheaper is that it's not very well regulated."

Agreed. So let's regulate it. The primary problem with CNG, LNG, and plain old NG is the leakage. Leaked methane has a CO2 equivalent of up to 28 times that of CO2. And leakage is easy to spot, from aerial photography or even satellites. So lets slap a 28 times CCA on those leaks. I'll bet they'll go away pretty quickly.

On the other hand, PSE isn't stupid .... (well, storm restoration is another issue). They sell both gas and electricity. Electricity at retail prices of about 4x that of natural gas (calculated from a recent bill). They would be crazy to burn that precious fuel in anything other than a gas turbine with the profits that the electric power would return. So I'm guessing that the "go all electric, zero emission" doesn't pencil out yet.

One more thing ... PSE isn't in complete control of their fleet. The people with the cardboard signs need to go stand in front of the Potelco offices. The people who actually run the big trucks for PSE.