Providing energy for all communities in a sustainable way
is one of the greatest global challenges of our time.
As the world moves towards a low-carbon future,
natural gas has an essential role to play in the energy mix.
Nick Wallis went to Paris with Shell to find out more about natural gas
and the role it can play now and in the future.
Paris, a city whose name will be indelibly associated
with the global effort to beat man-made climate change
after the first ever universal climate deal was agreed here in 2015.
And yet Paris has serious problems of its own.
The number of vehicles here and the amount of pollution they kick out
has led the authorities to put restrictions
on traffic flows in the city centre.
Air pollution isn't confined to Paris, it's a growing global challenge.
Tech start-up Plume Labs has developed a free app
which measures air pollution in real time.
From December, Plume Labs will start trialling
commercially-available, body-worn pollution detectors.
Pollution and climate change are quite different,
but at the same time quite linked
in the way that sources that produce CO2, for example,
will often also produce air pollution,
and when you try to basically raise people's concern or interest
in climate change, it's quite difficult
because it's something that happens on a global level over decades,
so it's hard to feel really concerned right now as an individual.
But when you look at air pollution that comes from the same sources,
it's something that you will be exposed to locally and directly, immediately,
and so it's taking the angle of air pollution is an interesting way
of making people feel more concerned
with the different sources of climate change and air pollution.
As the world's population grows and more people move to cities,
the demand for power is growing.
Energy companies have to find effective solutions
and some experts believe natural gas has a big part to play.
Gas has some unique advantages.
One, if you deliver gas into a load centre by pipe
power by pipe I might call it,
you lose all of the inefficiencies of electric transmission.
If I talk about the flexibility of gas plants
that can stop and start on a dime,
they provide the kind of balancing services
that a complex energy system of the future would require.
When you think about the environmental consequences,
the beneficial operational characteristics of natural gas,
it clearly has a substantial role to play in the future energy mix.
Natural gas is the cleanest-burning hydrocarbon.
It's abundant and versatile, helping meet growing global demand for energy.
It also has considerable social benefits.
Here in India, around 700 million people
still rely on solid fuels like coal, dung and wood for domestic cooking,
and according to the World Health Organization
exposure to smoke emissions from household solid fuels
is thought to cause half a million deaths a year.
But in recent years, natural gas usage in Gujarat
has gone from near zero to 25%, providing safe, clean energy
and demonstrably improving people's lives.
This isn't just about reducing worldwide CO2 emissions,
it's about using cleaner and less-polluting fuel
to limit environmental degradation and improve human health.
Royal Dutch Shell has global expertise in gas extraction and supply.
Maarten Wetselaar specialises in helping countries
transition away from polluting fuels.
He has pertinent advice for energy strategists.
Really plan it thoroughly as you also move your economy to renewables.
This to me is the biggest powerful move to make,
is to move to a gas plus renewables energy mix
in your country, and you can plan it very well together
and get people like Shell but many other suppliers in the world
to think ahead of you, do a bit of master planning
get the right infrastructure in place
and clean up your air now rather than in 10 years.
The necessity of tackling CO2 emissions and improving air quality
has been universally recognised.
Natural gas has a key role to play
in shifting our economies away from heavily-polluting energy sources
towards a low-carbon future.