Gas Engines Provide Adaptability in the Energy Transition

Natural gas has been designated as the key transition fuel toward a greener global energy matrix. As more intermittent renewable energy enters the power mix, the stability gas engines provide become increasingly important. Nevertheless, even natural gas will eventually be phased out, as higher efficiency and a greater share of blended green hydrogen will allow these engines to provide cleaner power.

The energy sector is witnessing historic times. On the back of the COVID-19 pandemic, increases and fluctuations in commodity and transportation prices and war, uncertainty remains the only constant in the outlook ahead. As the industry navigates these challenges, the world seeks to recover economic growth and fulfill climate targets as well. This challenging overview is driving trends such as the transition away from fossil fuels toward cleaner sources of energy. Meanwhile, grids are transforming worldwide, becoming more modern. As power production is coming closer to consumers, smaller distributed and decentralized projects are growing. Moreover, electrification is taking over almost all aspects of daily life, which is causing electricity demand to grow rapidly.

According to McKinsey’s Global Energy Perspective 2022, electricity and hydrogen will become the main consumable fuels by 2050, with electricity representing 50 percent of the energy consumption. By 2050, the growing energy demand will soften, despite population growth of more than 2 billion, this thanks to technological innovation making the world more energy-efficient.

Rewarding power production, renewable energy sources are taking over the market at a rapid pace. Renewables are expected to consolidate their role, acquiring up to 60 percent of the energy matrix by 2035 and up to 86 percent by 2050. However, despite this growth, “natural gas will remain to play a key role in the present and future of power production,” said Theodore Lorentzos, Head of Sales Americas, Bergen Engines.

“There is no sole solution for us to navigate the challenges we are witnessing around the world while we push to keep economic growth and achieve climate goals. All energy sources have unique advantages and disadvantages that countries should balance when designing the integration of their energy mix,” said Lorentzos.

Solar and wind energy’s intermittency can compromise the grid’s reliability, which is a disadvantage compared to other clean energy sources like hydro, thermal and nuclear power, do not have. Nevertheless, some of the alternatives have higher carbon emissions, such as thermal energy. Here, natural gas plays a key role in producing reliable energy with lower emissions.

Gas engines play a key role in the future of cleaner power production, as they provide flexible support for intermittent renewable power. As thermal energy allows the grid to produce reliable energy, many power producers are migrating from coal and fuel oil toward natural gas. Just by changing fuels, thermal power production becomes more sustainable. Likewise, new technologies are reducing carbon emissions through power production processes. “Bergen’s lean-burn engines ensure very low carbon emissions with efficiencies up to 48 to 50 percent and more than 93 percent fuel utilization,” shared Lorentzos.

There are two principal areas where natural gas engines will continue to grow in the near future. The first is pure power generation. Thermal electricity production is highly flexible. Therefore, applications may include migrating baseload to natural gas to produce reliable power so that the grid can support solar and wind power when demand goes up. Microgrids are increasing in demand too. Here, gas engines can help optimize industrial power consumption.

The second area is that of cogeneration. Through this process, the efficiency of natural gas-fired engines is optimized from 50 percent to 90 percent, allowing for the simultaneous production of both electricity and heat. This is convenient because industries do not only demand electricity, as thermal requirements represent half of the industry’s energy needs.

Moving forward, natural gas engines can adapt and function with other gases as input. Natural gas is marked as the transition fuel toward net zero, but to fully leave fossil fuels behind, fuels like green hydrogen are showing promising results as the power source of the future.

Hydrogen testing has already begun for different natural gas engines by feeding small percentages of the fuel to natural gas-fired engines. These engines can already work sustainably using a 15-percent hydrogen blend, with this hydrogen proportion expected to increase in the following years. The final goal is to take major steps toward zero emissions. To achieve the goal, natural gas engines will play a leading role in adaptation throughout the entire energy transition towards net zero.