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David Roberts has an interesting post today summarizing a new report from Citi Research about renewable power and natural gas. Basically, it turns out they go together like ham and eggs.

Here's the nickel summary: Renewable energy tends to be sporadic (solar only during the the day, wind only when it's windy, etc.), so if you rely heavily on renewable energy you need a secondary source that can be brought on and off line quickly to provide "peaking power." It turns out that gas-fired plants fill this bill nicely. What's more, as renewables expand even more, they start to eat into baseload power, and since baseload plants can't switch on and off off quickly, they'll no longer be economically viable and will get retired. That means even more natural gas.

The bad news here is that this means an ever expanding role for natural gas fracking. The good news is that it will mostly be replacing coal, so it's a net benefit.

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