GE: The Age of Gas is Upon Us

“There’s going to be a lot of opportunities for gas to work together with power, with transport systems and so on,” Farina added.

Then, Farina believes the third factor is going to be the “smart money that goes into multi-network integration”.

“Now sure, there’s some regulatory and policy issues around that. But we think the Industrial Internet suite of technologies is going to help that in terms of transparency and optimization: being able to map better how these systems are performing and how they are reacting to each other,” he said.

“And you’re already seeing it. In North America, this is at the forefront of a lot of the investment. People are really looking at the small-scale LNG systems that can serve heavy-duty trucking, railroads and marine applications. People are looking at combined heat and power close to the load centers to get really high efficiency. They’re talking about the integration of the gas systems so they can support the renewables. There’s also a lot of big questions about how the costs get allocated across the networks and how you manage that effectively.”

To sum up, Farina explained that what GE’s Age of Gas paper is “trying to bring out is a vision of where the gas industry can get to if it can get the network stories right, recognize that there are new technologies out there, recognize that there are some new supplies that can potentially be brought to market. And then it’s about the collaboration and the partnerships and the policies that get it done. And if it does all that, then gas is neck-and-neck with coal and oil and maybe even breaks out as a clear winner within 15 years.”