Alternative Energy-Natural Gas

Natural Gas

Pros: Natural gas is already a familiar face among those in the energy business. Many homes are heated with natural gas already in areas that have it available. The most interesting part of natural gas is possibly that it can actually help everyday people. If you own land over a place where gas companies want to drill, as an owner of that property, you sign a lease that settles an amount per acre for the amount of time that they will be drilling, those amounts usually range around $1,000-$2,000 per acre in the major natural gas area of the North East U.S. Also, they have to pay 12.5% of their profits that they gain from drilling under your property. There was even recently of a case where just on the 12.5% (not including lease money and job income) someone made $960,000 a year. Not only that, but natural gas has the least amount of carbon dioxide emissions of any fossil fuel. Natural gas also has the advantage of being familiar because it is closely related to gasoline.

Cons: There is a major drawback to natural gas as an energy alternative to gas. Hydrofracking. In short, hydrofracking is when gas companies pump down water, chemicals, and sand into the drilling holes to extract the gas. The main issues with this is that one: where the dirty water is disposed of, two: the fresh water near the drilling holes getting polluted and three: it takes a huge amount of fresh water. On top of that, because it's a fossil fuel, the amount of gas is finite and therefore we could end up in the same situation we are in now with running out of gasoline; in 50 years, we could be running out of natural gas.