Mr. Tim Gould:

We certainly recognise the concern. In last year's World Energy Outlook publication we examined in detail the question of methane emissions from natural gas and looked at the best information available. We worked with non-governmental organisations, NGOs, and companies to find out the best numbers that exist for methane emissions. The data on those are relatively scarce, particularly in many parts of the emerging economies. We found, on average, that in terms of the gas value chain, the figure is 1.7%. I say that with a precision that belies the uncertainty around that number, but 1.7% of gas is lost to the atmosphere and not used productively in the chain from production to consumption. It is a complicated discussion because there are different ways of converting the climate impact of methane versus CO2 but we would need to get up to leak rates around or above 3% in order to start to have the discussion about gas being as bad for the climate as coal on a life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions perspective.

Our analysis on the climate side suggests there are still significant benefits from using gas versus coal. On the air quality side, it is fairly unarguable that this would bring benefits relative to other combusted fuels. There are other options. Renewables is the option that does not come with those levels of emissions.