Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

Last week saw some much-needed good news for natural gas. The European Union signaled that it would include natural gas in its energy plans for the future, emissions and all. The not-so-good news is that speaking of emissions, the EU might oblige suppliers to minimize these as much as is possible.

In the early days of the rush to cut emissions, natural gas was hailed as what many called a bridge fuel, the bridge being between fossil fuels and renewable energy. Then, as the rush accelerated, the bridge-fuel status of natural gas began to be questioned, increasingly loudly.

While a lower emitter than coal or oil, gas was still an emitter, and many of the proponents of a net zero energy world became increasingly radical with the help of statistics that showed, for example, that U.S. emissions did not decline with the replacement of coal power plants with gas-fired plants because the output of these gas-fired plants—and their numbers—increased.