Southern Company Bet $8 Billion On NG Dominance Just 5 Years Ago; It Hasn't Worked Out That Way
One of the largest utilities in the U.S. put $8 billion into a bet that natural gas would dominate American electricity much like coal had before. “We really consider this to be a growth play,” Tom Fanning, chief executive officer of Southern Co., said in an interview just five years ago, as his company set on its landmark acquisition: natural-gas distributor AGL Resources Inc. Gas looked to be on the verge of generational dominance at the time. The American fracking boom had made the fuel superabundant and cheap, hastening coal’s rapid decline, while energy from wind and solar had higher costs and lower reliability. A giant utility like Southern would naturally see gas pipelines and storage as the key to a durable and lucrative future, meeting demand that would continue to grow.
Now those expansive time horizons are in deep doubt. In fact, there are flashing signs that the U.S. power sector is approaching peak gas, with demand topping out decades ahead of schedule. “The era of robust growth in the U.S. natural gas market is likely coming to a close,” says Devin McDermott, an analyst at Morgan Stanley. “It doesn’t mean the market falls apart. It doesn’t mean gas demand falls off of a cliff. It means that we need less new supply going forward.”
Natural gas only fulfilled its destiny as the nation’s top power source in 2016, backed by hundreds of billions of dollars invested in the creation of a gas-based economy. Renewables could take over as the No. 1 power source on the grid as soon as 2028, according to projections by McDermott and Morgan Stanley analyst Stephen Byrd. The American gas peak will mark a critical juncture—and it may have already been reached. McDermott expects overall U.S. gas demand growth in the U.S. slow to between 1% and 2% per year through 2030 as use by power generators shrinks by 2% to 3%. Overall demand could flatline or fall slightly if the Democrats win in November, a dramatic shift after years of record growth. “It’s a gradual trend, but it does add up over time,” he says.
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By the end of the decade, McDermott forecasts that gas will no longer be the largest producer of electricity in the U.S. And the pace of the gas decline could be accelerated if the presidential election goes to Joe Biden, who has campaigned on the goal to eliminate carbon emissions from America’s power grids by 2035. Some in the industry are making moves that indicate the writing is on the wall. Dominion Energy Inc., one of America’s biggest power companies, this summer agreed to sell substantially all of its gas pipeline assets. “To state the obvious, permitting for investment in gas transmission and storage has become increasingly litigious, uncertain and costly,” said Tom Farrell, Dominion’s executive chairman, in July. “This trend, though deeply concerning for our country’s economic growth and energy security, is a new reality, which threatens the pace at which we intended to grow these assets.”
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https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-natural-gas-demand-peak/?srnd=green&sref=pbOaIEpG