Climate Impact Comparison of Electric and Gas‐Powered End‐User Appliances

Abstract

To reach the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the usage of natural gas is considered to be a bridge technology in many countries, as it is promoted to be more climate-friendly than burning coal (Ladage et al., 2021). However, methane (CH 4 ), the main component of natural gas, has a much stronger warming potential (GWP 20 of 86 with the consideration of climate-carbon feedback) than carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and is released when natural gas enters the atmosphere incompletely burned (Myhre et al., 2013). Recent studies have shown that anthropogenic fossil CH 4 emissions are generally underestimated (Alvarez et al., 2018;Hmiel et al., 2020;Schwietzke et al., 2016) and that the targets set in the Paris Agreement can only be met if CH 4 emissions are drastically reduced (Nisbet et al., 2019).To improve the quantification of CH 4 emissions, many studies around the world have focused on determining these CH 4 emissions using various measurement and modeling approaches including mobile street-level