US gas squeeze hits power

Tight natural gas supplies in the US are adding to worries over reliability of electricity supplies, says Richard McMahon of the Edison Electric Institute

As the US addresses power reliability concerns raised by the biggest blackoutin its history, the country’s increasingly tight natural gas supply-demandsituation could compound the problem. The main issue is that 90% of US powerplants built since the early 1990s are natural gas-fired plants.

Several factors have fuelled the growth of gas-fired power plants: the commodity’shigh energy efficiencies, predictable and short construction cycles and relativelylow emissions. Couple these with the low