Recently, Sempra Energy’s senior vice president of corporate affairs and chief sustainability officer, Lisa Alexander, joined other global energy thought leaders for the International Energy Agency’s 2020 Global Gas Security Review, hosted by the Aspen Institute and Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, to discuss the future of natural gas and its vital role in the energy transition.
“We see great opportunity for step-function innovation in our energy networks, and that includes the role of natural gas,” said Alexander. “Now is the time to be going long in renewables and digitization while ramping up energy infrastructure in developing nations. All of this includes relying on natural gas to disintermediate dirtier forms of fuels, and also help increase the use of renewables for the future.”
The Aspen Institute is a nonprofit organization that engages global leaders from various industries, including energy, to help solve the greatest questions and most important challenges facing the world. One such question has been on the future of natural gas and its role in the energy transition.
Sempra Energy remains committed to ‘shaping the future’ and believes utilizing existing natural gas infrastructure to support the growing storage demands for renewable and hydrogen energy will be a critical step in the global energy transition. The role of the company in providing energy to more than 35 million consumers, including in two of the largest economies in the world – California and Texas – gives Sempra Energy insight into the market and sector drivers for natural gas. While, on average, Sempra’s utilities flow more than 40 percent of energy derived from wind or solar, natural gas helps reduce intermittency and increase the reliability of North America’s energy systems.
“It’s not a coincidence that use of renewables and natural gas are growing together,” said Alexander. “The more renewables, the more we see a need for natural gas for peaking and base load. Simply put, natural gas is the natural partner for renewables.”
Watch the full discussion on the Future of Natural Gas here: