The great run of US natural gas faces storage challenge

Further growth in the consumption of natural gas will need to overcome the trend for renewables paired with power grid storage

Natural gas in US power generation has been on a spectacular ten-year run. But this growth has not helped the price much as North America has colossal reserves of recoverable gas. US gas-fired power output grew by 63.6pc between 2010 and 2020, and built for itself a large and newly installed infrastructure base. Presumably, that investment will protect the fuel's position in the years ahead. But one technology could severely disrupt that expectation—grid-level storage. Battery storage not only threatens the niche gas peaker market, but also threatens to cut off growth of further natural gas plants more generally Mentioned as an afterthought in a recent EIA summary of the past year in