Natural gas exports discourage investments in renewable energy, a forthcoming study by Bård Harstad, a professor of political economy at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Katinka Holtsmarkopen, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Oslo, shows.

The latest awards from Stanford’s Sustainability Accelerator support wide-ranging efforts to help communities and nature withstand climate-related extreme events and advance the measurement of planetary systems.

The world has undergone some pretty radical changes recently. Energy prices and geopolitics have resulted in a global reset of expectations when it comes to energy. Over the last decade, energy has been viewed primarily though an environmental lens and this recent paradigm shift maintains climate awareness (particularly in places like Europe), but also expands the narrative to consider economic and security issues while transitioning to the energy system of the future. The role of natural gas has never been more apparent as a mechanism to achieve energy security in the US, but also as a way to support the deployment of renewables and provide reliability. Natural gas has evolved from being the bridge to renewables and is being appreciated as a necessity for affordability and reliability.