Restoring Equilibrium to Natural Gas Markets: Can Renewable Energy Help?

Heightened natural gas prices have emerged as a key energy-policy challenge for at least the early part of the 21st century. With the recent run-up in gas prices and the expected continuation of volatile and high prices in the near future, a growing number of voices are calling for increased diversification of energy supplies. Proponents of renewable energy technologies identify these clean energy sources as an important part of the solution. Increased deployment of renewable energy (RE) can hedge natural gas price risk in more than one way, but a recent report by Berkeley Lab evaluates one such benefit in detail: by displacing gas-fired electricity generation, RE reduces natural gas demand and thus puts downward pressure on gas prices. Many recent modeling studies of increased RE deployment have demonstrated that this ''secondary'' effect of lowering natural gas prices could be significant; as a result, this effect is increasingly cited as justification for policies promoting RE. The Berkeley Lab report summarizes recent modeling studies that have evaluated the impact of RE deployment on gas prices, reviews the reasonableness of the results of these studies in light of economic theory and other research, and develops a simple tool that can be used to evaluate the impact of RE on gas prices without relying on a complex national energy model.