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    WP: The shale-gas boom won’t do much for climate change. But it will make us richer.

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Summary

The shale-gas boom will provide a modest boost to U.S. economic growth but won't do much to solve climate change. Natural gas will, however, help clean up other air pollutants. There's a fair bit of disagreement between forecasts.

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WP: The shale-gas boom won’t do much for climate change. But it will make us richer.

The shale-gas boom in the United States won't keep pushing U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions down in the decades ahead. That's because, in addition to killing off coal-fired plants, cheap gas will also crowd out cleaner energy sources like wind, solar, and nuclear.

On the other hand, the glut of natural gas from fracking will make the country a bit wealthier and clean up other harmful air pollutants from power plants.

Those are the conclusions of a big new report  from Stanford's Energy Modeling Forum, which convened 50 experts and 14 different modeling teams to look at how the surge in natural-gas production will transform the U.S. economy.  MORE

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