Natural gas now preferred over coal as it burns cleaner

Coal miners warn: Green groups are coming for you next.

Think coal's got it bad in the fight against climate change? Watch what happens to natural gas.

Power plants around the world are stepping up their use of gas as a fuel because it burns cleaner than coal -and in the US, at least, it's cheaper. Gas now supplies about a third of the country's power, up from just 17 per cent a decade ago.

But US environmentalists have vowed to go after gas-fired power plants with the same vengeance they've used to force the retirement of hundreds of coal facilities.

Even coal miners are warning their fossil fuel kin to beware.Gas producers “will be next on the list of the industries to be destroyed,“ says Robert Murray, CEO of US coal miner Murray Energy.

Coal lost its place as America's No 1 power plant fuel last year, dethroned by gas. More than a thousand coal mines have closed since 2009, putting about 36,000 people out of work. Researchers and energy executives alike warn that if gas can't cut globe-warming emissions, it's only a matter of time before it shares the same fate.

Natural gas is often promoted as clean because it releases half as much carbon dioxide as coal when combusted. But methane, the most prevalent chemical compound in natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas in its own right, with heat-trapping emissions leaked at every stage of its life, from well to pipeline to power plant. In the US, the gas industry as a whole was responsible for more emissions than coal last year for the first time, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Green groups that once celebrated gas as a “bridge fuel,“ helping the world transition from dirty coal to zero-emission energy.