Dueling metaphors, fueling futures: “Bridge fuel” visions of coal and natural gas in the United States

Delborne, Jason A.; Hasala, Dresden; Wigner, Aubrey; Kinchy, Abby

doi:10.1016/j.erss.2019.101350

Cited by 48 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Generally, opinion polls have found a declining trend in public support for the use of fossil fuels, especially coal [2,4,9]. Natural gas presents an interesting case because it has been held up as a 'bridge fuel' to aid the transition to a cleaner energy system and thus propel climate mitigation [41,42]. The public is especially divided about the use of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" to extract oil and natural gas [7,43], although it is unclear how opposition for this extraction technology interacts with public support for natural gas as a 'bridge fuel' away from coal.…”

Section: Public Opinion Research On Energy Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Preferences in a Shifting Energy Future: Comparing Public Views of Eight Energy Sources in North America’s Pacific Northwest

Hazboun

Boudet

2020

Energies

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The U.S. and Canada continue to face major changes in energy production. Mounting awareness of the climate crisis has placed increasing importance on developing renewable energy sources, however, advances in fossil fuel extraction technology have opened vast domestic reserves of oil and natural gas. Public preferences for energy policy play a role in determining energy futures, but researchers rarely simultaneously compare public views across multiple renewable and non-renewable energies or across country boundaries. Here, we used a 2019 online survey sample (n = 1500) to compare predictors of support for eight fuel sources for electricity generation in British Columbia, Canada, and Washington and Oregon, USA. Results indicate the highest support overall for renewables (wind, solar, wave/tidal energy, geothermal) and the lowest for fossil fuels (coal and natural gas), nuclear, and hydropower. Mixed-effects regression modeling indicates that views on climate and the balance between environment and economy were consistent predictors of support across most energy types, while political ideology was less consistent. Perceived local importance of both extractive and renewable energy industries were significant predictors of support for some, but not all, energy sources, as were education and gender. Overall, our research suggests that while divisions persist in public energy preferences for both renewable and non-renewable sources, there is the broadest support for renewable energy technologies.

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Section: Public Opinion Research On Energy Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Preferences in a Shifting Energy Future: Comparing Public Views of Eight Energy Sources in North America’s Pacific Northwest

Hazboun

Boudet

2020

Energies

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“…According to their analysis, the deployments of the metaphor found in news articles and policy documents inhabit two general categories: (1) original interpretations, which praises the capacity of shale gas to "facilitate better security, environmental, and economic outcomes" (p. 4), and (2) bridge distortions, which challenge key elements of the metaphor. In light of the close tie between Canadian and American gas sectors, I expect the metaphor's appearance in Canadian media to follow the patterns identified by Delborne et al (2020). With this being said, it is equally interesting to explore how contextual factors such as public preference for progressive climate policies and Indigenous resistance in Canada would interact with the metaphor's inherent paradox-treating a fossil fuel as a solution to climate change.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The topic of shale gas and energy transition remains peripheral in most articles, except for articles under the climate change theme. Next, I coded each article's specific mention of either bridge fuel or transition fuel according to the analytical framework developed by Delborne et al (2020). This step identified four interpretations of the bridge fuel metaphor in the corpus: transitional fuel, a short bridge, destination fuel, and burning bridge.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Compared with the above analyses of fracking related metaphors, (Delborne et al, 2020) presents an exception that solely focuses on the evolvement of the bridge fuel metaphor since the 1970's. Their historical analysis revealed two interesting findings.…”

Section: Metaphors In Energy Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The problematic aspects of bridge fuel identified by previous research is truly alarming, yet media coverage often undermines such warnings. As recent studies such as Bomberg (2017) and Delborne et al (2020) have found, arguments emphasizing shale gas' potential contributions to the transition to a low-carbon future have played a prominent role in mobilizing popular support for shale gas development. Little research, however, has offered detailed analysis of media debates over bridge fuel in countries where the stakes of energy politics are high.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Bridge to Where? Tracing the Bridge Fuel Metaphor in the Canadian Media Sphere

Chen

2020

Front. Commun.

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This paper examines how Canadian media have discussed the role of natural gas in climate change mitigation from 2016 to 2019. It also explicates different stakeholders' varying stances on the environmental impacts of North America's ongoing “shale gas boom,” as manifested in their conflicting attitudes toward designating unconventional gas as a bridge to a low-carbon future. The data in question consist of 99 articles published by Canadian media sources, all of which included explicit references to either “bridge fuel” or “transition fuel.” Through a qualitative thematic analysis, I found that more than half of the articles adopted the conventional definition of bridge fuel. Meanwhile, there are three less common, yet noteworthy interpretations arising out of the rest of the articles, which conflict with each other in terms of their views on the relationship between unconventional gas and greenhouse gas emissions reduction. Overall, the fact that bridge fuel references only appeared in a fraction of Canadian environmental and energy news reports during the target period suggests the issue's peripheral status in the Canadian media sphere. Given this situation, the paper ends by calling for more knowledge mobilization efforts to raise public awareness of the controversial factors underlying expanding unconventional gas production and consumption.

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Recent advances and influencing parameters in developing electrode materials for symmetrical solid oxide fuel cells

Yusoff,

Baharuddin,

Somalu

et al. 2023

Int J Miner Metall Mater

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Dueling metaphors, fueling futures: “Bridge fuel” visions of coal and natural gas in the United States

Cited by 48 publications

References 15 publications

Public Preferences in a Shifting Energy Future: Comparing Public Views of Eight Energy Sources in North America’s Pacific Northwest

Public Preferences in a Shifting Energy Future: Comparing Public Views of Eight Energy Sources in North America’s Pacific Northwest

A Bridge to Where? Tracing the Bridge Fuel Metaphor in the Canadian Media Sphere

Recent advances and influencing parameters in developing electrode materials for symmetrical solid oxide fuel cells

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