[Manuel_D]

I know that this is talking about household energy use, but one of the larger uses of natural gas is metallurgy and industrial processes (like making fertilizer). Industrial natural gas use almost matches consumption for electricity generation in the US: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/use-of-natur...

Changing these systems to use something other than fossil fuels is a big conundrum. In theory, hydrogen could replace it. But almost all hydrogen today is generated via steam reformation (CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2) which emits greenhouse gases. Electrolysis powered by renewable power is theoretically possible, but scaling it up proves difficult. Some hypothesize that thermochemical hydrogen production [1] with heat provided by fission could produce hydrogen at the required scales.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermochemical_cycle

[sitkack]

We no longer need to deliver natural gas into cities to deliver power to a process, that was the original argument. Delivering it as a feedstock and or specific chemical heat source, sure.

[R0b0t1]

Running a small induction forge takes ~20kW or so, about the max deliverable to a house, so no. This output is achievable with gas.

[Manuel_D]

From the comment I responded to:

> tl;dr the need to deliver gas to anything other than a grid scale powerplant is over.

This is untrue. I explicitly acknowledged that the context is mostly in household use (did you miss that?), but this statement goes too far.