The problem with coal is of course its voluminous carbon dioxide emissions. Kvisle predicts the environmental headache will not be solved by the much touted but incredibly expensive carbon capture and sequestration proposals.

CCS only works with spongy geological formations of sedimentary rock, which Albertans are lucky to be endowed with by nature but are not common in most of the main coal-burning areas of Canada and the United States. Even where the geology is right, the technology is so costly that initial installations require government aid. Another problem with CCS – and one that the TransCanada chief does not see as something that will soon be resolved – is the massive amount of energy it takes to operate.

“At the average coal-fired power plant, you would use 30 to 40 per cent of your entire electricity output just to run the compressors to deal with the CO2. It is staggering but those are engineering facts. These are not political opinions or jiggery pokery,” Kvisle emphasizes.

The belief that gas will make up an increasing portion of the North American fuel mix is not unique to the chief executive officer of a pipeline network that transports one-fifth of the continent’s supplies. Energy economist and author Peter Tertzakian also believes natural gas is going to contribute an increasingly significant share of North America’s total fuel of all types.

“Increasingly, people are becoming believers that there is a large amount of gas that is at competitive prices. I know lots of policy-makers are talking about it in the U.S. Increasingly it will be a bit of an underdog because of all the fossil fuels – actually of all the fuels – it is optimal on many dimensions.”

Tertzakian predicts that gas will emerge as the energy underdog to watch in the coming years because its uses can be readily scaled up or down, it is clean-burning compared to coal and oil, it is flexible, transportation capacity is large and can be expanded, and it can be converted into different energy types like electricity and heat.

Projections by the U.S. Energy Information Administrations support rosy outlooks for growth in natural gas consumption. In its 2008 International Energy Outlook, Washington’s chief energy statistical agency projects that world gas consumption is going to increase 50 per cent by 2030 – from current levels of around 100 trillion cubic feet to 150. That is a colossal jump in fossil fuel use – the energy equivalent of growth in demand for oil by eight billion barrels a year or 22 million barrels a day.

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