Should we encourage gas use in the short term?

[LucidEnergy]

As a significantly less polluting source of energy, should we encourage the construction of more gas fired power stations in the short term, in a bid to eliminate coal much faster?

In the long term even gas would ideally be phased out, but in the short term this might be the less of two evils.

[allegrif]

I don't think so. We need to be discouraging funding for all fossil fuels. If anything, perhaps make taxes and levies slightly higher on coal and oil than gas, but we should still be discouraging gas on the whole. We have to invest in a renewable future., otherwise frankly we've had it.

[JamesH]

One thing you haven't considered is that this will deplete gas reserves even faster, and prices are high enough now as it is. I recognise that gas is one of the better forms of power generation, but we would end up becoming too dependant on gas then, and as we lack enough reserves ourselves, this would make us more dependant on Russia.