Some pointed criticism of the @BernieSanders climate plan by @FareedZakaria in the Post today. Makes the point that shutting down coal - rather than lower carbon gas or zero carbon nuclear - should be our priority in reducing emissions: washingtonpost.com/opinions/berni… 1/4
He links to my Carbon Brief analysis a few years back of drivers of US decarbonization. I found that gas has been the largest driver of power sector decarbonization over the past 15 years, but renewables are playing an increasingly large role. carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-u… 2/4 
My analysis goes through 2016 (as it was published in 2017), but the latest EIA results through 2018 show a similar picture: eia.gov/environment/em… 3/4
The usual caveats apply here that looking only at CO2 ignores the impact of methane leakage. But using standard accounting approaches (e.g. 100-yr GWP) including leakage doesn't fundamentally change the picture: thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/… 4/4
Even if we are reaching the point of diminishing returns to gas displacing coal, we should prioritize shutting down our existing coal plants. Banning fracking today would lead to a large increase in coal use in the short/medium term as idled coal capacity comes back online. 5/4
Also the subtitle of the WaPo column is putting it too strongly; gas is a lot better than coal but its not one of the two "most environmentally friendly energy sources we have". To achieve deep decarb gas needs to start to go next after coal (or be retrofitted with CCS). 6/4
