Switching the nation's reliance on petroleum-based fuels to natural gas may sound promising, but a new study suggests using the alternate fuel won't help reduce America's production of harmful greenhouse chemicals.

Researchers from the University of California, Irvine, Stanford University and the nonprofit organization Near Zero say they've determined inexpensive gas increases the consumption of electricity and in the process hinders expansion of cleaner energy sources, such as wind and solar, according to a news release.

The recent findings, published in the Sept. 24 issue of the journal Environmental Research Letters, are based on modeling the effect of high and low gas supplies on the United States power sector.

Rules recently proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would rely heavily on the substitution of natural gas for coal to lower carbon emissions by 2030.

Coal-fired plants, currently the nation's largest source of power, produce vast quantities of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas polluting Earth's atmosphere.

But, "in our results, abundant natural gas does not significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions. This is true even if no methane leaks during production and shipping," lead study author Christine Shearer, a postdoctoral scholar in earth system science at UCI, said in a statement. "Natural gas has been presented as a bridge to a low-carbon future, but what we see is that it's actually a major detour. We find that the only effective paths to reducing greenhouse gases are a regulatory cap or a carbon tax."

Previous studies focused on the risk natural gas, which is composed primarily of methane, could leak into the atmosphere from wells and pipelines.

The new work shows that even if no methane escapes, the overall climate benefits of the gas are likely to be small because its use delays the widespread construction of low-carbon energy facilities, such as solar arrays. The research teams examined a range of climate policies and discovered high natural gas usage could actually boost cumulative emissions by 5 percent between 2013 and 2055.

Shearer and her co-authors concluded greater use of gas is a poor strategy for clearing the atmosphere.

Trying to cut greenhouse gas emissions by burning natural gas "is like dieting by eating reduced-fat cookies," said Steven Davis, assistant professor of earth system science at UC Irvine and the study's principal investigator. "It may be better than eating full-fat cookies, but if you really want to lose weight, you probably need to avoid cookies altogether."