A high estimate for shale gas won’t solve our climate change woes
- 28 May 2012, 11:30
- Robin Webster
The UK's reserves of shale gas are back on the agenda, following
news
that the British Geological Society is due to make an announcement
on shale gas next month. But if it does turn out that we have
access to larger reserves that previously estimated, what would
that mean for climate change? Recent discussions at the
Shale Gas Environment Summit don't give us much grounds for
optimism.
Energy and climate change secretary Ed Davey accused the right
of the Tory party
on Friday of trying in undermine investment in renewables by
"making out that the UK could rely on shale gas instead". Davey
cited industry estimates that "if we exploited all the shale
gas that is there" it could provide five to ten percent of UK
energy needs - not quite the "
100 years of shale gas" claimed in some quarters.
A new
estimate by the British Geological Society (BGS) could shortly
settle this argument. The BGS has
announced that it will be holding a public briefing on shale
gas reserves in June. We don't know for sure whether it will give
more results from its investigation
into the amount of shale gas the UK has onshore, but it seems
likely. The BGS'
previous estimate of 144 billion cubic metres of shale gas - or
about 1.5 years worth of gas demand at current prices - was
released before Cuadrilla claimed reserves in the North of England
of 6,000 cubic metres, although
even Cuadrilla admit that only a small percent could be
recoverable.
If we do have significant reserves of shale gas in the UK, what
will it mean for our greenhouse gas emissions? The answer to that
question is complex. Natural gas produces about
half the emissions of coal when burnt, so a switch to shale gas
is often presented as a way to cut carbon
emissions. In this vein, there was quite a lot of talk at the
conference about the potential for shale gas to act as a 'bridging
fuel', providing energy security before the promised shift to
greener energy really kicks in.
But there are some difficulties. For one thing, assuming that
there is a shale gas revolution in this country, when will it
really get going? There are considerable barriers to its expansion
in Europe that didn't apply in the States, including a denser
population and a different approach to property rights.
At the conference, Peter Hughes of
Ricardo Strategic Consulting admitted the pace of development
in Europe is likely to be "leisurely" and that Europe was unlikely
to see "material shale gas production" before the 2020s. Paul Ekins
of UCL argued that there is a "huge range of views" on how quickly
European shale gas production can be ramped up.
The Climate
Change Committee has recommended that the UK needs to
decarbonise its electricity system,
reducing the proportion of energy we get from fossil fuels
dramatically by 2030. If the European shale gas industry
doesn't really get going until the 2020s, that seems to leave a
relatively narrow window for shale to act as a transition fuel.
Secondly, carbon capture and storage (CCS). The chief executive
of the Climate Change Committee David Kennedy told the conference
on Wednesday: "You can't decarbonise using unabated gas" - in other
words we need gas power stations to be fitted with CCS technology.
Kennedy's comments echo those of Environment
Agency boss, Lord Smith, who told the Today Programme a couple
of weeks ago:
"We have to have carbon capture and
storage for gas-fired power stations to capture the carbon rather
than just releasing it into the atmosphere".
There's a problem, however - no-one has yet been able to
demonstrate CCS technology on a commercial scale in the UK. The
Climate Change Committee, the body that advises the government on
decarbonising the UK economy, has already
expressed its concern that current government policy - which
allows power stations constructed now to keep burning gas without
CCS until
2045 - could threaten our ability to meet our climate change
targets.
The conference also discussed the still-unresolved question of
whether shale gas actually has higher emissions than conventional
gas. A 2011
study by Cornell University claimed that due to so-called
fugitive emissions - the accidental release of methane into the
atmosphere during the fracking process - shale gas could be more
environmentally polluting than coal. The paper has been
extremely controversial, but there is an active
debate continuing on this issue, and a real lack of hard
data.
Kennedy was clear that the Climate Change Committee's modelling,
due to be released in its next annual report, shows that
"Early power sector decarbonisation is
key to achieving 2050 target. Even in a cheap shale gas world."
What does this all mean? In summary, it appears that shale gas -
at least from the UK - will not be available as a transition fuel
over the next decade or so. Once it is available it looks doubtful
whether it will be useable. If we really care about hitting our
climate change targets, that is. Kennedy criticised
misleading coverage of the impact of green power on energy
bills by the media, arguing that modelling by the Climate Change
Committee shows that there is "no rationale, from an economic
perspective, for a second dash for gas" and "decarbonisation is
economically sensible".
There was a lot of discussion at the conference about local and
national campaigns against fracking, the extraction process for
shale gas. One speaker yesterday even announced that there has been
"media hysteria" around the issue and that fracking needs
"rebranding". The pressure on the industry on climate changes
issues, in contrast, is largely created not by local protests or
negative media coverage, but by government policy. And that
pressure is not very significant - at the moment, government policy
in this country will allow gas power stations to keep burning,
without carbon capture and storage, for the next three decades.
So if the estimates are high, and the economics work, the
nascent shale gas industry may have some basis for its optimism
about the future. What that would mean for our climate change
targets remains to be seen, but it isn't looking great.