An Uncertain Future for UK Shale?
Just how green is shale gas? That, surely, above all others, is the $64,000 question. Though research is ongoing to ascertain the environmental effects of shale gas exploration and production, there seems to be no easy answer as to whether the resource has a place in an increasingly climate-conscious world.
In the UK, where the government is increasingly focused on carbon and greenhouse gas targets, the future of shale gas is still up in the air in regards to energy policy, Professor Paul Ekins says.
Ekins, who is Professor of Energy and Environment Policy at the UCL Energy Institute, says that despite research into the matter, a number of uncertainties of shale gas’s effect persist.
There are, he says, two major sticking points on shale which have to be answered: the emissions resulting from shale production and the viability of carbon capture and storage (CCS).
“With regard to the low carbon transition, which we’re permitted to make, will shale gas substitute for coal, nuclear or renewables?” he asked the audience at the recent SMI Shale Environmental Summit .
“If it substitutes for coal, obviously emissions will go down. If it substitutes for nuclear or renewables, obviously emissions will go up. “
This, he says, is not the only concern with the potential emissions from shale; problematically, if some studies are proved correct, the fugitive emissions (emissions which escape from fuel production unintentionally) from shale might be higher than targets allow.
“This is a major uncertainty,” he says. “And the important point is, how high are these things called fugitive emissions? Shale gas is a very dispersed resource underground and there are fears and some studies which suggest that in trying to get it out, we won’t capture all of it, but quite a lot of it will just find its way into the atmosphere through the fissures in the rock and won’t therefore be captured.
“Natural gas is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide so if in seeking to get gas out to substitute for coal, we actually put a lot of extra gas in the atmosphere that wouldn’t otherwise be going into the atmosphere, then the carbon benefits or the greenhouse gas benefits over coal might be seriously undermined.”
The negation of shale’s benefits over coal has to do with a study that says a minor amount of emissions could escape during fracking and production. Even though the figure is a small one, it will have an impact, Professor Ekins says, one that could be just as damaging for energy targets as coal.
“There have been some studies on this, which suggest that fugitive emissions might be as much as four per cent of what you actually capture when you do fracking. And you only need three to nine per cent of leakage, depending on various assumptions, for gas to be equivalent to coal in power stations.
“So unless you can be very sure that you’re not getting these fugitive emissions, then the carbon benefits of gas in generation are very difficult to see.”
An audience member is sceptical on the four per cent figure and the studies on fugitive emissions; why, he asks, would the industry allow four per cent of its product to escape when it could be making money off that amount?
“The science I think of this, the jury is very much out,” Professor Ekins retorts. “There have been papers that say fugitive emissions are not a problem.
“Why would the industry allow four per cent of its gas to escape? Well presumably because it couldn’t do anything to help it; given that it’s a very dispersed activity, it might not be able to catch up all its gas—it might come up in cracks where it wasn’t expecting it.”
The figures which Professor Ekins quotes come from Professor Sir Brian Hoskins of Imperial College: Sir Hoskins is a member of the UK’s Climate Change Committee.
The Committee, an independent body which advises the UK government on carbon target achievement, cites four scenarios for reaching the UK’s carbon targets—only one of these scenarios features shale.
For this scenario to succeed, so too does a new technology—carbon capture and storage.
“Will gas carbon capture and storage work?” Dr. Ekins asks. “We’ve heard that Lord Smith of the Environment Agency said that shale gas had a future with gas CCS, but actually we’ve no idea if the gas CCS is going to work. There’s no commercial gas CCS plant up and running and not one really planned, even on a demonstration basis for the next five or six years.”
With regards to emissions, the UK can’t afford to let its focus be swayed by information which comes from the US, Professor Ekins warns—particularly its fossil fuel industries.
“They’re not going to be terribly worried about it in the US as they don’t have a climate policy of any kind, they don’t have any carbon emission targets and there’s very little prospect of getting them.
“And I have to say, the fossil fuel industry in the United States is doing everything it can to ensure they don’t get carbon targets, including spreading a lot of lies about the science of climate change as well. The situation and political context in the US is very different to that in the UK where we have very binding carbon targets which governments and all parties are signed up to and are committed to meet.”
In fact, the UK is exceeding its obligations, Prof. Ekins says, outdoing the carbon targets set out by the European Union by far. The binding carbon targets he refers to too are both the EU’s and the UK’s; the British government has set some clear targets for its country, enshrining its obligations in law for years to come.
In response to the EU’s 2020 carbon targets, the UK has done exceptionally well, he says.
“It’s [the government’s] actually responded and gone well beyond what was required. It passed the Climate Change Act in 2008 and that was a world first. And that put these emission reductions for 2020 and 2050 into statute so itself bound by law, as well as accepting these statutory obligations at the EU level.
“Because it realises that even 2020—certainly 2050—is outside any government’s term of office, it also provided for there to be five-yearly carbon budgets, which is the amount of carbon that can be emitted over a five-year period, and set out how those carbon budgets would work through to 2050 and then set up the Committee on Climate Change to advise on what those carbon budgets should be.”
For the moment, nothing is set in stone, Professor Ekins says, with the future of shale unsure. Traversing the switch from fossil to renewables and achieving carbon targets in relation to climate change is anything but simple. While shale gas may have a place in the energy mix, it is by no means the only route.
“Energy systems are complicated things and they are very inter-connected,” Prof Ekins says. “There’s heat, power and transport. They operate through complex networks. We expect lights to go on when we turn them on. We don’t want to be told they’ll come on in two hours’ time. And achieving all that is not easy. If we are to achieve the cuts in carbon emissions that we’re now signed up to by law, this requires a fundamental remaking of the energy system.
“We have a few decades in which to do it but there’s no single pathway through which the energy system has to evolve.”
Even if shale plays a part in the gas mix, CCS will be an important factor, and will be essential to gas use in the future. Getting it right now may save money and upheaval in the future.
“It’s quite clear to me that if the next generation of low-carbon generation either from renewables or nuclear doesn’t come forward, then we will get another generation of gas-fired power stations as they can be built relatively quickly, 18 months or so,” the academic says.
“We won’t have a gas gap, which the newspapers love to talk about, because the utilities will build the gas-fired power stations. They’ve already got lots of planning permission to build gas-fired stations and they’ll do that. And they’ll build them without CCS because we don’t know how to do CCS at the moment.
“If then low-carbon generation then comes onstream, in order to meet the carbon targets, those gas-fired power stations will either have to be retrofitted with CCS or they will have to go and become backup power stations to low carbon generating sources. And that will not be good for economics unless special arrangements are put in place.”
In the context of shale, the lack of planned progress on CCS and shale’s use is troubling to the professor.
“Shale gas poses grave risks for carbon targets, if it substitutes for renewables, and if CCS doesn’t work.”
Professor Paul Ekins was a presenter at the recent SMI Shale Gas Environmental Summit