Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumDesperate U.K. Turns to Shale Gas
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/518936/desperate-uk-turns-to-shale-gas/[font size=4]To meet emissions goals, the U.K. is reluctantly turning to fracking of shale gas.[/font]
By Peter Fairley on September 10, 2013
[font size=3]Proposed U.K. government policies to encourage hydrofracking of natural gas ignited a firestorm of protest this summer, with critics complaining that they were not consulted and that rules will restrict local planners authority. But the country appears to have few other options. The United Kingdom is in an energy quagmire that is forcing it to turn to shale gas.
The countrys aggressive carbon emissions goals call for the U.K.s power supply to be virtually carbon-free by 2030. But the government had been planning to slash emissions with low-carbon power strategiesnew nuclear reactors and carbon capture and storage systems on existing power plantsthat remain too expensive to build. And conventional natural gas from the North Sea that could buy time for the scale-up of renewable power is dwindling.
Cost matters to U.K. voters. Nearly three-quarters of its citizens are worried about climate change, according to a national poll released by the London-based U.K. Energy Research Centre in July. But more than four-fifths told the researchers that they are fairly or very concerned that both electricity and gas will become unaffordable in the next 10 to 20 years.
If the U.K. cant find an affordable supply of natural gas via hydrofracking of its shale deposits, it might have to restart mothballed coal-fired power plants to keep the lights on in future decades. One way or another, well muddle through, says George Day, economic strategy manager at the Loughborough-based Energy Technologies Institute, a partnership between industrial firms and the U.K. government. Whether well hit our carbon targets is another question, says Day.
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GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Damned if they do, damned if they don't. Welcome to the 21st century.
cilla4progress
(24,589 posts)cut emissions? Watching Gasland. Maybe it will cut CARBON emissions, but other climate change gases are released into the atmosphere.
What the f*** about wind and solar? How complicated is this?
cprise
(8,445 posts)But I agree its imprecise to use "carbon" when we should be saying "GHGs".
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)and isn't as polluting as coal for most other gases.
NickB79
(19,117 posts)EXCEPT methane. Fracking blows away every other energy source for fugitive methane.
And we all know that methane is 20X as potent as CO2.
Yo_Mama
(8,303 posts)http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-263
I am not sure the theory on fracking increasing atmospheric methane is true, especially if it replaces coal. Coal mining has released methane in the past, and trapping and using the methane is probably partly responsible for dropping atmospheric concentrations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalbed_methane
When you think about removal capacity, it's not clear how much methane concentrations will increase from fracking, esp. since in some cases methane will be exploited.
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/downloads/methaneuk/chapter02.pdf
Now mining the methane hydrate ice under the seas may be a totally different thing.
NickB79
(19,117 posts)Your link isn't discussing just the overall levels of methane, but also the growth rate by which methane levels have been rising. They've seen no drop in the overall concentrations, just a short-term slowing in the rate at which they were rising. They were never falling, and are now shooting upwards again.
Their study focused on the period from the late 80's to early 2000's when methane growth leveled off. Their conclusion was that better control of fugitive methane from conventional natural gas wells was the cause.
HOWEVER, since that time we've begun fracking for gas on a massive scale, and the previous practices the natural gas industry employed to prevent methane losses doesn't appear to work with fracked wells nearly as effectively: http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0623/Methane-leaks-of-shale-gas-may-undermine-its-climate-benefits
CRH
(1,553 posts)since 2004 when fracking started in ernest. The troughs are higher as well as the peaks.
Nihil
(13,508 posts)... when the methane *growth rate* suddenly started increasing again ...
Champion Jack
(5,378 posts)However, the extraction process is every bit as dirty if not worse than coal.
What price can you put on fresh drink drinking water for future generations?
diane in sf
(3,904 posts)Nihil
(13,508 posts)> To meet emissions goals, the U.K. is reluctantly turning to fracking of shale gas.
1) Shale gas is not necessary to meet our emissions goals.
2) There is no "reluctance" when the policies are being driven by the fossil fuel industry itself
and ably supported by the bought-out politicians & their handlers, oops, "advisors".
> But the government had been planning to slash emissions with low-carbon power
> strategiesnew nuclear reactors and carbon capture and storage systems on existing
> power plantsthat remain too expensive to build.
Not just "too expensive" but, in the case of CCS, completely fictional fabrications of
a "strategy". New nuclear could only happen by means of expansion on existing sites
(e.g., new or replacement reactors at existing nuclear power stations) and there have
been no surprises about either the space available for this option or the degree of pushback
from the people who oppose it.
> it might have to restart mothballed coal-fired power plants
Again, that is not another "Oh dear, we're being *forced* to do this" but is another explicit
goal of the entire UK government (driven by the greed of the Conservatives, supported by
the pandering of the Lib Dems and not opposed by the sycophants of Labour in case they
are seen as upsetting the coal mining unions).
And anyone who is taken in by "a partnership between industrial firms and the U.K. government"
needs their gullibilty meter recalibrating.