Whatever Fred Pearce says, shale gas is not the answer
Journalist Fred Pearce has written in The Guardian calling on his fellow environmentalists to have an open debate on Shale Gas. Perhaps it’s not such a bad idea, he says? Shale Gas is the gas which is now accessible through the newish form of mining – fracking – campaigns against which are sweeping the UK and Europe.
In his piece, he weighs up both some short term benefits, and some long term risks. To summarise, he argues that gas is the least polluting fossil fuel, and so if it’s replacing coal – the most polluting – then that’s a good thing. I am always up for debate, and I think he is wrong.
Let’s look at a couple of the things he says. First, let’s take his view on the climate impact of Shale Gas.
“Take the US. From a standing start a decade ago, it now gets more than a quarter of its natural gas from shale. Production is so cheap there that shale gas is replacing coal in power stations; and as a result its carbon dioxide emissions are the lowest since 1992.”
Really? There are two problems with that. The first is the correlation. If carbon emissions have fallen, is it because of Shale Gas? Some people have said so. But Greenpeace’s energy desk went back to the raw data from the US Energy Information Agency. And they discovered that this just isn’t true. The main reason for the reduction in emissions (if there was one) was in fact growth in renewable energy.
I say ‘if there was one’ because that too is dubious – or, at least, its scale is. You see, when these figures are calculated, they ignore something important. They don’t look at how much methane has escaped from the ground. And with fracking, this might well be a huge factor. There have been various studies, with various conclusions. But one thing is clear. When gas is extracted through fracking, which involves the hydraulic fracturing of rocks, some of it isn’t captured. Some of it leaks into the atmosphere. And methane is a potent greenhouse gas.
The result is that, according to some calculations, fracking is more polluting than coal. At the very least it isn’t the sunshine and roses that the industry makes it out to be.
So, to summarise, when Fred Pearce swallows the line that fracking reduced US carbon emissions, he is ignoring two things. 1) emissions from power plants reduced more because of renewables than because of the switch to gas 2) his figures do not include the direct emissions from gas wells, which are one of the main problems of fracking. No one knows exactly how polluting fracking is – and it varies from sight to sight. Some say it’s worse than coal. Others say its not so bad. But it certainly isn’t as climate clean as conventional gas.
Next, let’s look at the idea that we need a bridging technology. This is, in short, nonsense. He deals in his piece with the problem that, once all the infrastructure is set up to burn the gas, all the gas will be used. And that in itself is crucial: short of some kind of revolution, once gas rigs are set up, they will ensure that the stuff is pumped out until it’s all burnt. But he fails to raise other points.
If it’s a bridging technology, where is it bridging to? New renewable technologies he says – scaled up, bigger renewables. But as the Centre for Alternative Technology have shown, Britain’s energy needs could be met with current technology. Whilst I am all in favour of investing in better stuff, what we have now is enough. The problem isn’t the science. It’s that fossil fuels get about ten times the subsidy from the government that renewables get.
Most of all though, he seems to miss the most important fact that, in the long run, if we accept fracking, then it won’t replace coal. We will just have both shale gas, and coal. Our profit driven economy might temporarily switch from one to the other, but if its given any choice capitalism never goes long before saying ‘can I have both?’. If we allow this monster to open a new chocolate box, it will just gorge the contents of the two at once.
Finally, the piece ignores local impacts of fracking short of accepting that there are some places where it probably isn’t appropriate. But I can’t think of any place I’d rather have a fracking rig than a windfarm.
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I’ve always assumed that the problem of methane escape must be fatal to any claims about the environmental benefits of shale gas fracking per se. However, I’m not sure I’m convinced about the idea that we don’t need a bridging technology, or that it isn’t (potentially) bridging to anywhere. Gas fired power stations are a good complement to renewables because they provide a back up power source that can easily be scaled up or down. And being set up to pipe gas around means in principle that one is set up to use spare renewable capacity to produce ammonia or (a more complex transition) hydrogen. So one could at least make a case that building a gas infrastructure is a more plausible bridge to a sustainable future than building, say, more nuclear plants, or fitting coal with carbon capture and storage or whatever.
Good article. Not completely convinced, though. Shale gas is not ‘The Answer’ except as a bridging technology to renewables – and yes, that only makes sense with heavy investment in renewables which Osborne refuses in favour of fossil fuel. Don’t how one could force the link. But in UK at least, it might replace coal for electricity generation. Also : coal mines ventilate methane to atmosphere in large quantities all the time – leakage ought to be more controllable with fracking.
Was at a presentation by Scottish Power last week. They said that they were reconsidering the planned refit of Cockenzie Coal-fired Power Station into gas because the US gas boom had reduced demand for coal so much that the relative financial cost of gas vs. coal was borderline too great for them to do it. Interesting stuff.
Sorry Adam my middle sentence didn’t make sense. I was trying to highlight the potential impact relatively of vehicle fuel efficiency. This has been suggested as doing more than any shale gas scenario to reduce dramatically US CO2 emissions and dependence on oil imports.
thanks guys – these are interesting points indeed.
There are forceful arguments against Shale Gas reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Firstly as you say, there is debate about the methane leakages outweighing simple-minded carbon footprint impact. It is also debatable whether the Obama administration attempts to cut emissions by legislation improving vehicle efficiency.
But the whole idea that any reduction by the US is real is not true. The coal point is that the US has NOT reduced its coal mining. It has sold its coal abroad, and simply externalised the problem. The US contribution to worldwide GHG emissions has INCREASED because of shale gas.
A couple of other points which make holes in Fred’s argument:
1) As you say the carbon comparison of shale gas is cleaner than coal. As you point out this ignores methane losses from the wellheads. It also assumes that the gas will be used to replace coal in power stations. There is no certainty that this would be what happens (we closed one of our last two coal fired power stations in Scotland this week!). It is just as likely that the gas will be used as LGP in vehicles sparking a conversion for petrol cars to LPG and continuing reliance on fossil fuels when we should be moving to a combination of electric vehicles and better public transport. After all coal is relatively cheap while road fuel is getting increasingly expensive.
2) The view that shale gas is cheap is not proven. It may have made gas cheaper in the US, but given the different market and geology in Europe it is by no means certain that we would see the same effect here.