Another boost for shale gas – less impact than coal

Watts up with That? ^ | July 17, 2012 | Anthony Watts

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Map of major shale gas basis all over the world from the EIA report World Shale Gas Resources: An Initial Assessment of 14 Regions Outside the United States .

From the AGU Journal Highlights:

Replacing coal with natural gas would reduce warming

A debate has raged in the past couple of years as to whether natural gas is better or worse overall than coal and oil from a global warming perspective. The back-and-forth findings have been due to the timelines taken into consideration, the details of natural gas extraction, and the electricity-generating efficiency of various fuels. An analysis by Cathles, which focuses exclusively on potential warming and ignores secondary considerations, such as economic, political, or other environmental concerns, finds that natural gas is better for electricity generation than coal and oil under all realistic circumstances.

To come to this conclusion, the author considered three different future fuel consumption scenarios: (1) a business-as-usual case, which sees energy generation capacity continue at its current pace with its current energy mix until the middle of the century, at which point the implementation of low-carbon energy sources dominates and fossil fuel–derived energy production declines; (2) a gas substitution scenario, where natural gas replaces all coal power production and any new oil-powered facilities, with the same midcentury shift; and (3) a low-carbon scenario, where all electricity generation is immediately and aggressively switched to non–fossil fuel sources such as solar, wind, and nuclear.

The author finds that the gas substitution scenario would realize 40 percent of the reduction in global warming that could be achieved with a full switch to low-carbon fuel sources. The benefit for mitigating warming revolves around the fact that to produce an equivalent amount of electricity burning natural gas would release less carbon dioxide than burning oil or coal. Though atmospheric methane traps more outgoing radiation than carbon dioxide does, at reasonable leakage rates its atmospheric concentration is much lower and what is released decomposes much more quickly. The author suggests that over timescales relevant to large-scale warming—decades to centuries—the effect of any methane released during natural gas extraction would be inconsequential.

Source:

Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems,doi:10.1029/2012GC004032, 2012

Title:

“Assessing the greenhouse impact of natural gas”

Authors:

L. M. Cathles

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.

Key Points

• Natural gas substitution achieves 40% warming reduction of low carbon fuels
• Duration of substitution does not affect 40% benefit
• Full benefit at gas leakage 1% of production or less

Abstract

The global warming impact of substituting natural gas for coal and oil is currently in debate. We address this question here by comparing the reduction of greenhouse warming that would result from substituting gas for coal and some oil to the reduction which could be achieved by instead substituting zero carbon energy sources. We show that substitution of natural gas reduces global warming by 40% of that which could be attained by the substitution of zero carbon energy sources. At methane leakage rates that are ∼1% of production, which is similar to today’s probable leakage rate of ∼1.5% of production, the 40% benefit is realized as gas substitution occurs. For short transitions the leakage rate must be more than 10 to 15% of production for gas substitution not to reduce warming, and for longer transitions the leakage must be much greater. But even if the leakage was so high that the substitution was not of immediate benefit, the 40%-of-zero-carbon benefit would be realized shortly after methane emissions ceased because methane is removed quickly from the atmosphere whereas CO₂ is not. The benefits of substitution are unaffected by heat exchange to the ocean. CO₂ emissions are the key to anthropogenic climate change, and substituting gas reduces them by 40% of that possible by conversion to zero carbon energy sources. Gas substitution also reduces the rate at which zero carbon energy sources must eventually be introduced.

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[Fraxinus]

Question for those better informed than me.

What happens when the scouter for locating the gas well for fracking finds an orphan oil well? These are often 50+ years old and oozing crude.

I know that there are many of these in the Allegheny Mountains where the first oil wells were drilled and finding the last owner can be difficult (owner went out of business years ago).