The greenhouse impact of unconventional gas for electricity generation
By N. Hultman, D. Rebois, M. Scholten, Christopher W Ramig. 2011
178 citations recorded by the source corpus.
New techniques to extract natural gas from unconventional resources have become economically competitive over the past several years, leading to a rapid and largely unanticipated expansion in natural gas production. The US Energy Information Administration projects that unconventional gas will supply nearly half of US gas production by 2035. In addition, by significantly expanding and diversifying the gas supply internationally, the exploitation of new unconventional gas resources has the potential to reshape energy policy at national and international levels—altering geopolitics and energy security, recasting the economics of energy technology investment decisions, and shifting trends in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In anticipation of this expansion, one of the perceived core advantages of unconventional gas—its relatively moderate GHG impact compared to coal—has recently come under scrutiny. In this paper, we compare the GHG footprints of conventional natural gas, unconventional natural gas (i.e. shale gas that has been produced using the process of hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking’), and coal in a transparent and consistent way, focusing primarily on the electricity generation sector. We show that for electricity generation the GHG impacts of shale gas are 11% higher than those of conventional gas, and only 56% that of coal for standard assumptions.
Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/737fc079b902cc497019d5b3efea7a878ab40947
Citations in the corpus
- The 'Shale Gas Revolution': Developments and Changes (2012, unknown): “Different conclusions are reached in other more recent studies in peer-reviewed journals, such as Hultman et al. (2011), Jiang et al. (2011) and Skone (2011).”
- “Fracking” Controversy and Communication: Using National Survey Data to Understand Public Perceptions of Hydraulic Fracturing (2014, unknown): “Supporters have argued that fracking will spur economic growth, lead to more secure domestic energy supplies, and facilitate a rapid transition away from carbon-intensive, coalbased electricity generation (The Perryman Group, 2008; Considine et al., 2010; Hultman et al., 2011; US Environmental Prote”
- Cornucopia or curse? Reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking) (2014, unknown): “[42] reached a more moderate, yet still troubling conclusion, and found that for electricity generation shale gas was 11 percent worse (from an emissions standpoint) than ordinary gas but not worse than coal.”