Carbon footprint of global natural gas supplies to China

Yu Gan,Alhassan Badahdah,Hao Cai,Zifeng Lu,Steven Przesmitzki,Hassan M El-Houjeiri,Michael Wang

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-14606-4

Yu Gan, Alhassan Badahdah + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14606-4

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Abstract

As natural gas demand surges in China, driven by the coal-to-gas switching policy, widespread attention is focused on its impacts on global gas supply-demand rebalance and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Here, for the first time, we estimate well-to-city-gate GHG emissions of gas supplies for China, based on analyses of field-specific characteristics of 104 fields in 15 countries. Results show GHG intensities of supplies from 104 fields vary from 6.2 to 43.3 g CO2eq MJ−1. Due to the increase of GHG-intensive gas supplies from Russia, Central Asia, and domestic shale gas fields, the supply-energy-weighted average GHG intensity is projected to increase from 21.7 in 2016 to 23.3 CO2eq MJ−1 in 2030, and total well-to-city-gate emissions of gas supplies are estimated to grow by ~3 times. While securing gas supply is a top priority for the Chinese government, decreasing GHG intensity should be considered in meeting its commitment to emission reductions.

Highlights

As natural gas demand surges in China, driven by the coal-to-gas switching policy, widespread attention is focused on its impacts on global gas supply-demand rebalance and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
GHG emissions are presented in 100-year global warming potential (GWP100)[27]
The analysis of GHG intensity supply curves provides quantitative information missing in literature for natural gas supply chain GHG management, highlighting challenges and opportunities of emission reductions and clean energy policymaking for expanded natural gas use in China

Summary

Introduction

As natural gas demand surges in China, driven by the coal-to-gas switching policy, widespread attention is focused on its impacts on global gas supply-demand rebalance and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. For the first time, we estimate well-to-city-gate GHG emissions of gas supplies for China, based on analyses of field-specific characteristics of 104 fields in 15 countries. Significant differences in well-to-city-gate emissions occur between gas supplies from diverse sources with different characteristics[20,21] These differences exist across countries or extraction techniques and among individual fields with distinct geological conditions, raw gas composition, market distances, etc.[20,21,22,23]. The analysis of GHG emissions of natural gas supplies to China at such a granular level has not been done before and will provide insights into emission reductions and clean energy policymaking[24,25,26]

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