Abstract
The shale gas debate has taken center stage over the past decade in many European countries due to its purported climate advantages over coal and the implications for domestic energy security. Nevertheless, shale gas production generates greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions including carbon dioxide, methane, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds. In this study we develop three shale gas drilling projections in Germany and the United Kingdom based on estimated reservoir productivities and local capacity. For each projection, we define a set of emission scenarios in which gas losses are assigned to each stage of upstream gas production to quantify total emissions. The “realistic” (REm) and “optimistic” (OEm) scenarios investigated in this study describe, respectively, the potential emission range generated by business-as-usual activities, and the lowest emissions technically possible according to our settings. The latter scenario is based on the application of specific technologies and full compliance with a stringent regulatory framework described herein. Based on the median drilling projection, total annual methane emissions range between 150–294 Kt in REm and 28–42 Kt in OEm, while carbon dioxide emissions span from 5.55–7.21 Mt in REm to 3.11–3.96 Mt in OEm. Taking all drilling projections into consideration, methane leakage rates in REm range between 0.45 and 1.36% in Germany, and between 0.35 and 0.71% in the United Kingdom. The leakage rates are discussed in both the European (conventional gas) and international (shale gas) contexts. Further, the emission intensity of a potential European shale gas industry is estimated and compared to national inventories. Results from our science-based prospective scenarios can facilitate an informed discussion among the public and policy makers on the climate impact of a potential shale gas development in Europe, and on the appropriate role of natural gas in the worldwide energy transition.
Highlights
Over the past decade there has been a rapid increase in natural gas production in the United States (US), mainly due to shale gas, which accounts for about 60% of current total production (WEO, 2017)
We discuss results under the two technological/performance settings employed during shale gas development (REm and Optimistic Emissions (OEm)), under differing well productivities (P25, P50 and P75), for both wet and dry gas, for different greenhouse gas (GHG) and air pollutants, and for both countries under study (Germany and the United Kingdom (UK))
In the following paragraphs we focus on wet gas scenarios, while we refer to dry gas scenarios only occasionally: emission trends from dry scenarios closely resemble those from wet scenarios, with the exception that volatile organic compounds (VOCs) make up a very small component of the gas composition
Summary
Over the past decade there has been a rapid increase in natural gas production in the United States (US), mainly due to shale gas, which accounts for about 60% of current total production (WEO, 2017). A finegrained, laminated, sedimentary rock, has an extremely low permeability which in the past made extraction of this gas type difficult and uneconomical. Natural gas is often described as a transition fuel on the road to a decarbonized global energy system. This is because natural gas generates less carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions during combustion per unit of energy than coal or oil (WEO, 2017), and enables continued fossil fuel use with an ostensibly smaller impact on the climate.
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