Abstract
There is at present much interest in unconventional sources of natural gas, especially in shale gas which is obtained by hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking’. Boreholes are drilled and then lined with steel tubes so that a mixture of water and sand with small quantities of chemicals – the fracking fluid – can be pumped into them at very high pressure. The sand grains that wedge into the cracks induced in the shale rock by a ‘perforating gun’ then releases gas which returns up the tubes. In the United Kingdom (UK) exploratory drilling is at an early stage, with licences being issued to drill a limited number of test boreholes around the country. However, such activities are already meeting community resistance and controversy. Like all energy technologies it exhibits unwanted ‘side-effects’; these simply differ in their level of severity between the various options. Shale gas may make, for example, a contribution to attaining the UK’s statutory ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions targets, but only if appropriate and robust regulations are enforced. The benefits and disadvantages of shale gas fracking are therefore discussed in order to illustrate a ‘balance sheet’ approach. It is also argued that it is desirable to bring together experts from a range of disciplines in order to carry out energy technology assessments. That should draw on and interact with national and local stakeholders: ‘actors’ both large and small. Community engagement in a genuinely participative process – where the government is prepared to change course in response to the evidence and public opinion – will consequently be critically important for the adoption of any new energy option that might meet the needs of a low carbon future.
Highlights
The United Kingdom (UK) balance of payments would obviously benefit significantly from the large-scale development of shale gas extraction, it is unlikely that gas bills for household and industrial consumers would fall dramatically as they have done in North
Operational environmental permits for shale gas fracking in the UK are issued by the Environment Agency (EA), Natural Resources Wales (NRW), or the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) on a site-by-site basis in line with the requirements imposed in water abstraction licenses, and actual usage monitored over time
Public Health England (PHE) [79], for example, have recently proposed that baseline environmental monitoring be instigated in order to facilitate the impact assessment of shale gas extraction on the environment and public health, that the fracking chemicals should be publicly disclosed and their risks assessed before use, and that the type and composition of the extracted gas should be determined on a site-by-site basis
Summary
Human development is underpinned by energy sources of various kinds that heat, power and transport its citizens in their everyday life. Q This paper was presented at the 7th International Conference on Applied Energy (ICAE2015), March 28–31, 2015, Abu Dhabi, UAE (Original paper title: ‘‘Energy Technology Assessment of Shale Gas ‘Fracking’ – A UK Perspective” and Paper No.: ICAE2015-600). They differ in their level of severity. Licenses have been issued by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to drill a limited number of test boreholes around the country (see, for the case of England, [1]) These boreholes are lined with steel tubes, and a mixture of water and sand with small quantities of chemicals – the fracking fluid – is pumped into them at very high pressure. It is necessary to identify the components of a shale gas fracking ‘balance sheet’ of the sort employed in technology assessment [3,4,5] in order to evaluate its impact on communities, countryside and wildlife, and to determine whether it is compatible with Britain’s move towards a low carbon future in 2050 and beyond
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