Desperate U.K. Turns to Shale Gas
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/518936/desperate-uk-turns-to-shale-gas/[font size=4]To meet emissions goals, the U.K. is reluctantly turning to fracking of shale gas.[/font]
By Peter Fairley on September 10, 2013
[font size=3]Proposed U.K. government policies to encourage hydrofracking of natural gas ignited a firestorm of protest this summer, with critics complaining that they were not consulted and that rules will restrict local planners’ authority. But the country appears to have few other options. The United Kingdom is in an energy quagmire that is forcing it to turn to shale gas.
The country’s aggressive carbon emissions goals call for the U.K.’s power supply to be virtually carbon-free by 2030. But the government had been planning to slash emissions with low-carbon power strategies—new nuclear reactors and carbon capture and storage systems on existing power plants—that remain too expensive to build. And conventional natural gas from the North Sea that could buy time for the scale-up of renewable power is dwindling.
Cost matters to U.K. voters. Nearly three-quarters of its citizens are worried about climate change, according to a national poll released by the London-based U.K. Energy Research Centre in July. But more than four-fifths told the researchers that they are “fairly or very concerned” that both electricity and gas will become unaffordable in the next 10 to 20 years.
If the U.K. can’t find an affordable supply of natural gas via hydrofracking of its shale deposits, it might have to restart mothballed coal-fired power plants to keep the lights on in future decades. “One way or another, we’ll muddle through,” says George Day, economic strategy manager at the Loughborough-based Energy Technologies Institute, a partnership between industrial firms and the U.K. government. “Whether we’ll hit our carbon targets is another question,” says Day.
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http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-263
I am not sure the theory on fracking increasing atmospheric methane is true, especially if it replaces coal. Coal mining has released methane in the past, and trapping and using the methane is probably partly responsible for dropping atmospheric concentrations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalbed_methane
When you think about removal capacity, it's not clear how much methane concentrations will increase from fracking, esp. since in some cases methane will be exploited.
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/downloads/methaneuk/chapter02.pdf
Now mining the methane hydrate ice under the seas may be a totally different thing.
> To meet emissions goals, the U.K. is reluctantly turning to fracking of shale gas.
1) Shale gas is not necessary to meet our emissions goals.
2) There is no "reluctance" when the policies are being driven by the fossil fuel industry itself
and ably supported by the bought-out politicians & their handlers, oops, "advisors".
> But the government had been planning to slash emissions with low-carbon power
> strategies—new nuclear reactors and carbon capture and storage systems on existing
> power plants—that remain too expensive to build.
Not just "too expensive" but, in the case of CCS, completely fictional fabrications of
a "strategy". New nuclear could only happen by means of expansion on existing sites
(e.g., new or replacement reactors at existing nuclear power stations) and there have
been no surprises about either the space available for this option or the degree of pushback
from the people who oppose it.
> it might have to restart mothballed coal-fired power plants
Again, that is not another "Oh dear, we're being *forced* to do this" but is another explicit
goal of the entire UK government (driven by the greed of the Conservatives, supported by
the pandering of the Lib Dems and not opposed by the sycophants of Labour in case they
are seen as upsetting the coal mining unions).
And anyone who is taken in by "a partnership between industrial firms and the U.K. government"
needs their gullibilty meter recalibrating.
