fear about emissions and impact on development of renewables 19-06-2011

The oil industry's efforts to re-profile “unconventional gas” as a “green” alternative to coal poses a new threat to the development of low carbon power.

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Last week the IEA (International Energy Agency) published a special report (summary) highlighting the potential for natural gas in the energy mix.

Conventional natural gas is far less carbon unfriendly than coal and while the original dash for gas played a significant role in reducing the carbon emissions from electricity generation it is still a fossil fuel. To have any hope of keeping warming to less 2^oC - widely accepted as the most global temperatures can rise without risk of catastrophic climate change, all fossil fuel emissions need to be phased out over the next 50 years.

The “Golden Age of Gas Strategy” depends on exploiting vast reserves of "unconventional gas" extracted by processes such as fracking and coal gasification, processes that, according to research by RW Howarth et al produces methane emissions at least 30% and possibly double that of conventional gas wells. Far from being a "greener alternative", emissions on this scale would make unconventional gas more harmful than coal.

Emissions and direct environmental harm aside, there's a far more worrying aspect any new "dash for gas". Exploitation of abundant unconventional natural gas could stop development of renewables and politically difficult low carbon energy sources like nuclear power dead in their tracks. Michael Lind, writing in "War Room" talks of a "new age of fossil fuels". The article gives a chilling insight into the extent to which the dangers of climate change and the potential of low carbon energy are ignored USA. Lind argues that shale and tar sand oil remove the need to develop low carbon options as climate science presents only "worst case scenarios that can easily be ignored". A view as far from the truth as its possible to be - the science tells us with a high degree of confidence that doing nothing risks catastrophe.

The message for anyone concerned with sustainability is "keep unconventional hydrocarbons in the ground". If the oil industry exploits vast carbon reserves locked away in geological formations like shale gas and tar sand environmental disaster is inevitable.