Environmental Impacts of Shale Gas in the UK: Current Situation and Future Scenarios

Abstract

This paper presents life cycle environmental impacts of UK shale gas used for electricity generation, in comparison with other fossil, nuclear and renewable options. Per kWh of electricity generated, shale gas has higher environmental impacts than the other options, except for coal. Thus, if it were to replace coal, most impacts would be reduced, including the global warming potential (GWP; by 2.3 times). However, if it were to compete with nuclear or some renewables most impacts would rise, with the GWP increasing by 5–123 times. Within a future UK electricity mix up to 2030, shale gas would make little difference to the environmental impacts of electricity generation, including the GWP, even for the most optimistic assumptions for its domestic production. This suggests that, in the medium term, shale gas cannot help towards meeting UK climate change targets and that certain renewables and nuclear power should be prioritized instead.

Shale gas: a life-cycle perspective for UK production

“…The results shown for S.0 were compared with the results of the Bcentral case^reported in Cooper et al (2014) and Stamford and Azapagic (2014). We considered the functional For each environmental indicator, the table indicates which are the operations that mainly contribute to the environmental impact of shale gas production.…”

“…Strata containing shale gas can be very thin (Rozell and Reaven 2012) so efficient extraction is achieved through a combination of vertical drilling, to reach the shale formation to a depth of approximately 1500 m, and then directional drilling, to follow the shale formation for a horizontal section of at least 1500 m (Broderick et al 2011). Steel casing pipes are installed in the borehole and cemented to protect the surrounding rocks, improve well's integrity (Cooper et al 2014) and prevent leakage of natural gas through the well bore during the production phase.…”

“…In the UK, Stamford and Azapagic (2014) and Cooper et al (2014) are the only ones so far who have analysed different impact indicators (i.e. depletion of energy sources, acidification potential etc., but no water impacts) in addition to the carbon footprint.…”

“…As widely reported in literature (Stephenson et al 2011;Weber and Clavin 2012;Stamford and Azapagic 2014), it is assumed that extraction, processing and distribution of shale gas involve exactly the same processes as onshore extraction of conventional gas, but operations associated with hydraulic fracturing must be added. Therefore, two models have been built: the first (identified as the common operations model) accounts for the extraction of conventional gas and includes all the common processes between conventional and unconventional extraction: gas field exploration, natural gas production, purification, long distance transport and regional distribution.…”

“…Some of the potential implications between shale gas development, global warming, policy and economics are reported in Newell and Raimi (2014); it is clear that the global economic debate on shale gas development needs to be rooted on solid knowledge about its environmental impacts. Concerns about the environmental burdens of drilling and production of shale gas coupled with a strong nuclear lobby have pushed some countries such as France to ban exploration and trials (Cooper et al 2014). Hence, it is of major importance to identify the possible sources of pollution and to gain more insight into the environmental impact of shale gas production.…”