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|a A commentary on "The greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas in shale formations" by R.W. Howarth, R. Santoro, and Anthony Ingraffea |h [electronic resource]. |
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|a [S.l.] : |b Springer, |c 2012. |
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|a Please contact the owning institution for licensing and permissions. It is the user's responsibility to ensure use does not violate any third party rights. |
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|a Natural gas is widely considered to be an environmentally cleaner fuel than coal
because it does not produce detrimental by-products such as sulfur, mercury, ash and
particulates and because it provides twice the energy per unit of weight with half the carbon
footprint during combustion. These points are not in dispute. However, in their recent
publication in Climatic Change Letters, Howarth et al. (2011) report that their life-cycle
evaluation of shale gas drilling suggests that shale gas has a larger GHG footprint than coal
and that this larger footprint “undercuts the logic of its use as a bridging fuel over the
coming decades”. We argue here that their analysis is seriously flawed in that they
significantly overestimate the fugitive emissions associated with unconventional gas
extraction, undervalue the contribution of “green technologies” to reducing those emissions
to a level approaching that of conventional gas, base their comparison between gas and coal
on heat rather than electricity generation (almost the sole use of coal), and assume a time
interval over which to compute the relative climate impact of gas compared to coal that
does not capture the contrast between the long residence time of CO2 and the short
residence time of methane in the atmosphere. High leakage rates, a short methane GWP,
and comparison in terms of heat content are the inappropriate bases upon which Howarth et
al. ground their claim that gas could be twice as bad as coal in its greenhouse impact. Using
more reasonable leakage rates and bases of comparison, shale gas has a GHG footprint that
is half and perhaps a third that of coal. |
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|a Electronic reproduction. |c Florida International University, |d 2015. |f (dpSobek) |n Mode of access: World Wide Web. |n System requirements: Internet connectivity; Web browser software. |
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|a Lawrence M. Cathles III. |
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|a dpSobek |c Sea Level Rise |
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|u http://dpanther.fiu.edu/dpService/dpPurlService/purl/FI15042676/00001 |y Click here for full text |
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|a http://dpanther.fiu.edu/sobek/content/FI/15/04/26/76/00001/FI15042676_thm.jpg |
