Journal Article

Limited impact on decadal-scale climate change from increased use of natural gas

Fisher, Brian, Hilaire, Jérôme, Mi, Raymond, Riahi, Keywan, Rogner, Holger, Krey, Volker, Edmonds, Jae, Marangoni, Giacomo, Tavoni, Massimo, Bauer, Nico, Clarke, Leon, Flannery, Brian P., McJeon, Haewon

2014

Overview

It has been hoped that making abundant natural gas available by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) would reduce greenhouse gas emissions but now modelling shows that increased consumption will have limited effect on climate change. Fracking boom a minor influence on climate The development of hydraulic fracturing technologies has led to rapid growth in the use natural gas as an energy source. Some evidence has suggested that this growing adoption of natural gas might lead to a reduced greenhouse gas burden and consequent mitigation of climate change. This collaboration between five energy–climate modelling teams show that instead — under a scenario of abundant natural gas availability — increased consumption will have little or no impact on climate change. The authors suggest that expanded natural gas production and use is neither a substitute for a climate policy in the decades ahead nor a major new complication to the anthropogenic emissions problem. The most important energy development of the past decade has been the wide deployment of hydraulic fracturing technologies that enable the production of previously uneconomic shale gas resources in North America 1 . If these advanced gas production technologies were to be deployed globally, the energy market could see a large influx of economically competitive unconventional gas resources 2 . The climate implications of such abundant natural gas have been hotly debated. Some researchers have observed that abundant natural gas substituting for coal could reduce carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 . Others have reported that the non-CO 2 greenhouse gas emissions associated with shale gas production make its lifecycle emissions higher than those of coal 7 , 8 . Assessment of the full impact of abundant gas on climate change requires an integrated approach to the global energy–economy–climate systems, but the literature has been limited in either its geographic scope 9 , 10 or its coverage of greenhouse gases 2 . Here we show that market-driven increases in global supplies of unconventional natural gas do not discernibly reduce the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions or climate forcing. Our results, based on simulations from five state-of-the-art integrated assessment models 11 of energy–economy–climate systems independently forced by an abundant gas scenario, project large additional natural gas consumption of up to +170 per cent by 2050. The impact on CO 2 emissions, however, is found to be much smaller (from −2 per cent to +11 per cent), and a majority of the models reported a small increase in climate forcing (from −0.3 per cent to +7 per cent) associated with the increased use of abundant gas. Our results show that although market penetration of globally abundant gas may substantially change the future energy system, it is not necessarily an effective substitute for climate change mitigation policy 9 , 10 .

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: 704/106/694/682 / Carbon Dioxide - analysis / Carbon dioxide emissions / Climate change / Climate Change - statistics & numerical data / Climate change mitigation / Climate system / Climatic changes / Emissions / Energy / Energy policy / Environment / Environmental aspects / Environmental Policy / Greenhouse Effect - prevention & control / Greenhouse Effect - statistics & numerical data / Greenhouse gases / Humanities and Social Sciences / Hydraulic fracturing / letter / Models, Theoretical / multidisciplinary / Natural gas / Natural Gas - economics / Natural Gas - supply & distribution / Natural Gas - utilization / Natural gas supply / Oil and gas production / Reserves / Science / Shales / Time Factors