{"id":340,"date":"2013-08-08T18:15:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-08T18:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/eng\/?p=340"},"modified":"2013-08-08T18:15:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T18:15:00","slug":"bridge-or-gangplank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/eng\/bridge-or-gangplank\/","title":{"rendered":"Bridge Or Gangplank?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Natural gas is \u201ca bridge to a world with high CO2 Levels,\u201d climatologist Ken Caldeira\u00a0told me last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0major new study<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Geophysical Research Letters<\/em>\u00a0by 19 researchers \u2014 primarily from NOAA and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) \u2014 suggests natural gas may be more of gangplank than a bridge.<\/p>\n

Scientists used a research aircraft to measure leakage and\u00a0found<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The measurements show that on one February day in the Uintah Basin,\u00a0the natural gas field leaked 6 to 12 percent of the methane produced<\/strong>, on average, on February days.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) called the emissions rates \u201calarmingly high<\/a>.\u201d While the researchers conducted 12 flights, \u201cthey selected just one as their data source for this paper,\u201d\u00a0ClimateWire reports<\/a>. Researchers actually measured higher emissions on other flights, but atmospheric conditions during those flights \u201cgave the data more uncertainty.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Uinta Basin is of particular interest because it \u201cproduces about 1 percent of total U.S. natural gas\u201d and\u00a0fracking has increased there<\/a>\u00a0over the past decade.<\/p>\n

This study\u00a0confirms earlier findings<\/a>\u00a0of high rates of methane leakage\u00a0from natural gas fields. If these findings continue to be replicated elsewhere, they would utterly vitiate the direct climate benefit of natural gas, even when it is used only to switch off coal.<\/p>\n

How much methane leaks during the entire lifecycle of unconventional gas has emerged as a\u00a0key question<\/a>\u00a0in the fracking debate. Natural gas is\u00a0mostly methane<\/a>\u00a0(CH4).\u00a0 And methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than (CO2), which is released when any hydrocarbon, like natural gas, is burned \u2014 25 times more potent over a century and 80 to 100 times more potent over a 20-year period.<\/p>\n

Even without a high-leakage rate for shale gas, we know that \u201cAbsent a Serious Price for Global Warming Pollution,\u00a0<\/a>Natural Gas Is A Bridge To Nowhere<\/a>.\u201d That was\u00a0first demonstrated by the International Energy Agency in its big June 2011 report on gas \u2014 see\u00a0IEA\u2019s \u201cGolden Age of Gas Scenario\u201d Leads to More Than 6\u00b0F Warming and Out-of-Control Climate Change<\/a>. \u00a0That study \u2014 which had both coal and oil consumption peaking in 2020 \u2014 made abundantly clear that if we want to avoid catastrophic warming,\u00a0we need to start getting off of\u00a0al<\/em><\/strong>l<\/em>\u00a0fossil fuels<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Still, the leakage rate does matter.\u00a0 A major\u00a02011 study<\/a>\u00a0by Tom Wigley of the Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) concluded:<\/p>\n

The most important result, however, in accord with the above authors, is that, unless leakage rates for new methane can be kept below 2%, substituting gas for coal is not an effective means for reducing the magnitude of future climate change.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wigley, it should be noted, was looking at the combined warming impact from three factors \u2014 from the methane leakage, from the gas plant CO2 emissions, and from\u00a0the drop in sulfate aerosols caused by switching out coal for gas. In a country like the United States, which strongly regulates\u00a0sulfate aerosols, that third factor is probably much smaller. Of course, in countries like China and India, it would be a big deal.<\/p>\n

An April 2012\u00a0study found<\/a>\u00a0that a big switch from coal to gas would only reduce \u201ctechnology warming potentials\u201d\u00a0by about 25% over the first three decades \u2014 far different than the typical statement that you get a 50% drop in CO2 emissions from the switch. And that assumed a total methane leakage of 2.4%.\u00a0The study found that\u00a0if the total leakage exceeds\u00a03.2% \u201cgas becomes worse for the climate than coal for at least some period of time.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Leakage of 4%, let alone 9%, would call into question the value of unconventional gas as any sort of bridge fuel.\u00a0Colm Sweeney, the head of the aircraft program at NOAA\u2019s Earth System Research Laboratory, who\u00a0led the study\u2019s aerial component, told the journal\u00a0Nature<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were expecting to see high methane levels, but I don\u2019t think anybody really comprehended the true magnitude of what we would see.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The industry has tended kept most of the data secret while downplaying the leakage issue. EDF is working with the industry to develop credible leakage numbers in a variety of locations.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Natural gas is \u201ca bridge to a world with high CO2 Levels,\u201d climatologist Ken Caldeira\u00a0told me last year. A\u00a0major new study\u00a0in\u00a0Geophysical Research Letters\u00a0by 19 researchers \u2014 primarily from NOAA and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) \u2014 suggests natural gas may be more of gangplank than a bridge. Scientists used a researchContinue reading “Bridge Or Gangplank?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"syndication":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":341,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions\/341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340"},{"taxonomy":"syndication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/syndication?post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}