Full Title: Insight Briefing: Unconventional Gas
Author(s): The Climate Group
Publisher(s): The Climate Group
Publication Date: February 1, 2013
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
The spectacular growth in unconventional gas reserves and increasing levels of extraction in recent years is changing the international energy and climate landscape. The use of cheap and abundant shale gas in the US has helped deliver major economic benefits, which other countries are now seeking to emulate. As the ‘cleanest’ fossil fuel, natural gas, particularly from unconventional sources, could displace large amounts of coal from the power sector, reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the shift to lower carbon energy systems. But unconventional gas is no panacea to climate change. Its potential as a transition fuel depends on dealing with substantial challenges relating to fugitive emissions and its impact on global greenhouse gas targets. Any sustainable, long-term exploitation of unconventional gas can only take place within the framework of strong and increasing national and international emission reduction targets. Without the cost-effective commercialization of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in the short to medium term, the use of unconventional gas will be limited to a brief, transitory role in the shift to lower and then zero carbon energy systems. Critical to all of this is early action by policy and decision-makers. The necessary parameters for the sustainable use of unconventional gas must be put in place today to avoid investments that entrench a high carbon energy infrastructure of tomorrow.