Nick Grealy
Administrator of NoHotAir/ReImagineGas Blog
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The following is a condensed version of a post by Nick Grealy originally published at MyGridGB. Nick tells us why modern life is impossible without fracking.
Due to common failures of the gas industry and journalists who too often seek slogans instead of solutions there is still a widely held view, based more on feelings than figures, that natural gas is neither necessary or desirable. Easy slogans proposing simplistic solutions to complex engineering problems have invaded the debate.
The argument against gas has three strands. It often depends on glib use of the F word as simplistic value signalling. The obsession with the process instead of the product is irrelevant. Yesterday’s breakthrough, becomes today’s mainstream and in shale that date was 2014 when the “unconventional” method of hydraulic fracturing became the new normal when it provided over 50% of US gas production.
In 2017, 90% of all new US gas wells are horizontal, the other part of the shale revolution. Indeed a recent University of Texas study was unable to find evidence of ‘conventional’ gas drilling at all. Thus, in the US at least, natural gas today is produced as a matter of course by “fracking.” It’s as unconventional as making a phone call with a mobile phone to some people was in June 2007 when the iPhone was launched.
The key issue in the debate is an outdated, and often overwrought, view of the impact of gas exploration on the countryside. This is the most often cited reason given by shale gas opponents in the various public attitude tracker polls. The reality is entirely different: the combination of hydraulic fracturing, sub-surface imaging and horizontal drilling that is today’s mainstream method of gas production needs a minimal surface impact in the exploration phase and one that would be almost invisible in the production stage.
I and my partners in London Local Energy for example, anticipate we could produce up to 15% of London’s natural gas demand from a lone site no larger than, and contained within, a medium sized industrial unit. That unit could drain gas from an underground area of up to 200 square kilometres, but would be almost imperceptible at the surface – especially in our home, one of the most crowded urban areas on earth. Indeed, since it could replace any number of existing brownfield sites, it may well improve London, having far less traffic, for example, than current uses might allow.
The most important strand of opposition to natural gas comes from environmentalists who sometimes see natural gas as an expensive rival that will slow the transition to a low carbon era. That was widely held in the 2010/2015 period, but now that renewables are falling in price too, mainstream academics and organizations such as the Committee on Climate Change have more nuanced, and globally focussed views.
Here the US experience again informs, demonstrating abundant natural gas and renewables are natural partners. For example, MyGridGB rightly celebrates when wind sometimes exceeds 20% of UK electricity production. But over 20% is an everyday event during overnight periods in the Texas ERCOT region, as it also is in the South West Power Pool. There have been several times in the winter of 2016/17 where wind in both grids exceeded the 50% level, a level entirely out of reach in the UK.
As MyGridGB readers well know, but sadly many journalists have yet to, electricity is not energy, especially in a highly populated, high latitude and cold UK. We can’t change the latitude of the UK, but we need to change our attitude toward natural gas. We have to move on from a gut feeling dislike of natural gas, one where gas can’t be included in the “green team,” and to one that’s based on figures.
I’m often regaled, or reviled, on Twitter with news of 100% renewable targets, and sometimes even achieving them, in various places in the world. The sub-text is that if Norway or Costa Rica or Hawaii (three recent examples) can aim for 100% renewables, why can’t the UK? Is not shale thus a dinosaur solution? The answer lies not only in attitude and latitude, but also in altitude: Norway and Costa Rica, along with green (and nuclear) Switzerland and Austria, have mountains. Mountains means abundant hydro power. Latitude means both higher solar gain, but also lower heat demand. Costa Rica has essentially zero heat demand, as does Hawaii. But most of all, they have far lower populations than the UK.
High population density means not only high demand, but also precludes land intensive solutions such as solar farms, large wind arrays, and equally, the high numbers of oil and gas wells once associated with less crowed areas. This is especially true in urban areas. The UK, or at least its journalists, are often heavily invested in a myth of a perfect rural Arcadia, unsullied by modern life, signifier of both the low carbon and the authentic. The reality of course is that cities, where the majority of people choose to live by preference, tread far less lightly on the earth than rural areas.
The success of gas in eliminating coal – and carbon – from the UK grid, in partnership with efficiency and renewables is well known to readers of MyGridGB. But power demand is only a third of UK gas use, with residential heat and industrial demand making up approximately equal thirds. Industrial demand is not only the chemical, ceramic, cement, steel and manufacturing sectors, it’s equally vital in food production.
Milk has to be pasteurized. Bread needs baking, meat must be processed, coffee needs to be roasted and it is impossible to brew beer without heat. The food is then cooked, at home or away. Over 90% of UK Michelin starred restaurants use natural gas for cooking, as do almost 60% of homes. Finally, the food is eaten in homes, offices, hospitals and factories that need heat for at least six months of the year. Every day of the year, gas is used for domestic hot water. In London, for instance, 2.4% of annual gas demand still occurs during July.
According to Worcester Bosch, the UK’s largest heat equipment provider, who also sell biomass, heat pump and even solar hot water heating, 1.6 million gas central heating systems are replaced or installed in the UK every year. That’s one system every 40 seconds in London alone.
We’re sometimes told we need to invest in new heat networks, and not in gas infrastructure. But, the reality is that the UK gas grid is already here – bought and paid for decades ago. The maintenance cost of the network is minimal. Gas is thus not crowding out renewables. There is a good case to be made that the hybrid solution of gas and wind and solar, can be as successful as the Toyota Prius and other vehicle hybrids.
The question then becomes one of where should UK natural gas come from? Before answering this question, another widely held, but erroneous view must be addressed. Can’t we just use less gas (and electricity)? The answer is that we clearly already do and it’s something tp continually aim for. Each new heating system is far more efficient than any they replace. We use the exact same amount of natural gas in 2015 as we did in 1995 – even though GDP per capita doubled and population rose by 9%. Similarly, we used less gas in 2015 than in 2005.
There will always be room for improvement, but the max headroom for gas efficiency is being approached. The trend is downwards, but it’s unlikely be to eternal. Energy efficiency can easily cut a third of UK demand. But, gas demand is unlikely to entirely disappear. A plateau will be reached and the UK will always need some natural gas. The London Energy Plan still sees a 40% role for natural gas in the Zero Carbon 2050 London project, for example.
The question must be where will that gas come from? If we leave gas under our ground, then whose ground do we choose to take it from? If natural gas production is so dangerous, poisonous or damaging to ourselves, is there not also a moral dimension by displacing it upon others?
Increasingly gas will come from bio-methane, produced from agricultural by products or waste. But even the most optimistic scenarios predict a top range of less than 10% of UK gas production from zero carbon bio-gas. Some predict a role for hydrogen, but even there, much of the hydrogen would need to be reformed from natural gas. We cannot let feelings trump facts: The UK is cold and crowded. Modern life is impossible without large amounts of natural gas in any realistic scenario.There may well be many nibbles or sexy sounding niches that tempt the PR/media machine and may even cut natural gas demand, but adding them all together is unlikely to lead to a gas free future.
But, what if I am wrong? What if there can be technological great leaps forward in CCS, solar, batteries or modular nuclear? After all, the quantum leap in gas resources this century came from a similar paradigm shift that inflection point energy “experts” never predicted.
In that case, and may it come one day, then natural gas can well afford to shuffle off into a zero carbon future. With the natural gas delivery grid amortised several decades ago, there is minimal infrastructure investment that would soak up investment needed for the perfect carbon free world – if it does in fact show up.
Onshore natural gas wells can be paid off in months, not years. Off shore operations in the North Sea are incredibly expensive. Shale wells themselves are expensive – but require far less support services of investment in pipelines to hook up supply to demand. Thus, after paying off the well, it’s found money: onshore gas can disappear as quickly as it arrived if new alternatives present themselves.
It’s not exactly correct, but it’s not entirely wrong either, to say that using UK onshore natural gas is akin to taking it out of one hole in the ground (the well) and putting it, after minimum intervention, into any another hole in the ground, the gas mains that deliver gas. The UK has the shortest midstream in the world between producer and customer – it’s one of the key advantages of UK gas. As we’ll see in part two of this story to be published soon, it is provably the lowest carbon natural gas on earth. If we are, due to latitude and altitude, condemned to use natural gas to heat London, then the lowest carbon natural gas is the route to take.
Not only do feelings trump facts and figures, the antipathy some feel toward gas, stems from ignorance as to where gas actually comes from. It’s ironic that many consumers are obsessed with the provenance of their food, but never of the natural gas which is an often unavoidable second to last part of the process in the farm to table movement. The last part of farm to table is of course the eater.
The proof is not only in the pudding: It’s also in the baking of the pudding. Consumers’s are mostly clueless in this regard. In the second part of this article, I’ll demonstrate how, just as electricity doesn’t spontaneously come out of the wall, heat is the last part of a very long chain. Many people don’t need to – or want to – think about natural gas at all because a whole chain of people think about it a great deal. It’s time to create a new narrative about natural gas based on a synthesis of facts, figures and feelings.
Modern life is impossible?
Let’s not overstate the case please.
We’re not.
https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=NY
Is unreceive dogma a new yorker? New Yorkers might be the least informed people now about energy, natural gas, climate change and more thanks to the presence and dominance of the antifracking movement here.
Unreal.
How does unreceive dogma think the lights and equipment stay on in hospitals, houses stay warm in winter and more happen? By magic or osmosis?
Michael is in a fact a New Yorker, Karen.
“the UK is cold…”
By the end of the century, maybe not so much.
Yeah, yeah. Just like there was going to be no more snow in five years…
http://www.uncommondescent.com/science/no-more-snow-in-england-say-global-warmists/
and then…
http://www.express.co.uk/news/weather/748576/January-2017-weather-forecast-snow-UK-winter-heavy-snow
Interestingly, Nick Grealy is vey worried about climate change but he’s also a realist who sees gas as one of the solutions.
It should be stated that some of the most hardcore fractivists do not just say natural gas is unnecessary. What they say is that it is the worst fossil fuel. It is only since the birth of the antifracking movement that this is so and you find people saying this increasingly so at that. That is a massive step backwards. It should also be noted that the antifracking movement was and is most influential in NY where there is an enormous amount of concentrated press and other media types. This is also a massive problem.
The problem of the antifracking pipeline and natural gas movement is consistently underestimated in my opinion. There is mass misinformation all over the news about natural gas, pipelines as in plural, ferc and more and there has been now for years. All of this is alarming. There are whole states in the united States of America where natural gas production is essentially banned. Are there any states where coal production is banned? How did it come to this? How can the press promote such madness?
I wonder how these individuals feels about the recovery of methane from Wastewater Treatment Plants, Bio-Digesters and Landfills to either produce electric energy back into the grid and/or scrubbed to a standard that could be placed into the conventional pipelines?