Climate change- the last word?

The UK’s Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences have joined forces to produce a summary of what is known about climate change. They say: ‘This document explains that there are well-understood physical mechanisms by which changes in the amounts of greenhouse gases cause climate changes. It discusses the evidence that the concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere have increased and are still increasing rapidly, that climate change is occurring, and that most of the recent change is almost certainly due to emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activities. Further climate change is inevitable; if emissions of greenhouse gases continue unabated, future changes will substantially exceed those that have occurred so far. There remains a range of estimates of the magnitude and regional expression of future change, but increases in the extremes of climate that can adversely affect natural ecosystems and human activities and infrastructure are expected.’  It doesn’t get any more authoritative than that!

No doubt some contrarians will haggle, disputing the evidence or the analysis, or both. Or go off in odd tangents: www.spectator.co.uk/features/9057151/carry-on-warming/  It’s good for us! That's a line that also seems to be taken by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, who also say that, if it turns out to be real and significant, we can deal with climate change best by adaptation rather than what they see as expensive mitigation, using renewables. It’s recent report on sea level changes said  ‘It is the height of folly, and waste of money, to attempt to ‘control’ the size or frequency of damaging natural events by expecting that reductions in human carbon dioxide emissions will moderate climate ‘favourably’, whether that be putatively sought from a moderation in the frequency and intensity of damaging natural events or by a reduction in the rate of global average sea-level rise.’

Overall the GWPF rails against what they see as unwarranted  climate extremism and points to the scientific uncertainties.  They are apparently not convinced that climate change is very serious, or much to do with human activities, and what there is has in any case slowed and can be dealt with fairly easily. www.thegwpf.org/

For its part, the RS/NAS report says  ‘It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth’s climate. The atmosphere and oceans have warmed, accompanied by sea-level rise, a strong decline in Arctic sea ice, and other climate-related changes. The evidence is clear. However, due to the nature of science, not every single detail is ever totally settled or completely certain. Nor has every pertinent question yet been answered. Scientific evidence continues to be gathered around the world, and assumptions and findings about climate change are continually analysed and tested. Some areas of active debate and ongoing research include the link between ocean heat content and the rate of warming, estimates of how much warming to expect in the future, and the connections between climate change and extreme weather events’.

It’s a useful report, much more accessible than the IPCC’s massive tomes: www.ipcc.ch

See: http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/climate-change-evidence-causes.pdf  Though IPCCs new impacts report is also worth looking at. The American Association for the Advancement of Science has also published a report on climate change, highlighting the risks of inaction: whatweknow.aaas.org/get-the-facts/    We are not short if warnings.

So what next? The policy debates and attempted negotiations will continue  at the global Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change, COP 20, in Peru later this month, and then, for a big attempt at a wrap up, at COP21 in Paris in late 2015, although these days expectations that the COPs will lead to much of significance are low.  A loose commitment to a Kyoto II protocol has been thrashed out but it is not legally binding.  The stumbling blocks have chiefly been the US and China, who have seemed happy enough to commit to ramping up green technology (in competition with each other) but not to accept binding constraints on emissions. But with air quality an urgent issue in China, emission limits now seem likely (though not certain) and the USA, under Obama, evidently is now serious about reducing emissions from coal (by 30% by 2030), COP 20 might be a bit more productive. There are of course deviants, like Japan, which after Fukushima, reneged on its emission reduction targets, and Australia, which has experienced if anything even more severe extremes of weather recently than the US , but is heading off in the opposition direction- cutting just about all its climate policies and initiatives. The EU remains on message, and is making progress on its renewable and climate targets, but is constrained from going further and faster both economically and politically, by the left-overs of the recession and the swing to the right.  The rest of the world? Understandably most developing countries want help from rich industrial nations to meet the cost of limiting emissions and unsurprisingly aid of that sort is something that has only been agreed in rather broad terms.

So there is a way to go. As the World Energy Council and the International Energy Agency keep saying, the window of opportunity is narrowing, but globally we are making little progress, with overall coal burn increasing and wiping out gains from renewable energy’s expansion, while nuclear is mostly dead in the water and the progress hoped for by some on Carbon Capture technology remains illusive. Meanwhile, tragically, energy efficiency remains the Cinderalla option.  Unless fuel prices rise, or are raised by energy taxes, it’s hard to see how the latter will change– and politically it is very hard to win support for higher energy prices. Most people think they are already too high.  Some of that is due to the large subsidies enjoyed by fossil and nuclear, vastly more than renewables are given.  The renewables lobby can argue that fossil and nuclear energy will become in increasingly expensive as fuel sources deplete, while renewables are getting steadily cheaper and can meet all our energy needs in time, with no, or low, emissions. But initially a switch over might cost more as the new technology gets up to speed.  Some fear that, given the resistance to change, we may have climate change forced on us, and have to adapt, very painfully to it, or risk wild, expensive global geo-engineering experiments, which may actually make the overall situation worse.  We ought to be able to do better than that.  Some say that we can leave it to the market, which will drive the necessary new technology forward. For example Roger Pielke from the University of Colorado wrote to the FT saying  ‘advances in technology are what will reduce emissions, not arbitrary targets and timetables for reductions’, but surely carbon caps and targets create the pressure for technological innovation and change?  Market-based carbon trading may not be the best idea though, and certainly, unless there are tight caps, they plainly don't work, as the EU has found with its ETS systems. We need something more effective. But don't expect too much from COP 20!

The UN Sustainable Energy for All programme may be a bit more hopeful as a way ahead: http://www.iisd.ca/energy/se4all/2014f/html/crsvol181num7e.html and the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate  has produced a positive report ‘Better  Growth, Better Climate’  claiming that we can have green growth: http://newclimateeconomy.report/.  So has DECC: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prosperity-and-growth-hand-in-hand-with-carbon-reduction   Will that convince hard pressed developing countries? And is it really viable long-term, on a planet with finite resources?

Power from Nuclear

Carbon Connect’s Future Electricity Series is an independent research inquiry exploring what role fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear can play in providing sustainable, secure and affordable power in the short, medium and long term. It claims that the ‘different technologies should not be pitched against one another and that each has an important role to play in the UK’s future’. It has already looked first fossil fuels, and then renewables, and concluded that should nuclear and fossil CCS not deliver as much as expected, then renewables should and can be ramped up, with up to a 55% contribution being seen as possible by 2030, and that there is a need for this option to be supported more, as a contingency-in effect, a Plan B.

Now it has looked at nuclear, with a report by Fabrice Leveque and Andrew Robertson, and seems to have adopted a very uncritical approach. The tone is set by a quote at the front from (Labour) Baroness Worthington and Charles Hendry (Tory) MP, Future Electricity Series Co-Chairs: ‘Nuclear energy has a long history of controversy, but the UK has made important progress since 2007, when new nuclear was put back on the table, to today when we have broad political consensus behind new nuclear.’

The text that follows certainly does not rock that boat. Here are some of its findings:

‘The environmental impacts of nuclear power are comparable to some generation technologies and favourable to others, although the long lived nature of some radioactive nuclear waste and the dual use potential of nuclear technology for civil and military applications create unique but manageable challenges for social and economic sustainability’

 ‘Although uncertain, evidence suggests that there are adequate uranium resources to fuel a global expansion of nuclear power, including new of nuclear power stations in the UK. Development of thorium fuel cycles, technologies to enable a closed fuel cycle

and new extraction techniques could all improve fuel security and expand the potential of nuclear energy’.

‘New reactor and fuel cycle technologies could substantially increase fuel efficiency, reducing both mining requirements and the longevity of long-lived waste. New technologies could also reduce proliferation risks.’  

It's a little hard to accept these bland assertions, or the claim in the text that only ‘28 deaths have been attributed to high levels of radiation exposure following the Chernobyl accident’. Though maybe its true that the many thousands of other deaths that have been claim to be a result were due to low-level exposure. It’s hard to know where to start in relation to the other main points extracted above. Suffice the say that it seems clear that nuclear weapons material proliferation is a real and seemingly intractable issue, that nuclear fuel cycle emissions will grow as high grade uranium ore becomes scarce, that nuclear waste disposal still hasn't be resolved anywhere, and that the health implications of nuclear fuel production, plant accidents and releases far outweigh (and outlive) the risks/impacts associated with using wind and solar. And certainly not everyone shares the view that new technology can resolve or limit these problems.

The report also looks at grid balancing and here it is more cautious: ‘Nuclear power stations currently have an inflexible electrical output for economic, rather than technical reasons. Although they could be operated more flexibly in future, it is likely that other technologies could provide system flexibility at lower cost.’ Actually there are operational and safety reasons (Xenon contamination has to be cleared) why it’s hard to use nuclear plants to balance variable renewables rapidly and regularly. It’s not just economics.

It is also a little less complacent when it comes to the economic details of the UK programme, which has seen EDF being awarded a lucrative contract for Hinkley without any sign of competition amongst potential suppliers, or with other technology options: ‘Introducing competition into the process of  awarding revenue support for new nuclear power will be a substantial challenge for policy makers over the coming two decades. In particular, it is not yet clear how the Government’s goal of technology neutral auctions for revenue support contracts in the 2020s will be realised given the fundamental differences between low carbon generation technologies and the vastly different arrangements for renewables and nuclear currently’.

It also estimates that ‘equity investors in Hinkley Point C could achieve returns of around 20% before refinancing. This compares with typical equity returns on regulated network assets of 8 to 10% and on Private Finance Initiative projects of 12 to 15%,’ but doesn’t comment on that, except to say ‘it is difficult to judge the effectiveness of the negotiation process in driving value for money because it was neither competitive nor transparent’, though it worries that the European Commission may object under the State Aid rules.

Overall though, apart from a few pokes, e.g. about the need to get on with finding a waste repository and concerns about the costs and risks of delays, it seems to endorse government nuclear policy: there may be some economic uncertainties, but nuclear power is seen as an important part of the mix and the technological issues can be resolved.  www.policyconnect.org.uk/cc/sites/site_cc/files/carbonconnect_powerfromnuclear.pdf

Certainly DECC remains very ‘gung ho’ on nuclear- and even on the idea that the UK could have 75GW of nuclear by 2050. That had initially been floated in a DECC report last year, but caught the media’s attention after a mention by the government advisory Committee on Climate change. The basic idea is to follow the 16 GW of currently planned light water reactors (LWRs) i.e. ordinary water cooled plants, with next generation advanced rectors, including fast neutron plutonium breeders. They can breed new fuel from otherwise wasted U238. That’s good news for nuclear, since fissile uranium 235 reserves are limited.  But you have to have the initial input of plutonium- so you need a fleet of LWRs. DECC said: ‘a future fast reactor fleet has to be preceded by a similar sized LWR fleet and the reprocessing of the LWR spent fuel. Therefore, the ore demand from 2020 to 2100 is dominated by the fuel required for the LWR fleet.’

www.gov.uk/government/publications/nuclear-energy-research-and-development-roadmap-future-pathways

So we would still be stuck with old LWRs, reprocessing and wastes, for the far future. Switching to thorium doesn’t help much- it’s not fissile, so plutonium (from LWRs) is needed to fire it up, though some (like Baroness Worthington) see advantages in it, especially if molten salt flouride is used. 

That may a long way off and is not a current UK priority. Instead the current focus, apart from the LWR programme (Hinkley, Wylfa, Sizewell etc), is the prospect of using some of the UKs 100 tonne plus of plutonium stocks in new plutonium burning plant. The US liquid sodium cooled Prism fast reactor and the heavy water moderated Enhanced Candu 6 (EC6) reactor are both  ‘credible options’ for managing the UK's plutonium stockpile, according to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, although the government's preferred option is to reuse it as mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel. That would require a new MOX production plant-the old one failed. If the UK does manage to build a fleet of new reactors, then there will be more plutonium produced and, unless it is just stored in highly active spent fuel somewhere, a need for a new reprocessing plant (THORP is to shut soon), if we wanted to continue producing MOX into the future. And so the nuclear dream lives on, with ever renewed enthusiasm for new technology to try to solve the problems created by the previous approach.

You don't have to look far to hear very different views: just go to Germany- or Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Portugal  or Switzerland.  Or indeed Scotland!  But that’s another story, based on enthusiasm for a different set of technologies.

Carbon Capture: no real solution

I was interested to note that carbon dioxide gas concentration rises are not evenly spread in the atmosphere around the world at any particular point in time, due to the location of power plants, factories and cars (mostly for the moment in the global north), the time taken to mix the extra injected CO2  gas globally (about a year), and the differing annual forest absorption/decay cycles and sea absorption/release processes around the world.

http://carboncycle2.lbl.gov/resources/experts-corner/annual-cycles-of-atmospheric-co2-concentration.html

You can watch it happening, and the result getting worse year by year, in this excellent animation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA7tfz3k_9A  

So what can be done about it?  Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is offered as a way to allow us to continue to burn fossil fuels, and, given the strength of the fossil fuel lobby, it certainly has powerful backers, who argue the case for rapid expansion, for example in the UK: www.ccsassociation.org/press-centre/reports-and-publications/

However, despite pilot projects and programmes around the world, progress has been slow, and so far it is undeveloped on any significant scale, with its cost likely to be high.  www.technologyreview.com/news/428355/will-carbon-capture-be-ready-on-time/

There are also uncertainties at to its long term viability-  e.g. would the stored CO2 stay in place  in open aquifers indefinately?  In any case it would only be a partial solution to emissions-   it would not capture any where near 100% of what a power plant produces. And it would certainly not reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere. 

One idea for that is to reabsorb CO2 from the air. For example, Air capture of atmospheric CO2, coupled with chemical storage, has been proposed as a somewhat desperate geo-engineering attempt to deal with climate change.  The idea is to absorb CO2 by sucking air through vast towers of sodium hydroxide, with the resultant bicarbonate mulch then being stored, or recycled, to release the CO2 for storage in some other form. Superficially it sounds attractive - you can capture CO2 anywhere, not just directly from power plant exhausts. Fill deserts with so-called ‘green trees’. But quite apart the need to store or process the huge volumes of residues, and keep fresh supplies of NaOH coming, the proportion of CO2 in the air is around 0.039%, so to capture a ton of CO2 you would have to process over 2500 tons of air. The overall energy cost would be high. And, more subtly, it has been argued that absorbing CO2 from the air might lead to disruption of natural CO2 absorption processes, by plants and the sea, so you may be no better off. 

That argument seems odd at first glance. Surely getting CO2 levels back down a bit is good, however you do it. Unfortunately that ignores the fact that the seas have absorbed about 50% of our CO2 emissions, and, if we manage to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere by air capture, then it may be that some of this huge sea reservoir would be slowly outgassed to replace at least some it. Certainly one study, reported in Environmental Research Letters, suggested that mass removal of air CO2 ‘leads to an 
increase in the ocean-to-air CO2 flux, largely replacing the air CO2 
removed’  i.e. in time, the seas would outgas trapped CO2 pushing atmospheric levels back up. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/2/024011

This process would take time and the rate of outgassing might be low, so initially air capture would still yield a net reduction in atmospheric CO2. There’s evidently a complex balance between absorption and release processes, depending on, amongst other things (including temperature), the small partial pressure difference.  Also, over time, some of the absorbed CO2 is sequestered as geological carbon in seabed/rock formations and some say we could inject more to get it stored this way. http://web.mit.edu/energylab/www/pubs/overview.PDF

For the moment though, most of what’s there is still in surface layers, interacting with the atmosphere. There is a lot of it. Even so, it is possible that, if air extraction was to go ahead on a very large scale, eventually most of the extra sea-absorbed CO2 would presumably be outgassed, so that then, if air capture was continued, the atmospheric CO2 levels could be reduced much more. But it would take a very long time.

The aforementioned ERL paper notes that there is another approach which might be more effective- direct ocean CO2 extraction i.e. from the sea itself.   It argued that ‘excess ocean CO2 removal is required for any effective air CO2
 capture scheme because removal of air CO2 alone will simply reduce air 
CO2 concentration relative to that in the ocean.’ Indeed it boldly claims that, with sea capture, you then won’t need air capture: ‘schemes that consume/remove and sequester excess ocean 
CO2’ can ‘effectively address both excess
 ocean and air CO2, sidestepping the need for direct air CO2 capture.’

Removing CO2 from sea water has its problems (e.g. it needs energy), and it would still take a very long time and a huge effort to make much difference, but the concentration is about 140 times higher than in air, and some clever ideas for sea extraction have emerged: www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/30/1222358110.abstract Though if synfuels are produce using the CO2, as some suggest (to give an economic incentive), when they are burnt the overall process is no longer CO2 negative. For an interesting overview (even it does suggest using nuclear energy to run the system)  see: http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/01/16/zero-emission-synfuel-from-seawater/  

There are other options, with perhaps less eco-worries, e.g. biochar production using biomass- trapping CO2 more permanently as charcoal and using this to help to enhance soil fertility and carbon retention : http://carbon-negative.us/docs/CharcoalVision.pdf  and www.biochar.ac.uk/ But see: http://climate-connections.org/2013/07/24/the-problem-with-biochar/  and this absorption option  doesn’t avoid the sea outgassing problem.

What about BECCS, biomass energy carbon capture and storage?  Depending on the source, BECCs should be CO2 negative, and although that doesn’t escape the sea outgassing problem, the energy output would replace fossil burning and new CO2 additions to the atmosphere. So some say that, since geological/aquifer CO2 storage space will be limited, BECCS projects should be given priority over fossil CCS. Though there are still worries about whether CO2 captured from whatever source can be safely stored underground for ever, and about the ecological and land use impacts of the large scale use of biomass.

Tragically, it seems then that most of these artificial /bio carbon capture options have problems, and, even if expanded massively, BECCS maybe aside, would not be able to make a large difference except over a very long period   Worse still, the albeit slow dissolved CO2 blow back may also mean that, sadly, the CO2 absorption from reafforestation, a much more attractive proposition on many levels, would also be undercut and may not be too much (climate) use long term, unless done on a very large scale. Certainly the overall scale of CO2 re- absorption needed, by whatever means, to make much difference is vast. As the ERL paper noted, ‘to maintain atmospheric CO2 concentrations at pre-industrial levels for centuries, ultimately an amount of CO2 approaching the total cumulative amount of anthropogenic CO2 emissions would need to be removed from the atmosphere’. And, it seems, the sea. And it should also be said, the land- excess CO2 has also ended up being trapped in land sinks. Basically it’s too big a job: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/2/024011/pdf/1748-9326_5_2_024011.pdf

Moreover some of these carbon capture options have environmental side effects. Certainly, when it comes to some of the larger scale geo-engineering projects, then we enter a realm where there could be major impacts: seeding the sea with ferric compounds to increase bio-productivity, blocking sunlight with aerosol particles, orbital reflecting mirrors and so on. A recent study concluded that, not only could there be local or global side effects, some of them possibly irreversible, the overall effectiveness was low: even if continuously deployed on a massive scale, the climate engineering methods it evaluated could ‘only sequester an amount of atmospheric CO2 that is small compared with cumulative anthropogenic emissions’ and were ‘unable to prevent the mean surface temperature from increasing to well above 2C by the year 2100’. www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140225/ncomms4304/full/ncomms4304.html

So we can’t repair the earth much, except maybe very long term, with some risks, and the higher the temperature the harder that will be. Too much CO2 has be released, and trapped partly in the seas and land, to let us get the planet back even near to how it once was. But we can stop making it worse by not burning fossil fuels. That seems the only major option. Unless Gaia comes to the rescue and allows the sea to absorb a lot more CO2 without getting too acidic!  Or some other natural feedback loop intervenes.

Thanks to Jo Abbess from Claverton Energy Group for some of the links.

Shale gas- costs and limits

 There has been speculation and assertions about the impact of shale gas on gas prices. UK PM David Cameron said unequivocally that ‘fracking has real potential to drive energy bills down… gas and electric bills can go down when our home-grown energy supply goes up’. But Lord Stern disagreed, arguing that the economics were very uncertain.

 www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/baseless-economics-lord-stern-on-david-camerons-claims-that-a-uk-fracking-boom-can-bring-down-price-of-gas-8796758.html         

While Sir David King, ex Chief Scientist, said the eco-impacts of shale gas may be large and the UK contribution limited: www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/16/david-king-fracking-shale-gas

Energy Secretary Ed Davey warned that it was ‘no quick fix and no silver bullet’ and was at ‘the very early stages’. So the UK was unlikely to see benefits from shale gas until the next decade and, with the uncertain scale and nature of the resource, it was ‘far from clear that UK shale gas production could ever replicate the price effects seen in the US’. www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6090d082-1954-11e3-83b9-00144feab7de.html#axzz2eQ6sk4mW

However some see the prospects differently given international energy trading patterns: www.independent.co.uk/voices/letters/letters-frack-and-cut-gas-prices-by-a-third-8800063.html . It is certainly complicated. Prices have certainly fallen in the USA, though that may be a unique event- the geology and population densities in the EU are different. So is the market. The US doesn’t import much gas, and in the past hasn't used as much gas for heating as the UK- it’s been expensive there and they didn't have the North Sea boom. So Shale gas has had a big impact, expanding the market and pushing the price down. They can even export some-and some freed up coal. In the EU there is a big internal gas market fed from the North Sea but increasingly from Russia, and prices are competitive- topped up though by expensive imports of LPG. Shale gas might reduce the scale of the later, but then LPG may get cheaper now the USA is exporting into the world market. So shale gas may change patterns of supply, but it’s hard to say whether a shale gas boom in the UK or EU would reduce prices. Especially since Japans use of LPG to replace nuclear (hopefully temporarily until renewables can take over) has raised global LPG prices.

Then again the shale gas boom may not last. Well productivity falls rapidly, so early gains may not be sustained: you have to invest continually in new wells and the costs are significant.  Jeremy Leggett has provided regular updates to his book ‘The Energy of Nations’ and says ‘the top 15 players in US shale drilling have written off $35 billion since the boom started, and that investors are beginning to pull out. Meanwhile, production has peaked and is now falling in all but one of the major shale-gas drilling regions. The boom is looking like it could turn into a bust before too long’. www.jeremyleggett.net/

So not surprisingly views on what will happen next vary.  Writing in New Scientist (10/8/13), Michael Brooks noted the concern expressed by Sergey Paltsev, an energy economist at MIT, that, seduced by a false promise of cheap, plentiful energy from shale gas, we will cut back on investment in renewable alternatives. If so, Brooks said, as the costs and emissions associated with shale gas rise, as they inevitably will, we will end up on a costly bridge to nowhere. DECC by contrast still sees shale gas as the bridge to a green energy future.

However, despite DECC’s assertions that shale gas has lower GHG impacts than coal or imported LPG, the environmental impact issues continue to be debated.  http://www.eeb.cornell.edu/howarth/web/Marcellus.html Fugitive emissions/leaks of the powerful GHG methane are a key worry, water contamination another, along with the sheer volume of water needed, and there is also the possible risk of radioactive radon gas pollution: http://gdacc.org/2012/01/10/radon-in-natural-gas-from-marcellus-shale-by-marvin-resnikoff-radioactive-waste-management-associates/


For a good overview of the impacts issues see www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/08/shale-gas-more-or-less-polluting-than-coal/ For a short if partisan guide: http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-04-21/those-fracking-lies And for an independent technological assessment, which identifies a range of worrying drilling and site problems associated with fracking, see: www.davidsmythe.org/fracking/fracking.htm

The debate in the UK has gone on, as more details emerged. An AMEC report for the government, said that a major fracking effort could deliver about 25% of the UK's annual gas needs in its peak years in the 2020s and provide up to 32,000 jobs. But that could involve up to 2,880 wells being drilled and run for 20 years.  Fracking would need 58-144bn litres of water, with up to 108bn litres of waste water being contaminated by fracking chemicals and radioactive elements that occur naturally in rock. This would AMEC said ‘place a significant burden on existing wastewater treatment capacity’.  Some of the fracking water would need to be trucked into sites, with wastewater being trucked out, and Amec estimated 14 –51 journeys a day for each site, which ‘could have an adverse impact on traffic congestion, noise or air quality’. www.gov.uk/government/consultations/environmental-report-for-further-onshore-oil-and-gas-licensing

However the pressure is on to press ahead fast. Energy Minister, Michael Fallon said. ‘There is a huge amount of shale gas underneath us all and what is important for public confidence is to show the regulatory framework is robust’ and Shale gas fracking could take place across over half of Britain if plans to ‘step up the search’ for shale gas and oil are fruitful, with many new exploration sites being licensed.

To help things along Local Councils that back shale gas projects will get to keep 100% of the business rates collected from the schemes, rather than the usual 50%, and up to £10m per wellhead if shale gas is successfully extracted in their communities, through a1% levy on revenues. Fallon said ‘We expect 20 to 40 wells to be drilled in exploration over the next couple of years and I think it's very important that local communities see some of the benefit”.

So what next? While the Lords Economic Affairs select committee said that the UK was  ‘exceptionally fortunate’ to have substantial shale gas and oil resources, and urged the Prime Minister to lead a ‘sustained and concerted effort’ to go ‘all out’ for shale development , it accepted that drilling could not proceed without the support of the public, even if the majority of environmental and health concerns were ‘unfounded’ and leading to unnecessary delay. DECC, and Ed Davey especially, has been less that forthright is backing rapid expansion: DECC says shale gas has to be put in perspective: it should be pursued in combination with carbon capture and storage, and should not be seen as an alternative to renewables.

www.gov.uk/government/news/davey-uk-shale-gas-development-will-not-be-at-expense-of-climate-change-targets

That view was reinforced by a WWF reaction relayed by the Economist Intelligence Unit: the UK needed to decarbonise, so shale gas, which may not be cheap, plentiful or fast, was a diversion  http://www.economistinsights.com/energy/opinion/uk-shale-gas?

And  Paul Mobbs writing  in The Ecologist saw it unequivocally as a diabolical stitch up:

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2417288/fracking_as_bad_for_climate_as_coal_uks_dodgy_dossier_exposed.html

The National Trust and CPRE may be wobbling a bit, but local protests continue, further stimulated by the spectre of gas pipe link up projects going ahead without consultation. 

So what’s the bottom line? We can all agree that tight regulation will be needed if shale gas  goes ahead on any scale, but it is still far from certain that it will- much less should. Not least since the threat to renewables still remains. AD biogas from waste would be a better bet surely. Some say it will in fact all blow over: the US shale gas boom is a short term one-off episode driven more by speculation than by the scale of the realistic resource. Some see it accelerating in net terms, up to 2040 and beyond (see the EIA’s projection for the US at http://www.eia.gov/pressroom/presentations/sieminski_03012013.pdf). Others think it will fade way long before then.  In practice the outcome is likely to be shaped by other factors- for example, if carbon emissions are taken seriously then shale gas use may be constrained, unless CCS can be deployed on a wide scale.  The US EIA suggested that under high carbon costs, renewables and nuclear would boom more, with coal being all but extinguished. In the short term however shale gas does represent a threat to non-fossil fuels. It’s one reason why nuclear has declined so dramatically in the USA, but its impact on renewables has so far been more muted- as their costs fall, they are still booming in the US and elsewhere, although perhaps not as much as they would if there was no shale boom. Then again there are those that say fossil gas, of whatever sort, is a good partner for renewables. So shale gas represents no real problem. Although try telling that to those having fracking projects imposed on them!