A second dash for gas in the UK?

Most people are aware of the UK's "dash for gas" of the 90s. While controversial, mainly with the loss of jobs in the broader coal sector it has offered the country some reasonable benefits; namely in reducing electricity sector emissions and modernising the electricity sector overall. Some may even go as far to argue that it "liberated" the country from a heavily unionised mining sector that was deemed to be a serious threat to power supply security.

More recently, there has been a somewhat global interest for a new dash for gas. That has been mainly fuelled by the US success in accessing previously considered as unconventional gas reserves. What is known to most, as fracking (or hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technologies) has been credited for lowering gas prices in the US, making the country the largest gas producer and sparking hopes of complete US energy independence in the foreseeable future. Sounds too good?

In the UK, the Coalition Government has been keen to revive the country's dash for gas era and at the same time replicate at least some of the successes of the US experience with shale gas. In this post I will just list a few of the related policies that demonstrate the Government's gas bias.

Shale gas
It does not take much to understand that this Government really wants to promote shale gas in the UK. Chancellor George Osborne puts together the "most attractive tax breaks in the world" for the shale gas industry, while cutting subsidies for the most promising of renewables. If case you had any, David Cameron should have left no doubt about the Government's intentions when he took the case for shale gas on his shoulders. Since the UK's population density was seen as one of the main obstacles in developing shale gas the Government decided to find a solution. How? by allowing drilling companies right of access underneath your house, for as a long as drilling is at least 300m deep. A target easily attainable by the shale gas industry.

You may have thought that's about enough support for the shale gas industry, but the UK Government did not think so. Imagine (and it's not hard to) that some shale gas drilling operations fail and causes widespread environmental pollution. It has happened in the US and it can happen in the UK. The small drilling companies will easily go bust and then it's going to be the British taxpayer paying for the environmental disasters. This is not a very good incentive for drilling companies to improve their safety record me thinks... Discussing the shale gas case is not the focus of this post; that is a topic I will return to quite soon. However, the Government's support for shale gas is quite clear.

Gas-fired power stations
It is true that as far as fossil fuel-fired power generation goes, Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGT) are the most environmentally friendly option we have. It can be argued that we also have Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS), but its commercialisation may be decades away. In the meanwhile the UK power sector requires £110bn of investment to substitute its old coal and nuclear power stations.

The Government's preference is, again, with gas. The expectation is that new power stations will be allowed to emit up to 450gCO₂/kWh; a target which is easily achievable by CCGT systems. Any gas power stations will be exempt from potential new targets until 2045. In the meanwhile, planning for decarbonising the UK economy by 80% until 2050 show that the electricity sector should be largely decarbonised by 2030. All that when reducing subsidies for onshore wind and solar energy. The result will be to lock-in the UK economy in expensive, gas-fired power generation and gas imports.  

Capacity market
Faced with a capacity crunch, the Government decided to create a capacity market.This market should ideally incentivise power stations to meet peak-power demand when needed. Because of their flexibility, a significant segment of this market will be met by open cycle gas turbines (most often these are different than the CCGT power stations). However, the demand-side response (DSR) systems can also play a very important role. Their contribution is well recognised and used in the US and elsewhere. Demand-side response systems offer an aggregated service to the grid which means that they interrupt certain eligible loads (consumptions) when the grid cannot cope with the demand. This service has widespread environment and financial benefits and is a first steps towards a smart-grid.

Even though the Government decided to allow DSR providers to enter the capacity market it also made sure to put them in a disadvantage by allowing them to bid for only one year contracts (instead of up to 15 years for gas-fired providers). As a result they are losing out in providing competitive prices and securing long-term income. It has also forced them to either take part in the capacity market now (Transitional Arrangements) or in the enduring market (from 2018 onwards).

One more way to make sure we are locked-in to an expensive and imported gas-fired future...

Shale gas for the UK?

It's already been a few years since shale gas started making headlines in mainstream media. Despite some first doubts now it is clear to everyone that shale gas is a "game changer" for the US energy supply. Increased gas supply meant that prices plummeted and for the first time the link between oil and gas price was broken. Gas is a very flexible resource as it can be used for power generation with very efficient combined cycle gas turbines, for industrial processes, for domestic heating and cooking or even for transport. When burnt it is cleaner than any other mainstream fossil fuel; therefore the benefits of lower gas prices can be felt across every sector of the economy. Low energy prices make the US an attractive place for energy intensive industries, some of which have already started relocating. 

It all sounds rosy about shale gas but leaving open space for the industry to operate freely (see lack of regulation) meant that shale gas operations caused numerous light tremors and in some cases were accused for water contamination. Drilling for shale gas makes use of hydraulic fracturing which is the source of all the aforementioned problems.

What about shale gas in the UK then? Do we have enough resources here? Can we drill for them in ways that will control and limit the environmental impact? Should we just let shale gas where it is because more gas will only keep us hooked to fossil fuels for longer? Recent reports show that although the UK is not among the top shale gas countries outside of the US, the indigenous reserves are not negligible. Even more recently the British Geological Survey estimated the total reserves to be at 40 trillon cubic metres (tcm).

I'll straight-forward say that if we can control and limit the industry's environmental impact then there is no good reason for not drilling. Why?

With UK's conventional gas extraction being pretty low while US LNG is ready for shipments there is no doubt that the UK gas intensive industry will sooner or later start importing. Centrica already signed a 20+10 years contract for gas deliveries starting in 2018. That's shale gas converted to LNG. Although I have no proper estimations it is fair to assume that the embedded emissions of imported LNG from shale gas is higher than indigenous LNG. I wonder how the embedded emissions comparison looks like for imported LNG from conventional Qatar's sources and indigenous shale.

Will a success story for shale gas lock-in the UK in a high carbon (gas) future? There is no need to go very far to realise that this is not necessarily the case. The US, with huge coal reserves and production made a fast shift as soon as a new and better resource (shale gas) became available. In the same way, the UK will shift away from shale gas as soon as other, better resources (wind? wave? nuclear?) become available.    

The government should be wise enough to regulate the environmental impact of the industry, arrange for community compensations and do not favour the gas industry against the low carbon energy industries.