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2011 Environ. Res. Lett. 6 044008
(http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044008)
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IOP PUBLISHING
doi:10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/049504
Corrigendum
The greenhouse impact of unconventional gas for electricity generation
Nathan Hultman, Dylan Rebois, Michael Scholten and Christopher Ramig 2011 Environ. Res. Lett. 6 044008
Received 15 November 2011
Published 15 December 2011
In our discussion of the use of global warming potential (GWP) values in the Howarth et al (2011) paper, our text implies that
the GISS groups 2009 and 2010 papers (Shindell et al 2009 and Unger et al 2010) were contradictory. Such an interpretation
does not reflect the conclusions of those papers and was not our intention. First, the 2009 and 2010 papers address GWP
and radiative forcing, respectively. Our intentions in that paragraph were (a) to illustrate the possible ways that the GWP and
radiative forcing discussions in the scientific community were misapplied to lifecycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions
from unconventional gas extraction, and (b) to underscore that the reasonable questions about GWP raised by Shindell et al
(2009) are a justification for retaining a broader, rather than narrower, range of GWP possibilities for this calculation.
References
Howarth R W, Santoro R and Ingraffea A 2011 Methane and the greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas from shale formations Clim.
Change Lett. 106 67990
Shindell D T, Faluvegi G, Koch D M, Schmidt G A, Unger N and Bauer S E 2009 Improved attribution of climate forcing to emissions
Science 326 7168
Unger N, Bond T C, Wang J S, Koch D M, Menon S, Shindell D T and Bauer S E 2010 Attribution of climate forcing to economic sectors
Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. 107 33827
1748-9326/11/049504+01$33.00
Printed in the UK
IOP PUBLISHING
doi:10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/044008
energy policy
1. Introduction
New techniques to extract natural gas from unconventional
resourcessuch as shales or tight sandshave become
economically competitive over the past several years, leading
to a rapid and unanticipated expansion in natural gas
production. These techniques led to an increase in US
production of unconventional gas at an average annual rate of
17% between 2000 and 2006. Production further increased by
45% from 2006 to 2010 (Energy Information Administration
1748-9326/11/044008+09$33.00
N Hultman et al
Figure 1. US natural gas production 19902035, showing recent and projected increases in unconventional (shale and tight) gas production.
Data from EIA (Energy Information Administration 2011a).
N Hultman et al
must be converted to a common GHG metric such as CO2 equivalent (CO2 e). Third, because electricity generation
technologies vary greatly in their combustion efficiencies, the
emissions attributable to a kilogram or GJ of fuel are more
appropriately compared on the basis of electricity delivered
to the end-useri.e. on a per kWh basis. In this section, we
explain our approach to each of these steps and present results
comparing the greenhouse footprint of electricity generated
from conventional natural gas, unconventional natural gas, and
coal.
Emissions for LNG are small with respect to the other terms.
While the source data do not consider tight sand formations, it is assumed
that all unconventional gas sources have a similar emissions profile.
8 This claim is made based on the assumption that fugitive emissions from
tight sands formations are comparable to those from other unconventional
sources. We did not have explicit emissions data from tight sands, but we
know the number of tight sands wells that exist. By using emissions data from
the other unconventional sources, we can calculate the annual emissions per
well (which applies to all unconventional sources including tight sands, per our
assumption that they have similar emissions profiles). We then multiply that
number by the total number of unconventional wells to get an approximation
of all fugitive emissions from unconventional sources.
9 Ten years represents about four half-lives for the depletion of a well.
7
N Hultman et al
Table 1. Fugitive methane emissions from well completion and workover for both conventional and unconventional gas production. Source:
US Environmental Protection Agency (2010).
Conventional gas
Completion
Workover
Unconventional gas
Completion
Workover
per well
m3 y1
m3 y1
m3 y1
m3 y1
m3 y1
kg y1
kg y1
m3 y1
m3 y1
kg
kg y1
t y 1
t
t y1
t y 1
1037.8
882.1
695.1
152.6
120.2
81.8
224.5
3.1
698.2
475.4
47.5
11.9
12.1
1.2
22.5
Onshore production
Processing
Transmission
Storage
LNG storage
LNG terminals
Distribution
Total
2.376 109
6.984 108
1.869 109
3.456 108
7.383 107
1.455 107
1.300 109
6.678 109
259 807
220 836
174 018
38 192
30 095
20 488
56 208
779
174 798
119 000
11 900
2974 998
3031
303
5621
259 807
220 836
174 018
38 192
30 095
20 488
56 208
779
174 798
119 000
11 900
2974 998
3031
303
5621
69.5
59.1
46.5
10.2
8.0
5.5
15.0
0.2
46.8
31.8
3.2
0.8
0.8
0.1
1.5
N Hultman et al
Table 3. Global warming potential ranges for methane for 20, 100,
and 500 y time horizons. The low and middle case values are those
currently accepted by IPCC in AR4 (Solomon et al 2007). The high
20 and 100 y values are those based on Shindell et al as quoted in
Howarth et al (see text for discussion).
GWP methane
Low
Mid
High
20 y
100 y
500 y
72.0
25.0
7.6
72.0
25.0
7.6
105.0
42.0
7.6
Coal
Low Best High
N Hultman et al
33.95%
36.30%
38.94%
45.90%
33.70%
38.93%
37.80%
36.30%
50.53%
47.41%
43.08%
N Hultman et al
Figure 2. Comparison of combustion emissions intensity (kg CO2 equivalent per kWh electricity generated) ranges under different
technology and GWP assumptions.
Table 6. Combustion emissions intensity (kg CO2 equivalent per kWh electric generated) for conventional gas, unconventional gas, and coal
in the United States. Current USaverage fleet assumes new gas goes to generation with average fleet efficiency; Current USmarginal
generation assumes new gas goes to efficient existing generation capacity (CCGT); future scenarios assumes alternative efficient
technologies as described in the text.
Combustion emissions intensity (kg C02 e kWh1 )
Gas-conventional
Gas-unconventional
Coal
Low
Best
High
Low
Best
High
Low
Best
High
0.743
0.561
0.494
0.743
0.561
0.494
0.871
0.627
0.494
0.918
0.623
0.514
0.918
0.623
0.514
1.125
0.730
0.514
0.946
0.945
0.945
0.946
0.945
0.945
0.946
0.945
0.945
0.631
0.476
0.419
0.631
0.476
0.419
0.739
0.532
0.419
0.779
0.529
0.436
0.779
0.529
0.436
0.954
0.619
0.436
0.946
0.945
0.945
0.946
0.945
0.945
0.946
0.945
0.945
0.573
0.433
0.381
0.610
0.461
0.406
0.787
0.567
0.447
0.707
0.480
0.396
0.754
0.512
0.422
1.017
0.660
0.465
0.825
0.825
0.825
0.866
0.866
0.866
0.885
0.884
0.884
4. Discussion
There can remain little doubt that, by increasing the availability
of low-cost natural gas across many geographical regions, the
7
N Hultman et al
Figure 3. Greenhouse gas footprint of electricity from conventional and unconventional gas, relative to that of coal (defined as 100%). Results
are expressed as a percentage of coal emissions and are derived from combustion emissions intensities in table 6 (kg CO2 e kWh1 for gas
normalized to kg CO2 e kWh1 for coal). Results shown for GWP timescales of 20, 100, and 500 y. Reference coal emissions are taken from
parallel assumptions (GWP, technology, etc).
Table 7. Summary of greenhouse gas emissions from unconventional gas, conventional gas, and coal for the US, assuming mid-range
scenarios and 100 y GWP.
Summary; mid-range scenarios, 100 y GWP
CG
UG
Coal
0.561
59.4
0.0
0.623
65.9
11.0
0.945
100.0
68.4
0.476
50.4
0.0
0.529
55.9
11.0
0.945
100.0
98.5
0.461
53.3
0.0
0.512
59.1
11.0
0.866
100.0
87.7
N Hultman et al
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to Erin Mastrangelo and Mike
Pease for assistance, to Kevin Massy and Govinda Avasarala
for reviewing earlier drafts of this manuscript, and to
Arne Jacobsen and Tim Skone at DOE for conversations about
data availability. Comments from two anonymous reviewers
are gratefully acknowledged.
References
Air Liquide 2011 Methane Gas Encyclopaedia (http://encyclopedia.
airliquide.com/Encyclopedia.asp?GasID=41, accessed
05/07/2011)
Bellman D K, Blankenship B D, Imhoff C H, Dipietro J P,
Rederstorff B and Zheng X 2007 Topic Paper #4: Electric
Generation Efficiency (Washington, DC: National Petroleum
Council)
Energy Information Administration 2001 US Natural Gas Markets:
Mid-Term Prospects for Natural Gas Supply (Washington, DC:
US Department of Energy)
Energy Information Administration 2009a Emissions of Greenhouse
Gases Report: Methane Emissions (Washington, DC: US
Department of Energy)
Energy Information Administration 2009b US Coal Supply and
Demand (Washington, DC: US Department of Energy)
Energy Information Administration 2011a Annual Energy Outlook
(Washington, DC: US Department of Energy)
Energy Information Administration 2011b Natural Gas Summary
(available online www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/
ng sum lsum dcu nus a.htm, accessed 05/07/2011)
Energy Information Administration 2011c World Shale Gas
Resources: An Initial Assessment of 14 Regions Outside the
United States (Washington, DC: US Department of Energy)
Energy Information Administration 2009c Emissions of Greenhouse
Gases in the United States 2008 (Washington, DC: US
Department of Energy)