Will Abundant Natural Gas Solve Climate Change?

Abstract:

The rapid deployment of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technologies enabled the production of previously uneconomic shale gas resources in North America. Global deployment of these advanced gas production technologies could bring large influx of economically competitive unconventional gas resources to the energy system. It has been hoped that abundant natural gas substituting for coal could reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which in turn could reduce climate forcing. Other researchers countered that the non-CO2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with shale gas production make its lifecycle emissions higher than those of coal. In this study, we employ five state-of-the-art integrated assessment models (IAMs) of energy-economy-climate systems to assess the full impact of abundant gas on climate change. The models show large additional natural gas consumption up to +170% by 2050. The impact on CO2 emissions, however, is found to be much smaller (from -2% to +11%), and a majority of the models reported a small increase in climate forcing (from -0.3% to +7%) associated with the increased use of abundant gas. Our results show that while globally abundant gas may substantially change the future energy market equilibrium, it will not significantly mitigate climate change on its own in the absence of climate policies.