I was intrigued by a quote in a recent Globe Foundation report on BC’s green economy that BC has 1000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, a “low carbon resource opportunity for both transportation and for export to other economies around the world.” Converting to metric, and using BC government emission factors for combusting natural gas, this would be 55.8 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 awaiting its release into the atmosphere.
To put that number in perspective, this is almost double the world’s annual CO2 emissions. And I’m pretty sure that does not count additional reserves that could become available due to a massively environmentally damaging process called “fracking” (I kid you not, lovers of Battlestar Galactica).
Ironically, the Globe report categorizes these natural gas reserves under Green Natural Resource Opportunities. Which brings us back to CCS. If carbon capture and storage technologies can be successfully implemented over the lifecycle of this extracted natural gas, including where it is combusted, there might be a case to be made for their extraction.
But that seems like a big if, especially given all of the other bona fide green energy opportunities that could be tapped. Why invest so much in retrofitting coal plants for natural gas when we could be building out wind, water and solar technologies? Some work by Jacobson and Delucchi makes the case for renewables by 2030, and they have an extensive and rigorous analysis to back it up. They do not consider any combustion (CCS or biofuels) in their approach, which makes their technological, resource and economic assessment even more interesting. And they note that even with CCS, coal-fired electricity has way higher lifecycle emissions than any renewable (best in class is wind, in their estimation).
The only decent argument to be had for natural gas is that, as the “cleanest” of all fossil fuels, it could be a transition fuel en route to truly sustainable sources. But the counter-argument to that is the sheer urgency of getting over our addiction to fossil fuels necessitates much bolder action, so it is better to spearhead an aggressive switch directly to renewables.
Scott Andrews // Mar 29, 2010 at 11:50 am
The language baffles me here ““low carbon resource opportunity “. This is green washing at it’s finest. How is release 55.8 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 a low carbon “opportunity”.
Does this figure include the carbon required to extract all this gas? Thanks for the heads up Marc, it is this kind of proposal we have to mindful of.
Best regards,
Scott
Marc Lee // Mar 29, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Scott,
There would be additional emissions in getting the stuff out and processing it – about one-eighth the emissions from combustion, based on the numbers I crunched for BC exports in another recent post.
Aldyen Donnelly // Jun 29, 2010 at 9:48 am
Scott,
Extraction and processing emissions are higher than you suggest. For petroleum products, wellhead to refinery gate GHGs represent roughly 20% of total supply chain emissions, while end use accounts for the remaining 80%.
But for natural gas, there are large differences from one reserve to another, mostly due to large differences in sulphur content.
Without acid gas injection (CCS), wellhead to processing plant gate GHGs can be as much as 40% of total natural gas supply chain emissions for gas that originates in BC, due to high sulphur content (and the high energy costs of removing sulphur).
Having said that, there is no technical challenge in acid gas injection (CCS for sour gas products). While most gas produced in BC is still processed to remove sulphur, CH4 is simply separated from the rest of the “acid gas” stream and the acid gas injected into an underground reserve for 4 existing BC and Alberta projects. Acid gas injection has been economic and the technology proved for some time, and BC’s oldest acid gas injection project has been operating for almost 20 years.
Please note that CCS is also not new technology when it comes to collecting and injecting flue gas streams originating in gas processing plants and oil refineries. There are over 90 operating CCS projects in North America at this time, the oldest of which has been in operation since 1972. Please note that these projects are also well-monitored and the very low rate of leaks is well understood.
Where CCS technology remains unproved is in application to electricity generation sources. There are many technical challenges associated with the application of CCS in power generation that do not exist in the other, well-established contexts.
All this to say that we should be open to incremental natural gas development in BC, but only under the condition that EVERY new gas supply development project is approved conditional on it including acid gas injection or CCS when the gas is processed to remove sulphur. We also should demand that existing gas processing plants that are not already capturing and injecting waste gas be required to do so by, say, 2015.
It is important not to mix up the real technology challenges that we face trying to make CCS work for an existing coal-fired power source and well-established acid gas injection and/or CCS for gas processing plants.