The UK’s gas policy is potentially adding millions of tonnes of additional CO2 to the atmosphere – according to a study released today.
The report, by analysts at Gneiss Energy, puts numbers on the impact of running down production from the UK continental shelf (UKCS) whilst in tandem increasing imports of emissions-heavy liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Over the last decade, the UK has relied increasingly on imported gas from Norway and imported LNG from countries as diverse as Algeria, Qatar and the United States as extraction from the UKCS has been slowly run down in the face of an increasingly hostile policy environment.
Depending on the scenario chosen – this could be adding more than eight million additional tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere relative to relying fully on domestically-produced gas.
As previous analysis by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) has shown, imported LNG has significantly higher embodied CO2 than pipeline gas, due to the additional energy required to compress, transport and re-gasify; and in many cases it also has higher production emissions too.
The Gneiss Energy report uses government and industry data to forecast the UK’s gas use into the 2030s and models a number of scenarios – from relying entirely on UK production (‘full domestic’), to a 50% reduction in current UKCS production, with the slack taken up with a combination of increased LNG and Norway imports (‘UK sunset’).
For example, the ‘UK Sunset’ supply mix scenario brings 76% higher CO2 at the point of use than ‘full domestic’ which, at current household gas use levels, would generate an additional three million tonnes of CO2 per year from household gas use alone.
Jon Fitzpatrick, Managing Director of Edinburgh and London based Gneiss Energy says:
“We all want to get to a future where we do not need gas in the energy mix; however, all current analysis shows that gas will form a large part of the UK’s energy landscape for a number of years to come.
“By impeding investment in new projects, UK policymakers are virtually guaranteeing a reliance on increased imports of emissions-intense LNG from sources that are often of worse environmental pedigree than our domestic assets.
“Not only does imported LNG bring higher CO2, it increases the UK’s reliance on overseas supply, including fracked gas from the USA alongside supplies from Qatar. This is at the expense of home-produced gas, which has a lower carbon impact and supports inward investment.
“Assuming full national supply from LNG imports, we could see a future where household CO2 emissions caused by UK gas demand will be almost 8.5 million tonnes per annum higher than they would be with our current gas supply mix.
“The irony is that Norway, whose gas fields are in many cases adjacent to our own, continues to invest significantly in exploration and production of the very gas which we now pay to import, and one of the reasons that Norwegian gas has a lower impact than ours is that they are investing in the electrification of gas fields – something we could do too.
“At a time of climate crisis and increasing global uncertainty, it would make far more sense from an economic, environmental, social and strategic perspective to support and ramp up UK domestic gas production than relying on imported gas from overseas,” Fitzpatrick concludes.
A full copy of the report UK Gas Policy – scoring zero can be downloaded here.