Introduction and Overview: the Role of Shale Gas in Securing Our
Energy Future;
Shale Gas Boom, Trade, and Environmental Policies: Global Economic
and Environmental Analyses in a Multidisciplinary Modeling
Framework;
Exploration for Unconventional Hydrocarbons: Shale Gas and Shale
Oil;
Climate Change Impacts of Shale Gas Production;
The Hydrogeological Aspects of Shale Gas Extraction in the UK;
Coal Seam Gas Recovery in Australia: Economic, Environmental and
Policy Issues;
Prospects for Shale Gas Development in China;
Unconventional, Unburnable and Unwanted: why going all out for
shale gas is the wrong direction for the UK’s energy policy.
The series has been edited by Professors Hester and Harrison since it began in 1994.
Professor Roy Harrison OBE is listed by ISI Thomson Scientific (on ISI Web of Knowledge) as a Highly Cited Researcher in the Environmental Science/Ecology category. He has an h-index of 54 (i.e. 54 of his papers have received 54 or more citations in the literature). In 2004 he was appointed OBE for services to environmental science in the New Year Honours List. He was profiled by the Journal of Environmental Monitoring (Vol 5, pp 39N-41N, 2003). Professor Harrison’s research interests lie in the field of environment and human health. His main specialism is in air pollution, from emissions through atmospheric chemical and physical transformations to exposure and effects on human health. Much of this work is designed to inform the development of policy.
Now an emeritus professor, Professor Ron Hester's current
activities in chemistry are mainly as an editor and as an external
examiner and assessor. He also retains appointments as external
examiner and assessor/adviser on courses, individual promotions,
and departmental / subject area evaluations both in the UK and
abroad.
This book gives a far more comprehensive coverage of the subject
than others on the topic recently published and includes
information about the situation in the UK, Australia and China as
well as in the USA. The only omission in this respect is anything
about Poland, a country which could possibly generate large
quantities of gas from fracking.The first chapter gives a superb
overview of all aspects of the subject covering both principles and
practice in detail. In subsequent chapters economic factors figure
largely – the second chapter is about computer programs to predict
economic impacts of energy policies and a chapter on coal seam gas
in Australia has a lot about economic effects. This may come as a
surprise to some potential readers but energy supplies are governed
as much by economics as by other considerations. Another topic
covered extensively is the geology of gas-bearing strata. One of
these chapters deals with what might be described as
"micro-geology" – the porosity of the various kinds of gas-bearing
rock and whether the gas is biogenic or thermogenic; the gas is the
same but the fracking methods employed may differ in detail.
Several chapters deal with the climatic effects of exploiting shale
gas; in China and the USA which are still major coal consumers, the
use of shale gas is beneficial. In the UK the reduction of CO2
emissions would be marginal and the main advantage would be
security of supply. Various environmental impacts of fracking are
described in most chapters. For example fracking may give rise to
drinking water pollution; I thought this unlikely in the UK since
most large cities are supplied from distantly located reservoirs
but 30% of the UK drinking water comes from surface/groundwater
sources. The south east of England has a semi-arid climate and the
use of large volumes of water for fracking would be untenable. The
book ends with a chapter by an author from Friends of the Earth
that is entirely negative. Climate change is the major problem that
the whole world should be giving priority to combating but more and
more wind turbines is not the answer. No alternative energy source
is entirely carbon free – a wind turbine uses cement, steel and
copper in its construction all of which require the expenditure of
large amounts of energy and all the green sources of energy produce
electricity. So far no one has come up with a method of storing
large amounts of electricity but it could be used to generate
hydrogen. Major consumers of energy are transport and agriculture
and until the world switches to hydrogen-powered vehicles, which
are technically feasible, CO2 levels will go on rising. However,
switching to hydrogen is going to involve major costs initially,
which comes back to economics.Before I read this volume I was in
favour of fracking but this book has changed my opinion and I now
belong to the doubtful camp. A final negative for me was the
information in another book recently reviewed in Chromatographia
(Small-Scale Gas to Liquid Fuel Synthesis, published by CRC Press)
that so called "stranded gas", gas produced in locations where it
is currently not cost-effective to recover it and is flared off,
would be sufficient to generate around 250 billion barrels of
synthetic oil, a quantity equal to one third of the Middle East
proven oil reserves. This is a book that everyone concerned about
climate change, especially politicians, should read before deciding
on future energy policies.
*Chromatographia*
"This book gives a far more comprehensive coverage of the subject
than others on the topic recently published "The first chapter
gives a superb overview of all aspects of the subject covering both
principles and practice in detail." "This is a book that everyone
concerned about climate change, especially politicians, should read
before deciding on future energy policies."
*Chromatographia*
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