At the European Union's energy summit in February, no other item on the agenda was as controversial as the impact of shale exploration. Despite protests from the green lobby, EU energy ministers agreed that the potentially game-changing nature of shale would be carefully considered in the next few months.
Unconventional gas is embedded in shale rock formations deep below the earth's surface. These geological strata hold vast deposits of shale gas. To exploit these resources, energy companies drill several kilometres deep into the rock and then horizontally in several directions. According to estimates of the International Energy Agency, supplies of unconventional gas could provide humankind with cheap and relatively clean energy for more than 250 years.
Greens ‘lost’ as growth prevails
By Terry Corcoran,
Financial Policy
It may be reaching a bit, but when one of the world’s leading climate alarmists and activists — British author and journalist George Monbiot — declares that he and his environment movement colleagues “are lost” in a world that still believes in what many environmentalists do not believe, namely growth and prosperity, it is almost certain that global warming is in decline as a political issue.
In a column this week in The Guardian, Mr. Monbiot laments the failure of green activists to reach beyond a “set of deep beliefs … that in some cases remain unexamined.” Mostly, he said, the battle over energy supplies and carbon emissions has plunged the environmental movement into choosing objectives that “are at odds” with one another.
Green predictions of collapse have not materialized as the global carbon-based economic expansion continues. “The problem we face,” he said, “is not that we have too little fossil fuel, but too much.” As conventional oil declines, economies will switch to tar sands, shale gas and coal. If coal runs out, other fossil fuels will take its place. Because the greens can’t get their political and ideological acts together into a world economic view that makes sense, Mr. Monbiot sees the world heading for “environmental destruction.”
Europe told of potential shale gas bonanza
By Sylvia Pfeifer in London,
Financial Times
Unconventional gas resources in Europe have the potential to reshape the continent’s supply, reducing its dependency on Russia and the Middle East, says a report out on Friday.
The European study cautions, however, that several challenges need to be addressed – including environmental concerns – before commercial production from unconventional sources, such as shale gas, becomes a reality.
Such production has revolutionised North America’s energy market and allowed the US, once a significant importer, to become self-sufficient in gas.
