Those who keep talking down shale gas should read the views of Elizabeth Muller. Ms Muller does not run a shale gas company. She is co founder and executive Director of Berkeley Earth, an impeccably green non profit research group in California.
In her opinion, environmentalists in the US and elsewhere should be encouraging China to develop its shale gas resources. Those resources are huge – perhaps 50 per cent greater than those of the US, and have yet to be explored in detail. That process is just beginning and includes a number of international companies including Shell.
Ms Muller’s argument, which is unanswerable, is that any development of shale gas will offset the use of some coal. Shale gas is not carbon free but it is cleaner than coal which is China’s basic fuel now. And unless things can be changed radically, will be the dominant source of energy for the next several decades. If shale gas could back out some amount of China’s coal consumption, emissions could be materially reduced. Read more
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