Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
report on the EU Recovery Fund revealed that most projects under way were for
gas power generation; none of the eligible CCS projects had started.
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The UK
'
s
March 2012 budget gave a tax break for oil and gas production in Shetland.
Policy-makers
main concern is now quite clearly with the advent of sizeable shale
gas supplies. Prominent academics lament that the new focus on shale gas has rein-
forced governments
'
'
tendency to de
ne energy security as being a matter of the
'
even further into the dis-
tance the prioritisation of similar geo-strategic planning in relation to renewables.
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Experts opine that combining traditional and unconventional gases, the world
has 300 years of supplies. The policy priority in this sense is to delink gas from oil
markets, by completing the single market in gas infrastructures and linkages.
A fundamental change in energy has occurred with the US switch to shale gas: a
change which leaves Europe with higher energy costs over the foreseeable future
than both the US and China. More positively, as the US has gained autonomy due
to shale exploration, this has driven down LNG prices, which in absolute terms is
good for European buyers. Not only do many talk of the end of pipeline politics,
but the switch to shale gas has given the US its lowest emissions in 20 years.
Countries like Algeria claim that they have more shale gas than natural gas. Other
shale basins exist in Norway, Poland, Ukraine, Turkey and East Africa. In March
2013 the UK company Centrica signed a sizeable deal to import shale gas from the
US. The most signi
grand strategy
'
calculations of hydrocarbons, putting o
cant impact will be if supplies increase enough for China to
switch from coal to shale gas. The next step would be for unconventional gas to be
extended into the transport sector, which is where oil dependency is still nearly
absolute.
Policy-makers have breathed a sigh of relief as gas returns to being a buyers
'
market. This has further lessened the perceived urgency of the climate security
agenda. The policy focus has seemed to shift away from the question of access to
non-European renewable sources to debates over how far shale could and should
be incorporated into the European energy mix. So far, Poland has been the keenest
on developing shale; France has restricted fracking; the UK gave the go ahead to
preliminary exploration in 2011. A European Parliament hearing in 2012 rein-
forced the extent to which the new focus on shale gas now cuts across the EU
'
s
international climate diplomacy.
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One EU o
cial highlights that the climate directorate has pushed for this new
energy panorama to be turned to the advantage of the climate security agenda,
with the argument that if traditional energy security concerns now appear less
acute, then there should be more policy space to prioritise the longer-term strategic
impacts of climate change. These two issues can now be delinked, where they have
often been con
ated or at least mixed up in the same set of overarching external
energy policies. However,
the climate directorate has
struggled to gain any
