Understanding the life cycle surface land requirements of natural gas-fired electricity
- Johns Hopkins Univ., Washington, DC (United States). School of Advanced International Studies; Univ. of Calgary, AB (Canada)
- Joint Inst. for Strategic Energy Analysis, Golden, CO (United States); National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States). Strategic Energy Analysis Center
- Univ. of Calgary, AB (Canada)
The surface land use of fossil fuel acquisition and utilization has not been well characterized, inhibiting consistent comparisons of different electricity generation technologies. We present a method for robust estimation of the life cycle land use of electricity generated from natural gas through a case study that includes inventories of infrastructure, satellite imagery and well-level production. Approximately 500 sites in the Barnett Shale of Texas were sampled across five life cycle stages (production, gathering, processing, transmission and power generation). Total land use (0.62 m2 MWh-1, 95% confidence intervals +/-0.01 m2 MWh-1) was dominated by midstream infrastructure, particularly pipelines (74%). These results were sensitive to power plant heat rate (85-190% of the base case), facility lifetime (89-169%), number of wells per site (16-100%), well lifetime (92-154%) and pipeline right of way (58-142%). When replicated for other gas-producing regions and different fuels, our approach offers a route to enable empirically grounded comparisons of the land footprint of energy choices.
- Research Organization:
- National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Policy and Systems Analysis
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC36-08GO28308
- OSTI ID:
- 1398873
- Report Number(s):
- NREL/JA-6A20-66274
- Journal Information:
- Nature Energy, Vol. 2, Issue 10; ISSN 2058-7546
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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