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Title: Understanding the life cycle surface land requirements of natural gas-fired electricity

Journal Article · · Nature Energy
ORCiD logo [1];  [2];  [2]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3];  [2];  [2];  [3]
  1. Johns Hopkins Univ., Washington, DC (United States). School of Advanced International Studies; Univ. of Calgary, AB (Canada)
  2. Joint Inst. for Strategic Energy Analysis, Golden, CO (United States); National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States). Strategic Energy Analysis Center
  3. Univ. of Calgary, AB (Canada)
+ Show Author Affiliations

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
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 19 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (4)

Comparison of Recent Oil and Gas, Wind Energy, and Other Anthropogenic Landscape Alteration Factors in Texas Through 2014 journal March 2018
Environmental life cycle assessment of Mediterranean tomato: case study of a Tunisian soilless geothermal multi-tunnel greenhouse journal January 2020
An approach for evaluating changes in land-use from energy sprawl and other anthropogenic activities with implications for biotic resource management journal February 2018
The Water‐Energy Nexus of Hydraulic Fracturing: A Global Hydrologic Analysis for Shale Oil and Gas Extraction text January 2018

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