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No Risk, No Energy
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No Risk, No Energy

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "H: Geo-Energy".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 9796

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Paolo Capuano

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Physics “E.R. Caianiello”, Università degli Studi di Salerno, 84084 Fisciano, Italy
Interests: induced/triggered seismicity; multi-risk assessment; environmental impact; seismic source

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Natural resources are effectively utilized in the development of human society but sometimes exploitation of resources can result in natural disasters. The main assumption beyond the statement “No Risk, No Energy” is that all energy sources have both positive and negative effects and it is not realistic to consider that a source bears zero risks. There, each community instrument should be evaluated to choose "acceptable" risks in the energy field, by considering the entire lifecycle of the exploration and exploitation of the resource (from the cradle to the grave).

This Special Issue will provide a coherent selection of the most recent achievements in risks correlated with energy geo-resources exploration and exploitation. In this perspective, the development of a procedure to compare different energy sources and their impacts can play a decisive role in the selection of policies. The evaluation of environmental, economic, and social impacts associated with different energy systems thanks to a tool facilitating that comparison will allow a consistent and transparent assessment of different energy alternatives. The comparative evaluation of different impacts related to the exploitation of different energy sources has been the topic of many studies over the last thirty years, attempting to quantify those effects. Different methods have been used to compare the environmental effects of different energy sources also trying to integrate them into a decision-making process.

This Special Issue will address advances in research related to the use of energy geo-resources minimizing the environmental impacts. We invite original manuscripts presenting recent advances in this area with special reference to, but not limited to, the following topics: induced seismicity, water contamination, air pollution, hazard monitoring and risks analysis, and best practices. Examples from known sites of geo-energy exploitation are welcome.

Prof. Paolo Capuano
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Induced/triggered seismicity
  • Water contamination
  • Air pollution
  • Environmental monitoring
  • Conventional/unconventional hydrocarbons
  • Carbon capture storage
  • Development of new technologies
  • Databases
  • Micro and macro scale processing

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

9 pages, 4649 KiB  
Article
A Hydrofracturing-Triggered Earthquake Occurred Three Years after the Stimulation
by Stanisław Lasocki, Łukasz Rudziński, Antek K. Tokarski and Beata Orlecka-Sikora
Energies 2022, 15(1), 336; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15010336 - 4 Jan 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1766
Abstract
Hydrofracturing, used for shale gas exploitation, may induce felt, even damaging earthquakes. On 15 June 2019, an Mw2.8 earthquake occurred, spatially correlated with the location of earlier exploratory hydrofracturing operations for shale gas in Wysin in Poland. However, this earthquake was [...] Read more.
Hydrofracturing, used for shale gas exploitation, may induce felt, even damaging earthquakes. On 15 June 2019, an Mw2.8 earthquake occurred, spatially correlated with the location of earlier exploratory hydrofracturing operations for shale gas in Wysin in Poland. However, this earthquake was atypical. Hydrofracturing-triggered seismicity mainly occurs during stimulation; occasionally, it continues a few months after completion of the stimulation. In Wysin, there were only two weaker events during two-month hydrofracturing and then 35 months of seismic silence until the mentioned earthquake occurred. The Wysin site is in Gdańsk Pomerania broader region, located on the very weakly seismically active Precambrian Platform. The historical documents, covering 1000 years, report no natural earthquakes in Gdańsk Pomerania. We conclude, therefore, that despite the never observed before that long lag time after stimulation, the Mw2.8 earthquake was triggered by hydrofracturing. It is possible that its unusually late occurrence in relation to the time of its triggering technological activity was caused by changes in stresses due to time-dependent deformation of reservoir shales. The Wysin earthquake determines a new time horizon for the effect of HF on the stress state, which can lead to triggering earthquakes. Time-dependent deformation and its induced stress changes should be considered in shall gas reservoir exploitation plans. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue No Risk, No Energy)
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31 pages, 6790 KiB  
Article
An Integrated Approach to Risk and Impacts of Geo-Resources Exploration and Exploitation
by Maria Vittoria Gargiulo, Alexander Garcia, Andrea Paulillo, Ortensia Amoroso, Ernesto Salzano and Paolo Capuano
Energies 2021, 14(14), 4178; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14144178 - 10 Jul 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1983
Abstract
Geo-resources are widely exploited in our society, with huge benefits for both economy and communities. Nevertheless, with benefits come risks and impacts. Understanding how such risks and impacts are intrinsically borne in a given project is of critical importance for both industry and [...] Read more.
Geo-resources are widely exploited in our society, with huge benefits for both economy and communities. Nevertheless, with benefits come risks and impacts. Understanding how such risks and impacts are intrinsically borne in a given project is of critical importance for both industry and society. In particular, it is crucial to distinguish between the specific impacts related to exploiting a given energy resource and those shared with the exploitation of other energy resources. A variety of different approaches can be used to identify and assess such risks and impacts. In particular, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and risk assessments (RAs) are the most commonly adopted. Although both are widely used to support decision making in environmental management, they are rarely used in combination perhaps because they have been developed by largely different groups of specialists. By analyzing the structure and the ratio of the two tools, we have developed an approach for combining and harmonizing LCA and MRA; the resulting protocol envisages building MRA upon LCA both qualitatively and quantitatively. We demonstrate the approach in a case study using a virtual site (based on a real one) for geothermal energy production. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue No Risk, No Energy)
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17 pages, 2450 KiB  
Article
Time-Dependent Seismic Hazard Analysis for Induced Seismicity: The Case of St Gallen (Switzerland), Geothermal Field
by Vincenzo Convertito, Hossein Ebrahimian, Ortensia Amoroso, Fatemeh Jalayer, Raffaella De Matteis and Paolo Capuano
Energies 2021, 14(10), 2747; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14102747 - 11 May 2021
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2568
Abstract
Reliable seismic hazard analyses are crucial to mitigate seismic risk. When dealing with induced seismicity the standard Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA) has to be modified because of the peculiar characteristics of the induced events. In particular, the relative shallow depths, small magnitude, [...] Read more.
Reliable seismic hazard analyses are crucial to mitigate seismic risk. When dealing with induced seismicity the standard Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA) has to be modified because of the peculiar characteristics of the induced events. In particular, the relative shallow depths, small magnitude, a correlation with field operations, and eventually non-Poisson recurrence time. In addition to the well-known problem of estimating the maximum expected magnitude, it is important to take into account how the industrial field operations affect the temporal and spatial distribution of the earthquakes. In fact, during specific stages of the project the seismicity may be hard to be modelled as a Poisson process—as usually done in the standard PSHA—and can cluster near the well or migrate toward hazardous known or—even worse—not known faults. Here we present a technique in which we modify the standard PSHA to compute time-dependent seismic hazard. The technique allows using non-Poisson models (BPT, Weibull, gamma and ETAS) whose parameters are fitted using the seismicity record during distinct stages of the field operations. As a test case, the procedure has been implemented by using data recorded at St. Gallen deep geothermal field, Switzerland, during fluid injection. The results suggest that seismic hazard analyses, using appropriate recurrence model, ground motion predictive equations, and maximum magnitude allow the expected ground-motion to be reliably predicted in the study area. The predictions can support site managers to decide how to proceed with the project avoiding adverse consequences. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue No Risk, No Energy)
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18 pages, 3080 KiB  
Article
4D Travel-Time Tomography as a Tool for Tracking Fluid-Driven Medium Changes in Offshore Oil–Gas Exploitation Areas
by Grazia De Landro, Ortensia Amoroso, Guido Russo and Aldo Zollo
Energies 2020, 13(22), 5878; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13225878 - 11 Nov 2020
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2549
Abstract
The monitoring of rock volume where offshore exploitation activities take place is crucial to assess the corresponding seismic hazard. Fluid injection/extraction operations generate a pore fluid pressure perturbation into the volume hosting the reservoir which, in turn, may trigger new failures and induce [...] Read more.
The monitoring of rock volume where offshore exploitation activities take place is crucial to assess the corresponding seismic hazard. Fluid injection/extraction operations generate a pore fluid pressure perturbation into the volume hosting the reservoir which, in turn, may trigger new failures and induce changes in the elastic properties of rocks. Our purpose is to evaluate the feasibility of reconstructing pore pressure perturbation diffusion in the host medium by imaging the 4D velocity changes using active seismic. We simulated repeated active offshore surveys and imaged the target volume. We constructed the velocity model perturbed by the fluid injection using physical modeling and evaluated under which conditions the repeated surveys could image the velocity changes. We found that the induced pressure perturbation causes seismic velocity variations ranging between 2–5% and 15–20%, depending on the different injection conditions and medium properties. So, in most cases, time-lapse tomography is very efficient in tracking the perturbation. The noise level characterizing the recording station sites is a crucial parameter. Since we evaluated the feasibility of the proposed 4D imaging strategy under different realistic environmental and operational conditions, our results can be directly applied to set up and configure the acquisition layout of surveys aimed at retrieving fluid-induced medium changes in the hosting medium. Moreover, our results can be considered as a useful starting point to design the guidelines to monitor exploitation areas. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue No Risk, No Energy)
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