Google images

Why It Matters If China can produce large amounts of natural gas, this might slow the growth of its greenhouse gas emissions. The discovery of vast amounts of shale gas in the United States has already had a big impact on the country’s energy use—prompting a shift away from coal and helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (see “A Drop in U.S. CO2 Emissions” and “King Natural Gas”). By some estimates, China has even more shale gas. But it will be difficult for China to access these resources, which are bound up in shale rock, without significant advances in extraction technologies—including the use of powerful computer simulations of the physical properties of shale deposits.