Environmentalists are facing a conundrum.
Reducing greenhouse gas levels is urgent, although
the greenies are remiss to accept natural gas as a
viable vehicle, releasing 45 percent fewer carbon
emissions than coal. Despite the possibilities, its
imperfections remain a sore point among ecologists.
Eco-activists can be accused of taking the
apocalyptic view while partisan conservatives have
inflated the failures associated President Obama’s
clean energy program. And while those critics reject
the notion that climate change is the result of
human endeavor, they do support the acceleration of
this country’s most abundant natural resource:
unconventional shale gas, which has also helped the
United States reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by
4 percent in recent years.
“Natural gas is an important transition to a carbon
free economy provided we don’t go too many decades,”
says Tom Wigley, climate scientists with
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research,
who participated in a conference sponsored by the
Breakthrough Institute. “After 30 or 40 years,
it won’t matter what we do.”
Here in this country, coal’s share of the
electricity market has fallen from 50 percent in
2005 to 36 percent in 2012. Overseas, and especially
in developing nations, coal remains the dominant
fuel. According to the
International Energy Agency in Paris, coal use
will exceed that of oil by 2017. Consider: In 2011,
China added 55,000 megawatts of coal-generated
power.
At the same time, the estimates of
recoverable natural gas in the United States
have grown from 200 trillion cubic feet in 2005 to
350 trillion cubic feet in 2012. Meanwhile, the U.S.
Energy Information Administration predicts that
technically recoverable
shale gas resources outside this country are
7,300 trillion cubic feet. That’s 10 percent higher
than the study done in 2011.
“The world is awash in natural gas,” says Robert
Bryce, a scholar at the
Manhattan Institute and the author of Power
Hungry. “The U.S. is leading the world. We have the
rigs and the pipes. We own the minerals beneath our
feet. Other nations are a decade or two behind.”
Green Politics
Bryce, who also addressed the Breakthrough
Institute’s conference outside of San Francisco last
week, goes on to say that if natural gas is used to
fuel vehicles, it could reduce global carbon dioxide
levels by 20 percent. The issue here, though, is
that the infrastructure is limited. That is, the
lack of pipelines means that the gas must be flared
as opposed to captured and transported. He says that
Russia is flaring excessive amounts of natural gas,
or enough to keep France fat and happy.
To be sure, the extraction of natural gas is not
without fault. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking,
has been blamed for polluting ground water supplies
and for being too water-intensive -- a resource that
is scarce and which must be disposed. Meantime,
environmentalists are also worried about the
incidental releases of methane, which is a
greenhouse gas that is far more potent than carbon
dioxide.
Carl Pope, former executive director of the
Sierra Club, spoke at the Breakthrough
conference and said that his group formed an
alliance with the natural gas industry because the
two had a common goal -- to prevent the building of
150 coal plants over a decade. But he said that the
industry is actively trying to avert public scrutiny
by failing to disclose the chemicals it uses to
frack, or to ply loose the shale gas from the rocks
where it is embedded deep underground.
Meantime, Pope disagrees with developers and says
that the federal government has a role in the
oversight of hydraulic fracturing. That’s because
the process affects drinking water supplies and air
emissions, which fall under the domain of the
Environmental Protection Agency. He is, furthermore,
concerned that the exporting of natural gas in the
form of LNG would increase ecological damage and
harm air quality while driving up prices for
consumers.
“Natural gas can be part of a climate solution,”
says Pope. “It is not so risky that it should be
demonized. But it is not so intrinsically clean”
that it should be solely relied upon to solve the
problem of global warming.
A central theme to emerge from the Breakthrough
Institute’s annual dialogue is the call to reform
and renovate green politics -- to get its advocates
to embrace the advancement of new tools that can
reduce pollution levels tied to power plants. To
that end, such thinking would apply not just to
drilling technologies but also to the production of
renewable fuels, which conservatives must likewise
accept.
Infighting creates delays that will defeat progress.
Focusing on and then sharing improvements in
technology, by contrast, will polish power
production and leave future generations with cleaner
air and water.
EnergyBiz Insider has been awarded the Gold for
Original Web Commentary presented by the American
Society of Business Press Editors. The column is
also the Winner of the 2011 Online Column category
awarded by Media Industry News, MIN. Ken Silverstein
has been honored as one of MIN’s Most Intriguing
People in Media.
Twitter: @Ken_Silverstein
energybizinsider@energycentral.com
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