Shale gas supply offers promise of huge benefits
America is known as the planet’s energy glutton. We’re also accused of having a tin ear when asked to do anything to reduce the threat of climate change. Europe is often cited as the model to follow.
But it is America that has reduced the size of its carbon footprint. In the past five years we have reduced our carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 4,500 million tons. In Europe, total carbon emissions have actually risen, despite the fact that they have policies in place to limit emissions and the public sentiment there is so robustly in favor of the limitations.
Why is the glutton less gluttonous and the scold more profligate?
There are a variety of reasons, the economy being one. The cost of oil has made coal-fired generation cheaper in Europe, thus the increase in emissions. But while the same would appear to be true here, we have something going in our favor that they do not: the production of natural gas from shale.
It’s been a revolution of sorts. At a time when the production of oil is controlled by hostile political forces, we’re producing gas at a fraction of the cost and have tapped a supply that could easily last another century — and that’s using today’s technology. Our advances have created tens of thousands of jobs and have reduced our energy costs significantly.
For anyone concerned with the costs associated with the nation’s energy security — the war in Iraq, for example — this is good news. For the first time in a half-century we are actually a net exporter of energy. It feels good to be marching toward a future that is far less dependent on OPEC than it used to be.
It is a march not without its challenges, however. The process used to extract the natural gas — known as fracking — is under attack by environmentalists. In Vermont we’ve gone so far as to ban the practice even though, as a practical matter, it’s meaningless since we aren’t known to have any natural gas supplies worth fracking.
ENVIRONMENTALISTS are not misguided in their concerns. The fracking process has the potential to pollute aquifers and to release methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. The answer, however, is not to ban the process, which more extreme activists advocate. Nor is the answer to allow producers to do whatever is necessary to generate more gas and more jobs.
To ensure that the fracking process does not pollute our groundwater or air would raise the price of gas an estimated 7 percent, according to a report issued by the International Energy Agency.
Seven percent.
The cost could be double that and still be a bargain. The problem is that there is no trust on either side of the argument. Environmentalists don’t trust the industry to keep the bargain; the industry doesn’t trust environmentalists to be content with half a victory.
It’s a common refrain in today’s all-or-nothing political environment. But it’s something the public should resist. There is huge potential for us to reduce our energy costs and to become more energy independent if we promote the technology necessary to extract these fuels. There are enormous benefits to being released from the geopolitical pressures of being dependent on oil from the Middle East or Venezuela. And there are global benefits of burning natural gas versus coal, when it comes to the threat of climate change.
It would be absurd to forfeit these benefits just because the industry could not embrace the 7 percent increase in costs to ensure that the process was close to environmentally benign.
