Un-Natural Gas and Unnecessary Pipelines: De-bunking Myths
Climate change is a defining issue of our times for the survival of humans and the planet. It is the real issue of national security and should trump the $1 trillion handout our national government throws at militarized national security. Every major religion deems it a moral issue and an ethical obligation to future generations. So also should government.
"All that glitters is not gold." Take the word "natural." Two-thirds of Americans wrongly think the word "natural" on a food label means it contains no artificial ingredients, pesticides or genetically engineered organisms, and no hormones or antibiotics in the case of meat. (1) "Natural" is conflated with "safe." Analogously, we universally refer to gas drilled conventionally or fracked as "natural." True, gas found in deep rock and soil formations and biologically formed from dead animal and plant matter, is natural. Once drilled, transported, and combusted for heat and electricity, though, it is un-natural, even anti-natural, for reasons explored here.
The blue flame of natural gas has been branded* "*the new green*," *and promoted as the poster child of cleaner and safer fossil fuels because it generates fewer carbon dioxide emissions than coal and oil. What precisely is meant by *cleaner* and *safer* is the crux of the climate change debate regarding our energy future.
For almost a decade the federal government has turned a blind eye towards regulating the hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" boom in 22 states: a boom that injects pressurized sand, "trade secret" chemicals, and vast amounts of water into shale formations to release pockets of gas and oil. Yet, *the environmental *risks of fracking are legion: groundwater and drinking water contamination; local air pollution; intensive local water use; inadequate hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal facilities; an increase in earthquakes; and release of methane to the atmosphere. (2) Potentially the riskiest aspect of un-natural gas, whether fracked or traditionally drilled, is methane gas releases throughout its life cycle from drilling and transport to storage and combustion.
The US EPA estimates a 1.5 percent leakage rate of methane from gas; other estimates from field studies range from 1-8 percent methane leakage. One major concern with EPA's estimate, according to the inventor of the underlying technology of the methane sensor is that this sensor can malfunction and provide erroneous low readings when emissions are high. Other studies warn that higher methane leakages could make gas worse than coal for climate change because methane is a potent greenhouse gas, warming the atmosphere nearly 100 times the rate of carbon dioxide in the first two decades after emitted. (3)
A recent Harvard University study of methane leaks from gas lines and gas storage facilities leaks in the city of Boston found that the gas leaking is sufficient to heat 200,000 homes and valued at $90 million per year. This unprecedented study estimated the leaks at 2.7% of natural gas delivered to the region, significantly higher than previous state estimates of 1.1%. (4)
The touted environmental and economic benefits of switching from coal to "clean gas" are so riddled with uncertainties that the former Commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and now energy consultant, Jon Wellinghof, recommended in a Washington Post opinion piece that his state of Virginia's energy future should rely on renewable technologies. "The only path lies in building capacity for free fuel - sunlight and wind - and making the electricity system far more efficient so less energy is wasted." (5)
How "clean" is the American Gas Industry, representing 200 gas utilities that lobbied members of Congress and the White House *to block and later amend a green building rule? *The rule would require all new and renovated federal buildings to be fossil fuel-free buildings by 2030. In its lobbying, the gas industry worked to distance itself from "real" polluters-coal and oil-to re-make its image as clean. (6)
Gas is touted as *a bridge* in the energy transition to renewables. This benign version of an altruistic industry, which would facilitate the transition to renewables, is belied by the industry's own actions to slow the exponential growth rate of solar and wind. The gas industry is a powerful member and funder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (known as ALEC). Dubbed " a corporate bill mill," ALEC's corporate members and participating state legislators devise model bills to advance corporate priorities. ALEC has aggressively drafted bills for state legislators that would eliminate state renewable energy targets; limit, if not end, subsidies for renewable energy industries; add a surcharge to utility customers who have installed solar energy; and block new federal environmental regulations for fracking on public lands. (7) "Enemies of the sun," economist Paul Krugman rightly dubs them.
Renewable energy costs are dropping exponentially and driving the equally unparalleled growth of renewably energy installations throughout the world. In 2014, solar and wind surpassed all other energy sources for new electricity generated in the United States. The Bank of England recently warned investors that policy changes addressing climate change could threaten investments in fossil fuels - leaving them *stranded assets*. The global stock market index company MSCI has reported that investors who have divested from fossil fuels over the past 5 years are outperforming those who haven't. (8)
In tandem with the growth of renewables, scenarios and roadmaps for achieving a renewable energy world by 2050 are also on the rise.
A Stanford University team has designed a state-by-state roadmap to reach 100 percent renewable energy by 2050, based on substantial increases in efficiency and each state's unique wind, water and solar resources. Called the Solutions Project, it maps out how to replace all new energy sources with wind, water and solar by 2030 and all existing power plants by 2050. The barriers to achieving a renewable world energy system are "primarily political and social, not technological or economic," concluded the researchers. (9)
A minimally publicized 2012 study conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the Department of Energy has demonstrated that "Renewable Energy generation from technologies that are commercially available today, in combination with a more flexible electric system, is more than adequate to supply 80 percent of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050 while meeting demand on an hourly basis in every region of the country." (10)
Greenpeace International working with European research institutes and the Global Wind Energy Council published a 2014 report, *Energy [R]evolution, *which found that by 2050 it is possible for the United States to reduce primary energy demand by 40 percent through energy conservation and efficiency, to generate 97 percent of electricity from renewable energy sources at lower costs than conventional sources, to reduce CO2 emissions to four percent of 1990 levels, while creating more jobs than conventional sources. Total cost savings would cover 150 percent of total additional investments (compared to business as usual scenario). (11)
Opponents of renewable technologies, promoters of fossil fuels and nuclear power, and diehard critics of government subsidies to renewable technologies, such as the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, brand federal energy subsidies as an unfair handout to the solar and wind sector. A welfare program, if you will, giving advantage to the renewable industry which would collapse if it had to compete with coal, oil, gas and nuclear. However, an historical study of government subsidies to all energy technologies easily demolishes this myth. (12) Federal incentives for the first 15 years of subsidy life were five times greater for oil and gas and 10 times greater for nuclear power than for emerging renewable technologies. Indirect government support for fossil fuels and nuclear includes land grants for early timber and railroads for coal and other fuels. Early R&D for these energy industries was significantly greater than for renewables and efficiency. Moreover, there is no counterpart in renewable energy subsidies to the $7.3 trillion spent by the Department of Defense from 1976 through 2007 patrolling the Persian Gulf to protect US oil shipments. Finally, the fossil fuel and nuclear power are not held financially liable for premature deaths and morbidity from air pollution from fossil fuel combustion or for the costs of ultimate disposal of nuclear waste. Nor do the fossil fuel industries pay their fair share for their role in the record loss of species and coral reefs, five-fold increase in natural disasters since 1970, and property damage due to global warming emissions. We the people foot that bill.
Taking action
Let's level the playing field: Make the energy polluters pay for their carbon emissions through carbon taxes. Phase out the decades-long subsidies to these octogenarian energy industries.
Encourage state governments to raise their renewable energy, conservation and efficiency goals using the 2050 scenarios described above. (The Solutions Project at Stanford University is already working with the California and New York to implement their renewable energy roadmap.)
Lobby for aggressive conservation and efficiency programs, a rapid gas pipe leak detection and repair program to *render new gas pipelines unnecessary*.
Monitor local media: The fossil fuel and nuclear industries have concocted disinformation for decades about climate change, disinformation that has been reported uncritically by the major media. These *merchants of falsehoods* successfully sowed seeds of doubt and deception in the United States, such that US citizens are the least informed about the science of climate change and most resistant to a renewable economy of any industrial nation. (13)
Engage in grassroots organizing, educating, lobbying, and local non-violent action. It is the most authentic action of change. (14)
Sources:
1. http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/08/natural-on-food-labels-is-misleading/index.htm
2. http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/health/case_studies/hydrofracking _w.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEB_Wwe-uBM
3. http://assets.climatecentral.org/pdfs/NaturalGas-and-ClimateChange.pdf
6. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/9312-gas-industry-aims-to-block-2030-zero-carbon-building- goal
7. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_Corporations.
9. http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v301/n5/full/scientificamerican1109-58.html
10. http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re_futures/
12. http://www.dblinvestors.com/documents/What-Would-Jefferson-Do-Final-Version.pdf
13. http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org
14. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/local_resistance_can_overthrow_our_political_masters_20151004
Pat Hynes, former Professor of Environmental Health directs the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice and the Renewables Are Ready education project. http://traprock.org