Leakage of methane from fracking boosts shale gas global warming impact; National Academy review is warranted

Comparison of greenhouse gas emissions from shale gas (with low and high estimates of fugitive methane emissions) [with other energy sources].  Top panel (a) is for a 20-year time horizon, and bottom panel (b) is for a 100-year time horizon.  Estimates include direct emissions of CO2 during combustion (blue bars), indirect emissions of CO2 necessary to develop and use the energy source (red bars), and fugitive emissions of methane, converted to equivalent value of CO2 as described in the text (pink bars).

I was a (relatively) early booster of shale gas as a potential game changer for greenhouse gas mitigation [see Game Changer, Part 1:  There appears to be a lot more natural gas than previously thought (6/10) and Part 2: "Unconventional gas makes the 2020 climate targets so damn easy and cheap to meet" (7/10)].

But there were always lurking concerns about the impact of methane leakage in from the unconventional gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing, since methane is a considerably more potent greenhouse gas (GHG) than carbon dioxide.  Now three Cornell University professors have published a major analysis in Climatic Change, “Methane and the Greenhouse-Gas Footprint of Natural Gas from Shale Formations,” that seeks to quantify the impact of the leakage from the best available data.

They find a leakage rate large enough to seriously undercut gas’s GHG benefit even in high-efficiency combined cycle plants — and one that is all-but-fatal to any GHG benefit from using natural gas as a transport fuel. That conclusions is doubly true if one looks at the GHG impact over a few decades, rather than a century.

This is a potentially game-unchanging conclusion for one of the seminal energy policy choices of this decade — how hard to push shale gas here and around the world.  And yet, as the lead author Cornell Prof. Robert Howarth explained to me in an interview, it is based upon very limited data.  And that’s in part because the industry has fought efforts to get more data.  Prof. Howarth agreed with my suggestion that this would be a very ripe topic for the National Academy of Sciences to review.

The study’s basic conclusion is that shale gas production is a bigger, longer and more complicated enterprise than conventional drilling, and that methane leakage is much higher during production and processing:

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By Michael Conathan, CAP’s Director of Ocean Programs

The EPA’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gasses as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act survived the FY11 budget battle.  But climate hawks came out on the short end of another, lower-profile but no less vital, struggle related to the climate monitoring efforts of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

E&E’s Greenwire (subs. req’d) reported today on an overlooked rider to H.R. 1 and also included in the final deal on the full year continuing resolution that the House and Senate will vote on this week:

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The Republican slash-and-burn budget accepted by President Obama to avoid a government shutdown will put our fragile economic recovery in jeopardy. Moreover, the cuts are ideologically motivated, preserving massive subsidies for fossil fuel polluters while knocking out support for a cleaner, more innovative economic future. These cuts from President Obama’s budget request and funding prohibitions include:

– Environmental Protection Agency: $1.6 billion, including $50 million from science and technology programs, $110 million from environmental programs and management, $4 million from buildings, $10 million from Superfund, $797 million from the Clean and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds program, and $223 million in other state and tribal assistance grants

– High Speed Rail: $1.4 billion

– Title 17 Innovative Technology Loan Guarantee Program: $860 million (worth $18 billion in loans)

– Wildland Fire Programs: $735 million

– Defense Environmental Cleanup: $584 million

– Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy: $550 million

– National Science Foundation – Research: $444 million

– International Clean Technology and Strategic Climate Funds: $400 million

– Land and Water Conservation Fund: $318 million

– Department of Energy Office of Science: $252 million

– Department of Interior Climate Programs: $116 million

– Green jobs innovation fund: $40 million

– No funds are allowed to be used to establish the NOAA Climate Service.

High-speed rail strengthens cities, takes money from oil companies, and provides a strong base for high-paying unionized jobs. The staggering cuts in high-speed rail reflect the Tea Party agenda to keep America locked in fealty to big oil.

Due to the strength of the outcry over Republican efforts to deny global warming and block EPA regulation of carbon pollution, the EPA budget will not restrict protections against greenhouse pollution. Instead, the cuts to the EPA budget emphasize a major drawdown in the federal funding for state-level clean water projects, which threatens state efforts to limit drinking water pollution from natural gas fracking, industrial agriculture, and other polluters.

These cuts will not only ensure our continued dependence on dirty and dangerous fossil fuels, keeping gas prices high at the pump while poisoning our air, land, and water, but will also kill investment in the new technologies and new industries that could restore our economic health.

In 2010, all forms of renewable energy provided 8.2 quadrillion BTUs of primary energy production in the United States, a little less than 11% of our total production of 74.9 quads.  At the same time, nuclear power provided 8.4 quads, a little more than 11% of the total.

This is data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review for March 2011.  Given that renewable power continues to grow at a healthy clip, while nuclear power has stagnated in recent years, renewables may well deliver more total primary production than nuclear sometime this year.

Here’s some more detail on how energy production breaks down within the renewable resource category (via Cleantechnica):

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CAP’s Tom Kenworthy in a WonkRoom cross-post.

The budget agreement unveiled today includes a gift from the Grand Oil Party to its big energy benefactors:  It blocks the Interior Department from implementing a policy to protect pristine public lands from development. The rider to the FY2011 continuing resolution prevents Interior from using funds to implement the wild lands policy through the end of this fiscal year, which ends on September 30:

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CAP Oceans Director Mike Conathan and Lee Hamill in a Science Progress cross-post (with video)

Until March 17 when the freighter Oliva ran aground and spilled approximately 1,500 tons of fuel oil onto the shores of Nightingale Island, the Tristan da Cunha archipelago had been best known by devout birders as one of the world’s primo pristine aviaries. Among the rest of the world population, however, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who even knew of these islands’ existence. Now, they’ve become the latest example of the global impact of our fossil fuel economy.

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By Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Rob Bishop (R-UT)

The budget agreement unveiled today includes a gift from the Grand Oil Party to its big energy benefactors: it blocks the Interior Department from implementing a policy to protect pristine public lands from development. The rider to the FY2011 continuing resolution prevents Interior from using funds to implement the wild lands policy through the end of this fiscal year, which ends on September 30:

SEC. 1769. For the fiscal year ending September 30, 2011, none of the funds made available by this division or any other Act may be used to implement, administer, or enforce Secretarial Order No. 3310 issued by the Secretary of the Interior on December 22, 2010.

Secretarial Order No. 3310 is the wild lands policy announced late last year by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, which restored a decades-old practice of allowing interim protections for Bureau of Land Management areas prized for recreation, wildlife, and other non-commercial uses. In a controversial 2003 out-of-court settlement with the state of Utah, then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton had revoked BLM’s authority to protect lands with wilderness characteristics pending final congressional action on whether to include them in the nation’s wilderness system. That “no more wilderness” deal opened up millions of acres of western lands to potential development including oil and gas production.

The inclusion of this rider is a victory for western GOP lawmakers who have been pushing to open up more western lands to oil and gas development. These “lords of yesterday” have been led by House Natural Resource Committee’s Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) and Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA).

Google invests $168M in solar energy project

Google Inc. is investing $168 million in an alternative power project that aims to produce enough solar energy to light 140,000 homes.

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Former GOP Senator says “Don’t undercut Clean Air Act”

As a Republican U.S. senator from Minnesota, I worked to craft a bipartisan law to strengthen the Clean Air Act in 1990.

President George H.W. Bush led efforts to ensure a strong bill, and in the end 89 senators voted to pass it.

One of the central tenets of journalism, attributed to various sources, is “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”

That is why the media loves contrarians, say, environmentalists who like nuclear power or, these days, national Republicans who support the EPA and action on global warming.

A long time ago in a galaxy not so far far away the fact that a Republican Senator would support strengthening the Clean Air Act was strictly dog bites man.  Now it is news.  Well, it would be news, if we could find such a Senator.

The best we can do is a former Republican Senator, David Durenberger in a Star Tribune op-ed, “Don’t undercut Clean Air Act.”  Here’s the rest:

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