There’s a major new study out this week that provides more evidence to support questions about whether natural gas is really better than coal in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and dealing with the climate crisis.

I first saw a report of the study on Joe Romm’s excellent Climate Progress blog. Joe is calling this a “bombshell study,” and he explains:

How much methane leaks during the entire lifecycle of unconventional gas has emerged as a key question in the fracking debate.  Natural gas is mostly methane (CH4).  And methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than (CO2), which is released when any hydrocarbon, like natural gas, is burned.

Even without a high-leakage rate for shale gas, we know that “Absent a Serious Price for Global Warming Pollution, Natural Gas Is A Bridge To Nowhere.”

But the leakage rate does matter.  A major 2011 study by Tom Wigley of the Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) concluded:

The most important result, however, in accord with the above authors, is that, unless leakage rates for new methane can be kept below 2%, substituting gas for coal is not an effective means for reducing the magnitude of future climate change.

Now, as the journal Nature reports, we finally have some actual air sampling measurements, and they appear to confirm the higher estimates put forward by Cornell professor Robert Howarth:

When US government scientists began sampling the air from a tower north of Denver, Colorado, they expected urban smog — but not strong whiffs of what looked like natural gas. They eventually linked the mysterious pollution to a nearby natural-gas field, and their investigation has now produced the first hard evidence that the cleanest-burning fossil fuel might not be much better than coal when it comes to climate change.

Led by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Colorado, Boulder, the study estimates that natural-gas producers in an area known as the Denver-Julesburg Basin are losing about 4% of their gas to the atmosphere — not including additional losses in the pipeline and distribution system. This is more than double the official inventory, but roughly in line with estimates made in 2011 that have been challenged by industry. And because methane is some 25 times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, releases of that magnitude could effectively offset the environmental edge that natural gas is said to enjoy over other fossil fuels.

Methane is 25 times  more efficient than CO2 trapping heat over 100 year — but it is 100 times more efficient than CO2 trapping heat over two decades.

 

“If we want natural gas to be the cleanest fossil fuel source, methane emissions have to be reduced,” says Gabrielle Pétron, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA and at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and first author on the study, currently in press at the Journal of Geophysical Research. Emissions will vary depending on the site, but Pétron sees no reason to think that this particular basin is unique. “I think we seriously need to look at natural-gas operations on the national scale.”

Protesters stand in front of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia before an appearance by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson Friday Jan. 13, 2012.  Residents of the small northeastern Pennsylvania town of Dimock,  at the center of the political fight over natural gas drilling, joined environmental activists from elsewhere to rally Friday outside a conference on urban environmental issues.   About a dozen residents of Dimock have sued Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., claiming the energy company caused contamination of wells when it extracted natural gas using a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.  (AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma)

While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency steps in to protect water supplies for the people of the Pennsylvania town of Dimock from natural gas drilling, West Virginia lawmakers are right now debating the huge tax breaks that Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin wants to offer to try to lure a natural gas “cracker” plant to our state to further the Marcellus Shale drilling boom.

We’ve written before about questions regarding the governor’s proposal, and about his overstating the potential job impacts of this sort of a facility. It’s clear that West Virginia and surrounding states are going to fall all over themselves trying to come up with giveaways for the cracker (despite questions about whether such programs are built on a strong foundation to protect the public’s investment, as these reports from Good Jobs first suggest).

But how sustainable is the Marcellus Shale boom?

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.,  has told us:

We all know that Marcellus Shale could truly be a game-changer for our great state. We are literally sitting on top of tremendous potential with the Marcellus Shale, and we need to work together to chart a path forward in a safe and responsible way that allows us to produce energy right here in America and create good-paying jobs for hard-working Americans.

The potential of Marcellus is truly remarkable. From an energy-development standpoint, we are on the cusp of something that could help us reduce our dangerous dependence on foreign oil that threatens both our national security and our economic security. It’s so important that we develop our resources here at home, rather than continuing to rely on countries that don’t like us very much and wish to do us harm.

Still, serious questions are being asked — not by political leaders, of course — about all of this. Some of these are summarized clearly in a piece by Chris Nelder for the online magazine Slate:

The recent press about the potential of shale gas would have you believe that America is now sitting on a 100-year supply of natural gas. It’s a “game-changer.” A “golden age of gas” awaits, one in which the United States will be energy independent, even exporting gas to the rest of the world, upending our current energy-importing situation.

The data, however, tell a very different story. Between the demonstrable gas reserves, and the potential resources blared in the headlines, lies an enormous gulf of uncertainty.

We don’t yet know how much of the estimated gas resources will be economically recoverable or whether the projected production rates for some wells might be off by a factor of 10. We might have a 100-year supply of gas, or we might have an 11-year supply. We might realize economic and environmental benefits by transitioning trucking and coal-fired power generation to natural gas, or we might do so only to find ourselves out on a limb far more economically dangerous than the current peak and impending decline of world oil supply. We simply don’t know, and we may not know for years to come.

Wonder if Sen. Manchin will hold a field hearing to address these questions …

There’s an important new paper out from scientists at MIT, published in the inaugural issue of a new journal, Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy. The paper is called, “The Influence of Shale Gas on U.S. Energy and Environmental Policy,” (sign-in required) and it concludes:

… The gas “revolution” has important implications for the direction and intensity of national efforts to develop and deploy low-emission technologies, like CCS for coal and gas.

With nothing more than regulatory policies of the type and stringency simulated here there is no market for these technologies, and the shale gas reduces interest even further. Under more stringent GHG targets these technologies are needed, but the shale gas delays their market role by up to two decades. Thus in the shale boom there is the risk of stunting these programs altogether. While taking advantage of this gift in the short run, treating gas a “bridge” to a low-carbon future, it is crucial not to allow the greater ease of the near-term task to erode efforts to prepare a landing at the other end of the bridge.

As explained in a National Geographic online article:

A team of researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology used economic modeling to show that new abundant natural gas is likely to have a far more complex impact on the energy scene than is generally assumed. If climate policy continues to play out in the United States with a relatively weak set of measures to control emissions, the new gas source will lead to lower gas and electricity prices, and total energy use will be higher in 2050.

Absent the shale supply, the United States could have expected to see GHG emissions 2 percent below 2005 levels by 2050 under this relatively weak policy. But the lower gas prices under the current shale gas outlook will stimulate economic growth, leading GHG emissions to increase by 13 percent over 2005. And the shale gas will retard the growth of renewable energy’s share of electricity, and push off the development of carbon capture and storage technology, needed to meet more ambitious policy targets, by as long as two decades.

“Shale gas is a great advantage to the U.S. in the short term, for the next few decades,” said MIT economist Henry Jacoby, lead author of the new study. “But it is so attractive that it threatens other energy sources we ultimately will need.”

We’ve written before about the work of an Obama administration Department of Energy panel examining drilling for natural gas in shale formations (see here and here).  And over at the Coal Tattoo blog, I’ve covered the problems with the fact that West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection doesn’t really have staff with an expertise or focus on human health issues.

Now a new article in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives discusses the lack of input from public health professionals in studies and regulatory actions regarding shale-gas drilling:

We review the extent to which advisory committees formed in 2011 by the US Department of Energy and the states of Maryland and Pennsylvania contain individuals with expertise pertinent to human environmental public health. We also analyze the extent to which human health issues are of concern to the public by reviewing the presentations to the public meeting of the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board Natural Gas Subcommittee.

At a public hearing held by the President’s Natural Gas Subcommittee 62.7% of those not in favor of drilling mentioned health issues. Although public health is specified to be a concern in the executive orders forming these three advisory committees, we could identify no individuals with health expertise among the 52 members of the Pennsylvania Governor’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission; the Maryland Marcellus Shale Safe Drilling Initiative Advisory Commission; or the Secretary of Energy’s Natural Gas Subcommittee.

The conclusion:

Despite recognition of the environmental public health concerns related to drilling in the Marcellus Shale, neither state nor national advisory committees selected to respond to these concerns contained recognizable environmental public health expertise.