While the climate crisis is urgent and requires urgent, serious action, it is also a massively complex systems-of-systems challenge, with massively complicated and innumerous interactions, that will require decades (actually, centuries) of action to mitigate, adapt, and redress the impacts that we already face and will face for generations to come.
For the past decade, the world energy system has had numerous ‘revolutions’ underway.
A clean energy revolution (with expanded deployment of solar, wind, batteries, electric vehicles, and otherwise with plunging prices) offers real silver bb pathways for the climate crisis.
The “Fracking Revolution” radically transformed the fossil fuel landscape, massively boosting U.S. production of oil and fossil gas along with lowered prices, changed industrial manufacturing patterns, and shifts in international security. While there were many benefits from that Fracking, those have come at a high cost of significantly boosted methane emissions along with undermining the speed of renewable energy deployment (due to entrenched political and economic interests and falsely perceived (due to excluding externalities) low costs).
To take serious climate action, we must address fracking: the methane leakages are too serious; the falsely low prices undermine moves to clean energy; and, even with zero methane leakages, fossil gas still emits significant carbon when burned (even if 50% of coal’s emissions) .
However, moves to Act On Climate ( whether a Green New Deal, moving to a Virginia Clean Economy, or …) should recognize the complexity of the energy system, the reality of a complex system of system, and the need for charting pathways that do not create highly dangerous shocks that could undermine the potential for moving to a prosperous, climate friendly society.
Repeated calls for any sort of immediate end to fracking seem to ignore this. We can’t just ban it without sending shockwaves through the energy system and creating not just economic risks and repercussions.
Within the United States, fracked fossil fuels play a serious role in oil and fossil gas production.
U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that in 2019, U.S. dry shale gas production was about 25.28 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), and equal to about 75% of total U.S. dry natural gas production in 2019
If there were a stroke of a pen to “ban fracking”, there would be massive impacts through the economy — rapid, lasting, and utterly unnecessary damages.
Yet, to be quite clear, Frack Fracking: while securing, traditional energy resiliency and economic concepts, fracking creates too many risks and damages to be expanded or even maintained at continued levels. In other words, Fracking has been a miracle at too high a cost.
We must chart and navigate a course to drive down existing fracking’s negative externalities while deploying clean economy elements to lower, with every passing day, our need to rely on fracked oil and fracked fossil gas.
A basic policy portfolio
- Methane leakage detection, control regulation, and enforcement of regulation — from the fracked well to the end usage.
- Reducing leakage means more fossil gas being used, rather than simply wasted.
- Pricing GHG emissions (not just carbon — also methane, super GHGs, etc …)
- to further incentivize both reduced leakage and accelerate moves to clean economy options.
- Invest in rapid deployment of clean economy options
- to lower the need for fracked fossil fuels with every passing moment.
With these three elements, working together, the climate impacts of fracking would fall dramatically and rapidly. And, we might be able to (essentially) eliminate fracking from the US energy system over roughly the coming 10-15 years while boosting economic performance, creating jobs, enhancing energy resiliency, and reducing US and global emissions.
In other words, Frack Fracking even though we shouldn’t ban it outright.