Ill-informed or cynical politicians may ridicule the threat of climate change, but wiser public servants, disciplined environmentalists, enlightened industry leaders and international groups are focused on the serious business of looking for solutions.
A case in point: a report released last week that reviews the development of so-called unconventional gas — natural gas trapped in layers of slate and other dense rock formations and methane gas trapped in seams of coal. These gases release far less destructive carbon when they burn than oil or coal. The report, “Golden Rules for a Golden Age of Gas,” deserves close examination.
It is the work of the respected International Energy Agency, an independent body created 37 years ago within the framework of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development based in Paris. The 150-page report is detailed and complex. It looks at geology, economics, sociology, chemistry and the mechanics of drilling and extraction, including the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.”
It places special emphasis on the crucial importance of preventing environmental damage to air, water and land and to protecting human health. Industry can keep those very real dangers to a bare minimum, the report stresses, with existing technologies that are relatively inexpensive.
But ensuring long-term safety requires muscular government regulations — some relevant new ones were finalized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in April — that are enforced fairly and rigorously.
The report’s “golden rules” urge “full transparency, measuring and monitoring of environmental impacts and engagement with local communities….” It specifies careful selection of drilling sites to “reduce the above-ground impacts … while minimizing any risk of earthquakes or of fluids passing between geological strata.”
The report calls for setting and meeting “high standards of well design, construction and integrity testing” to prevent leaks of chemicals and other pollutants into water supplies.
Industry also must provide communities with realistic advance projections of how much water will be needed for production, how much contaminated wastewater will be produced and how the latter will be controlled and disposed of.
The “Golden Rules” report estimates that meeting strict environmental standards for unconventional gas production would add only about 7 percent to the cost of one typical shale gas well. It also notes that gas producers almost always develop multiple wells on a single site, offering significant economies of scale and cost reductions for regulatory compliance.
By following the “golden rules,” the report maintains, industry would build a record of “environmental performance and public acceptance” that would earn it “a social license to operate.” That, in turn, would allow unconventional gas production and use to continue to expand, displacing oil and coal use that worsens climate change.
The specific cost estimates and the “golden rules” concept may be new, but the issues explored in the IEA report are not. Most were covered in a report and recommendations submitted by a shale-gas advisory committee to U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu last November.
In December, one of the committee members, Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, told EDF supporters that unconventional gas could serve as an intermediate step between dirty fossil fuels and clean renewable energy.
“This is a really important opportunity for our country,” he told them, “if we get it right. And that’s a big ‘if.’”
Krupp has it right.
