A new report by green energy groups once again confirms hydraulic fracturing for natural gas has done more to cut U.S. carbon dioxide emissions than all of President Barack Obama’s global warming regulatory schemes.
The Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) and Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) released their annual energy factbook, and found cheap natural gas has been a major driver of U.S. emissions reductions in recent years.
“Unprecedented levels of natural gas supply pushed down power prices, putting the country in a more internationally competitive position while also prompting coal-to-gas switching that slashed US carbon emissions,” the group’s report reads.
Natural gas prices have dropped significantly in recent years due to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — a process involving injecting water, sand and some chemicals deep underground to break up shale formations and release previously unrecoverable hydrocarbons.
Environmentalists have derided fracking as environmentally unfriendly and contributing to global warming. What’s ironic, however, is switching from coal-fired electricity to natural gas power has caused CO2 emissions to drop, which is exactly what environmentalists say is needed to fight global warming.
“U.S. power sector CO2 emissions fell to their lowest annual level since the mid-1990s,” according to the report.
“As natural gas prices sank to their lowest levels since 1999 and natural gas plants displaced generation previously provided by retiring coal plants, natural gas consumption in the power sector exceeded 10 [quadrillion BTUs] for the first time ever, surpassing 2012’s high-water mark of 9.8quads,” the report continues.
While green energy and fuel and energy efficiency standards have had some impact on emissions, those are negligible compared to what natural gas has done to bring emissions down. Though, the report does applaud Obama’s issuing of new global warming regulations targeting coal plants.
But BCSE and BNEF aren’t the first groups to report on how effective cheap natural gas has been at reducing CO2 emissions. A study by the conservative Manhattan Institute last year found fracking is responsible for the lion’s share of emissions reductions since 2008.
The Manhattan Institute reported in November natural gas is responsible for nearly 20 percent of U.S. emissions cuts, while solar power was only responsible for 1 percent.
Even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitted fracking was a main reason for falling emissions as opposed to green energy policies.
“A key development since AR4 is the rapid deployment of hydraulic‐fracturing and horizontal‐drilling technologies, which has increased and diversified the gas supply and allowed for a more extensive switching of power and heat production from coal to gas … this is an important reason for a reduction of GHG emissions in the United States,” the IPCC stated in its 2013 report.
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