ENVIRONMENTAL CLAIMS JOURNAL 2017, VOL. 29, NO. 4, 253-268 i Routledge https://doi.org/10.1080/10406026.2017.1372392 a Taylor & Francis Group
®, Check for updates. Fracking in New York State: Weighing Risks and Benefits
Robert A. Michaels, PhD, CEP? and Randy W. Simon, PhD>
RAM TRAC Corporation Schenectady; ’Simon Technology Services Schenectady
ABSTRACT
The controversial decision to ban fracking in New York State, most notably in the Marcellus Shale formation, was informed by global, national, state, and local issues that have general relevance. Without prejudging whether fracking can be undertaken safely, we discuss the science of fracking, focusing primarily on widely reported public health and environmental risks, especially those associated with greenhouse gas emissions. Based upon such concerns, any reconsideration of the fracking ban in New York should include, at a minimum, consideration of imposing public and environmental health risk management requirements as proven feasible and successful via industry experience. Fracking should be viewed as one choice among alternative energy strategies, all of which pose risks, rather than simplistically classified as either safe or unsafe. Assuming that our energy needs will continue to grow, our goal should be to guide the evolution of our energy portfolio toward sustainable sources as they emerge as feasible energy alternatives.
Introduction
“Fracking” and “hydrofracking;” both short for “hydrofracturing,” enables drillers to extract gas and oil from deposits, known as “shale plays” (Malakoff 2014a). One such shale play is the vast Marcellus Shale located in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. As previously reported (Michaels and Simon 2013)', New York State long has grappled with the question of whether, and under what conditions, fracking might be permitted. The grappling ended in June 2015 when New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo formalized a temporary ban on high-volume hydraulic fracturing in the State, in part on the strength of a long-awaited report by the New York State Department of Health issued in December 2014 (NYS DOH 2014). The matter is not completely settled, inasmuch as New York might reconsider the decision as fracking technology evolves, and if the will and the means are found to regulate it to assure public and environmental health safety (Javaid 2016).
CONTACT Robert A. Michaels, PhD, CEP &) ram@ramtrac.com €) RAM TRAC Corporation Schenectady, NY.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/becj.
' Portions of this article were published previously: Michaels, Robert A. and Randy W. Simon. Fracking in New York State: Weighing risks and benefits. Albany, New York State Bar Association, NYSBA Municipal Lawyer, 27(3):12-16, Fall 2013.
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The Southern Tier and Western New York State include a high proportion of economically depressed areas that might benefit from fracking if done correctly (Christopherson 2011; Kurkoski 2012). Exploitation of Marcellus Shale gas deposits in Pennsylvania and beyond already has nurtured a profitable industry. The costs, however, have included adverse impacts on public and environmental health (below), and on the social fabric and economic life of affected communities. Alarmists prejudge these adverse impacts as being intrinsic to fracking, and therefore inevitable, based upon past experience. We believe that a more evenhanded view is that early phases of implementation in many industries, such as aviation, reveal problems that often are mitigated with further development.
The magnitude of gas reserves in the Marcellus and other shale formations is controversial. Estimates made at the beginning of the shale boom recently have come down substantially. Nonetheless, the era of large-scale exploitation of this resource is well underway, and has brought the issues of health and environmental impacts of fracking to the forefront. Rapid expansion of fracking technology adds urgency to issues raised by its use.
Without prejudging whether fracking can be undertaken safely, we discuss the science of fracking, and explore whether it can be undertaken with minimal negative consequences. We emphasize issues that are specifically related to fracking, such as greenhouse gas release, rather than issues that are generically related to industrial development, such as adverse environmental effects of clearing space in forestland. Broader issues of the impact and wisdom of the continued use of fossil fuels are beyond the focus of this article.
Background
The role of natural gas in the overall U.S. and global energy portfolio has grown dramatically because of the emergence of shale gas as an economical resource for large-scale production. Shale gas is natural gas that is trapped within formations of shales, which are fine-grained sedimentary rocks that can contain large amounts of gas and oil. The existence of extensive deposits of shale gas has been known for decades, but extracting it was uneconomical until development of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies in the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed, shale gas accounted for only 1.6 percent of US. natural gas production in 2000 (Wang and Krupnick, 2013). Development of new technologies under government-sponsored programs and a successful demonstration project in the Barnett Shale in north Texas together fueled a boom in shale oil production around the world. In the United States, the Marcellus Formation, spanning much of the Appalachian Basin, propelled a major expansion of the USS. gas industry starting in 2008. By 2010, shale gas accounted for more than 20 percent of U.S. natural gas production and, by the end of 2011, it reached 34 percent (US EIA 2013a). This increasing trend in shale contribution to total natural gas production in the United States roughly tracks the
increasing fraction of domestic (marketed) natural gas production that is attributed to fracking (Fig. 1, US EIA 2016).
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Marketed natural gas production in the United States (2000-2015) Lom billion cubic feet per day ela 90 80 70 60 from hydraulically 50 fractured wells (67% in 2015) 40 30 20 from nonhydraulically 40 fractured wells (33% in 2015) it) 2000 2003 2006 2009 2012 2015
Figure 1. Increasing fraction of U.S. natural gas produced via fracking, 2000-2015, Source: US EIA. Hydraulically fractured wells provide two-thirds of U.S. natural gas production. Washington, D.C.; U.S. Energy Information Agency, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=26112, May 5, 2016.
The term “hydrofracking” denotes forceful injection of fluid at high temperature and pressure to break up (“fracture”) deep bedrock, and thereby extract trapped natural gas. The term is a euphemism, because “hydro” implies misleadingly that the injected fluid is just water. Actually it is a mixture of water (98-99.5 %) and a proprietary cocktail of organic and inorganic additives including sand and fluids (0.5-2.0 %): acids to improve gas flow, biocides to prevent clogging, corrosion and scale inhibitors to prevent leaks, gels or gums to add viscosity, and friction reducers to maintain pressure from surface pumps to the furthest reaches of the wells (Clark et al. 2012). These fluids may include toxic chemicals that are linked to cancer and other adverse health and environmental effects (NYS DEC 2015, US EPA 2013). The specific composition of fluids is unknown, however, because the gas drilling industry has guarded the composition of fracking fluids.
New technologies now enable horizontal drilling in all radial directions, like spokes of a bicycle wheel, from the base of a vertical shaft, producing a shaped array of horizontal shafts miles beneath groundwater aquifers to deliver fracking fluids explosively. The same shafts then collect natural gas from all directions in an area of approximately 640 acres (Kurkoski 2012) or more if horizontal shafts extend up to several kilometers (Ellsworth 2013), delivering it to the central vertical shaft that conveys gas upward, through aquifers, to the surface. In a perfect world, natural gas is collected for sale, and toxic fracking fluids are recycled. Residual gas and fracking fluids remain in the fractured bedrock, but are safely sequestered miles beneath the surface, never to pollute air, surface soil, or water. The real world and real bedrock, however, are imperfect.
Natural gas and fracking fluids must be contained reliably within lined well shafts, from which leakage of gas and fracking fluids otherwise can occur if containment is inadequate. Leakage, especially near the surface, can contaminate groundwater,
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surface water, surface soils, and air. If recovered fracking fluids are stored in open lagoons, they can leach into soils and groundwater and vaporize into air. Contaminated groundwater or surface water used for residential or institutional drinking supplies also can pose risks to public health (NYS DEC 2015; US EPA 2013).
In Pennsylvania, some homes were reported to have gas emanating from water faucets, causing odors and posing risks of fire and even explosion, though the linkage to fracking has been difficult to verify (NYS DEC 2015; Stokstad 2014). Clearing spaces in Pennsylvania's Allegheny National Forest for well pads, roads, and pipeline construction, together with increased traffic associated with unconventional oil and gas development in the Marcellus and Utica Shale formations, recently has been implicated in increasing propagules of harmful invasive plants imported with construction gravel and sand (Barlow et al. 2017).
Oil and gas drilling also has been associated with seismic risks, albeit with some degree of controversy. Two deadly earthquakes in Italy might be attributable to drilling, to an increased rate of oil extraction, or to injection of wastewater (Cartlidge 2014). Recent dramatic increases in seismicity in Oklahoma, however, have been associated causally and definitively with fracking, most notably with injection of fracking wastewater (US GS 2015). Oklahoma had a total of less than 100 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or more between 1970 and 1999. The state measured more than 900 of them in 2015 alone, before the collapse in oil prices led to steep declines in wastewater injection.
Global issues
Global risks posed by fracking primarily have been associated with greenhouse gas emissions. Human activities that release these gases are known to drive climate change, sea level elevation, flooding, and moisture-associated public health effects such as emerging fungal risks (Michaels 2017; Michaels 2014). The primary global issue, therefore, is whether fracking will generate more planetary greenhouse warming than will its energy alternatives. Greenhouse gas generation from nuclear power, for example, is virtually nonexistent, and the potential for harnessing clean energy from sustainable solar, geothermal, wind, tidal, and other renewable sources is enormous. The current political and economic environment, however, is hostile to nuclear power; and renewables, for a combination of technical and economic reasons, are not in a position to provide quickly for the majority of our energy needs. Thus, for a substantial period of time, we must continue to rely heavily upon fossil fuels.
Natural gas is cleaner to burn than coal, oil, or gasoline. Coal is used to generate the largest fraction of the world’s electricity (about 40 %), and likewise constitutes the largest man-made source of greenhouse gas emissions. Replacement of coal plants by natural gas plants would result in a reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from those plants by 30-50 percent, and virtually eliminate emissions of mercury and other toxic metals, nitrogen oxides, and acid gases such as sulfates that contribute to acid rain (US EIA 2013b). Replacing gasoline or diesel fuel with
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natural gas in vehicles would yield a 10-30 percent reduction in CO, emissions (US EIA 2013b). Clearly, if natural gas can be extracted without negative consequences, its use as a replacement for other fossil fuels would benefit public health and the environment, and would be advantageous to use, especially where no viable nonfossil fuel replacement is available.
The salient question, therefore, is whether substitution of fracking-derived natural gas for coal and oil in power generation, and for oil in automotive transportation, will reduce substantially the adverse climate effects of greenhouse gas emissions (Kintisch 2014). Greenhouse gases are released not only from burning natural gas, but also from natural gas leakage during production. Most of this leaked (“fugitive”) gas is methane, the primary constituent of natural gas. If methane leakage from fracking is excessive, no net greenhouse benefit would accrue. Unfortunately, investigators so far have failed to reach consensus on either the magnitude of the methane release problem or its variation among gas fields and among well operators. Estimates of methane leakage range from as little as 1 percent to as much as 10 percent of the amount being extracted from natural gas wells.”
Methane release from fracking contributes to total release of methane and, more broadly, to total release of greenhouse gases. Together, human emissions of CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gases “now overwhelm the influence of natural drivers on the external forcing of the earth’s climate” (US GCRP 2017, page 187). Methane is a relatively short-lived but potent greenhouse gas, whereas CO; is relatively long-lived. Reduction of short-lived potent greenhouse gases on an accelerated time scale may buy time with respect to long-lived greenhouse gases, most notably CO, (Shoemaker et al. 2013).
In 2009, with fracking on the rise but the U.S. economy in recession, methane constituted only a small fraction of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (US EIA 2011a). Even when adjusted upward to equivalent CO, to account for methane’s greater greenhouse warming potency, methane constituted only 11.1 percent of the total. However, this value cannot and should not be accepted uncritically. Data on methane leakage from fracking are incomplete and variable. Fugitive methane emissions from natural gas extraction, processing, and pipelines may be difficult to assess, and finding the leaks may be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
The preponderance of greenhouse gas effects is exerted by CO2, which accounted for 81.5 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2009, assuming that EIA’s methane leakage value is correct. The EIA reported that, in early 2012, CO emissions reached a 20-year minimum (Fig. 2 and Carey 2012), constituting approximately 70 percent of CO, emission reductions targeted by the Kyoto Protocol relative to future forecasts that were made in 1998. This reduction of carbon
2 Argonne National Laboratory investigators estimated methane leakage at 2.0 percent over the life cycle of the well, and at 1.2 percent for drilling, completion, and production activities. Prior to large-scale adoption of fracking, USEPA estimated leakage at 1.4 percent over the life cycle, and at 0.4 percent for drilling, completion, and production. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (US NOAA) reported methane leakage rates of 4 percent at a shale gas field near Denver (Pétron et al. 2012), and of nearly 9 percent in the Uinta Basin in Utah (Tollefson 2013, page 493).
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)
LJ,
‘million metne tons. el 6,200
6,000 5,800 5,600 5,400 5,200 5,000
u 0
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Figure 2. U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, 2005-2015, Source: US EIA. U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in 2015 are 12 percent below their 2005 levels. Washington, D.C.; U.S. Energy Information Agency, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=26152, March 31, 2011.
emissions relating to energy consumption EIA attributed to increased shale gas production, predominantly accomplished via fracking. The implication is that increased methane emission due to fracking (Fig. 3) may be a price of decreasing CO, emissions, together producing net benefit regarding global climate change.
A different picture, however, emerges from extensive modeling of climate impacts that would be exerted by large-scale replacement of coal with natural gas obtained via fracking. The modeling assumes a variety of methane release rates. Models incorporating high methane release rates predict a greater rise in global temperatures than if coal burning continued. That is, methane leakage would contribute more to global warming than the gases that would have been emitted by burning coal. Likewise, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that methane leakage rates would have to be below 1.6 percent for natural gas-powered cars to exert less effect on climate change than cars running on gasoline (Alvarez et al. 2012).
million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent 200
150 100
50 Mobile sources petroleum systems Stationary combustion 0 1990 1995 2000 2005 2009
Figure 3. U.S. methane emissions from energy sources, 1990-2009, Source: US EIA. Emissions of greenhouse gases in the U.S. Washington, D.C.; U.S. Energy Information Agency, http://www. eia.gov/environment/emissions/ghg_report/ghg_overview.cfm, March 31, 2011.
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A study by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF; Allen et al. 2013), published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, quantified methane leakage at 190 on-shore natural gas sites. That study concluded that extracting gas via fracking, when done properly, releases less methane than previously thought: only one-percent leakage was reported. These results, however, do not necessarily document what is happening at the preponderance of fracking sites, as other studies have found dramatically higher methane leakage levels (Allen et al. 2013). Nonetheless, the EDF results do demonstrate that the fracking industry in principle can reduce methane leakage to a very low level, if provided with economic and regulatory incentives to do so. Economic incentives also can include finding economically viable uses for recovered methane, such as use as an inexpensive feedstock for synthesis of lucrative chemical industry products (Service 2014).
Transitions from mature older technologies to emerging new technologies often are characterized by relatively high environmental and public health impacts of the emerging technology, which may abate as the technology matures. Given the urgent time constraints for controlling global climate change, this transition in the case of fracking must be controlled more effectively than has been achieved during previous technology transitions. One approach that could help to accomplish this goal would be to require the gas industry to continue quantifying methane leakage from shale wells, and to develop and implement a program to hold fugitive methane to acceptably (and sustainably) low emission rates.
All methods of natural gas extraction release methane into the atmosphere. This likewise is true of coal mining and other fossil fuel extraction activities. If shale gas is to continue to be a major source of energy, it must be extracted in a manner that substantially retains the environmental benefits of natural gas, and thereby mitigates the impacts of extracting and using coal and oil. According to Brandt et al. (2014), methane leaks from many sources, and “hydraulic fracturing for natural gas is unlikely to be a dominant contributor to total emissions.” On the other hand, recent data indicate that methane emissions in the United States have increased by 30 percent over the past decade. The burgeoning use of fracking during that period is highly suggestive of a linkage (Turner et al. 2016a). A large increase in U.S. methane emissions over the past decade has been inferred from satellite data and surface observations (Turner et al. 2016b). Accordingly, responsible exploitation of shale formations must be coupled with responsible regulation of fracking, and with regulation of fugitive methane in quantitative detail.
U.S. national issues
The main national issue relating to fracking is the need to develop energy selfsufficiency and strategic independence from uncertain foreign energy sources. Our energy portfolio of domestic resources currently is dominated by gas, petroleum, and coal. These sources together account for nearly 80 percent of domestic energy production (US EIA 2017). The abundance of coal and its resultant low price historically provided a strong economic incentive for continued use despite negative
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environmental and health consequences. In recent years, however, fracking has reduced the price of natural gas, and coal has become progressively less attractive economically. As a result, reliance on gas has overtaken reliance on coal for energy in New York State (Nearing 2013) as well as nationally. Coal is less versatile than natural gas, for example as shown by unsuccessful efforts to convert it to a vehicle fuel. These factors in turn have prolonged U.S. dependency on foreign oil. Thus, the United States may have a strong national interest in promoting use of more-versatile natural gas, even if obtained from environmentally costly fracking.
The costs of relying upon foreign energy sources include political, economic, and military costs. These considerations may have led to a hands-off national policy on fracking, except that in 2014 the U.S. Department of the Interior opened Federal lands to oil sand exploitation (Malakoff 2014b) and, in March 2015, issued a final rule regulating fracking for oil and gas on Federal and Indian Lands (US DOI 2015). Further, the USEPA issued a series of reports of the Agency’s long-term assessment of potential impacts of fracking on drinking water supplies. In December 2012 and October 2013, EPA released progress reports (US EPA 2013; US EPA 2012); in June 2015, the Agency released an external review draft (US EPA 2015); and in December 2016, it issued the final report (US EPA 2016).
Based in part on these reports, the Obama Administration sought to restore Federal oversight even in the face of industry opposition. President Obama's Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz, a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology physics professor, advocated accelerating replacement of oil and coal with natural gas (Malakoff 2013). Much if not most of that natural gas would be obtained via fracking. The Obama Administration also recognized the need to commit the United States to climate change mitigation strategies codified in the Paris Accord (see, most notably, Obama 2017). The Paris Accord recognizes the need to substitute gas for coal and oil, at least until more green alternatives reach technical and economic feasibility.
In contrast, the Trump Administration has opposed regulatory stringency. Indeed, in 2017, the President announced withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Accord, which Congress has not yet ratified. With regard to fracking, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt ordered a stay of portions of an Obama-era rule intended to curb methane emissions from new oil and gas infrastructure. This stay was challenged successfully in Clean Air Council et al. vs. Pruitt et al. (Case Number 17-1145; Rodriguez 2017), resulting in a Panel of the DC Circuit Court lifting EPA’s stay in July. On August 10, 2017, the DC Circuit Court rejected a request by states and industry groups to reconsider the adverse July panel ruling.
New York State issues
In light of impending disengagement of the United States from the Paris Accord, several governors have expressed their intent to commit their states to its goals (see, for example, Frazee and Berndtson 2017). One of these is Jerry Brown, Governor of California, which has the eighth largest economy in the world. Others announcing the intent to comply include the states of Washington and New York, and more
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conservative states also have been reported likely to comply based upon economic incentives.
New York State long has grappled with the question of whether, and under what conditions, fracking might be permitted (NYS DEC 2015; US EPA 2013). The grappling ended in June 2015, when Governor Andrew Cuomo formalized a temporary ban on high-volume hydraulic fracturing in New York State. New York nonetheless might reconsider the decision as fracking technology evolves. Indeed, one emerging variation on high-volume hydraulic fracturing already is under consideration: gelled propane fracking, in which propane gas suspended in a gel is used in place of water (Giardin 2015).
Based on the reports of environmental and public health concerns from other states, New York, if it were to revisit its fracking decision, should consider, at a minimum, imposing conditions on fracking. California, for example, has adopted this approach. In California, fracking typically involves pressurizing conventional oil and gas deposits constrained by a discrete domed cap rock formation (CA DOC 2016). The process is relatively benign because pressures are limited to avoid fracturing the cap rock dome. Regulation of the process is relatively less necessary because frackers are motivated to avoid overpressurizing, which would cause rapid loss of their confined resource. The lineal extent of cap-confined conventional oil and gas fields also is relatively short, so that fracking in California tends to use far less fluid to fracture within a narrow vertical band along a well, generally starting several thousand feet underground, with fractures extending only tens to hundreds of feet away from the well.
These mitigating conditions in California generally are inapplicable to New York, and more broadly to the “unconventional” Marcellus Shale, which is unconfined by a domed cap rock formation. Nonetheless, New York could regulate fracking in a manner compatible with its geological circumstances. New York might consider providing incentives for the oil and gas industry to prevent accidents by establishing a fracking “superfund” to cover damage, if it occurs*. More generally, fracking would have to be regulated like any technology that potentially poses significant public health and environmental risks. Drillers should be required to avoid sensitive locations such as drinking-water reservoirs, and avoid damaged bedrock, such as previously drilled areas. They should be required to disclose the composition of fracking fluids that will be used, thereby assuring that detected contamination patterns can be matched to their source(s). Permits should specify use of Best Management Practices (BMPs) and Best Available Control Technology (BACT). BMPs and BACT for fracking should include monitoring equipment capable of detecting contaminant releases before they become unmanageable, which could include double-hull piping to detect leaks in the inner tube that would be contained by, and detected within, the outer tube pending repair or replacement. The regulatory
3 Superfund represents a form of industry-funded public insurance, whereas the specialty insurance market also offers private insurance to the energy sector: owners and contractors for pollution releases during fracking, with optional coverage for completed operations. A private insurance requirement would constitute another avenue for management of long-term risks.
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package also should prohibit open, unlined lagoons, instead requiring closed containers for storing, recycling, and transporting fracking fluids.
Local issues
As have several states, many communities have committed to adhering to the goals of the Paris Accord, including expressions of support by at least 87 mayors (Frazee and Berndtson 2017). Such general support for Paris Accord goals, however, often does not translate into support for local fracking. At the local level, communities must balance between competing collective versus individual interests. Individuals may have an interest in selling mineral rights or rights-of-way to gas drillers. Communities, in contrast, typically have an interest in controlling the pace and direction of development, and preventing environmental and public health problems.
As an illustrative example of the potential conflict of community vs. individual interests involving fracking, Broome County, New York, until 2012, had a law enabling the County to confiscate mineral rights of tax-foreclosed properties’. Under leadership of Legislator Julia A. Lewis, this provision was repealed, enabling any purchaser of tax-foreclosed properties in Broome County to reap the benefit of mineral ownership. Individual purchasers, therefore, may benefit economically from fracking if, in the future, the decision to ban it ultimately is reversed by New York State (Bean 2017).
Mechanisms for regional coordination of communities have been developed, for example, to select and permit a deep geological repository for long-term storage of low-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants (Paulson 2009). As may eventually be the case with fracking wastes, however, the problem of long-term storage of so-called “rad-wastes” remains a major obstacle to siting nuclear power plants, notwithstanding their negligible greenhouse gas emissions and global climate impact. For example, the proposed Yucca Mountain repository in a Nevada salt dome was considered and litigated for decades, and is still not built. A case study of cumulative impacts of fracking on brook trout in a Marcellus Shale watershed further illustrates trade-offs between energy development and the benefits provided by natural ecosystems (Smith et al. 2012).
Evolution of energy sources
Exploitation of most if not all energy sources poses risks to public health and the environment. Like the proverbial lunch, ultimately it is not free. This raises the question of whether our society should exploit energy sources even though doing so poses risks. Modern societies can and must increase their energy efficiencies in order to reduce demand, but ultimately they still depend upon having access to substantial supplies of energy. The bottom line is that societies must manage the
4 Broome County, New York Code: § 222-7. Mineral and gas rights. All County-owned property which exceeds five acres shall be sold subject to the retention of subsurface mineral and gas rights by the County except in the case of an approved hardship sellback on foreclosed property pursuant to § 222-13.
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risks inherent in meeting their needs in order to keep those risks within acceptable limits.
Risk management includes evaluating fracking as a choice among alternative energy strategies, rather than simplistically viewing fracking as either safe or unsafe. Alternatives such as expanded coal mining and drilling for undersea oil have serious potential consequences. New fossil energy sources tend to be the most difficult to reach, the most expensive to extract, and the most onerous for public health and the environment; indeed, this explains in part why their exploitation, and the enabling technologies, are relatively recent developments. The “ecological footprint” of an average barrel of oil accordingly has increased since 1950, and will continue to increase (Davidson and Andrews 2013). For example, greenhouse gas emissions released in extracting a barrel of oil from newly exploited oil sands in Alberta, Canada were 23 times greater than emissions from extracting an Alberta barrel of oil via conventional drilling (Davidson and Andrews 2013). Thus, as the most accessible traditional sources of fossil energy become progressively more difficult to reach, and therefore more environmentally costly to extract, a decision to refrain from exploiting our abundant shale gas reserves conceivably could have a net negative environmental impact.
Nor will renewable resources provide a timely alternative to fracking — unless the pace of renewable resource development accelerates dramatically, even beyond its remarkable growth rate in recent years. Currently, exclusive reliance upon renewable resources remains impractical to some extent because of the relative immaturity of renewable energy technologies, but primarily because of their intrinsic properties. The major renewable technologies, specifically wind and solar, deliver power only intermittently. Therefore they cannot fully meet the base power needs of the grid, and will remain insufficient pending availability of a viable energy storage technology or, alternatively, development ofa sufficiently interconnected smart grid that can shuttle power effectively to where it is needed on demand. Both of these approaches are progressing steadily, but even under the most optimistic scenario, a grid fully dominated by renewables is still decades away.
China and India have huge populations, and are major users of coal. Green energy use, however, has increased in China and India, and coal use has begun to decline in both countries as a result of more aggressive environmental policies (Dasgupta 2016). Even the most optimistic studies previously had suggested that complete transition to renewable energy would take 20-30 years (Jacobson and Delucchi 2011), and that coal would remain the major contributor to total carbon emissions. Over that period, if coal use had continued as planned, the damage to public health and the environment caused by, for example, the originally planned 1,000 or more additional coal burning plants (many in China; Carrington 2012) might well have been overwhelming. However, the amount of new coal power under construction around the world fell by 62 percent from 2015 to 2016, and the number of planned new coal plants dropped by nearly 50 percent between 2016 and 2017. Work has been frozen at hundreds of sites in China and India and, in January 2017, China halted work on a further 100 coal-fired projects. In addition, a record amount of coal power station capacity was retired globally in 2016 (Vaughn 2017). These trends are continuing,
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together suggesting that the major threat of the increasing use of coal may be abating.
Human societies will continue to increase their use of energy as global population grows and standards of living improve. We must evolve, therefore, toward efficiency, moderation, and adoption of a sustainable “portfolio” of energy sources. We must invest heavily in renewable energy sources so they eventually will suffice for our energy needs. At best, therefore, natural gas displacement of other fossil fuels, most notably coal, may represent a bridge, less optimistically a crutch (McNutt 2013), taking us from our near-term energy needs to our long-term goal of meeting those needs sustainably. If we fail to do this in a proactive and timely manner - that is, immediately — natural gas will be “a bridge too far; and our options for addressing global climate change will close quickly and irrevocably (Stocker 2013). All of this means, most essentially, that continued development of depletable, non-renewable, non-sustainable energy sources such as natural gas from fracking requires adoption of the safest practices now, and a firm exit strategy that will assure a sustainable future. As Brandt et al. (2014) concluded: “If natural gas is to be a ‘bridge’ to a more sustainable energy future, it is a bridge that must be traversed carefully: Diligence will be required to ensure that leakage rates are low enough to achieve sustainability goals.”
Conclusion
The controversial decision to ban fracking in New York State, most notably in the Marcellus Shale formation, was informed by global, national, state, and local issues that have general relevance. Fracking has been linked to widely reported public health and environmental risks. Global risks primarily have been associated with greenhouse gas emissions because they drive climate change, sea level elevation, flooding, and moisture-associated public health effects such as emerging fungal risks. These risks have unified nations around the world in efforts to manage them, codified as the Paris Accord. Even as the United States belatedly has announced its departure from the Accord, national progress toward its goals may be sustained by economic realities, and by decisions at the state and local levels to adhere to the global imperatives set forth as the Paris Accord.
Based upon such concerns, any potential reconsideration of the fracking ban in New York State should include, at a minimum, consideration of imposing stringent risk management requirements that have been proven feasible via industry experience in multiple states. Fracking should be viewed as one choice among alternative energy strategies, all of which pose risks, rather than simplistically as either safe or unsafe. Assuming that our energy needs will continue to grow, our goal should be to guide the evolution of our energy portfolio toward sustainable sources as they emerge as technically and economically feasible alternatives.
About the authors
Robert A. Michaels (ram@ramtrac.com) is an environmental toxicologist consulting in health risk assessment and management. He has served numerous corporations, the U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and the Natural Resources Defense Council
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(NRDC). He chaired the State of Maine Scientific Advisory Panel and the Certification Review Board of the Academy of Board Certified Environmental Professionals. Dr. Michaels has been Secretary of the NFPA Committee on Classification and Properties of Hazardous Chemicals, Board Member of the National Association of Environmental Professionals, and Member of the Editorial Advisory Boards of Springer-Verlag and Cambridge University Press journals. He earned his doctorate at SUNY at Stony Brook in 1979. Randy W. Simon (randy@simontechservices.com) is a physicist with over 30 years of experience in renewable energy technology, materials research, superconductor applications, and a variety of other technical and management areas. He has been an officer of a publicly traded Silicon Valley company, worked in government laboratories, the aerospace industry, and at university research institutions. He holds a PhD in physics from UCLA. Dr. Simon has authored numerous technical papers, magazine articles, energy policy documents, online articles and blogs, radio scripts, and a book, and holds seven patents. He hosts a daily radio segment on environmental matters on a regional National Public Radio (NPR) station. He also composes, arranges, and produces jazz music.
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Publication citation
Michaels, RA; and Randy W. Simon. Fracking in New York State: weighing risks and benefits. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, Environmental Claims Journal, 29(4), 253-68, Fall 2017; doi 10.1080/10406026.2017.1372392; published online 27 November 2017;