Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
How the recession reshaped U.S. electricity production
Electricity generation in the United States fell 4.1 percent in 2009, the biggest drop in 60 years, according to a new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The survey offers a snapshot of the impact the recession had on energy markets and shifts in the power supply as coal costs rose and natural gas prices plummeted. Industrial demand for electricity, for instance, dropped by 9.1 percent in 2009 to the lowest level in 22 years.
Expectations that Congress would pass legislation to impose a cap on greenhouse gas emissions may have also encouraged a move away from carbon-intensive electricity production, the report stated.
Electricity produced from coal-fired power plants fell by 11.6 percent in 2009 from the previous year while generation from natural gas increased by 4.3 percent, according to the report.
“In 2009, annual average natural gas wellhead prices reached their lowest level in seven years,” the report said. “Increased supply due to the availability of shale gas, coupled with mild winter temperatures and higher production, and storage levels, and significant expansions of pipelines capacity also worked to put downward pressure on natural gas prices.”
As Southeastern states switched to natural gas, coal’s share of the nation’s electricity production fell to its lowest level since 1978.
The Green Gauge: Shale developers hit speed bumps
Development of shale gas has attracted myriad fans and enemies in recent months: those who cheer a source of natural gas on the home turf of the U.S. and environmentalists who warn the process to release the gas underground risks contaminating drinking water.
This month, Chesapeake Energy, Denbury Resources and Southwest Energy Co. each made headlines for environmental mishaps, and share the top spot in this issue of The Green Gauge, a breakdown of companies that made headlines Sept. 6 to Sept 19 for winning or losing credibility based on environment-related activity.
Selections of companies were made by Christopher Greenwald, director of data content at ASSET4, a Thomson Reuters business that provides investment research on the environmental, social and governance performance of major global corporations. These ratings are not recommendations to buy or sell.
Chesapeake Energy, Denbury Resources, Southwest Energy Co.
In the wake of the Gulf Oil disaster, environmentalists have become increasingly critical of the process of hydraulic fracturing, which involves blasting water, sand and chemicals into shale rock underground in order to retrieve natural gas. A recent public hearing by the EPA on hydraulic fracturing in Binghamton, New York drew about 200 protesters, and the NGO Riverkeeper published a study in conjunction with the hearings outlining the risks of the technique for water contamination.
Several companies active in hydraulic fracturing for shale gas have faced notable controversies surrounding the impacts of the practice in recent weeks. Chesapeake Energy, a company that hopes to expand its hydraulic fracturing into New York State, was ordered to ensure the safety of its shale wells in Pennsylvania, after the Department of Environmental Protection found methane concentrations in water that could be traced back to several of the company’s sites.
History is replete with mining and oil companies drilling and mining, and when they have finished destroying the environment, they merely say, “Thanks, sorry for the mess.”, and then they leave. As long as they are allowed to walk away from their mistakes, and leave the rest of us to live with polluted water, air, land, etc., this will not end.
Goldilocks and the three fuels
– Richard Heinberg is the author of eight books, including “Peak Everything”, “Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis” and “The Party’s Over”. He is also a senior fellow with the Post Carbon Institute. The views expressed are his own. –
Recent shale gas projects, including those involving the massive Marcellus Shale in several northeastern states, have been yielding significant quantities of fuel. Reserves of the stuff are enormous. But drilling costs and per-well decline rates are high, so producers can make a profit only if gas prices are near historic highs.
Where are oil prices headed in 2010? Forecasts for the year are all over the map, from more than $100 a barrel to under $50.
The difference hinges mostly on assumptions about whether the economy will recover or relapse. Yet it may be that price volatility has become an inherent feature of the oil market—and fossil fuel markets in general—for reasons that can perhaps best be explained with the help of a little history and an old children’s story.
Once upon a time (about a dozen years past), oil sold for $12 a barrel and a lot of people thought it would get even cheaper because the market was glutted.
But instead the price rose: many big oilfields were aging and yielding less, and it was getting harder to find new ones—especially in places easy and cheap to drill.
Robert Kennedy Jr: solar and natural gas belong together
The solar power sector and the natural gas industry need to build an alliance to get more government support and take over the energy sector from incumbents like Big Oil and King Coal, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said on Wednesday.
The environmentalist spoke at the Solar Power International Conference being held in Anaheim, California, this week.
“The alliance is just forming,” Kennedy told reporters after his remarks. He added that the natural gas industry has been “hiding under oil and they think Big Oil is going to take care of them. But they’re realizing Big Oil is never going to let them make a profit” and that companies like Chesapeake are realizing “that their future is with the environmental community and the renewable community.”
He said the team-up also makes sense because power from natural gas can help balance out solar and wind-generated electricity on the grid, eliminating the problem of inconsistency on sunny days, for instance.
Kennedy argued that the solar power industry needs to alert the U.S. government that the country is in an “arms race with the Chinese.”
“It’s not an arms race over tanks and planes. It’s an arms race over who’s going to build solar panels and who’s going to build them the most efficient. We’ve got to start treating this as an arms race,” Kennedy said.
He added that the Chinese have outspent the U.S. government in the renewable sector and that “they know that this is the future and they want to put us out of business. They are going to put a lot of us out of business, a lot of solar panel makers out of business because they’re going to flood the market with their paneling.”
NG players would be foolish to decouple from oil lobbies – they go hand in hand – and anyone who suggests that it would be wise to decouple is delusional.
But why the greens haven’t taken on King Coal in alliance with NG is amazing – NG is far cleaner in all respects – from extraction to consumption.
Must the natural gas industry clean up its act?
Natural gas is regarded as a relatively clean source of energy but there is mounting evidence that it has a dirty side.
My colleague Jon Hurdle has reported on Wyoming water woes that have been linked to the booming gas industry. You can see his stories here and here.
In August U.S. government scientists reported that they had for the first time found chemical contaminants in drinking water wells near natural gas drilling operations, fueling concern that a gas-extraction technique is endangering the health of people who live close to drilling rigs.
The Environmental Protection Agency found chemicals that researchers say may cause illnesses including cancer, kidney failure, anemia and fertility problems in water from 11 of 39 wells tested around the Wyoming town of Pavillion in March and May this year.
On Monday, I reported that high concentrations of harmful compounds have been found in the air in a north Texas town that is in the heart of the region’s gas industry, according to a report released by an environmental consultancy.
The study by Wolf Eagle Environmental Engineers and Consultants found high concentrations of carcinogenic and neurotoxin compounds in the atmosphere at seven locations around the rural town of DISH, which is about 50 miles northwest of Dallas.
as a weekend flyfisherman who fishes every time i get a chance in PA. and am hearing almost daily about the pollution dangers from this process of drilling and the amount of water it uses i am getting sick to my stomach
from Summit Notebook:
Kinder: wind, solar not the answer to U.S. energy needs
Rich Kinder, CEO of Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, says the Obama Administration's push to develop alternative energy sources such as wind and solar are not the answer to reducing the nation's dependence on oil or reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Click below to hear where Kinder thinks the U.S. should be focusing its attention.
Kinder: wind, solar not the answer from Reuters TV on Vimeo.
Seeking sentiment on drilling, Salazar gets an earful
There is no doubt that Californians made themselves clear on Thursday when they gathered to tell U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar that they had had enough of offshore oil drilling and were ready to turn their attention to solar, wind and other renewables.
“I think the verdict today is very clear, that drilling is inappropriate,” said Leah Zimmerman, who attended the meeting dressed in a polar bear suit.
“California is well-known for being an innovative state. Why not take advantage of that rather than trying to dampen it?” asked Craig Cadwallader of the Surfrider Foundation, a group dedicated to protecting oceans and beaches.
When Salazar took office in January he was handed a Bush-era plan to open parts of the Atlantic, Gulf Coast, Pacific, and Alaska to outer continental shelf drilling.
He decided to arrange four meetings nationwide to listen to what people had to say.
“This is a sea change from the Bush administration,” said California Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi.
Salazar did not say whether the Obama administration’s energy plan would allow for new offshore drilling, but said that it would include oil and gas.
Great to hear the people of California have got their priorities right.
Group wants oil, gas drillers to follow rules in U.S. West
An environmental group this week issued a report saying oil and gas companies have enjoyed exemptions to common sense anti-pollution federal rules that govern companies in other industries. This has led, the Environmental Working Group claims, to fouled groundwater, creeks and acres and acres of formerly pristine land in the U.S. West.
The report, “Free Pass for Oil and Gas in the American West,” contains county-by-county maps of what it says are examples of mismanagement of the oil and gas industry.
“Drilling companies regularly complain that environmental standards deny them access to sites where they’d like to drill,” the EWG said. “But the cratered landscape tells a different story.”
The report claims that 270,000 oil and natural gas wells have been drilled since 1980, and 120,000 of them since 2000. Most of those wells are for natural gas.
The EWG says that these well have been drilled with waivers to federal environmental laws including the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act.
The problem with elected officials is they don’t have a clue what these two words mean: fracturing chemicals.
The problem with everyone is perhaps one in ten know what fracturing chemicals are.
The problem is we were not suppose to know. It was kept a secret then when the government thought their little secret was going to get out, they exempted fracturing chemicals so they would not interfere with their profitable ventures.
All of this at the expense of the environment which threatens humans, wildlife and aquatic life.
No education? Start learning what is in over 500 toxic fracturing chemicals. Diseases would drop if fracturing chemicals were banned. Has your water been tested for over 500 fracturing chemicals? Do you know what is in those toxic chemicals? No one is going to protect you and this is up to local communities to work together to get the job done: Ban toxic fracturing chemicals. No change will be made until the voice cries across the USA. You can be part of that voice or you can put blinders on and enjoy what life you have left before you die from chronic exposure to natural gas exemptions in water and air.
T. Boone Pickens working on solar
T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire oil investor who is building the largest wind farm in the United States, is also setting his sights on solar power.
Pickens last month launched a campaign aimed at weaning the United States off its dependence on foreign oil and is in the midst of a nation-wide tour to promote it. Following a speech in Los Angeles, Pickens told me he is looking beyond his wind investments to solar energy and is eager to share his “Pickens Plan” with both of the U.S. presidential candidates. Here’s what he had to say:
Q: Do you think your plan to meet with Obama and McCain will happen any time soon?
A: Don’t know. It could. We’ll see.
Q: Are you investing in technologies other than wind?
A: I’m interested in solar, but I’m not near as far along. But I have a bunch of engineers that are with me working on solar.
Q: Are there any emerging technologies other than wind and solar that interest you?
T Boone Pickens is evidently unaware that there are TRILLIONS of barrels of oil in the USA proper.
Gull Island
Prudhoe Bay
Oil Shale in Colorado, Wyoming, & Montana
Oil in the mountains West of Denver
The Bakken doposit in South Dakota, North Dakota, montana & Canada
oil in the South That is being witheld from production by Government
Enough to last the USA 2000 years or more.
Ahhhhhh, man’s going to save the world, again.
Seen any studies on the future effect of sucking the energy out of the atmosphere with windmills? See First Law of Thermodynamics! I haven’t.
And how will these local energy drains affect global wind patterns and temperature? I haven’t seen studies on that, either.
I imagine that a wall of windmills in California, not to mention building them on 1/3rd of China, will cause several globally (at least to humans) harmful changes.
Seems as ignorant as thinking electric cars reduce greenhouse gases, when, in actuality, they merely SHIFT the pollution source from car exhaust to coal fired power plant’s increased exhaust (greater load to charge the car batteries).