Guest column: Natural gas use helps cut carbon emissions

Ten years into the shale revolution, U.S. natural gas production has reached record levels, manufacturing is making a strong comeback and consumers are saving a lot of money. But something else is happening that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves: Carbon emissions are decreasing.

Despite the “ban fracking” agenda that many Green activist groups support, U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions have fallen 10 percent since 2005, attributable in large part to increased use of natural gas, which has roughly half the carbon content of coal. Credit goes to the combined use of horizontal drilling and fracking, an innovative technique being used to produce gas in the Marcellus and other shale formations around the country. This has produced an abundance of natural gas, a big change from the 1990s, when gas supplies were extremely tight and subject to wide swings in price.

Today, natural gas accounts for 75 percent of Florida’s electricity production. Natural gas, along with nuclear power and renewable sources like wind and solar energy, will play a key role in enabling Florida to meet the EPA’s requirement for a 38.3 percent decline in carbon emissions from electricity production by 2030.

Think of natural gas as a bridge fuel that will be valuable until the time when zero-carbon energy sources like solar, wind and nuclear power can meet a larger share of Florida’s energy requirements. For now, natural gas is an essential part of the state’s energy mix.

The Obama administration initially questioned the value of fracking, but it is now on board. “Responsible development of natural gas is an important part of our work to curb climate change,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said earlier this year. Natural gas, she said, has been a “game changer with our ability to really move forward with pollution reductions that have been very hard to get our arms around for decades.”

But the administration has been slow to capitalize on the potential global environmental benefits of natural gas. Coal accounts for 40 percent of the world’s electricity. If gas were to replace coal in electricity production in industrialized countries, carbon emissions would be reduced to safe and acceptable levels. ExxonMobil’s latest projections show that by 2040, carbon emissions from the advanced economies of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries will decline 20 percent from 2010 levels.

For that to happen, however, U.S. energy companies would need to export liquefied natural gas to markets in Europe and Asia. But the U.S. Department of Energy has been slow-walking license applications to sell LNG to other countries. To date, only one company has received a license, six others have conditional approvals and a dozen more applications are being reviewed. DOE recently said no decision on the license applications would be made until early next year.

That’s nonsensical. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the United States has more than 100 years’ worth of natural gas, and other countries are clamoring to obtain some of it to meet their energy needs. Not only could its expanded use help prevent the worst effects of climate change, but exporting natural gas to European countries like Germany, Ukraine and the Czech Republic that are heavily dependent on Russian gas would weaken Vladimir Putin’s grip on their economies.

Fortunately, the shale-gas revolution has already had a major impact on the nation’s energy supply and its benefits are extending to government revenues, manufacturing, household spending, job creation and the wider economy. Its significance will continue to rise as it continues to unfold. But let’s not overlook how profoundly the shale revolution has already reduced America’s carbon footprint. That will really help us in the long run.