Due before Tuesday, March 3 at 9 AM.
Based on ONE of the readings assigned for March 4th:
Scott, C. A., Pierce, S. A., Pasqualetti, M. J., Jones, A. L., Montz, B. E., & Hoover, J. H. (2011). Policy and institutional dimensions of the water-energy nexus. Energy Policy, 39(10), 6622-6630.
Sovacool, B. K. (2014). Cornucopia or curse? Reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking). Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 37, 249-264.
Reminder: the reflection should be 1-page long (~500 words) and contain two questions at the end.
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In the reading Cornucopia or curse? Reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking), the author Benjamin K. Sovacool recounts the shale gas basic and pros and cons of shale gas development. One big problem we face is, knowing the cons and pros, we should abandon shale gas or maintain its status as a main source of energy. One of the cons mentioned by the author in the article is that the development of shale gas will suppress the development of recyclable and clean energy, but it does meet human’s current needs. This reminds me of the famous economical trade-off: to develop capital will decease the current gain but accelerate future gain, but to maintain current gain means little to no investment in capital thus less stagnates future gain. In this case, if we keep investing in shale gas, the development in other energy like wind energy will be retarded. In contrast, if we stop investing in shale gas, the share of other energy will stay or increase, but the current energy supply may face a deficit. However, what is also known in terms of the said economic trade-off is that if we split the retained earning and invest one to capital development and keep the other for spending. To apply it to the case of shale gas, we, therefore, need to consider both. That is, considering the situation where the share of recyclable and clean energy is declining because of shale gas according to the article, The investment into shale gas development should be restricted. From the reading, we know there will be trillions of dollars into the shale gas and over one million new wells will be drilled in the next few years. The crazy expansion of shale gas wells must lead to various problems as the author has mentioned. Instead, we need to restrict the total yield to a reasonable amount, such as the minimum requirement for human current development or a certain percentage of annual global energy yield, which requires further discussions. As a result, the number of wells will decrease so that we can pick the locations with the most proper geological, social and economic conditions. Due to the reduced number, we can better take care of wells by investing more construction technologies to mitigate their side effects. The rest part of the investment cut from shale gas development will be put into other energy development. The result this way is trying to achieve is that the use of shale gas is minimized while making sure other energy development will catch up the step. However, this will require complex international negotiations and collaborations to reach a final agreement. Sitting on a treasure of resource, no one can resist not to enjoy it
Q1: Above is just an idea of an undergraduate supported by no research, but do you agree with me?
Q2: what is the relation between this article and the topic of water we need to cover this semester?
Sovacool’s article “Cornucopia or curse? Reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing” was a well-balanced and thorough analysis of the pros and cons of the fracking debate. It delineated 4 main benefits: affordability, cleaner in comparison to other fossil fuels, its wide availability, and economic benefits from jobs. Sovacool then discussed the risks, such as the accident-prone technology, environmental degradation, increase seismic activity, uncertain reserves, and unclear profits. The author then ends on the idea that it is near impossible to say whether fracking is truly beneficial or detrimental, but more governance would be needed when moving forwards in using better governance schemes so the cons can be diminished. I found this article an excellent and informative read as it not only provided both sides of the debate in a thorough manner but also commented on what does it mean, or what does the evidence just presented able to help guide further studies and exploration in this field. Nonetheless, it seemed apparent to me that Sovacool’s evidence for the cons of shale gas seemed to have overpowered the available pros.
Shale gas is not going to be a panacea for energy insecurity and no one energy source will ever be, however, I think that as Sovacool discussed in the article, it has a lot of potential to shift a system completely reliant on dirty fuels that produce emissions that are much more persistent in the atmosphere to a system that is moving towards change and renewability.
Most of the issues that have arose in contention to hydraulic fracking are issues that already exist within conventional gas. However, hydraulic fracking has the potential to lead to less emissions with proper regulations and monitoring. Technological innovation in the 21st century has the potential to mitigate this – although the extent of this is still unknown, and whether the funding for this would be supported by people who are more and more skeptical about the implications of shale gas. Shale gas can therefore be used as a means to instigate the beginnings of a shift away from a dominant market in the energy system to a more distributed system where no energy source is being so heavily relied on that any limitations becomes exacerbated.
1. How plausible is it, and how much investment would be needed for technological development to allow hydraulic fracturing to become an environmentally and economically secure option?
2. Balancing costs and benefits directly against each other may not be the best way to evaluate a context-dependent, wicked problem like hydraulic fracturing – what are some other methods that allow a more nuanced interrogation?
In their article, “Policy and institutional dimensions of the water-energy nexus”, Scott et al. explore the inextricable linkage between energy and water production and outline the key reasons why their effective management is a wicked issue. Two main difficulties/themes that stood out to me were: i) the degree to which demand for resources elicits widespread cascading impacts across the landscape and, ii) inertia (due to infrastructure and institutions) and how it hinders innovation in sustainable resource management.
Scott et al. discussed at length how the spatial disparity between resource extraction sites and areas where resources are actually consumed contributes to huge variation in local versus regional/national concerns and priorities. As is typical with large scale resource provisioning infrastructure, certain geographic regions experience the majority of negative project externalities while the areas driving demand enjoy low prices and reliable provisioning. However, I hadn’t thought about the cascading effects of these large projects; the Southwestern case study in this article was demonstrative of this. The huge water demands of Phoenix, Arizona require a huge aqueduct transporting water from the distant Colorado which in turn requires a huge amount of energy from an even more distant power plant which, in turn, requires further water resources for cooling. Ironically, this is all done to preserve Phoenix’s limited local water sources. So in order for Phoenix to have access to reliable water, those living further downstream in the Colorado watershed experience limited water access while others living in Northern Arizona must deal with the environmental consequences of land loss due to the flooding of Lake Powell and the coal burning Navajo Generating Station. This power station would draw on destructive coal mining from somewhere else in the landscape entirely, negatively impacting that region. This web-like distribution of consequences triggered by the use of one resource in one city, can only allude to the immensity of the task surrounding resource management reform.
Over the course of the last few years I have taken a large variety of environmental science and biology courses and as a result have had discussions about climate nearly every day. One thing that has really started to frustrate me, is the frequency to which some of my class discussions surrounding climate change (and other environmental issues) stop abruptly with the declaration that the education of the public is the “solution”. Although shifting public and political consensus surrounding environmental issues is obviously an important step in eliciting change, ignoring the immensity of the practical realities surrounding a large scale shift in infrastructure is certainly convenient. I was satisfied to see the inertia surrounding resource management reform being attributed to these practicalities. I further appreciated the fact that Scott et al. acknowledged that institutional arrangements perpetuate this inertia. Their re-framing of the nexus of water and energy use could be helpful in incrementally shifting the way we approach these resources and, consequently, how we manage them.
Question 1: How is it possible that the legal framework in the United States allows additives to fracking fluid to be kept secret as trade secrets? Are there no environmental laws against this?
Question 2: Does the injection of biocides into fracking wells and disposal wells pose any danger of creating antibiotic resistance in otherwise isolated microbial communities underground or in the water table.
According to Scott et al. in “Policy and institutional dimensions of the water-energy nexus,” the water-energy nexus is the use of water and energy as an interrelated entity, as they are needed in order to produce one another. However, it is integral to note that the difference between the relationship is that while energy is used to produce water effectively, water becomes “degraded” during the production of energy (2622). This is something to be worried about as the exploitation of life’s most valuable resource has been at an all-time high this past century. Another note they emphasize is the fact that the nexus must look past just the usage of the resources, but also at the at the way they are managed on different scales. These two issues of resource coupling alongside multi-tiered management create a very dynamic issue in regards to this week’s topic of fracking.
On all scales of governance, water management in relation to energy is a contested issue due to the marginalization of local voices over other, more powerful voices, as well as the difficulty around changing existing physical infrastructure. Both the energy and water sector have long-standing technology that is dependent on current infrastructure and institutions, so it is difficult to move away from these in order to support change, or curtail the problem of institutional inertia.
Geographically, water exists across borders such as across Canada and the USA, so nation-states must decide how the resource is used in terms of energy production, as well as take into account the information that the United Nation produces. Water exists within different rural-urban areas, between states, etc. Thus, the water-energy nexus is an extremely political topic because of the power balances for the resources at hand. Resource coupling must ask the question, who gets to benefit from the energy produced in the expense of the exploitation of water? Whose surface water and groundwater is going to be impacted on the behalf of benefiting another locality and under whose supervision?
In regards to this week’s module of fracking, Scott et al. look at the Northeastern/Central areas of the USA. This case study showcases the role of urban vs. rural needs, as the management of the water-energy nexus of this area is highly influenced by the opportunity of economic development in fracking. Because of the institutional inertia of fracking technology and higher price of natural gas, it is optimal for big name companies to invest in fracking. This would make it easy to sell a high amount of energy to urban centers at the expense of local community members. This expense to the locality is not monetary, but environmental because fracking is extremely high in toxins and impacts the local groundwater, streams, rivers, and lakes. This is detrimental and oppressive to the people in close proximity to the Marcellus shale formation, but would benefit people in the region, particularly in Pennsylvania and NY through taxes and energy.
Question 1: What are multi-tiered institutional arrangements (laws, policies, organizations) that exist to protect water stores in Canada and are they efficient in doing so?
Question 2: In regards to Alberta, how can the conversation of fracking ‘economics’ vs. ‘environment’ be framed in order to most benefit stakeholders?
In the text “policy and institutional dimensions of the water-energy nexus”, Scott, Pierce, Pasqualetti, Jones, Montz and Hoover explain the close links between energy and water, their interdependence, their interlinkages, and propose several examples of tandem management of both resources.
In the introduction, they point out that he water-enegy nexus is also fundamentally about decision-making. The aim of this paper is to assess how energy and water, considered together rather than as two separate resources, reveal a broader set of institutional relationships and highlight decision-making challenges faced by society. In their analysis, they use two concepts, “the resource coupling of energy water” and “multi-tiered institutional arrangements for resource management decision making”. The first concept signifies the interdependence of energy and water, but not only from an operational point of view, but also at the regional level of natural resources, and non-conventional water, in relation to changing human demands for energy and the water that will be required to generate it.
The concept of “multi-level institutional arrangements for resource management decision-making” refers to the fact that local resources are not always managed by local authorities, so that the linkages between energy and water resources do not necessarily correspond to the institutional level.
These two principles are used to analyse the linkages between water and energy. The objective of this paper is to move the construction of the water and energy link beyond the input-output relationship and into the realm of resource governance, policy and adaptation to global change. The authors argue that this implies a better understanding of the local environmental and social impacts of increasing global demand for energy and water. To illustrate this, three examples are used.
The first example is the case of the Southwest with the link between the shortage of electricity and water in the State of Arizona. The current and planned water and energy infrastructure in the state of Arizona embodies the coupled nature of water and energy and is particularly representative of the southwestern United States. It also illustrates the institutional disconnect between local and regional management that suffers from large-scale infrastructure. The second example is the case of the East, with the link between coal and water quality. This case illustrates how national energy demands are met by coal mining with alternating local watershed processes. The third case is that of the northeastern and central United States, with the link between shale natural gas and water quality. In this region, natural gas offers economic development opportunities, and water is a component of fracturing. Part of the controversy in this case relates to conflicting views on energy and water.
In any case, the problem of interdependencies between water and energy is difficult to assess. They all demonstrate the need to include institutions and decision-making in the water-energy nexus. The conclusion of this paper is that there are four central assertions regarding the institutional and policy dimensions of the water-energy nexus. First, the need to explicitly consider institutions and decision-making. Second, that water will remain primarily a local or regional resource. Third, that the externalization of water and the environmental and social impact of energy development can be the result of disjointed policy options, and that, on the contrary, mechanisms for internalizing impacts can bring water and energy policy closer together. Finally, trade-offs between the use of water and energy resources are inevitable.
So the idea is to prove that water and energy are not simply linked by the use of resources but on multiple scales. They have a very close relationship that goes through many stages, such as decision-making for the development use, or associated impacts of both resources. Changing this relationship requires investigating institutional and policy dimensions of water and energy coupling.
How can we include institutions and decision-making in the water-energy nexus?
How can we limit the influence of economy on water-energy management?
In “Cornucopia or Curse? Reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking)”, Sovacool lays out both sides of the fracking debate in a highly systematic, balanced, and thought-provoking review. He commences with a break down of some of the technical and more colloquial jargon around hydraulic fracturing, that is crucial for a deeper understanding of the issues raised later. In a complex process, the key point that differentiates shale gas from conventional natural gas is it is in a gaseous form, not a liquid form, hence does not flow naturally along the well. Instead, small explosions put holes in the drill casing, through which highly pressurized water and proppants are forced. This creates pores in a previously impermeable rock, allowing for the release of the gas. The author talks about the many benefits of shale gas- reduced carbon emissions, smaller environmental footprint, lowered price of electricity, and abundance of supply. However, the cons list is extensive. Water and air pollution and public health, atmospheric leakages on site, seismic activity, and above all, huge uncertainty in profit margins with considerable risk at multiple stages of the process.
This review made mention to a prediction that by 2030, shale gas supply would triple in US, accounting for half of domestic gas supply. Given the abundance of new wells needed to meet this prediction, I would have thought that concerns around safe extraction should be first and foremost in the planning. However, I was stunned to learn that when this article was published, shale gas extraction was exempt from the US Safe Water Drinking Act, actually making it very difficult for scientists to monitor how fracking was affecting groundwater, and assess contamination. It is clear that tight regulations need to be in place to manage the highly technical extraction techniques and site-specific geology, to ensure atmospheric losses are at a minimum and ground water contamination, leakages and accidents do not occur.
Proponents of shale gas argue shale gas is much cleaner than the dirtiest fuel source coal; the lesser of two evils. It is easy to spin shale gas as clean and efficient, especially when you consider its potential to reduce emissions from the electricity sector in the US by 17%, compared to business as usual. However, these benefits do come at the expense of other areas of environmental destruction, and do not offset the severe damage that can be caused when wells or pipelines fail.
The crux of the debate focuses on whether shale gas is an initial step away from a fossil fuel powered economy, or not. Sovacool highlights that in the US, fracking has encouraged rather than deterred reliance on oil and coal. The fracking technique has been applied to extract deeper and harder to access reserves of “tight oil” which flows as a liquid. Furthermore, cheap gas has stunted the growth of the wind, solar and nuclear industries, putting a halt on advancement of true renewables. It seems fracking represents a step sideways, more than a step forward. In conclusion, the author highlights that as with any natural resource management debate, the costs and benefits are not evenly shared among stakeholders. Both sides of the debate offer valid, strong cases, and there are so many nuances, not to mention politics and other values that come in to play in this discussion.
Q1. 10 years ago when this article was published, British Petroleum was quoted as saying a “shale gas revolution” was imminent. What is the evidence to support/disprove this quote based on today’s figures and estimates? Has this prediction manifested?
Q2. Based on the global shale bowl distribution map in this article, do you think there are possibilities for monopolies or geopolitical tensions to arise, based on where shale gas is located?
*Correction to Q1. Nearly 10 years ago in 2011, BP made this prediction, saying there would be a shale gas revolution seen between 2011-2030.
In Sovacool’s (2014) article Cornucopia or curse? Reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking), he studies a cost benefit analysis of hydraulic fracturing, specifically taking into account the four key areas of implications being: social, economic, environmental and technical. He notes the major benefits that fracking provides is the extensive availability of oil reserves, lower oil prices, significantly lower damage to the environment compared to coal and oil and strong economic growth.
However, there are a number of notable costs related to fracking. Those being: the potential for leaks or accidents to happen at plants, severe damage to social communities and the environment (specifically when things go wrong). For this reason fracking should not be viewed as a step forward in the advancement of renewables, but is arguably contributing to maintaining dependence on oil. He emphasises the difference between effects that will have immediate effect (like economic growth) and those which will play out in the future (like climate change and earthquake risk). To me, this debate of future vs present implications is a mind-set that must be overcome, if we want to combat some of the earth’s biggest climate issues. We must look more long-term, rather than act on current, short-term desires.
In this article Sovacool mentions that by 2030, shale gas supply would triple in US, accounting for half of domestic gas supply. I found this highly alarming, as the US is one of the world’s worst polluters and therefore they must start divesting from oil and instead invest in renewables.
Moreover, he highlights the changing extent that some costs and benefits are experienced: from local to global implications. Referring to the political contestation around the fracking industry, he demonstrates that the debate is also related to politics and values, rather than solely data and numbers. Similar to my research on the fracking industry, I found the uniqueness of fracturing sites to significantly play into the fracking debate. In a country like the Unites States, the benefits of fracking have appeared so great that fracking has been taken up at a number of sites, however in Europe, fracking is viewed a lots less desirably. Sovacool suggests this may be because of population density is a lots smaller in the United States compared to Europe, and therefore the probability that you will live near to a fracking site is considerably lower in the Unites States. Ultimately the future of hydraulic fracturing appears uncertain, as it depends largely on the public’s opinion of whether the risks associated are counteracted by the potential economic benefits it can provide.
Q1: Can hydraulic fracturing really be viewed as revolutionary, when it still creates high dependence on oil?
Q2: What can be done to change peoples’ mindsets from solely thinking about short-term economic gains, rather than long-term environmental and social consequences?
In his article, ‘Cornucopia or curse?’, Benjamin K. Sovacool offers a survey of academic research which presents reasons to expand or curb the exploitation of shale gas resources through hydraulic fracturing (fracking). There are several compelling arguments in favour of fracking: shale gas is in abundant supply, it may have a cleaner environmental footprint, and has the potential to support economic development through royalties and job creation. However, Sovacool notes that hydraulic fracturing also has negative implications for “Pollution and public health,” grassroots protests, “climate change”, as well as competing with emerging renewables markets.
Sovacool introduced the environmental impacts of methane release from fracking and noted that “more methane is going into the atmosphere than previously expected”. While natural gas may have a lower carbon footprint than coal when burned, emissions inventories generally fail to account for the impact of fugitive emissions such as methane gas abandoned fracking sites.
Most methane is released in the initial drill-out phase of the well when flowback fluids return to the surface. Abandoned wells also release fugitive emissions when methane returns to the surface in the form of methane gas of methane dissolved in flowback fluids. Emissions inventories rarely account for fugitive methane emissions from these abandoned wells. This is a critical omission given that “methane is a greenhouse gas 21–23 times more potent than carbon dioxide on a 100-year timeframe” (258). Methane is a much larger and immediate driver of atmospheric forcing than carbon dioxide, and accounts for “16 percent of the total on a CO2 equivalent basis.” (258).
The absence of monitoring schemes for abandoned gas wells in North America leaves academics and policymakers with a concerning information gap about the impacts of fracking. In the United States alone, there are an estimated 3 million abandoned oil and gas wells. Yet, there are no regulatory requirements to monitor or account for methane emissions from abandoned wells in the United States. The same appears to be true in Canada. If the impacts of fugitive emissions from abandoned fracking sites were accounted for in emissions inventories, natural gas extracted through hydraulic fracturing may have a CO2e footprint not significantly different from that of oil or coal. Without improved monitoring, decisions about fracking will be made with incomplete information; the absence of fugitive emissions monitoring presents a rose-tinted image of hydraulic fracturing.
Two questions:
– One: Sovacool suggests that shale gas competes for financial support as a ‘green’ energy source- how could this be prevented? Would placing controls reduce the number of fracking permits issues in the U.S and Canada assist with increasing the permeation of renewables into the energy generation sector?
-Two: Has the Canadian government ever tabled plans to create a national organization to monitor methane emissions from abandoned wells?
The author starts the paper out by informing the reader that energy and water are interlinked. This is a very valid point because water is a natural resource that is needed by humans to survive. This is turn gives humans energy to preform day-to-day tasks. Water can also be used as energy by daming a river and using that as a source of energy to supply the surrounding area with energy in the form of electricity. The author also explains the “three water–energy nexus cases in the United States are examined: (1) water and energy development in the water-scarce Southwest; (2) conflicts between coal development, environmental quality, and social impacts in the East; and (3) tensions between environmental quality and economic development of shale natural gas in the Northeast and Central U.S.” The first water-energy nexus is very interesting and relevant due to the great water scarcity in the southwest of North America. Due to the large-scale daming of rivers that flow through the USA and also through Mexico, it has left little to no fresh water for Mexicans. Through the commodification and daming of large rivers, it has dried up the tail end of the river. This has led to great problems for the local people who rely on this source of fresh water for their water consumption needs. This forces the local people to then buy water, which cuts into their monitory gains and diminishes the point of having a river for freshwater. The second water-energy nexus case is conflicts between coal development, environmental quality and social impacts of the East. This is valid today due to the large negative impacts that fossil fuels have on our environment. Coal development is slowly decreasing, as there is a lower reliance on it due to the invention of gasoline and electric powered vehicles. Nevertheless, coal is still being mined and used today, especially in countries where their economy is not the strongest. Due to the large scale damming of the rivers, it creates pollution and environmental degradation of the river and leads to a loss in biodiversity that lives and survives off of the river. These negative environmental impacts must be addressed as these effect the Earth and humans in ways that can harm the future generations to come. The final water energy nexus is tensions between environmental quality and economic development of shale natural gas in the Northeast and Central U.S. The tensions between environmental quality and economic development have been ongoing for some time now and have worsened the problem of environmental degradation and biodiversity even more. Large companies that only care for commodification of nature, continue to exploit nature in any way possible in order to make the most amount of profit. This means that the exploitation of river networks will continue because they are making lots of money off of it. This in turn will increase water scarcity and further ruin the river networks in the world until we live in a world that is inhabitable.
Question #1: Do you think that the relationship between environment and the economy will change in a positive way or negative way in the future?
Question #2: Do you think there is any other way to produce large scale energy to large populations in other forms that do not degrade nature and biodiversity?
Response to: Sovacool, B. K. (2014). Cornucopia or curse? Reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking). Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 37, 249-264.
Within his paper, Sovacool asks the big question: are the economic and energy benefits associated with shale gas extraction worth the potential environmental and social impacts? He first educates the reader on the basics of shale gas, discussing who produces it, how it is produced, and why it is worth producing. I was not surprised to learn that the United States has become a top exporter of shale gas and is being referred to, by the media, as “Saudi America”. After providing the reader with a brief, but detailed background, Sovacool discusses the pros and cons of shale gas development in greater detail. Before reading this paper, I was not very educated on hydraulic fracturing and had only ever focused on the negative impacts. I found it interesting how Sovacool decided to present the arguments in favour of fracking first and was surprised at how easily I was convinced of the benefits of shale gas extraction. Although, once he begun discussing the cons of shale gas development, I was reminded of the reasoning behind my initial opinion, and continued to stand by it.
One specific realization of the shale gas extraction process that stood out to me was how many externalities were left out of the budget. I was shocked at how cheap the fracking process is compared to other forms of energy production. However, Sovacool later points out that if one were to attach an economic cost to all of the externalities involved within fracking, shale gas would no longer be “cheap”. There are many externalities excluded from its budget that contributes to this artificial appearance of affordability. The American Journal of Public Health pointed out that postmineral extraction cleanup costs are substantial, including restoration of damaged or contaminated streams and soil, improper handling of wastewater disposal, and improper disposal of radioactive material and hazardous waste. It is evident that when these externalities become factored into the budget of shale gas production, natural gas becomes far more expensive than most forms of renewable energy.
I would be interested to know how these externalities, such as contamination of streams and soil, improper handling of wastewater disposal, and improper disposal of radioactive material/hazardous waste affects the surrounding communities and ecosystems. I wonder how the local populations perceive the fracking process and how much this process affects their daily lives. Are surrounding communities given cheaper gas and does that outweigh the local costs? How often do these companies decontaminate the streams and soil that they contaminated through the extraction process? Specifically, I would have been interested to learn how the fracking process affects indigenous communities in Canada.
Question 1: How do you think the public is able to be better integrated within the decision making process of hydraulic fracturing?
Question 2: Due to the fact that every fracking site/community is very different, do you think it is possible to create a generalized form of legislation?
Cornucopia or curse? Reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is a study by Benjamin K. Sovacoo which assesses the technical, economic, environmental and social costs and benefits of hydraulic fracturing of natural gas. Its general argument is that shale gas fracking is contestable; it has positive and negative effects which depend on the process and context of fracking (how and where fracking occurs). The assessment is fairly neutral and presents both sides of the argument with empirical examples in each situation. It is a very helpful account to understand shale gas basics as well as the environmental and economic rationale driving its production.
“Done properly, shale gas development can enhance energy security and the availability of energy fuels, lower natural gas prices, offer a cleaner environmental footprint that some other fossil fuels and enable local economic development.
Done poorly, production can be prone to accidents and leakage, contribute to environmental degradation, induce earthquakes and when externalities are accounted for, produce more net economic losses than profits.”
Thus, Sovacoo’s two main observations is that both shale gas development proponents and opponents put forward the economic and the environmental argument. On the one hand, fracking allows economic development because it creates jobs (Pennsylvania created 29, 000 new jobs in the shale gas industry in 2008). Moreover, the abundance of supply contributes in part to lower the prices of natural gas. On the other hand, opponents argue that the profitability remains unclear, notably when considering the economic costs of externalities associated with shale gas production.
From an environmental perspective, it is true that shale gas production has a cleaner environmental footprint than other fossil fuels (i.e. lower emissions of sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and mercury than coal and oil). Sovacoo observes that the use of shale gas has lowered the US overall emission. Yet, he also importantly points at the negative environmental impacts of shale gas production. Fracking can lower water quality and generate drilling muds that require treatment, it also rely heavily on diesel and therefore pollutes the atmosphere. The argument that shale gas production is “less bad” than other fossil fuel is countered by the observation that it has actually led populations to use more oil and coal and less renewable electricity and nuclear power. Indeed, the drop in prices has led American’s driller to “hunt for oil and to use fracking technology to liberate liquid fuel rather than gaseous fuel”. Sovacoo argues that wind energy was expected to overtake natural gas but this trend has been reversed since the introduction of fracking.
If the article intends to be present an objective account of shale gas development, both its economic and environmental arguments demonstrate that in the long term, shale gas in not profitable and draws policies away from sustainable alternatives. It leaves us with questions concerning the future of shale gas production?
How can renewable energy be more profitable than shale gas production?
What political measures-if any- are put in place to drive away from fracking? And in what contexts?
In “Cornucopia or Curse: Reviewing the Costs and Benefits of Shale Gas Hydraulic Fracturing,” Sovacool (2013) outlines how hydraulic fracturing is done and attempts to objectively outline the associated costs and benefits of hydraulic fracturing. I feel though that he fails to provide a truly objective view and instead allows a bias against current hydraulic fracturing practices to color his article (a bias which I personally hold as well but find obscuring of a truly objective presentation of what fracking’s costs and benefits are).
Sovacool states that when the economic costs of negative externalities are accounted for, shale gas is the most expensive fuel option currently available (262). I did wonder at this point in the article how exactly externalities were being considered and if the comparison was as consistent as possible across all forms of energy generation. I personally found myself skeptical that oil has not had comparable economic costs associated with it from negative externalities and as a result, this is an area into which I would like to do more research. Part of my skepticism is also rooted in a what appears to be a false equivalence Sovacool makes earlier in the article when he states that a Pennsylvania study “found that while the total emissions of a single well were less than that of a single coal-fired power plant, in areas where drilling was concentrated emissions were ‘20–40 times higher’ than what regulations permitted for a single minor source” (258). Such a statistic begs to be interpreted and properly contextualized because as it currently stands, I read this as a conflation of scales.
Another area in which I believe Sovacool fails to present a truly balanced argument is in relation to his discussion on the profitability of shale hydraulic fracturing. One of his arguments for the uncertainty of the profitability of this field is relative to uncertainties around the peak production of unconventional gas. While I think this is a very valid concern to raise, in neglecting to mention this same concern exists with other fuel sources, in particular oil which is thought to be past its peak, he implicitly implies that compared to other energy sources, this uncertainty makes shale gas an economically unattractive option relative to something like oil. Furthermore, he argues against fracking’s profitability on the basis that there are diminishing economic returns on extracted gas as wells are depleted. This characteristic of resource extraction is not limited to shale gas extraction and by failing to mention that such diminishing returns exist in other energy sectors, he once more implicitly implies that fracking has unique challenges associated with making it profitable relative to other fuel sources when that is not the case.
Perhaps my concerns and how I wished Sovacool had alleviated them he felt are beyond the scope of the article. I believe though it is important to note these factors when attempting to present an objective comparison of the costs and benefits of fracking. Failing to do so, in my opinion, ultimately weakens the presented information as it opens it up to criticism which may undermine the perceived credibility of other facts presented within the article.
Question 1: To what extent would further investment in interstate power grids alleviate geographic disparities in ability to produce renewable forms of energy?
Question 2: Sovacool states that the relative cheapness of shale gas may be solidifying fossil fuel economies and undermining the transition to renewables. Given this concern, should governments consider imposing a price floor on unconventional gas in order to protect other forms of energy generation?
In the paper “Policy and Institutional Dimensions of Water-Energy Nexus” by Scott et al., the authors explore the relationship between water and energy, which are resources often coupled together in resource management because “energy is required to secure, deliver, treat and distribute water… and water is used, consumed, and often degraded to develop, process and deliver energy for consumption” (6622). There are three principle case studies outlined in this article, but the one that interests me the most, as someone passionate about environmental justice, is the eastern case linking coal mining and poor water quality. The authors identify that energy production can have serious implications on environmental quality and human health. Of course, the problem is that coal is a main energy source for the US, at the time that this paper was written it made up half of the US’s electrical generation, and it also is an industry that employs a number of workers. Entire towns were built around the coal industry in the US, such as Appalachia where upward of 40% of the labour force was reaping the benefits of the local coal industry even though generally their inhabitants remain poor. However, in recent years there are many coal workers in the US being laid off or not getting paid when they should be because of a reduced demand for coal, so I wonder how well these numbers hold up now. They talk about the environmental implications, such as large scale surface and mountaintop removal techniques resulting in headwater stream burial and a decline in surface water and groundwater quality, that consequently also have an impact on the quality of water for human consumption. I think one interesting thing to me is that a lot of the time when activists or policy makers are talking about communities with poor quality drinking water, they are defending the rights of already marginalized communities like First Nations or people in the developing world, but it is unfortunate that even the locals in Kentucky counties who may even work for the industry have contaminated water sources but still work in the industry because they are virtually stuck in this line of work, having built their livelihoods around it. They are a poor, even rural people but continue to work for this dirty industry because perhaps they do not see a way out. It is odd to know that some decision-makers still see coal development as a long-term opportunity, when we are just a few years away from the proposed Paris Agreement targets of being net zero emissions by 2030. As the paper suggests, to deal with all of these issues in sight, effective institutions that can enforce regulation must be built and regulations must be strengthened through “legal means and with adequate financial and human resources” (6629), although, I am curious as to what these institutions would actually look like and how much of a voice local community members would have.
Two questions:
1. Compare and contrast the local coal mining communities in Appalachia to other groups that do not have access to quality water that we have talked about, what are their similarities and how do they differ?
2. Are the findings of this paper still entirely relevant or have there been developments in the energy sector in the US that should be accounted for?
“Cornucopia or curse? Reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking)” by Benjamin K. Sovacool examines the myriad of pros and cons to hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as fracking. Sovacool firstly describes the fracking process as one that involves drilling at great depths for natural shale gas through pumping water sand and chemicals into the porous rocks at high pressures. This releases natural gas that flows back up with the drilling fluids and thus, produces the extremely coveted resource of natural gas. Shale gas has been increasingly popularized in recent decades with scholars estimating a tripling of shale gas supply by 2030 in the United States. Countries such as Bolivia, Libya, Algeria, Canada, and Norway also produce (and export) extremely large quantities of shale gas. However, despite its popularity resultant of lower prices, abundance of supply and economic development, Sovacool notes that there are numerous downfalls to fracking.
Sovacool firstly outlines pollution and public health concerns, specifically referring to the dangerous amount of methane that is produced from fracking. As a greenhouse gas, methane’s instantaneous impact on the environment and ozone layer is particularly dramatic. The author notes that methane is 21-23 times more potent than carbon dioxide. This causes air pollution in addition to the contamination of drinking water. Although Sovacool performs a detailed analysis of the public health concerns of fracking, the author fails to assess the nuances of the situation. Sovacool details displacement and social factors, yet somehow disregards the disproportionate social impact that is faced by low-income racialized communities as a result of fracking projects. Northeastern Pennsylvania and New York are specifically referenced as sites of contamination, but there is no consideration for these communities mean income, demographic makeup, or local response to methane contamination. As low-income communities, often Black, Brown, and Indigenous ones, are prone to being situated near hazardous waste sites and/or construction zones, projects such as these disproportionately impacts their health. In examining the consequences of hydraulic fracturing, it is necessary to assess the reasoning behind certain communities suffering. Oil and gas companies often disregard local calls for relocating their hazardous sites and this is pertinent to decision-making in the industry.
If a community has a large makeup of children and youth and a fracking site is positioned nearby, thus polluting their air and water sources, it is important to note this as particular communities are continuously exposed to fracking pollution. This significantly impacts the futurity of these communities and becomes a systemic problem if repeated.
Q 1: Is the positioning of fracking projects near low-income communities purposeful as a result of their inability to resist corporate power?
Q 2: Sovacool mentions the displacement of cleaner forms of energy as a result of fracking popularization. Are there other forms of displacement resulting from fracking too?
In the article, Policy and institutional dimensions of the water-energy nexus, by Scott et al., the authors are considering two mains points. First the “resources coupling of energy and water” and the “multi-tiered institutional arrangements for resource management decision-making”. They are using different cases and examples to illustrate or emphasize their ideas. However, what interest me the most was their development on the processes of decision making in the field of water-energy nexus and its influence on water management, and water resources as well as its impact on the population. It is interesting to consider the scale of decision-making, as the local use of water-energy resources are not necessarily managed by local authority but at a greater institutional scale. As for example, as illustrated in the case studies, sometimes three different spatial areas can be involved in the process of water-energy sources, for example the Southwestern case involving the use of water from the CAP aqueduct, distant from the actual demand. Then, this kind of situation – and the Southwest isn’t an isolated case – implies the intervention of different jurisdictions. The management of water resources is then a multi-tiered institutional challenge that also raises other concerns on the externalities of resource coupling. In a short-term event, all the actors of the decision-making process will necessarily have to incorporate the environmental and social considerations in the negotiations. And indeed, the international community is becoming more and more insistent on the regulation of water-energy nexus and might in a close future have a powerful impact on States’ policies. For the case of the US (in particular but true worldwide), the first main challenge might be to recreate an actual spatial scale coherence, in the ruling of water-energy nexus, the authors advocate in favor of technology choices and centrally regulations and mediations, as it would not be realistic to have a unified system on one scale. However, in my opinion, the involvement of different scales in the decision-making process as well as in the exploitation of the resources and the consumption of it should be the first concerned and try to be resolve as much as possible. Nevertheless, it is interesting to take into account the importance and the involvement of decision-making process and the different institutional scales involved in the process of decision-making, to also better understand the impacts on the resource’s management and use. The climate emergency might accelerate the need to a more local management of resources.
Q.1: To what extent the multi-tiered institutional decision making has an influence on the environmental impact of water-energy use?
Q.2: Will the international law regulates the water-energy use to reduce the environmental and human health impact?
The regulation and administration and water and energy is a complex topic. The interconnections between the different levels of government raise many issues and questions about responsibility, costs, and priorities. The addition of capitalistic interests further clouds these concerns. The nature of capitalistic ventures seeks to maximize profits while minimizing costs. It is evident that corporations purposefully exploit the confusion about ownership and responsibility in the government in order to acquire the cheapest possible rights to resources while externalizing the costs. While the governments deal with the moral issues of balancing the interests of all the civilian stakeholders, corporations exist in a state of constant exploitation and expansion, leaving behind desecrated lands for those on the local scale. The lack of renewable energy sources secures the public’s need for the exploited resources. The extraction of natural gas or coal is intrinsically different from the generation of energy from solar panels. Extracting non-renewables is centered around speed and efficiency, ignoring anything that does not bring economic benefit (like environmental quality, sustainability for future use, and longevity). The multi-scalar issue of water-energy management is not in itself an insurmountable issue but with the addition of capitalist interests, purposefully clouding the judgment of decision makers, the issues become much more difficult to resolve.
The coupling of water and energy at first seems strange but with thought makes perfect sense. Every kind of energy production requires water in some way, either directly or indirectly. The extraction of water and transportation of it to a useful area require energy. Therefor the 2 are interlinked. The two resources must be considered when managing any type of energy production. If the production of energy requires an unsustainable amount of water there is a problem, and same for the acquisition of water. One particularly unbalanced production of energy is the extraction of gas by hydraulic fracking. Fracking does not just have a negative effect on the environment from its burning, the extraction process takes incredible amounts of water while diminishing the lands future accessibility to water (by its effects on the water table). Devastating the ground water has trickle down effects that will continue to reap consequences on the land well after the Fracking drill is gone. Lowering the water table can result in sink holes and landslides while the polluted water from the process can seep into the natural environment, causing catastrophic damage to riparian species. The coupling of water and energy interlocks the risks, rewards, stakeholders, and emissions of water acquisition and energy production. Seeking solutions requires knowledge of the scales of influence long with an in depth understanding of the issues, risks, and potential benefits of the coupled water and energy industries.
Questions
-Is there a way of decoupling the capitalistic industries from governmental control (or at least to regulate it)
-What could be a balanced approach to using water for energy production? (avoid halting energy production while stopping the exploitation of water as a resource)
In the article, “Policy and institutional dimensions of the energy-water nexus,” Scott et al. present an analysis of the varying and complex interconnections between energy and water supply and demand systems, which are often overlooked by conventional approaches. Water and energy are both needed for the development of the other at various scales: energy in order to treat, remove, transport, and provide various other supportive functions for water supply, and water needed in many scales for the production of energy sources. Furthermore, water is linked to energy in terms of the negative impacts it bears as a result of energy-source extraction processes which also contribute to various other environmental and human health concerns.
As the article discusses, trade-offs thus exist in the development of these resources, and the respective weights and interests create increasingly complex trade-offs. In terms of this issue, one critical point highlighted by Scott et al. is the tendency for regional- or state-level needs to overshadow and not integrate local concerns. For example, there are often high local costs and sometimes fairly concentrated local benefits to energy development projects, but nonetheless state-level bodies often represent them as necessary costs to meet energy and water needs. Furthermore, Scott et al. assert that despite this inevitable energy-water tradeoff, the degree and quality of the impact that a use of one of the resources has on the other can be reduced. One method they bring forward is to utilize “cross-scale resource substitution,” in which energy is more readily adaptable than water (for example, water cannot be transported as effectively to non-local sites). Additionally, institutional coordination that is multi-tiered can bring water and energy management to be considered in coordination with one another.
Scott et al. note how the treatment of these two resources remain fairly disparate, and although there are shifts being made to adjust this there are still critical barriers to overcome, especially in the face of climate change and growing demand for resources. Barriers such as entrenched infrastructure and energy systems, as well as the corresponding interests that support these, delay the resource-coupling process in decision making. Scott et al. posits that approaches to the water-energy nexus must both recognize and work with resource coupling, which implies that they are managed with consideration to their interconnectedness, the various impacts created at multiple scales beyond resource use, and with attention to both local as well as regional, national, and global scales.
With reflection on the case studies brought forward by Scott et al., it was evident that long-term planning for energy practices (i.e., what sources of energy we source, where we source them from) must take into account how this has massive implications for the amount of water used, consumed, degraded, and polluted. Similarly, water management and planning must balance the spatial distribution of water sources and the implications for energy demands this would create given various management approaches. Lastly, a key take-away is the necessity to recognize how impacts of energy and water systems and their nexus are often borne disproportionately by lower income communities. As climate change brings about extreme weather events and changing environmental conditions, institutions must not only be capable of weighing complex trade-offs, but of protecting marginalized communities from over-sharing a burden of new systems that come to the fore.
Question 1: What are some potential institutional mechanisms to internalize impacts of energy development on water, the environment, and human health?
Question 2: Environmental and water impacts of energy sources such as coal and fracking can be detrimental to local water sources and environments, and having a corresponding adverse impact on human health. How may we reconcile local interests with national energy interests, which are not only economic but interconnected with general social well-being to some extent?
The article “Cornucopia or Curse? Reviewing the costs and benefits of Shale gas hydralic fracturing (fracking)” by Benjamin K. Sovacool was very informative, and provided a thorough explanation on the economic ins and outs of shale gas production. The pros and cons were outlined in a way that was easy to read and understand, and the associated images and graphs were also helping guide the reader through the data and statistics. For the pros of fracking, Sovacool writes that shale gas development enhances energy security and the availability of energy fuels, lowers natural gas prices, offers a cleaner environmental footprint than some other fossil fuels (notably from coal), and also enables local economic development through the production of hundreds of thousands of jobs. As for cons, which Sovacool writes that they only come as a consequence if extraction of shale gas is not done properly, he writes that projects can be: prone to accidents, contribute to environmental degradation (i.e:generate waste which is difficult to dispose, contribute to air polution), induce earthquakes, catalyze major public health concerns (high levels or radiation leading to cancer), and also lead to a loss in profits and economic downfall. With all this in mind, it is no surprise that there are many social and political protests against fracking across the globe. Sovacool highlights this, and provides stats that across many European countries and a number of U.S states, the public is pretty evenly split on the topic of hydraulic fracturing projects – with a 51% for those who are not in favour of fracking.
I appreciated that this study took into account more than 100 other studies looking at shale gas across the span of 10 years, and that all the information was compiled into a fluid and reader-friendly text. In concluding the points of his study, Sovacool argues four points: The first point is that shale gas production brings about benefits but that these may not be distributed evenly. The second point is that public debates on shale gas will always remain divisive because there is a wide array of data to support both sides of the argument. The third point is that there will be different developmental trajectories of shale gas around the world because of the complexity in its contestations. The final point is that the efficiency and utility of fracking ultimately depends on its governing principles.
The researcher writing this article was very clearly aiming to thoughtfully provide pure facts and dissociate any bias he may have for or against fracking. However, it is still quite obvious that despite all the arguments he presented against fracking, his stance is that it is still a necessity, as he argues that the benefits may very well be worthwhile if projects are managed and conducted properly – which is quite an optimistic perspective.
Questions:
– With such a clear divide between those who are for and against fracking, do you think there is some way to achieve a middle ground?
– According to Sovacool, shale gas production can work if it is comprehensively regulated. Aside from more money, what else might this demand from the public, local communities, and local governments?
Scott, C. A., Pierce, S. A., Pasqualetti, M. J., Jones, A. L., Montz, B. E., & Hoover, J. H. (2011). Policy and institutional dimensions of the water-energy nexus. Energy Policy, 39(10), 6622-6630.
Water and energy are forever interconnected. They operate as partners, working overtime to accommodate human’s ever-increasing consumption of resources. Proper management of this relationship is required, yet as Scott et al. demonstrate, nexuses are incredibly challenging to manage due to differences in scale and priority. Through a series of case studies examining water with different sources of energy, they demonstrate the complicated relationship, the reliance, issues and successes of the various forms of water-energy nexuses.
Scott et al. begin the paper by taking a step back to examine the components of the nexus. They illustrate how the various parts of the complex maintain an overarching emphasis on resource consumption; this is the driving force of the nexus. The water-energy nexus is essential to us, yet there is no uniform way to manage it. Resources are managed at the local, regional and global scale. These differences can be drastic since “localized challenges are diminished when considered from broader perspectives, while regionally important challenges are not prioritized locally” (6622). There are efforts to transition to less water-intensive energy technologies, but this progress is limited due to existing infrastructure and undeveloped technology. The case study about Arizona placed emphasis on the differences between local and regional management. Large-scale systems are relied upon to supply electricity, but there is this assumption that this centralized, large-scale energy production can be maintained. The study involving Kentucky featured coal and its relationship with water. Water is needed in the extraction, transportation and distribution of coal. While the benefits of energy were reaped, the water-related impacts to landowners and local communities were being felt. So much so that it became the main reason for opposition to mining in the 1980’s. The third case study discussed in this paper was centred around the shale natural gas-water quality nexus in northeastern and central United States. Natural gas is proposed as a way to harness energy with fewer local impacts when compared to coal mining. This case study highlighted the complex set of pros and cons that accompanies fracking. Different forms of energy can be more easily accessed, better transported or are better for the environment. What remains the same, however, is our species’ dependence on them. The nexus is used to describe and illustrate the complex network the various components create, with the hope that by understanding it, we may be able to improve our current system.
Water and energy can be thought of separately, but if we are to solve issues resulting from a nexus, we need to examine them as a compound, each integrated into each other. This connection simultaneously creates more problems and possibilities, yet as they do not exist without each other, they need to be dealt with as a unit. Traditionally, the water-energy nexus was viewed as solely a resource management approach, but the nexus has stretched far beyond that to be “one of the most pressing couple-resource and environmental challenges of our time” (6629).
Questions:
1. Do you think it is possible to move beyond the nexus? To separate water and energy from each other?
2. There was a mention of technology being used to improve the nexus. What role do you think (developing) technology will play in the evolving water-energy nexus?
In “Policy and institutional dimensions of the water-energy nexus,” Scott et al. expand conventional understandings of the water-energy nexus by evaluating the relationship between water and energy through the lens of resource coupling and multi-tiered institutional arrangements. In contrast to traditional approaches that consider water and energy as individual resources, the authors illustrate how incorporating water and energy linkages beyond point-of-use arrangements or input-out matrixes leads to proper resource governance, policy, and global-change adaptation. Multi-tiered institutional arrangements – in the form of laws, policies, and organizations – are not confined to a single jurisdiction to manage resources, but can work across jurisdictional levels to allow for more alternatives in the decision-making process.
Scott et al. acknowledge that water and energy interdependencies is considered a messy or wicked problem. I found the Northeastern and Central US examples to be particularly interesting in light of our debate on hydraulic fracturing. As we prepare for the debate, something we will need to tackle that Scott et al. do not mention entirely is the discourse around fugitive emissions. Defined as the unintended or irregular releases of gases, we acknowledge that the process of extracting shale gas is nowhere near perfect, but require a set of trade-offs. As Scott et al., note in his section on stakeholder trade-offs and modeled energy-water portfolios, these complexities are inevitable in light of the water-energy nexus being a wicked problem. Gas in the US is seen as vital to energy independence and a better alternative to coal. Locally, there are also competing interests and disparate views coming from stakeholders, landowners, and citizens. As such, multi-tiered decision making in the New York case study appeared to be muddled and potted.
Current water-energy discourses must take into account the ‘externalization of impacts’. Scott et al. note that, “consumers may benefit from low commercial cost energy while corporations make profits; however, the impacts are often borne by low-income residents of energy-rich regions such as Appalachia” (2011, p. 6629). Resource coupling multi-tiered institutional coordination is more important than ever. These models do a good job taking into account the current political landscape as well as exacerbations in climate change. In an era of climate denial when the science is clear, the current administration has touted his less familiar slogan of “Trump Digs Coal,” channeling the nostalgia of large coal booms in the Midwest and signalling a return to the past. Multi-tiered institutional considerations in these models must take into account further anomalies or administrations that seem to forego the science for political gain at the expense of long-term environmental sustainability, economic rationality, and social equity.
Question 1: Scott et al. note that the water-energy nexus can be understood as a ‘messy or wicked problem.’ In response to these assertions, the authors note that ‘creative scholarship’ is necessary to move forward. What does ‘creative scholarship’ entail and how can it be mobilized to break the impasse on seemingly entrenched wicked problems?
Question 2: It is clear that water-energy discourses must take into account the ‘externalization of impacts.’ Much of the negative impacts are placed on low-income and minority communities while positive impacts are distributed among a select few. How do we reconcile these disparities and move towards environmental justice as well as social and economic equity?
The article “Cornucopia or curse? Reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing” points out that the rapid development of the shale gas industry has an important impact on the world’s energy structure, but the environmental risks brought by its shale gas development are also large, including land occupation and pollution, large consumption and pollution of water resources, Greenhouse gas emissions, etc. Sovacool conducts a cost and benefits analysis to assess hydraulic fracturing of natural gas. He provides the pros and cons of shale gas and initiated a debate about it. How to choose and find a balance is the main problem we need to face and solve.
First of all, Sovacool mentions that Shale gas as an unconventional form of oil has sparked a silent revolution. Obviously, Shale gas has lots of advantages compared to traditional fossil fuel. The reserves of shale gas are huge and the price is very low and compared with coal and petroleum, shale gas has lower carbon emission and cleaner environmental footprint. In addition, as an emerging industry, it creates lots of jobs and boosts economic development. Although the benefits of shale gas development are tangible, the cost of shale gas development is also alarming. Firstly, the production process requires a huge amount of water, which is a difficulty for water-scarce areas. Secondly, the mining process will generate wastewater, which contains toxic or carcinogens. Moreover, shale gas development is not just about water pollution. It will also cause earthquakes, crustal subsidence, natural gas leaks, and other related accidents.
Through cost and benefit analysis, we can see that shale gas development is a controversial matter. In my opinion, the core contradiction is how to achieve sustainable development rather than discussing if we should completely abandon shale gas and fracking altogether. Differences in values and national conditions can lead to different outcomes of the debate. For example, as Sobacool mentioned in his article, because of the high population density in Europe, the impact of environmental hazards is completely different from that of the United States. Therefore more prudent environmental policies are necessary for Europe. Secondly, failure or even lack of government supervision is one of the reasons causing these problems. Before large-scale development of shale gas, environmental risks should be fully assessed and a corresponding protection framework should be established to ensure the public health is not threatened by shale gas.
Question1. Do you think economic development and environmental protection are contradictions?
Question2. the author mentioned shale gas is taking away the investment share of renewable energy, hence do you think the energy industry should be nationalized to ensure environmental safety and the development of renewable energy?
The article, “Cornucopia or curse? Reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking)” by Benjamin K. Sovacool, compares and contrasts the pros and cons of Shale gas fracturing, while also outlining in a great amount of detail, the process behind shale fracking and what is involved in comparison to other ways of obtaining gasses from earth. On the ‘pro’ side of things, Sovacool made it clear that shale gas fracking has one of the cleaner environmental footprints then that of other fossil fuels like coal and oil. Sovacool also made note that shale gas has carbon benefits and has assisted in reducing plants greenhouse gas emissions by up to 50%. Along with its improved environmental footprint, Shale gas fracking creates lower natural gas prices. According to the article, shale gas is nearly 55% cheaper than that from newer gas wells and it is projected that new technology will only help bring that number even higher. This new wave of cheaper gas has created a domino affect which has created an upwards trend in cheaper electricity. The increased use of shale gas has made some serious dents in gas prices and if trends continue in the direction that they are going, North America’s reliance on foreign gas, particularly Russia, would decrease. Considerably one of the most important pros involving shale gas is that there just so happens to currently be an abundance of it. Around the globe, there is a vast amount of basins that contain north of 5760 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas. These numbers indicate that the use of shale gas could potentially cause for the greatest shift in energy-reserve estimates in the last half century.
While the pros to shale gas fracking are clearly large and impactful, it is hard to discuss the power of shale gas fracking without considering the negative things that come with it. In his article, Sovacool mentions that the process of fracking is very technologically complex and also a very expensive operation to run. The relationship between cost, and likelihood of events like gas leaks at plants. One of the many things that I did not know about fracking before reading this article was how complex the act of fracking is and because of the many steps that are involved in fracking, it is often difficult to detect exactly where or why malfunctions in machinery are taking place. When a malfunction takes place in fracking, the consequences can be very serious. Although I previously mentioned that shale gas fracking is considered to be more environmentally friendly than the use of almost any other natural gas, it is important to understand that the potential damage that can be caused by shale gas fracking is still devastating. In the article, Sovacool lists a number of examples of complications that have happened with fracking and based off of those examples, I believe that fracking does not serve as the solution to obtaining natural gasses from earth, but more so an indefinite band-aid that will be used until a larger technological advancement is made.
Questions:
1: While statistically speaking shale gas fracking is a major improvement in terms of obtaining natural gasses with a smaller environmental footprint. With that in mind, fracking still causes for some major debate for how ecologically friendly the processes are. If you were in charge of revolutionizing the ways in which we obtain our gasses from the earth, would your main priority be to tackle the costs involved in fracking, or too further advance its ability to be less harmful to the environment?
2: Considering that some areas around the globe like Alberta and Saudia Arabia are viewed as oil hotspots, do you believe that there would ever be able to be one single form of legal framework that holds all fracking sites around the globe accountable for there actions and monitors there practices at the exact same standards?
In the article “Cornucopia or Curse? Reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking),” author Benjamin K. Sovacool gives a comprehensive review of the pros and cons of shale gas production. He first highlights the positives aspects which he writes are its availability, affordability, ability to create jobs and fuel economic development, and that its less environmentally harmful than other fossil fuels such as coal and oil. He then outlines the negative aspects which he describes as environmental degradation, the risks to human health, increased risk of earthquakes, high risk of accidents due to the high technical sophistication fracking requires, and economic and supply uncertainty.
Sovacool comes to the conclusion that only with proper regulation and monitoring shale gas production can be a viable option. He argues that because this issue is so polarized and site-specific fracking’s outcome could be vastly different depending on an array of factors.
I found this article argued both sides very diplomatically, however, I found the cons side more convincing. Therefore, I was surprised to learn that the survey conducted by the Economist of global public attitudes towards fracking was split almost 50/50, with 49% for and 51% against when so few countries use fracking and some have outright banned it. I find the cons side more convincing mainly due to the effects fracking has on ecosystems and its contribution to climate change. Furthermore, Sovacool details that when the externalities associated with fracking are incorporated it is overall more economically costly. There are other ways to produce energy such as renewables and there are other ways to increase economic development and create jobs. In contrast, the damage done by fracking to local communities’ health, local ecosystems and the harmful contribution of methane emissions to climate change cannot be undone.
This article put forward several interesting points and facts that I was unaware of or had not considered. First, in the United States fracking is excepted from the Safe Water Drinking Act. This case highlights the power that industries can have over laws, and how this power could allow for laws that protect businesses over the health and well-being of ecosystems and local people. Second, the argument that further investment into fracking could “lock economies into fossil-fueled infrastructure” and directly compete with the adoption of renewables. This point emphasized the importance of understanding fracking as not clean energy, but rather cleaner than other fossil fuels.
Should fracking be a dominant form of energy production in the future as predicted in the article? If no, to what extent should fracking be utilized?
Are local stakeholders who directly benefit economically more likely to see fracking as positive, even when they experience the environmental and health-related ramifications? Why is there such division in viewpoint between different communities as in the example of the frack burger town?
Sovacool’s “Cornucopia or curse? Reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking)” explores the pros and cons of shale gas hydraulic fracturing. Ultimately, the article offers conclusions for policymakers, energy planners, investors, and analysts to consider.
The article begins with an explanation of the process of fracking, as well as the technical terms associated with the process, whilst also highlighting market trends. The article then begins to explore the pros of shale gas hydraulic fracturing, which mainly revolves around the abundance of supply, lower natural gas prices, cleaner environmental footprint, as well as economic development. The article then highlights the cons, which revolve around the technological sophistication needed to carry out the process, environmental degradation (which consists of pollution and public health, climate change, and displacement and social opposition), the increase in earthquake and seismicity and unclear profitability related to fracking. Of the pros, the most significant argument is that of its relatively cleaner environmental footprint as compared to other fossil fuels which are widely used in the United States. Contrastingly, the most significant cons argument is that of the environmental degradation which it produces. Ultimately, the cons argument outweighs that of the pros argument for fracking. The article concludes that shale gas fracking evokes significant benefits and costs, highlights the largely contested nature of the debate and how this could affect development trajectories around the world, and lastly, it highlights how its efficiency is also largely contingent on its management on behalf of the government.
The article makes a specific focus on the case of the United States (i.e. a developed country), which derives around 80% of its energy from fossil fuels (a non-renewable energy). This reflection questions whether these pros and cons would be consistent if the focus were made on a country that derived its energy from more renewable forms of energy, such as Canada, which derives around 60% of its energy from hydro. Additionally, this reflection also questions whether these pros and cons would be consistent if the focus were made on a country with a different level of development. For example, in developing countries, would the ‘pro’ argument of economic development be the most significant factor to consider.
1. Are the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ argued in this article consistent in countries which use more renewable energy sources?
2. How do the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ argued in this article differ between developed and developing countries?
“Policy and institutional dimensions of the water-energy nexus” by C.A. Scott et al. is an analysis of the ways energy and water are linked by their use of resources, their interdependence in regards to consumption patterns, and current versus potential alternative management practices. As it stands, energy is required in order to secure water access, treatment and distribution, while water is necessary for the development and delivery of energy– an intensive process generally detrimental to the health and longevity of natural systems including water itself. Traditionally, it is the needs of companies and operating facilities that are prioritized, with emphasis on efficiency for economic growth. This quantitative approach separates management from holistic evaluation, and generally ignores the impacts at the local level. Such an output-oriented focus neglects critical components of the input process, such as institutions and political frameworks that govern how a society functions; and effects on environment and human health are treated as externalities, despite being intrinsically sourced.
When the problems that arise from a model of ever-increasing production and consumption occasionally are addressed, it is by engineering manufactured mitigation tactics; Instead of targeting root structural or ideological issues, the situation is merely further capitalized upon. The authoritative bodies determining this are headed by those who already possess power, and thereby illegitimate but highly consequential claims to that authority. This leaves little room for local decision making, something allegedly amended via “regulatory cooperation”. However, the concept of financial compensation itself is constructed under the same system that creates the conditions in which such compensation is needed.
Considering water and energy collectively, rather than individually, reveals broader institutional relationships and societal decision-making challenges beyond the traditional input-output viewpoint. With this in mind, the author highlights the need for resource coupling and multi-tiered institutional arrangements in order to push the water-energy nexus into resource governance, policy, and global adaptation. Here I propose that, while doing so might increase understanding of local environmental and social implications, limiting initiatives within current systems of government will fail to actually enact any fundamental change. For example, the author proposes that it is the local versus regional institutions which negatively impact infrastructure and heavily depend on inputs to ensure resource access. Therefore, alongside this point it stood out to me that place-based responses may actually increase carbon emissions, counteracting broader reduction efforts. It seems that it is less the scale at which water and energy are managed- although this is certainly a compounding factor- than it is the act of institutionalizing natural resources in the first place.
Questions:
-Why do you think the author emphasized the role of individual consumer practices in influencing demand for water and energy? Do you agree with this analysis? Why or why not?
-How might water and energy management look in an economy that subverted capital as an “externality”?
The literary review “Cornocopia or Curse? Reviewing the results of Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking)” written by Dr Benjamin Sovacool was a thorough overview of the entire fracking industry. Stylistically Sovacool chose to open the paper by explaining the process of how fracking is conducted, followed by its pros, then its cons and finally a general summation of his findings. This allowed an in-depth understanding of the field and brought nuance to the more general topic at hand. The pros section of the paper raised some very interesting points, in particular its section on how in comparison to oil and coal fracking presents a marginally cleaner production pathway. The other pros are more self-evident with the global importance of the energy sector, it is natural that any technological advancement that allows for the production of cheap inputs into existing energy infrastructure will reap economic benefits worldwide. Cheap gas means a reduced economic cost for the entire planet, but what is not accounted for is that this means increased global production likely contributing to further global temperature rise through CO2 release.
The high technical complexity was a very interesting point that was raised in the paper that I had not previously thought about when considering fracking. The amount of room for error is incredibly high, and with the trend of loosening regulations around environmental accountability for corporations in many countries, it will be interesting to see how long until an environmental catastrophe occurs. In a broader sense, the complexity of the technology also allows for more minute leaks to occur in the system which coupled with the dramatic increase in fracking infrastructure will likely cause long-term environmental degradation. The social opposition section brings up a very good point about the opportunity cost of fracking, in that it displaces other forms of natural energy that without the drop in oil price that fracking has provided may have become more affordable than non-renewables pollutants.
Another interesting point is the seismicity problem. The process of fracking through vertical shale layers raises questions about the long terms effects of fracking on a region, the article touches on this and describes earthquakes up to magnitude 3.3 in some cases. This is on a rather small scale but raises questions when taking into consideration the astronomical spike in fracking especially in the USA. When done at such a large scale and with it only expected to increase in the next 20 years there must be some long term effects on the stability and cohesion of the underground system. Furthermore, the article briefly touches on the chemicals used in the underground fracking process, it is unlikely that this high usage of chemicals in the deep underground rock layers is completely cleaned likely causing cross-contamination into the environment.
Are there any regulations on how close fracking set up can occur to one another? Is it possible that the stability of a region be compromised by over-fracking?
Could fracking chemicals end up contaminating groundwater reserves through infiltration and leakage from increased fracking operations?
In the “Cornucopia or curse?” reading the author outlines the basics of shale gas extraction via hydraulic fracturing as well as the pros and cons of this process. The introduction states plainly that shale gas can be thought of as either cornucopia or curse depending on the situation. The author then outlines some shale gas basics. This includes the history of shale gas extraction as well as a 7 step outline of how the process actually works. Essentially, shale gas differs from other types of sources due to the fact that it doesn’t naturally flow into pools. Through hydraulic fracturing, we are able to make small controlled blasts, creating gas flow through the porous shale along seams. Horizontal drilling can allow for multi stage fracking along the same vertical hole. These blasts are used using large amounts of water, with major jobs using millions of gallons.
The author then outlines the pros and cons of shale gas development. First the pros he lists are: supply abundance, lowering of natural gas prices, clean(er) environmental footprint, and economic development. The part of the pros list that stood out to me most was the sociopolitical implications of lower gas prices. These lowered prices would allow countries such as Canada to reduce their dependence on certain “energy monopoly’ countries. These monopolies have led to conflict and an unfair power balance on the global stage, and with shale gas expansion the power imbalance would be readjusted, potentially reducing the amount of future conflicts. The cons listed are: technological sophistication, environmental degradation, earthquakes/ seismic activity, and unclear profitability. A part that stuck out to me within the environmental degradation argument is the role water plays in the process. Hydraulic fracturing requires the use of huge amounts of water, this is dangerous because the world’s water sources are already under large amounts of stress. For example, the author cites a study that found that global groundwater needs will be 3.5 times the amount of available groundwater in the near future.
Overall, this article was very interesting. Personally, I have tended to write off any form of fossil fuel expansion as against my beliefs. Having read the pros side of the argument, I now have a greater understanding of why people are pushing for this expansion. After reading the whole article I came to the personal conclusion that the dangers outweigh the potential benefits.
Questions:
Which aspect of environmental degradation posed by shale gas development stuck out to you? Why?
Do you believe there is a sustainable future for fossil fuel use?
The paper by Scott et al (2011) shows how energy and water are interlinked through their usage, as energy is needed to secure, deliver, treat, and distribute water, and water is used and degraded to create and transport energy. While providing some economic benefits, energy development such as coal and natural gas can cause local-level environment and human health problems, which are usually treated as externalities to be mitigated after-the-fact. Small scale land owners may focus on short/medium term economic benefits while others on short/long term environmental impacts. Water and energy interdependencies are a wicked problem with no optimal solution. One problem faced in improving the system is that existing infrastructure and policy both limit transition to less intensive energy production, however, this can be addressed through incremental change.
Energy generation is a huge contributor to carbon emissions. Paradoxically, local mitigation of climate change effects requires increased water and energy demand, which can have counteractive effects regionally or nationally in the long term. The authors note that energy production often operates with an assumption of resource inexhaustibility, such as in large-scale systems in the Southwest US that require high input. Energy-intensive ground water pumping over long distances has a high cost in areas where local water sources do not meet local needs. The authors note how resource withdrawal that is transported and consumed in a different location leads to local and regional trade-offs which are displaced – negative impacts where extraction occurs.
A theme throughout the paper was the impacts and responsibilities of different stakeholders.
The disconnect between affected communities and interested stakeholders presents a problem when short-medium-term costs tend to be borne by those with less power. One idea presented was that consumers who benefit from reduced energy costs can make financial contributions to offset impacts in coal producing regions as a way to ‘internalize externalities’. The paper criticizes this perspective due to the spatial disconnect between those who benefit and those who experience negative impacts from energy production, as well as the unjustifiable carbon emissions. It is important to reflect on how theoretical practices play out on the ground, and continually adjust methods that do not work. Often financial incentives for reducing impacts do not prevent pollution and environmental damage from happening, as it is still more profitable to financially compensate for damage after the fact, when in reality the damage is irreversible. Users of more environmentally damaging but affordable forms of energy will not necessarily recognize the non-financial costs. Low-income residents of rich nations and low-income areas both experience the worst effects of the climate crisis but have contributed the least. This power dynamic needs to be addressed in order for people to suffer less from the impacts of climate change.
Q 1: What ways could we shift power dynamics so that people who contribute the least but experience the worst of climate change have more power?
Q2: What non-financial incentives might work to encourage reduction of environmentally destructive energy production?
In response to “The Economics of Shale Gas Development” by Mason et al.
The paper outlines the benefits and costs of the economics of hydraulic fracturing. While they do a good job of outlining various factors, the paper seems a tad bit dated compared to modern concerns over, and information about, hydraulic fracking. One of the main points in the benefits of fracking is the decreased prices in natural gas, having a ripple effect onto everyday life (in heating of homes) and on manufacturing in the States. While this has been true in the past few decades, and is still somewhat true, the lies in the accounting of fracking corporations has recently come to light. Corporations have utilized capital expenditure, and ignored depreciation in order to manipulate their stocks, showing that they are growing when in fact they are losing money from the heavy costs of well building and maintenance. Since this paper was written (2014) there have been large fracking corporations that have filed for bankruptcy due to their loses over the years. Because of this new information coming to light, it is evident that fracking corporations will need to raise the prices of their oil, changing the dynamics of the elasticity mentioned in the article. This will have huge detrimental effects on a society that is becoming more and more dependent on natural gas in many parts of the economy.
Another part about this article that is concerning is the “benefits” of natural gas in relation to air quality and greenhouse gases. The first issue is that this paper sets up a false dichotomy: comparing natural gas only to coal. Framed in such a way natural gas appears to be very good for the environment, when in reality it’s only good compared to the absolute worst form of energy consumption. Additionally, the research into the emissions of natural gas only looks at the CO2 given off by the use of the fuels. This has serious gaps in logic as CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas that must be accounted for. The paper states that methane is not accounted for in the study but methane is the greenhouse gas that natural gas gives off the most of (or at least, more of compared to coal). Also, the paper does not mention the greenhouse gases given off by flaring at fracking sites.
There are many problems with the arguments that the authors have for the benefits of hydraulic fracturing. While they are attempting to be unbiased by discussing the pros and the cons I believe that there are issues with presenting data that is skewed just to give one side of the argument a voice. Nobody is truly unbiased, that is even shown once the authors get to the costs section, so it is better for the authors to first state their biases and then discuss the issue instead of pretending to take a place of neutrality in discussing the topic.
Questions
-Are there and long-term economic benefits the hydraulic fracturing?
-Have there been any comparison of CO2e (a measurement of all GHGs) between natural gas and other forms of energy production including and apart from coal?
Sovacool’s article: Cornucopia or curse? Reviews the technical, economic, environmental, and social costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking). The article explores lucrative economic and geopolitical aspects of the industry, including its ability to enhance energy security and the availability of energy fuels. In addition, the energy production lowers natural gas prices, and enables local economic development and/or stimulation. Despite these benefits, the industry is not without tradeoffs. Hydraulic fracturing is often hailed as a transitional fuel, offering a cleaner environmental footprint than other fossil fuels, such as coal. However, poor production of shale gas can be prone to accidents and leakage, contributing to environmental degradation, water contamination, induced seismicity, and, when externalities are accounted for, the production of more net economic losses than profits. While hydraulic fracturing may be less carbon intensive than other fuel alternatives, it emits significant amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas roughly with a global warming potential (GWP) ~100 times greater than CO2. Upon further investigation, I found that most methane emitted from fracturing operations is not properly accounted for, and no one knows the true extent of methane emissions the industry releases. Furthermore, the addition of fracking fluid poses significant concerns and threats to public health, and particularly damages already marginalized communities.
As an environmentalist, I have always found myself in opposition to hydraulic fracturing. I have maintained the belief that the industry is driven by profit and power, and the argument of shale gas as an essential transitional fuel is nothing more than a form of greenwashing. Although the negative impacts and losses of this industry seem to trump the benefits, Sovacool explores the role of hydraulic fracturing in offering the potential to shift our modern day energy system from a reliance on fossil fuels to a more sustainable system. In a world in which productivity is closely linked to energy expenditure, Sovacool argues that fracking will be vital to global economic stability until renewable or nuclear energy carries more of the workload. He continues to illustrate the necessity of fracking, stating that the use of shale gas has lowered the overall emissions intensity of the US national grid (which is heavily dependent on coal), and will continue to lower emissions to the extent that coal- or oil- fired generation is displaced. While this is true, as fracturing has been effective in beginning the transition to renewable energies, I believe that this argument is now outdated in the context of developed countries. Unprecedented and rapid climate change requires more immediate and drastic action. We no longer have the time or environmental capacity to invest in fossil fuel energy production.
Sovacool concludes with the fitting argument that all is a matter of polarity. Enforcing stronger regulations remains crucial to minimize risk to the environment and human health. Establishing/investing in technological systems, operating procedures, government regulations, and corporate values at each locality is essential. Yet with opposing opinions on hydraulic fracturing, the debate on shale gas production is likely to persist for many years to come.
Q1: Is the argument that hydraulic fracturing is a transition fuel still valuable in the context of unprecedented climate change requiring immediate action?
Q2: How do costs and benefits of hydraulic fracturing in developed countries compare to those in developing nations?