What is the impact of fracking on environmental quality?

Josiah Neeley writes at R Street,

As with many environmental issues, the debate over hydraulic fracturing is often framed as a conflict between what’s good for the economy and what’s good for the environment.

The economic case for fracking is strong. According to a recent analysis by the Brookings Institution, fracking has been responsible for annual declines in residential natural gas bills of $13 billion a year between 2007 and 2013, an average savings of $200 a year per household. Analysis by IHS Inc.’s Cambridge Energy Research Associates (IHS CERA) found that, in 2012 the fracking-led energy boom contributed $283 billion to U.S. gross domestic product, an increase of more than $1,200 in income per household.

But do these economic benefits necessitate sacrificing environmental quality? The answer, in brief, is no. Many of the claimed environmental harms from hydraulic fracturing do not stand up to scrutiny, while other concerns can be managed and limited by effective oversight. Fracking is not only an economic boon, but it is also a net positive for the environment.

Climate effects of fracking

U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have fallen significantly in recent years. U.S. GHG emissions in 2013 were lower than in 1995, and per-capita emissions are comparable to emissions levels in the mid-1960s.



Both coal and natural gas are fossil fuels, but when it comes to carbon-dioxide emissions, not all fossil fuels are created equal. Burning natural gas releases about half the CO2 per unit of electricity generated as does coal. By helping to reduce the price of natural gas, fracking has therefore been a major factor in recent CO2 reductions.

While some methane clearly does escape during oil and gas production from fracked wells, most analyses have concluded that, even factoring in methane emissions, electricity from natural gas still has half the total greenhouse gas footprint of an equivalent amount of coal.

For an equivalent amount of electricity generated, power plant use of natural gas produces less than a third as much of the nitrogen oxides, and about 1 percent as much of the sulfur oxides, as coal. Burning natural gas also produces far fewer particulates than coal per unit of energy generated. Burning coal also produces emissions of other hazardous substances, such as mercury, which are not present in natural gas.

...Despite numerous investigations, there are currently no cases where the fracking process has been shown to have contaminated groundwater supplies in Texas. Indeed, geological considerations make direct contamination via fracking unlikely. While groundwater supplies typically lie a few hundred feet below the earth’s surface, shale oil and gas resides several thousand feet down. For fracking to contaminate groundwater, chemicals from the process would have to migrate up through thousands of feet of solid rock.

...As with air quality, water use for hydraulic fracturing has to be compared to the water use that would be required to produce the largely coal-power electricity that natural gas displaces. A 2013 analysis found that “water saved by using natural gas combined cycle plants relative to coal steam turbine plants is 25–50 times greater than the amount of water used in hydraulic fracturing to extract the gas.”

Every source of energy has plusses and minuses. Wind farms provide zero carbon electricity, but this energy is intermittent and the turbines themselves can kill birds and other species. Hydroelectric dams can provide reliable power, but can radically alter local ecosystems. To evaluate an energy source properly, one must look at it not in the abstract, but in comparison to the most likely alternatives.

Judged from this perspective, the environmental record of hydraulic fracturing looks pretty good. Fracked natural gas has supplanted significant amounts of coal electricity, delivering low cost electricity with half the levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions of other harmful compounds are also drastically less. Fracking poses little risk to water quality, and uses less water than coal. While hydraulic fracturing can pose environmental challenges, particularly in certain local areas, these can be managed via appropriate regulation and oversight.

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