Fracking Breaks the CO2 Budget

The Obama administration is prepared to directly regulate methane leaks from the oil and natural gas industry, and may do so soon.  But as we explained in a previous blog, directly regulating methane from the industry greenwashes the climate impacts of widespread and intensive drilling and fracking for natural gas.  That’s because, just looking at carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, almost all of the natural gas has to stay underground, unburned, to stay within a CO2 budget that would avoid dangerous climate changes.

In terms of climate impact, methane emissions from the natural gas industry largely, if not totally, offset reductions in carbon dioxide from using natural gas instead of coal, gasoline, diesel or heating oils.  More methane is leaking than regulators estimate, and pound-for-pound, each puff of methane from the industry is 87 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat over 20 years, and 36 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat over 100 years.  The conservative estimate from atmospheric measurements (not from inventorying) is that U.S. natural gas leakage in 2010, averaged over the country that year, amounted to over three percent of total 2010 production.

The Obama administration and many environmental organizations are making waves to reduce this leakage, but setting aside the effectiveness of any new rules, consider that in terms of CO2 alone, burning all the natural gas unleashed by fracking breaks the CO2 budget.

In order to have even a 75 percent chance to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius (averting high risks of extremely dangerous and irreversible climate impacts, such as sea level rise, habitat destruction and extreme weather), we must keep total CO2 emissions from 2015-2050 under about 440 Gigatonnes (Gt, or one trillion kilograms).

Read more at Fracking Breaks the CO2 Budget