Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:
Western Maryland’s largest newspaper, The Cumberland Times-News, reaching citizens in parts of West Virginia and Pennsylvania as well, has run two pieces on the role of natural gas in our energy futures, one on March 4th from a “professional petroleum geologist,” John J. Interval, from “Bridgeville, PA,” entitled “Natural Gas a Vital Resource,” and one on March 19th, an editorial which supports Governor Larry Hogan’s decision to approve the Potomac Pipeline running under the river and linking the fracking gas fields of West Virginia and Pennsylvania to West Virginia’s eastern “Panhandle” region. It was entitled “Go Ahead.” {in last minute developments, Delegate Shane Robinson has introduced a bill, HB-1826, very, very late in the session, to require the administration to conduct the more thorough “401” analysis that they have been evading up to now: see here: www.sierraclub.org/… }
My response to Mr. Interval was sent in just four day’s later, on March 8th, but the paper has a frequency limit on repeat author letters, and I had just had one published on the Forest Conservation Act, so it looks like I’m not going to get this one through the presses. Therefore, I’m posting it here, with some additions.
And these observations: It’s quite clear that the Hogan administration’s decision to support the legislative ban on natural gas fracking in Maryland was a political, tactical one, and that high level talks and maneuvers were under way, with the environmental public shut-out, to facilitate the gas industry moving its products across the state, and indeed, expanding its use here in Maryland. That may be surprising to some, including former Annapolis Delegate and Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Heather Mizeur, but not to this observer. That led me to send the following letter to Heather, back on February 16th. I have not received a reply, and really don’t expect one.
Heather:
I think a better guide to this governor was his Inaugural Address and initial speech to the Maryland legislature. I've stated that we won the anti-fracking battle in Maryland partly because of two factors, not to take anything away from our campaigns, in which I worked unpaid, full time in the fall of 2016: a split in the Western Maryland business ownership class, almost 50/50 between those who would be hurt, or helped, by fracking, and 2) the fact that the oil and gas industry did not feel the stakes in Maryland were high enough, the extractable gas worth an all out campaign financing effort.
The Governor's broader commitments and actions reveal he is simply a fossil fuel, thorough-going capitalist in the grand old manner, but capable of throwing us a bone without much meat on it from time to time. He will plead austerity at the idea of a renewables worker and community compensation plan, yet open the state's financial commitments to the tune of billions to try to lure Amazon's eastern headquarters to Maryland. A thorough-going Neoliberal who thinks that the private sector's actions equate to the public good, economically and ecologically, and that there is no alternative.
At this late date and hour in the climate crisis, he couldn't be more wrong. He's for the status quo all the way, in comfort for himself.
I never felt the gas industry went all out to win the fracking campaign here: gas prices were too low, the amount of gas available was not large, and the real playing field was for building more infrastructure, pipelines and much more, to move the product out of the country via the LNG process, to take advantage of the higher prices abroad. While domestic demand remained flat, in terms of consumer usage, the other real opportunity was to replace coal on the electricity generating front, reaping a massive “greenwashing” bonus, which Mr. Interval’s letter dutifully supports — that we’re both cleaning our air and reducing carbon dioxide pollution — cutting it in half, by replacing coal with natural gas. That line — which has some truth in it - obscures the role of methane gas in driving global warming at a faster pace than CO2, it being a shorter lived but much more potent Green House Gas, leaking every step of the way along the whole complicated fracking process, right on through to its exportation on those huge LNG tanker ships.
The environmental community has made three mistakes in their efforts to move the nation along to genuine renewable energy as quickly as possible — to wind, solar and hydro power.
First, we have not gotten the difficult message on methane leakage through to the Democratic Party establishment, much less to the average citizen. For example, Bill McKibben, one of our leading environmental writers, laid out the case here in the Nation magazine almost exactly two years ago: www.thenation.com/… and now here he is, just a week ago, saying we failed to make a dent in the natural gas dependency and the direction of public opinion: e360.yale.edu/…
Second, we have underestimated the impact that the new and intensifying Cold War with Russia is having on our domestic policies regarding energy sources and stemming global warming.
And third, while Democrats have been obsessed with Russian behavior interfering in our elections and causing much trouble in European and Middle East crisis spots, China has moved up to dominate both the solar panel and wind turbine manufacturing processes, and threatens to take the lead in other aspects of clean power product development as well. While Amy Myers Jaffe, writing in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs, the establishment publication in that policy area, calls our attention to the rise of China via her “Renewable Energy and Chinese Power” article, here — www.foreignaffairs.com/… she, in the end, seems to subscribe to the Obama doctrine of an inconclusive, “all of the above” as our response.
To pull this off, she assumes that the natural gas industry will just be content to play a temporary role as the “bridge” fuel, bat down Russian attempts to isolate/strangle Western and Eastern Europe on their own brand of gas dependency, and then co-cooperatively phase themselves out as they acknowledge the all- around superiority of wind, solar and hydro. For her, Bill McKibben’s efforts don’t seem to exist; nor scientist Kevin Anderson’s fierce and detailed criticism of Western Europe’s cancelling out the chance to meet their Paris Agreement pledges by their determination to give such a prominent role to natural gas in their energy plans. Here www.theguardian.com/… and here: www.foeeurope.org/…
Ms. Jaffe’s diagnosis of China as the rising “Green Giant” is also challenged in a complex article by a modern China “hand,” who also happens to have a “fierce green fire” in his eyes on ecological matters: Richard Smith. Smith’s view of the direction of China’s multi-faceted economy is not so green as Ms. Jaffe’s: the state run sector, 50% of the economy, will do whatever it takes to keep everyone employed, including continuing to suffocate the country and the globe with Green House Gases. Smith explains that China can pile up impressive generation numbers for solar power, the largest in the world, yet it still gets most of its power, 75%, from coal, and has plans for many giant American state-sized (he says Rhode Island and Connecticut) coal gasification plants in remote parts of the country. I strongly recommend Smith’s article as a necessary corrective to Jaffe’s estimate on China: mahb.stanford.edu/…
Readers: I wouldn’t underestimate the degree to which the U.S. has also, after Russia, “weaponized” natural gas in foreign policy struggles, or, for that matter, the intensity with which natural gas companies, including pipeline companies, will fight to keep us on a steady diet of their fossil fuels, despite the full competitiveness of wind and solar now on price. It can get ugly, as this “ALEC” inspired legislation — to criminalize pipeline protests — in a “lock-them-up” spirit — now being proposed in at least five state legislatures around the country, “demonstrates.” Here at therealnews.com/...
Oh yes: I better finish with what I promised in the beginning, before so much context came flooding in — important context, crucial context, I would maintain. So here’s my “LTE” which didn’t run, answering our fracking enthusiast and natural gas champion in the cause of slowing Global Warming:
I am writing in rebuttal to John J. Interval’s endorsement of one already lost cause, fracking in Maryland, and his promotion of yet another dubious idea: of natural gas as the fuel to fight global warming and as the “bridge to solar and wind energy.”
Mr. Interval leaves out a lot of science in his telling. In 2011, one engineer and two evolutionary biologists/ecologists at Cornell University - Anthony Ingraffea, Robert W. Howarth, and Renee Santoro - came out with the first peer reviewed analysis of the greenhouse gas footprint (GHG) of shale gas. They were cautious in their assessment, because no one else had compiled anything like it. They found that because of leaks all along the line in the extraction, processing, and transportation of fracked gas, and the character of methane as a very potent Greenhouse Gas compared to carbon dioxide, that fracked gas was not going to save us from global warming. In fact, over a run of two to three decades, it was going to be worse than burning the other fossil fuels.
In 2012, with more data, and under a lot of criticism from a very powerful industry who had become the darling of both political parties, they reaffirmed their initial finding: “We reiterate our conclusion from our April 2011 paper that shale gas is not a suitable bridge fuel for the 21st century.”
It takes courage to oppose a proud new invention that had gathered so much momentum. For example, consider Hillary Clinton’s record at the State Department, one of promotion of fracked gas as the new Cold War with Russia heated up, here at https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/world/europe/us-seeks-to-reduce-ukraines-reliance-on-russia-for-natural-gas.html
Because the domestic price of gas is still very low, and the foreign prices high, and the Cold War even hotter today than in 2011-2014, the urge to build even more gas infrastructure – pipelines, compressor stations, LNG processing plants and the huge tankers it takes to ship it abroad – is going to lock us into a monumental capital commitment that will delay and directly challenge wind and solar for generating capacity. That will make gas more a roadblock than a bridge to the future.
This ill-fated path is only going to add to the already existing American economic tragedy of losing manufacturing capacity to China, the nation which has driven the price drops in solar panels, and for wind turbines as well – while their energy efficiency keeps going up. If you haven’t checked the size of the latest generation of wind turbines lately, they’re astounding: between 400-500 feet tall. That’s scale of a different sort.
Wind and solar and storage batteries are the wave of the future in energy, out of scientific necessity, and America, by betting so heavily on an already obsolete gas-fracking technology, is only going to compound the damage, to nature and to our long term economic competitiveness – and American jobs.
The gap in wind and solar coverage — their diurnal and seasonal fluctuation is a real issue, and gas will play some role in the transition of the grid that will evolve to even the generation out. The gaps are being closed by a large scale battery storage facility in Arizona, for example, the first in the nation. We can close the wind gap by building powerful long distance transmission lines which can bring prairie wind to fill in when offshore isn’t blowing. And the IT revolution will work to take the pressure off peak time load capacity through more sophisticated demand management tools. With as many micro-grids as possible.
I invite the citizens of Western Maryland, and of all the state, to pick up Gretchen Bakke’s book “The Grid,” and Maryland’s own Dr. Arjun Makhijani’s “Prosperous, Renewable Maryland” as good energy primers. His book can be found online at: http://ieer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/RenewableMD-Roadmap-2016.pdf
They point, like true compasses, to a future where fossil fuels can be left in their deep, ancient beds, far underground. Good night to them.
Best,
billofrights,
Frostburg, MD 21532
PS If you are wondering why I’ve said nothing so far about the struggle in Annapolis between competing bills on Maryland’s Renewable Energy Standards Program (RPS), a shadow boxing contest, really, at least for this session, between the Chesapeake Climate Action Network’s (CCAN) 50% bill, HB-1453, and Food and Water Watch’s 100% one, HB-878, it’s because neither bill could clear the Economic Matters Committee in the House, with the hearing held on March 5th, and presided over by Delegate Sally Jameson, who, “just by chance,” had a bill passed in 2017, HB-1414, which studies the issues around both the competing bills out to December of 2019: great foresight, Delegate Jameson! That gave the industry powers opposing both bills — and the legislative leadership — a great place to pause and not act this year to increase the wind and solar requirements — and, in the case of HB-878, attempt to straighten out the confusing, inefficient and misleading process of qualifying as a “renewable” energy source in Maryland. Delegate Jameson’s bill hands off the studying to a body, the Power Plant Research Program, nested in the DNR since 1971. Despite many attempts to find the “who, what and reasons behind this body,” I could turn up not a comma’s worth of criticism: no analysis of them, nada...I guess they are timeless, from the Heavenly City but here on earth to guide us. Citizens, they may be meritorious, or not, but to turn up a blank page after nearly half-a-century’s existence, is not what one expects to find in a vigorous democracy; which is what we have in Maryland, right?
Stay tuned for Part II, where, with your signed permission slip, you can travel along the same twisting path I did to try to educate myself on this RPS program in Maryland, which has produced so little wind and solar, and a lot of promotional hype from officialdom, since it was created as the nation’s first Renewable Energy Portfolio program, way back in 2004. Citizens: we deserve better than this, but to get it, we’re going to have to dig, investigate, speak, protest — and write about it.