Category: comment

comment to Nat’l Geographic on “green” fracking

After I had already commented on this article:  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/03/140319-5-technologies-for-greener-fracking/#, a call went out from a fracktivist blogger that we should also blog our comments, so here is mine:

No fossil fuel can be green. Period. All of the things that are in this article have been around for several years and get trotted out by the industry to try to give themselves cover, but they are not widely implemented and some of them are not widely implementable. Fracking with gelled propane is not only more expensive, it is also much more dangerous and cannot be used close to people because of the explosion hazard. Most of the methane that leaks is not from the wells, although some is, but from processing and underground pipelines. The horrible explosion in NYC recently highlights the deplorable state of methane infrastructure in the US. The only green choice is to stop going after unconventional fossil fuels and use remaining conventional sources as we move to renewable energy sources as quickly as possible.

This week in NYS IBM news

On Monday, Governor Cuomo lauded IBM for keeping 3,100 jobs in the Hudson Valley and adding 500 in Buffalo. On Thursday, IBM carried out yet another round of lay-offs in the US, including Poughkeepsie and Endicott NY. No speeches from the Governor on that.

Endicott, the birthplace of IBM, is just across the Susquehanna from me. In a perverse twist on decimation, IBM now employs less than 10% of the people it once did in Endicott. Decimation would be knocking out every tenth person; instead, IBM has knocked out nine, (usually) keeping the tenth.

It’s happened over time. Sometimes, IBM sold a division to another company. The workers get transferred to the other company, but their employment there doesn’t tend to last very long because the new company wants the contracts, not the experienced workers whom they deem too expensive. Other times, IBM off-shored the jobs. It adds insult to injury to have your last weeks of work spent trying to train a new grad in India to do the job for which you spent years developing your skills. In recent years, it seems to be that corporate America’s answer to everything is to cut costs to drive up the earnings per share, regardless of what this does to your ability to deliver quality products on time. There are only so many cuts you can make before you run into difficulties with not having enough skilled people to complete the job, even though the remaining workers do lots of (unpaid) overtime.

In Endicott, the situation is exacerbated by the fact that IBM has not done much hiring here in the past 20+ years. Most of the cuts now involve workers with over thirty years of experience, who wind up being bridged into retirement. What goes with them are critical skills and knowledge base which haven’t been able to be transferred to younger workers because there aren’t many around.

IBM’s mantra for decades was THINK. The corporate leaders seem to have forgotten that. IBM made its name because it was loyal to its workers and they were loyal to IBM. IBM invested in their training and well-being and the employees innovated, obtained record number of patents, and made great products. IBM on a corporate level is making itself into just another company chasing some number for the next quarter and not thinking about the long-term future for themselves, their employees, the communities, and their customers. Will they remember their heritage before it is too late?

Comment on methane emissions and leakage

I just sent the following comment to this article: http://theenergycollective.com/sierenernst/330521/quantifying-impact-multiple-avenues-methanes-underestimation . It’s my first time commenting on this site, so moderation may take a while. I thought I’d post here because I spent so much time on it, I figured it might as well appear somewhere.

There have been several recent NOAA-partnered studies showing high levels of leakage (from 4% to 9+%) in the Denver-Julesburg, Uintah, and Los Angeles basins. These were measured from atmospheric rather than surface instruments, so they would show leakage from drilling operations along with the immediate processing infrastructure. They also were able to categorize the methane associated with drilling from that from other sources, such as landfills and agriculture.   http://www.nature.com/news/air-sampling-reveals-high-emissions-from-gas-field-1.9982  http://blogs.agu.org/geospace/2013/08/09/scientists-observe-significant-methane-leaks-in-a-utah-natural-gas-field/   http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/solving-the-case-of-californias-extra-machine/

We also need to consider that in some plays, such as the Bakken, methane is treated as a byproduct that isn’t worth the dollars and effort to capture, so it is flared or even vented for months on end while the companies concentrate on the much more lucrative oil. This contributes to atmospheric carbon dioxide with absolutely no beneficial use to society and currently unmeasured amounts of methane and other hydrocarbons and VOCs escaping to the atmosphere and adding to the greenhouse gas load.

There are some studies in big cities, such as Boston, New York, and Washington, that show thousands of leaks in the distribution lines, causing leakage rates up to 3%. The distribution companies who should be maintaining these lines don’t hurry to fix them because their customers are being charged for the leaked gas as part of their rates.   http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/07/31/gas-leaks-costing-mass-consumers/5nIv3FsJaZRwscJ48jGMsI/story.html  Unfortunately, the climate comes out as a loser.

Plus, there are the thousands upon thousands of miles of pipelines and the compressor stations and other infrastructure that are venting and leaking gas, which is not being measured. Methane plumes sometimes form in areas where drilling has occurred. http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/study-airborne-methane-plume-found-near-bradford-county-gas-migration-site-1.1335347 And let’s not forget the methane emissions that are inherent in the production, storage, transport, and use of LNG.

Even if every driller used best practices with every new well going forward, there would still be much higher total leakage rates than the current EPA estimates. With so many sources of leakage, they would not be easy or cheap to fix. The comparison with coal is low-ball. Instead of comparing one fossil fuel to another, let’s compare, as the original Howarth/Ingraffea/Santoro paper does, to solar, wind, and other energy technologies. That will give us a better idea of the wisest places to concentrate our resources in the fight to keep global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius.