Australian Fracking Gas Boom - Bridging fuel to Nowhere

Fracking gas , a futile waste of time

In the light of current Australian state and federal government incestious relationships with the gas fracking industry, it should be strongly noted, that methane gas, especially mined by fracking, is no longer considered to be a lower carbon emissions bridging fuel leading to a zero carbon economy. In global climate and economy models, it is no better than coal as a fossil fuel, in terms of carbon emissions and increased global warming.

Both the ALP and LNP have shown strong support for the fracking industry, as do the bankers and investors of the rentier classes, because fossil fuel energy was once supposed to be an unbeatable investment in an ever-expanding economy, which the only kind of economy that both parties understand and favour.  The ALP's energy policy in its last term of office greatly favoured new gas fracking and a gas export policy, which was to be claimed part of its carbon emissions reduction targets, and a favoured "jobs, growth and wealth" industry.

Successive ALP and LNP governments have used Gas Mining and its "bridging" properties as an excuse for reduced investment in renewable energy. The social and environmental consequences of fracking have upset a lot of people and a lot of environment.

So here are the findings of a recent annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, and a session entitled "Is peak oil dead and What does it mean for climate change".

The abstracts are available here: https://agu.confex.com/agu/os16/preliminaryview.cgi/Session7260.html

Abundant gas same or worse for global warming

James Edmonds noted that modelled impacts of abundant gas has little observable impact on CO2 emissions, and tended to increase overall climate forcing, by replacing coal and its effects on sulphur dioxide emissions, and increase in methane emissions, a short term potent greenhouse gas.

Unburnable carbon. What will stop us burning it?

Richard Heinberg of the post - carbon institute also gave an abridged version of an online publication here - What Geological, Economic, or Policy Forces Might Limit Fossil Fuel Production?

Assiduous carbon accounting experts such as Kevin Anderson have pointed out, that once realistic carbon budgets for deforestation and cement production are included, the remaining budget for energy-only carbon emissions to 2100 is about 19 years of continued "business as usual" emissions.  For the aspirational goal of 1.5C that is now less than a decade's worth of consumption at current rates.  Already emitted carbon will take us past that target anyway, given the system time delays.

Current economics and pricing of coal and gas has crashed. Thats what happens when system limits apply, and lots of investors have dived into limited market opportunities. Demand has been falling faster while supply increases, and economies have still declined.

An important limit here is the increasing energy costs of harder technical extraction. The oil industry has had rising production costs of about 11 per cent per year from 2009. Unconventional oils, and gas have higher costs again, and higher carbon emissions cost.

The 350.org divestment strategy is great for public and political awareness, and taking money out of publicly traded fossil fuel companies, but that is only one tenth of the global industry.

Richard Heinberg noted that "The cost of solar and wind is falling and the rate of adoption is high, though not nearly high enough to avert catastrophic climate change. Since renewables mostly produce electricity, coal will be the fossil fuel impacted first and foremost. "

Overall, "Peak oil theorists argue that depletion of the world’s top energy resource guarantees an endless energy-starved recession beginning at some point in the relatively near future, while climate scientists warn that extreme weather events will increasingly hammer national economies."

Other resource "limits to growth" are also producing economic contraction, and lead to fossil fuel consumption decline.

Our biggest constraint to achieving a post-fossil energy economy is probably the assumption that we must continue industrial expansion and economic growth. This is the biggest barrier in adapting to a "new" economy.  In Australia, the ALP and LNP wear their growth blinkers all the time, and have wasted a decade of time, and are still wasting time, for a transition to renewable energy.

Internationally, the rush to renewable energy game is on. Financial industries which still have real money, will be falling over themselves to lend money to governments of nations with proven renewable energy resources, and the will to do something with them. The ALP and LNP are clearly not political parties of this persuasion.

The material footprint of nations

This abstract studied in detail "Material Footprint".  It concluded that countries use of nondomestic resources is , on average, about threefold larger than the physical quantity of traded goods. As wealth grows, with every 10% increase in gross domestic product, the average national material footprint increased by 6%.  So achievements in de-coupling the use of natural resources from economic growth of advanced economies are smaller than reported or even non-existent.

With the de-coupled growth illusion out of the way, economic growth is soon to be limited by the finite amounts of and ultimate scarcity of natures material resources. More "jobs, growth and wealth" is not even possible now, if the remaining resources are to be considered our all-time future generations capital endowment.

I can only repeat the summary of Richard Heinberg's article , and apply it to Australia.

Australian Real New Economy

Fossil fuel limits might come from any of several directions. That would be good for the climate. But unless we are able to replace energy services from those fuels relatively seamlessly with energy services from alternative sources, we may have to figure out how to get by without economic growth. It might therefore be helpful for world leaders to begin now to examine how to manage the transition to a post-carbon and post-growth economy with the least negative impact to human welfare.

This is the real new economy. No sign of recognition from LNP or ALP.

Slide from Richard Heinbergs talk.  All roads lead to an energy constrained future, from reduced investment. We are not investing enough in renewable energy now, and all our fracking gas investment was essentially a waste of time and money, as we descend into the "energy-economy" trap.

 

author:
Michael Rynn
description:
Natural gas is not a bridging fuel for reducing carbon emissions and global warming. Australian New Economy consists of renewable energy only.
keywords:
Australian Fracking Gas Boom - Bridging fuel to Nowhere, Australian New Economy
og:title:
Australian Fracking Gas Boom - Bridging fuel to Nowhere

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