Hacker News Reader

Comment by 40acres | Hacker News Reader

Great to see coal phasing out but I feel like the risks of natural gas have not been well publicized, data regarding methane leaks from natural gas is sketchy at best and fracking has almost certainly caused more frequent earthquakes (albeit small on the Richter scale) at sites.

Big oil pushes natural gas as a bridge energy, and despite lots of skepticism towards them I think they're correct. The window where natural gas is a plurality of global energy consumption has to be as small as possible.

View on HN

Yeah, this article celebrates the closure of coal, which is great because coal is super dirty, but it's tallying up all the carbon emissions they put out as if that annual emission has been eliminated. That's super misleading given that much of the demand is taken up by natural gas. I'd rather hear about the net reduction; that'd be a better indicator of progress.

These figures[1] seem to indicate a ~50% decrease in carbon emissions for the same energy generated, but I'm not sure if it carries over directly to power plants.

Also, there's this fairly interesting (supposedly) zero-emissions natural gas power plant [2] but all of the news seem to be from 2018 so it's not getting a lot of attention.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=73&t=11

[2] https://www.netpower.com/

Has there been any earthquakes which are actually significant? No matter how bad fracking is, coal is much worse (the goal needs to be to get China and India onto Natural Gas and then renewables)

The Methane leaking is a huge unknown. It isn't regulated, but is known to be quite high for any given site and along pipelines.

As it is a very potent greenhouse gas, the effects could be significant.

To be clear, both are bad and I hope renewables eat their lunch, breakfast, and dinner in short order.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 excluded hydraulic fracturing from both the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exemptions_for_hydraulic_fract...

If it's as safe as we're led to believe, why does it need to be exempted from the laws that protect the environment we all share?

Oklahoma put restrictions in place after earthquakes threatened critical infrastructure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009–19_Oklahoma_earthquake_sw...

I believe the Netherlands is phasing out its industry because of concerns. I also recall reading about problems in China as they begin trying to frack.

In the north of the Netherlands (province of Groningen, location of Europe's largest gas field) earthquakes caused by gas extraction have caused widespread damage to homes and infrastructure. The government - pressured by inhabitants - decided to significantly cut back production of the field, and will close the field entirely in 2030.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen_gas_field

The Netherlands is phasing out natural gas due to actual earthquakes in the lower magnitudes. Because it's a location where natural earthquakes normally don't take place, there is a risk of collapsing houses with all possible consequences.

Wat? Both China and India are years ahead of US in terms of renewables. Not only they are already ahead, they also invest more.

No they aren't. Not even close.

China gets 65% of its electricity from coal, the US gets 25% from coal. China emits more co2 than the US and India combined, and their co2 emissions are increasing 10% per year.

The US is pretty lackluster for renewables. But despite all appearances to the contrary, it's not doing nearly as bad as Trump claims to acclaim to. China is the polar opposite: it talks the talk but it's the largest polluter in the world by a huge margin.

Aren’t these numbers misleading, by implicitly treating gas as clean energy?

The right metric should be %renewables of installed capacity

USA < 15%

India almost 17%

China almost 25%

China is still way behind the States in per capita. Quoting absolute numbers is just meaningless.

The biosphere only cares about absolute numbers.

Yes, it cares about the combined emissions of each human, not what silly borders we've drawn on a map.

Western countries don't have a moral right to pressure everyone else until we get our own house in order. China isn't the problem. You are, and so am I.

> the goal needs to be to get China and India onto Natural Gas and then renewables

Is there much natural gas in China and India? China can possibly get it from Russia and a few other neighboring countries? What about India?

That wouldn't be my major objection. Its basically rushing through exactly the same steps the west has been through (why?) and locking in a model of the grid based on centralised generators, when they have the opportunity to build out a grid based entirely on renewables.

I'm thinking of more rural areas here, that havent already been hooked up to the grid. If you introduce possibly intermittent renewables villages are probably going to be more accepting if they don't already have access to 24/7 power. They can make it work for them, but that village can join up with other villages and become more reliable as the network expands.

Its analogous to mobile phones and mobile payments in the developing world. You don't have to build the landline and banking infrastructure, you can miss it out completely.

> the goal needs to be to get China and India onto Natural Gas

There is plenty of coal in India but not so much natural gas. Economically speaking in the short term it does not make sense for India to go with imported natural gas.

It is hypothesized that the increased release of methane via fracking is a large driver in recent short term global warming and the amount of methane released has been vastly understated by previous industry and government studies, even though it only lasts a relatively short time in the atmosphere. https://www.biogeosciences.net/16/3033/2019/

Yeah the cows have been getting a bad rap...

Renewables with storage are already starting to compete with natural gas. It seems better to do what we can to tilt that scale even further, rather than investing in more assets that will need to be stranded in 2–10 years.

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/7/13/1755187...

Fracking also causes significant groundwater pollution which is often handwaved away by politicians. Keeping gas cheap gets you more votes.

Fracking causing leaks of contaminants into groundwater is hugely dependent on the local geology. In locations with lots of natural fractures and nearby sources of drinking water (e.g., Pennsylvania), there's a much higher risk of contamination than in deeper basins with more uniform geology (e.g., North Dakota).

That's not to say handwaving is good, but that all geology is local and risk assessment has to be done at that scale.

Earthquakes related to oil and gas are almost entirely because of wastewater injection, not the fracking process itself. One could argue that the increased wastewater production from the development and production of fracked wells is therefore responsible, but the connection that "fracking = earthquakes" isn't direct.

Seems a little pedantic unless there are alternative ways to do fracking.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com