K.J. Rodgers
Crownsville, Maryland  

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Despite an overflow of funding, renewable energy sources are under performing  in carbon emissions compared to natural gas. Fracking is saving the climate.

If it is one thing that all environmentalist groups say they want it would be green energy: energy that is sustainable, safe, and can help reduce the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. I do not think anyone would disagree, as we all want a clean world for us to raise our children and grandchildren. Without a doubt they are willing to go far above and beyond reason to spread their message, but is that the reality?

Since we all agree we want a clean environment and sustainable energy, what seems to be the problem? Well to be blunt, they are targeting the wrong energy source. Maybe one day we can have fusion power that will deliver an energy source that is self-fueled and everlasting, but until that day we have natural gas. Clean, environmentally-friendly natural gas is already changing the landscape and the air quality.

Of course, renewables such as wind and solar energy are also an option. However, if we overlook the toxic waste it produces (Treehugger.com for crying out loud) or the fact waste is shipped hundreds of miles using fossil fuel, if we can just overlook that for just one moment and look at the facts, we will see it is not helping as much as natural gas and it really is naïve to think solar and wind are we need.

The Manhattan Institute recently published a paper with some interesting facts. One being, that solar has only reduced emissions by 1% compared to natural gas’ 19%. The paper publishes this in another much easier comparison as well, “For every ton of CO2 cut by solar power, fracking has cut 13 tons.”

“The technology that has done most to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions is fracking. In the past seven years, the fracking-led natural gas boom has cut U.S. emissions more than ten times as fast as solar power has. And while renewable technologies are making significant progress, growth in their investment and deployment is slowing dramatically. Anyone serious about reducing carbon-dioxide emissions should be celebrating fracking both in the U.S. and around the world.”

The importance of this is staggering. The natural gas boom is not only adding jobs, or generating one of our largest exports our country, helping to createour stronger dollar, but it is saving the world and, yet, misinformed activists are attacking it. When you look at the renewables such as wind and solar, you can see they only attributed 13%. While that 13% is still a decrease in total emissions and we are glad for it, it still holds no water compared to the natural gas produced from fracking – especially as time moves forward.

Solar and wind is slowing down. We can see from the Manhattan Institute’s paper that after a year-over-year increase of 60% up to 2008, renewables have hit a plateau and started to fall 23.8% per year since 2009. Perhaps this is just a reduction in investment or failed subsidies our government has attempted, but nonetheless, renewable energies may have already peaked. Natural gas… not so much.

The Clean Power Plan is already forcing the nation’s coal-fired power plants to reduce their emissions 32% from 2005 levels. Besides the closure of the smaller plants throughout the United States, take a guess what fuel source is going to replace coal? Natural gas. It is what many of these plants already use as a secondary fuel source.

The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions states, “Natural gas-fired electric power plants are expected to continue to increase in importance – accounting for 37 percent of 23.5 GW of electric power generation planned for 2012 and 60 percent of capacity additions between 2010 and 2035.” Not only does gas emit roughly half the emissions as coal, the technologies for retrieving the gas have advanced fast enough for the price of gas to be well below the cost of intensive mining.

After all the money thrown into renewables, they have made virtually no dent in our emissions, while nearly 20 percent reductions are seen with fracking.  You do have to stop and ask the activists, why are you doing this; do you not love the earth?

Editor’s Note: As a matter of full disclosure to our readers, K.J. Rodgers is my son-in-law and he and his wife, Kelly, reside in Crownsville, MD.