The extraction, transportation and burning of fracked gas (called “natural gas” by the fossil fuel industry) poses significant health and safety risks to communities and fuels the climate crisis. Shifting toward clean sources of energy, like wind or solar, can save money for ratepayers and prevent these risks. This is particularly important for those most impacted by fossil gas pollution, climate, and costs—primarily BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and low-income communities. This week, Sierra Club and MN350 released a report written by Melissa Patin on The Health, Safety, Climate and Economic Risks of Fossil Gas Extraction and Use that outlines the risks of continued investments in fracked gas in Minnesota.
Minnesota needs a plan to generate 100% of its electricity from clean, renewable energy and to electrify heating and cooling in our homes and businesses. But the fossil fuel industry has worked hard to convince the public that fracked gas is necessary and good.
Here, we take on some of the myths the fossil fuel industry has perpetuated and debunk them.
MYTH: Gas is a clean fuel
FACT: Gas pollutes our air, water and climate.
Too often, newspapers report on new fracked gas plants saying things like “natural gas power plants produce only half as much greenhouse gas as coal plants.” Such a statement simply is not true. Gas-fired power plants generally produce about half as much carbon dioxide (CO2), but they produce far more methane, another greenhouse gas, that over a twenty-year span contributes 86 times as much to global warming as CO2 . That’s in part because of the methane released during the fracking process, when gas bearing rock formations are fractured (or “fracked”) by high water pressure to free the gas.
Thus it’s a misnomer to call this gas “natural,” since the majority of gas in the US is derived from an unnatural fracking process. Even so, the quantity of gas released into the atmosphere through fracking could be limited by using best practices, but the Trump Administration has eviscerated EPA rules governing the fracking process while many states are also lax in regulating fracking.
While methane, along with carbon dioxide (CO2), are the pollutants that do the most harm to our climate, other pollutants harmful to human health are released first through the mining of sand used in fracking, then in the fracking process itself, next as the gas is transported through pipelines, and finally as it is burned to generate electricity.
These pollutants include nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and fine particulates (PM2.5), which are regulated by the EPA because exposure to them is linked to respiratory disease, heart disease, and elevated mortality. Silica, a fine sand, is mined in Minnesota for fracking and released into the air at the mines can damage lungs leading to increased risk of lung cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Fine particulates are a leading cause of asthma. One recent study found that individuals exposed for long periods of time to even low levels of fine particulates are much more likely to die from COVID-19.
BIPOC and people living in poverty are more likely to be exposed to these pollutants because the operations generating them are more likely to take place in their neighborhoods. These groups are also more likely to suffer from the chronic diseases that are worsened by these pollutants, and are therefore more likely to die from long-term exposure to air pollution caused by the production of electricity using fracked gas. For these reasons the use of fracked gas as a fuel is a concern for environmental justice reasons, as well as more general health and climate concerns.
MYTH: Gas delivers cheap electricity
FACT: Renewable energy delivers cheaper electricity
Xcel itself believes that over the next fourteen years it can increase the percentage of electricity that it generates from renewable sources from 30% to 58% while keeping the rate of growth in customers’ bills below the rate of inflation and approximately one percentage point a year below that of other electric utilities around the country. (Source: Xcel Energy, Upper Midwest Integrated Resource Plan 2020-2034 Supplement, June 30, 2020, p. 5)
With improved technology and economies of scale, the cost of renewable energy generation is plunging rapidly. Bloomberg NEF reports that the lifetime cost of solar generation fell by 87% and onshore wind by 56% during the 2010s, making solar today the cheapest source of energy over the lifetime of a new facility once construction and fuel costs (zero for solar or wind) are factored in. (Source: The Economist, May 23, 2020, p.49)
It’s much cheaper in the long run to build new solar and wind facilities than to build new fracked gas plants, because the new gas plants will become too expensive to operate before the end of their planned life span. That’s because they will be competing with energy sources whose fuel costs are zero. The utilities will then seek to pass on the costs of these now abandoned gas plants to ratepayers as stranded costs . Sierra Club looked at two of the proposed gas plants in Minnesota, Xcel’s Sherco and Minnesota Power’s NTEC plants and found ratepayers would be better off with clean energy.
MYTH: Gas power plants are needed because the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow.
FACT: Minnesota can reliably meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals without building new gas plants
This argument against wind and solar power may have worked a few years back, but rapid developments in battery technology have made it obsolete, as demonstrated by a recent study that shows America could achieve 90% carbon-free energy as early as 2035 without building any new gas plants.
California, Hawaii, Maine, New Mexico, New York, Virginia, Washington State, New Jersey, Washington DC and Puerto Rico have committed to 100% carbon-free electricity by 2050. LS Power is developing the largest battery storage project to date at 250 megawatts (www.lspower.com).
Closer to home, a battery is being developed that will combine low cost with long duration. Great River Energy plans to operate a battery at a power plant in Cambridge, Minnesota that will provide 150 hours of continuous energy capability, compared with the four hours common from traditional lithium-ion batteries. The combination of new battery technology and continued falling costs from solar and wind energy will make new fracked gas plants uncompetitive to run long before the end of their intended 30-plus year life spans.
MYTH: Moving away from fossil fuels will cost jobs
FACT: Moving toward 100% renewable generation could triple the number of energy sector jobs in Minnesota
A study commissioned by the McKnight Foundation, Minnesota’s Smarter Grid Study, forecasts that state policies leading toward clean energy would create 14,000 jobs in wind and 36,000 in solar by 2050.
And yet utilities keep proposing new fracked gas plants. There are three proposed fracked gas plants in Minnesota right now, and there could be more on the horizon.
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Xcel Energy: In its 2019 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) Xcel proposed to build an approximately 800-megawatt fracked gas plant adjacent to the Sherco coal plant site in Becker, Minnesota. The plant and its associated pipeline will cost ratepayers over $1 billion and emit over 3 million metric tons of carbon annually. Although fracked gas is often purported to be cleaner than coal, the CO2 and even more potent methane emitted through the production lifecycle make it just as bad for our climate.
Nonetheless, despite a year of falling prices for wind and solar generation and advances in battery technology that would make greater reliance on these renewable technologies feasible, Xcel is sticking with its proposal to build the fracked gas plant in its 2020 supplement to its IRP. Besides the harm to the climate this plant would cause, it would likely leave Xcel rate payers on the hook for paying off the costs of the plant after economics force its retirement as early as 2037, only ten years after it is set to come on line. And that would be especially bad for low-income households, for which utility bills are a major part of the household budget.
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Minnesota Power: Minnesota Power has a proposal to partner with Dairyland Power to construct the 525 MW Nemadji Trail Energy Center (NTEC) fracked gas plant in Superior, Wisconsin. If built, NTEC would cost ratepayers over seven hundred million dollars to construct and emit over one million tons of carbon each year. The plant was originally proposed in 2017, and at that time, we found cleaner and more cost effective alternatives were available. Clean energy costs have only dropped since then, leaving NTEC in the same risky position for customers as Sherco.
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Rochester Public Utilities Commission: Thanks to a strong grassroots effort of Rochester residents calling for action on climate, the City of Rochester and Rochester Public Utilities (RPU) have made a commitment to 100% clean energy. Last year, the RPU board committed to net 100% renewable energy by 2031, which will reduce GHG from electricity production by 95%. Yet RPU is still considering building a new fracked gas plant to meet peak electricity demand instead of battery storage, which even now looks cost competitive, and storage costs continue to fall as technology advances.
Despite the story we are being told by the fossil fuel industry, fracked gas fuels the climate crisis, poses risks to our health, environment and safety, costs customers more than clean energy, and is not needed to meet our energy needs. Fracked gas is energy we can’t afford, and we must stop new investment and move to 100% clean, renewable energy.