Put the word “natural” in front of anything and it sounds so much sweeter, doesn’t it? Unless it turns out to be a natural disaster.
Canada is the world’s third-biggest supplier of natural gas, to which you may respond, “Amazing! We’re fully loaded with a squeaky-clean-burning source of energy!” But is it as clean and green as its marketers would have us believe?
It depends on how and where you get it. There’s our “conventional” gas that’s basically easy-access free gas found trapped below rock. And then there’s Canada’s biggest “unconventional” supply, meaning it’s a pain in the ass to get at (tightly locked in shale, coal beds, tight gas sands) and makes a fracking mess of things via hydraulic fracturing.
Many Canadians, especially in Ontario, have the impression that fracking is an unfortunate American problem, the process you see Matt Damon dramatizing in Promised Land or director Josh Fox documenting in GasLand. Alas, that’s far from the case.
The ecological devastation that accompanies the high-pressure injection of millions of litres of water and tens of thousands of litres of chemicals per underground well is a reality in Canada, too. One biologist and former enviro consultant to the oil and gas biz in Alberta, Jessica Ernst, went public in 2006 about the burns she was getting from her shower and the fires she could light at her taps after Encana fracked into her aquifer.
She’s suing Encana as well as the Alberta Environment and Energy Resources Conservation Board for $33 million, refusing to settle if it means signing a confidentiality agreement, which purportedly is what others have been doing.
Over in BC, records are being broken by the biggest hydraulic fracking ops in North America, triggering a slew of mini-earthquakes and a day of action against heavy fracker Chevron at the end of the month.
Right now, there’s no fracking in Ontario – the Libs are “reviewing” their rules around the whole issue. To mark World Water Day today (Thursday, March 21), tell your MPP you want a Quebec-style moratorium.
And tell your MP the same thing, especially in light of the federal enviro commissioner’s recent assessment showing that Ottawa is way too lax on fracking. The oil and gas biz is exempt from reporting the chemicals being pumped into the ground, which means Environment Canada and Health Canada can’t research and track fracking’s impact.
And what about the whole notion that natural gas is clean-burning? The party line is that burning natural gas emits far less greenhouse gas, smog-inducers and lung-clogging particulate matter than burning coal and oil. Those last two bits may be true, but it turns out natural gas may not be as harmless on the greenhouse-gas-releasing front when you factor in its life cycle and the climate-changing potency of its primary component, methane.
When the U.S. EPA added in the methane released from gas wells and leaky pipes, it pegged natural gas’s GHG emissions at double previous estimates, making it only 25 to 40 per cent cleaner than coal.
The data gets even dirtier when it comes to fracked shale gas. The University of Maryland found the lifetime greenhouse gas emissions of shale gas are 100 per cent higher than those of regular natural gas. Preliminary research by Robert Howarth of Cornell University concludes that when total greenhouse gases releases are factored in, fracked gas may be as bad or worse than coal.
Enviro orgs caution that we need to get a better grip on natural gas before we tout it as part of a green energy plan. Ultimately, we all need to crank conservation efforts up a notch or three and look to renewables.
By the way, there is such thing as green natural gas – the kind created by decaying matter in landfill. At this point, Toronto captures methane that helps feed the electrical grid from three old dump sites. Bullfrog taps into a landfill gas project in Quebec.
Don’t take the natural gas your pad uses for granted. Turn your furnace down, take shorter hot showers and try a few more raw food meals – beyond this weekend’s Earth Hour.
Got a question?
Send your green queries to ecoholic@nowtoronto.com | twitter.com/ecoholicnation
