More than 68% of New European Electricity Capacity Came From Wind and Solar in 2011

[joshcryer]

39. Fracking is absolutely necessary to "meet the needs we might have during a transition."

1) Fracking is relatively new and it isn't needed to meet the needs we might have during a transition.

Fracking is heavily developed over decades of research. It is already responsible for more than half of US gas production:

2) The generating infrastructure for natural gas is already in place and largely paid for.

My contention has nothing to do with whether or not the generation infrastructure is there. We have 272 trillion cf of conventional natural gas left. At current rates it will be exhausted in 10 years if we only used conventional natural gas. Therefore, logic, reason, says that we must use non-conventional natural gas reserves (shale gas, tight gas, coal bed methane, all of which require "fracking" to fracture the rocks to get the gas).

As we have seen by the image posted upthread, the result isn't that "less coal is being used," and my contention is that even if we, as a country, "use less coal" we'd still export the stuff to other countries.

3) We have a number of noncarbon alternatives to natural gas in a renewable grid.

Yes, we do. The question is about whether or not we're going to be carbon neutral or, I should say, whether or not capitalism itself is going to result in carbon neutrality. I think we're going to make a major dent in the consumption of carbon fuels in the coming decades. The WEO projects as much. The US is slated to shut down a lot of coal plants:



pp 234 WEO 2010

So what? The coal is going to stay in the ground, then? I highly doubt that. If it can be sold on the market, and I have no reason to believe it can't be, it will be sold.

4) Nuclear also requires natural gas spinning reserves - far more than renewables would.

Yes. Natural gas, it's that magical gas that gets obscene environmental ads in a fine display of greenwashing I've ever seen. I've encountered nuclear shills who believe nuclear is the answer who trumpet clean natural gas in their plans. Good luck with that! If you can sell fossil fuels, it will be sold. The only way to stop it is to tax it, put tariffs on it, and the fossil fuel lobby would never have that. "Only" 50 or so more years until it's all used up anyway.

We cannot play this bullshit game that greenwashes natural gas and its effects, and downplays the share of non-conventional tight sands, shale, or coal bed natural gas that will take up the lions share of consumption in the coming years. Indeed, the significant amounts of natural gas is used in the development of Canada's vast oil sands deposits only underscores that fact. Oh, we'll be "energy independent" all right.