As reported in today’s issue of Seven Days, a possible moratorium on hydraulic fracturing is wending its way through the Statehouse. In a preemptive strike, lawmakers are considering putting the brakes on the controversial method of drilling for natural gas more commonly known as fracking.
But despite the state’s apparent squeamishness over fracking, Vermont is moving ahead with plans to expand its natural gas network.
Right now, Vermont gets about 6 percent of its energy from natural gas. There’s only one gas utility in the state: Vermont Gas Systems, a subsidiary of Montreal-based Gaz Métro, which since 1965 has piped natural gas from the Canadian border to customers in Chittenden and Franklin counties.
Now Vermont Gas Systems is looking to expand. The utility won approval last fall from the Vermont Public Service Board to funnel $4.4 million annually into an expansion fund, with an eye toward extending its reach into Addison and Rutland counties as early as 2015.
Natural gas “doesn’t do sprawl well,” says Steve Wark, Vermont Gas director of communications. That means the utility is looking for places with a population density to support new pipelines. And that population — especially when it comes to local business — is hungry for natural gas. Cheaper fuel means bigger profits.
“Right now our focus is on helping businesses and residential consumers save money by using natural gas,” Wark says.
Natural gas is also singled out in the Shumlin administration’s comprehensive energy plan, released in December. The report says natural gas could serve as an engine for economic development; as a possible means of powering transportation fleets; and, potentially, as the fuel for small or medium-sized electricity generating plants.
While acknowledging that new extraction techniques — meaning fracking — raise “significant environmental and emissions concerns,” the plan calls for Vermont to increase use of natural gas and bio-fuel blends when it isn’t possible to use renewable energy.
The reason? It’s cheap. Right now, gas is 40 percent cheaper than fuel oil — and it’s cleaner burning than other types of fossil fuels.
“Before hydrofracking came forward, people were really pushing natural gas as an environmental boon,” says Ken Smith, the director of the Cornell Cooperative Extension in Chenango County, New York. Smith is on the front lines of the debate over fracking along the Marcellus Shale in New York.
“There are great benefits in Vermont to switching to natural gas,” Smith says. “That doesn’t take away the other negatives … but I think it’s important for people to consider that as part of the equation.”
Smith points out that Vermont is downwind from coal-fired power plants in the Midwest — and their toxic emissions that carry powerful toxins like mercury, which is responsible for acid rain. Smith argues that the state stands to benefit if its neighbors make the switch to natural gas.
Not everyone agrees. Paul Burns, the executive director of Vermont Public Interest Research Group, says that natural gas prices are arguably too low.
“They are low enough to be making it difficult for truly green technologies on the renewable sides of things to get a foothold,” Burns says.
This much is certain: The state’s potential moratorium on fracking will likely have no bearing on the natural gas market. Vermonters’ natural gas comes from Alberta and travels east along the TransCanada Pipeline. The province is rich in natural gas reserves, producing 75 percent of the gas extracted in Canada each year.
Joe Choquette, a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute In Vermont, estimates that between 30 and 45 percent of the gas delivered to Vermont’s border comes from hydraulic fracturing in Canada. Wark won’t guess at a percentage; he says it’s too hard to know how the gas is extracted.
For activists like Burns, that’s all the more reason to move away from all fossil fuels — cheap natural gas included.
“I think environmentalists are having to take another look at gas and whether or not it should be considered a so-called bridge to a cleaner future,” Burns says. “We need to be going even more rapidly toward renewable energy.”
This article appears in The Love & Marriage Issue 2012.
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Farmers could use gas too, but Vermont Gas isn’t interested in running gas lines out to us because the density ( more than 100 feet between lots) isn’t suffuciently profitable. Perhaps the Legislature could look into what amounts to a Defacto policy of discriminating against agriculture.
If the statement above that “…between 30 and 45 percent of the gas delivered to Vermont’s border comes from hydraulic fracturing in Canada,” is true, then I’ll assume that the same percentage comprises the supply WITHIN the state. If so, then we
have an obligation to impose a ban on gas produced via fracking elsewhere.
Why should Vermont benefit while Alberta suffers? Plus, an outright
ban must go hand in hand with the following offsets:
1) An income sensitive subsidy program available to all that contributes
funds to drastically improve the energy efficiency profile of the envelope of
every home and businesses in the State;
2) Construction of methane digesters (both small and community-scale) to
generate a biofuel that can supplement our use of natural gas and propane.
3) Construction of efficient wood-fired grain alcohol stills to produce
alcohol for cooking in locations where digesters are not feasible.
4) A program to educate people in the use of, and to provide incentives
towards, the purchase and use of [preferably] US or Canadian-made solar ovens
to further reduce our use of natural gas.
5) An income sensitive subsidy program available to all that contributes funds toward the
costs of installing [preferably] US or Canadian-made indirect solar hot water heaters in every home and business in the
state, where feasible.
6) An income sensitive subsidy program available to all
that contributes funds towards the purchase of [preferably] US or Canadian-made
ultra high efficiency (1.0 gpm or less) shower heads, faucet aerators, and
ultra-efficient models of front-loading washing machines.
7) An income sensitive subsidy
program available to all that contributes funds toward the purchase and
installation of [preferably] US or Canadian-made ultra high efficiency furnaces
and boilers.
8) Modification to existing building codes to allow for and
incentivize much smaller dwellings (800 square feet or far less) to further
reduce the energy footprint of new AND existing homes.
9) Modification to existing building codes to allow for the use of ecological sanitation (urine diverting composting toilet systems) in part to collect urine for use as a fertilizer.
Industry currently uses vast amounts of natural gas to synthesize urea which is then used as the major source of nitrogen in commercial fertilizer. We have an essentially free and abundant source of urea available to us (the major component of urine is urea) yet we go through the time and massive expense (and the associated negative carbon and ecological footprints) to mine natural gas so we can then synthesize urea from it. That we also mix our waste with industrially produced fresh water (an increasingly limited and highly precious resource) and then expend enormous amounts of energy building, operating and maintaining centralized waste water treatment plants (and the infrastructure that delivers waste water to each site) to handle what we currently view as a waste (instead of a resource) only adds to this insanity.
10) New regulations and laws that mandate all of the above.
Taking such a limited view of fracking only serves to limit our understanding of how our
actions negatively affect the Earth and the human communities that surround us.
So, yes, let’s ban both fracking AND the product of fracking, but let’s also take the steps necessary to simplify our lives and minimize the impact human activities have on the planet. One without the other is just a PR campaign.