EnergyFactor By ExxonMobil | Pespectives has a new home

Where do they think their electricity will come from?

Lawmakers in Maryland are considering legislation to extend the de facto ban on hydraulic fracturing put in place by former Governor Martin O’Malley. Specifically, Annapolis currently is considering a proposal to ban the practice in the state’s portion of the Marcellus Shale for at least three years.

This would be a bad idea for Maryland for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that natural gas has played an increasingly larger role in the state’s energy mix in recent years. Meanwhile coal has become increasingly less important.

A changing energy portfolio

03252015_Chart_v2Consider the state’s power plants. In 2007, just as the natural gas revolution was starting to get underway in the United States, coal-fired power generation accounted for nearly 60 percent of the electricity produced in Maryland, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

In 2012, coal’s share was down to 42 percent. In fact, Maryland’s coal power plants generated 13 million fewer megawatt hours of electricity in 2012 compared to 2007.

During that same time, the total amount of electricity generated by natural gas-fired power plants in Maryland more than doubled, helping fill the breach left by coal.

Natural gas’s share of the state’s electricity production mix jumped from 4 percent to 13 percent between 2007 and 2012, with positive implications both for Maryland’s environment and for efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

This is a good-news story, and the hero is natural gas. After all, as the Environmental Protection Agency points out, natural gas emits about half as much carbon dioxide as coal when used for power generation. The switch from coal to natural gas in many of the nation’s power plants is a chief reason U.S. emissions have fallen to levels not seen since the 1990s.

So just where do Maryland lawmakers think that this natural gas is coming from, anyway?

It comes from fracking.

Fracking’s economic stimulus

Thanks entirely to fracking in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Louisiana, and Texas, U.S. natural gas production has soared over the last decade. And every single state in the lower 48 has benefitted from the natural gas revolution, including Maryland.

To repeat something I wrote a few weeks ago, this tremendous increase in natural gas production “has put downward pressure on electricity prices and revitalized American manufacturing, while contributing to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions unrivaled anywhere else in the world.”

Those are the benefits. The risks that fracking opponents like to cite just haven’t materialized.

The Obama administration has confirmed repeatedly that shale oil and gas development using hydraulic fracturing can be safely carried out while protecting human health and the environment.

In fact, the administration is so confident that fracking can be conducted safely, last week it gave its blessing to hydraulic fracturing on federal and Indian lands.

Looks like there’s a lot the Obama administration knows about fracking that some in the Maryland legislature don’t seem to understand.

 

 


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