Study: Fracking Good; Coal Bad

In America, anyway…

Oil from Canada's tar sands is extremely dirty and expensive to extract. That's why we shouldn't use most of it, a new study finds.Imago/ZUMA


When scientists and policymakers talk about limiting climate change, what they’re mainly talking about keeping more fossil fuels in the ground. The fact is, there’s no way to prevent global warming from reaching catastrophic levels if we burn up our remaining reserves of oil, gas, and coal.

Climate negotiators have agreed that warming should be limited to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial level. That means that humans can release about 1.1 trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, and we’ve gone through about half of that already. The remaining emissions are known as our “carbon budget”; if we “spend” emissions beyond our budget, we’re much more likely to push the planet to dangerous levels of warming. If we burned through all of our current reserves of fossil fuels, we would overspend the budget by about threefold.

In other words, there are a lot of fossil fuels that are “unburnable” if we’re going to stay within the prescribed warming limit. But how much, exactly? And where exactly are those unburnable fuels? That’s the question asked in a study released today in the journal Nature by a team of energy analysts at University College London. The answer matters because mapping the geographical spread of unburnable fuels is a key step in understanding the roles specific regions need to play in the fight against climate change.

The model developed by Christophe McGlade and his team takes into account known estimates of fossil fuel reserves in a number of different countries and regions, as well as the global warming potential of those reserves and the market forces that determine which reserves are the most cost-effective to exploit. The results, shown below, are what the model finds to be the most cost-effective distribution that stays within the 3.6-degree limit.

The researchers ran the model twice: Once assuming widespread use of carbon capture and storage (an emerging technology for catching carbon emissions as they escape from power plants that is gaining steam but has yet to be proven on the global stage), and once assuming no CCS at all. The two scenarios ultimately aren’t that much different—using CCS won’t allow us to burn vastly more coal, oil, and gas. The results shown below are from the “with-CCS” scenario.

unburnable

Tim McDonnell

A couple interesting things pop out. As you might expect, the vast majority of the world’s coal would need to stay buried. The United States is able to use most of its oil and gas in this scenario, because those resources are relatively cost-efficient to extract and bring to market compared to, for example, gas in China and India. In other words, according to this study, the US fracking boom can go forward full steam as long as the gas it produces aggressively replaces our coal consumption. But Canada can’t touch most of its oil, because the oil there—the kind that would be carried in the Keystone XL Pipeline—is exceptionally carbon-heavy tar sands crude.

What isn’t shown in the graphic above is that the model prohibits developing any of the vast oil and gas reserves in the Arctic. Melting sea ice has made those reserves increasingly attractive to energy companies like Shell.

Of course, the model has to make assumptions about future oil and gas prices that are basically impossible to be certain about. Unexpected changes to the price of oil, for example, could upset the cost equation for drilling in the US and re-shuffle the entire regional breakdown. But even as an estimate, the study really illuminates the vital need for policies all over the world that dramatically cut our dependence on coal.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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