State and local restrictions on natural gas production permits prevent climate damage mitigation.
We hear three recurrent lies about climate change. They are: Climate change is not real, or, if real, it will have little adverse effect; climate change can be mitigated quickly, easily, and at little cost; and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is the most significant obstacle to the process of permitting projects that are essential to the success of our efforts to mitigate climate change.
The first claim has been exposed as a lie in many ways and in many forums. It is contradicted by hundreds of studies and by the increases in average temperatures, temperature variations, number of major weather events, intensity of weather events, and increases in the Arctic, Antarctic, and glacial ice melt that are already occurring.
The other two lies are not as well known. They were exposed by a January 25 editorial in The Wall Street Journal. The editorial recited several accurate and important facts. The winter storm that struck much of the country on January 25 placed great strains on the electricity grid in the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and Northeast. The regional grid operators were able to avoid serious service interruptions only by making maximum use of their most reliable sources of electricity.
Forty percent of the electricity consumed in the Midwest and 24 percent of the electricity consumed in the Mid-Atlantic was generated by burning coal. Very little electricity was generated through use of carbon-free fuels such as solar and wind. Those sources are not reliable. They are not available in the weather conditions that existed on January 25 and on many other days. The electricity that they generate can be stored economically only for a few hours. In New England, for instance, more electricity was generated by burning wood and waste than by windmills.
The data recited in The Wall Street Journal editorial exposed the second big lie. Many advocates for climate-change mitigation have claimed that climate change can be mitigated easily, quickly, and at a low cost. That claim is false. Even after having devoted hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies and regulatory mandates to efforts to replace generating fuels that yield high emissions of carbon dioxide with fuels that emit less carbon dioxide or are carbon-free, we are nowhere near where we need to be to mitigate climate change effectively. We need to focus on more realistic methods of mitigating climate change and increase significantly the resources that we devote to methods of adapting to the inevitable changes in the climate. We also need to face the reality that mitigating climate change and adapting to climate change are expensive long-term goals.
The data about electricity generation in New England reinforce the fictional nature of the claim that climate change can be mitigated quickly, easily, and at a low cost, but they also expose the third important lie about climate change. On January 15, 40 percent of the electricity consumed in New England was generated through use of extremely expensive fuel oil that emits far more carbon dioxide than natural gas. Moreover, most of the natural gas that is consumed in New England is expensive liquified natural gas that is imported from other countries.
The terrible situation in New England is a product of the difficulty that the operators of the New England grid have in obtaining access either to electricity generated in Canada through carbon-free hydropower or to low-carbon emitting natural gas from domestic sources. This appalling situation is a result of permitting problems.
It is well known that refusals to issue permits and extremely long delays in obtaining permits are major obstacles to mitigation of climate change, but most of the attention has been focused on delays caused by compliance with NEPA. Congressional leaders and the Trump Administration have proposed changes to NEPA that would reduce its adverse effect on the ability to mitigate climate change by making it easier and faster to obtain permits to construct projects that would allow replacing high carbon fuels with low-carbon fuels or carbon-free fuels. Proponents of these changes claim that NEPA is the most important source of problems in the permitting process. That is the third big lie.
New York has refused to issue permits to allow production of natural gas via fracking. New York has also blocked the construction of natural gas pipelines that would transport the abundant supplies of natural gas that are available in Pennsylvania to New England. New Hampshire and New York have refused to permit construction of the electricity transmission lines that are essential to allow carbon-free Canadian hydropower to reach New England.
As the situation in New England illustrates, state and local governments are the most important cause of the permitting crisis. Only the federal government can address that crisis effectively, by authorizing federal agencies to engage in preemptive permitting of interstate pipelines and transmission lines. Yet politicians of both parties seem to be reluctant even to acknowledge the serious problems that are being created by the state and local permitting process.
