Democratic presidential contenders are promising to swiftly ban fracking, the drilling technique responsible for cheap natural gas, but it’s a plan that could backfire and raise carbon emissions in the short term — if, that is, it’s even feasible.
Curbing fracking could also make it harder for Democrats to win the White House in the first place, given that they need to win states heavily dependent on the shale boom to beat President Trump.
“Rather than banning fracking as some far-left candidates have proposed, more thoughtful Democrats should support cost-effective ways to cut natural gas emissions, like better regulations on methane and greater incentives for deployment of carbon capture technology,” said Paul Bledsoe, a strategic adviser with the Progressive Policy Institute and former climate change adviser to President Bill Clinton.
Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris, among others, are taking a more aggressive approach than that of President Barack Obama, who sought to improve the safety of fracking while embracing rising energy production.
“This feels so different than 2016,” said Barry Rabe, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan who studies climate politics. “It is one thing to talk about ending coal, where mining jobs are limited and geographically concentrated. If you are talking about gas, there are a lot more jobs and a lot more people, and it takes you into more purple states and congressional districts.”
The rise of natural gas, which now generates 35% of power, played a crucial role in cutting U.S. emissions over the last decade, especially in industrial swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, by displacing coal, which emits twice as much carbon.
Democrats face pressure from progressive groups to endorse measures to limit the use of natural gas, as scientists from the United Nations warn the world must act quickly to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
Sanders, a longtime opponent of fracking, has led the charge against it, challenging other Democratic candidates to support a “full fracking ban” — a call that Warren and Harris later embraced.
Warren issued a tweet on Sept. 6 promising to ban fracking “everywhere,” including on both federal and private land, on her first day as president.
The fracking question has split the Democratic field. Joe Biden wouldn’t ban fracking because he doesn’t think “we would get it done” in Congress, he said during CNN’s climate change town hall this month. Amy Klobuchar said she would not ban fracking because she sees natural gas “as a transitional fuel” between other fossil fuels and renewables.
Banning fracking could have unintended consequences, said Arvind Ravikumar, an assistant professor of energy engineering at the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology who studies the future of natural gas.
Ravikumar said it’s “likely” emissions would increase if a president moves to ban fracking immediately, rather than phasing it out over a period of decades. In the near term, coal use might increase to offset the loss of electricity from natural gas plants. That could increase emissions overall, even if fracking limits lowered emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and raised the price of oil.
It’s also challenging to replace gas use from buildings and in the manufacturing sector immediately, so that would likely require importing more fossil fuels.
While wind and solar are growing rapidly, the energy system needs more time to adapt to be run mostly on renewables.
“Low-cost natural gas makes decarbonization more difficult in certain parts of the economy,” said Noah Kaufman, an energy economist at Columbia University. “But fracking also leads to cheaper decarbonization opportunities in the power sector,” he added, citing the potential of using carbon capture technologies that can remove emissions from a natural gas plant and store it underground.
“Given these trade-offs, it’s hard to believe an outright ban is the best we can do,” Kaufman said.
The Democrats are also likely promising more than they can legally deliver without legislation in calling for an immediate fracking ban.
“An executive order is a folly,” said an oil and gas industry trade group official who requested anonymity to discuss matters that could come before a future administration. “Nothing in the federal statute gives the president authority to ban fracking by fiat nationwide.”
The law is also unsettled on how much authority Congress has over fracking on state and private land, where the majority of oil and natural gas production takes place.
“Congress could provide some additional statutory ability to strictly regulate and even ban fracking nationwide with respect to public and private lands,” the industry official said, but it’s “unsettled” because fracking is mostly regulated on a state-by-state basis.
Only 21% of oil in 2018 was produced on federal land, including offshore, according to the Energy Information Administration. A smaller amount of natural gas — 13% — was produced on federal land, EIA says.
Michael Gerrard, an environmental law professor at Columbia University, said the federal government has limited oversight over natural gas production because Congress has exempted most fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act.
However, the Environmental Protection Agency could attempt to use the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act to “severely limit” fracking, including on state and private land, if it found endangerment to public health from air and surface water pollution.
There would likely be legal challenges to an immediate ban on wells that were already or soon to be operating because the federal government can’t evict energy companies from ongoing operations without providing compensation.
The oil and gas industry, however, is worried about the promises by Democrats to ban fracking.
A handful of states — New York, Vermont, Maryland, and Oregon — have already outlawed fracking, although Oregon’s ban is temporary.
“It’s very concerning that the rhetoric from the presidential candidates is so hostile to our industry,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, a group of oil and gas companies active on federal lands. “They will come at this with so much red tape that they will kill oil and gas development.”
