>It allows extraction of natural gas, which will have to be part of our energy mix for the foreseeable future. Natural gas plants not only emit less CO2 than the coal plants they replace, but can serve as peaker plants to back up renewables.

Yes, but you kinda defeat the environmental/GHG purpose when you leak out (unburned) methane, which is an even worse GHG than CO2.

Methane isn’t good for reducing GHG emissions when the act of extracting it releases something much worse!

(Though of course an exact CBA depends on tabulating the relative amount of methane released per usable unit extracted, and its relative effectiveness as GHG ... to say nothing of the other harms of fracking.)

Methane is logarithmic though.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/11/methane-the-irrelevan...

And? The damage from CO2 is logarithmic as well, and methane is currently at a much lower concentration and the atmosphere, meaning that any given mass is much more dangerous than CO2, even after adjusting for relative absorption.

You just answered your own question.

Fracking is not the only answer. It is the cheapest answer. Traditional drilling still gets gas, but it costs more. On the flip side, fracked wells die off faster. When I worked in the natural gas industry, all the engineers told me that fracking was a great shorter-term plan, but it scared them because it would have all the younger wells drying up at about the same time as the older traditionally drilled wells, and they foresaw a bad convergence of both kinds of wells dying off at the same time coming in our future.

At the same time, it doesn't seem clear at all that methane is less harmful than CO2, so arguing that we're emitting less CO2 is only part of the story.

It may not even be the cheapest if you dig deeply (sorry) into the special concessions and other breaks that the industry gets which enable it to operate more cheaply than it should.

Take a look at some of the criminally low lease fees that have been charged to some drillers for public lands.

Is fracking sustainable? Are problems that are caused by fracking likely to get less as we get better at it, or are they likely to get worse as we try to get at riskier deposits?

> Is fracking sustainable?

Is that an honest question?

It's used to extract a fossil fuel. That should answer your question in case you know the definition of "sustainable".

Sorry, poor choice of word. I meant short term, will it even be a stable source until it is finished being tapped or will it increase in instability to communities around it.

We are talking about injecting heavy metals to aquifers and at the same time surface radon patches from deep areas. Mercury in water that somebody will drink later and Radon that kills silently people when accumulates in basements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMsLEqjVbgA

And is known that had caused earthquakes in dense populated areas from Mediterranean coasts (see Castor Project) or US, so is a danger for infrastructures also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6PHVhjaNRI

And there is also this thing that I don't even have words for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvJAKVnK4qM

All for a source of gas that could last one or two years in many cases, and then is exhausted and left contaminated. But is heavily subsidised by taxes in many cases

Fracking is greedy monkey stuff. Is a nonsense from any human point of view in any historical period (past or future) to pay for deliberately allowing a few people poison your own drink water.

Excellent response, thank you for all that information. I wanted to try and see a positive side to it as energy independence is a good thing for a nation. But it doesn't look like it's worth it. Hopefully renewables make it unprofitable sooner rather than later.

> which will have to be part of our energy mix for the foreseeable future

That is only true as long it is cheaper than nuclear. The usage of natural gas is a mix of economic and political choices, and depending on the country you can get a very different choices.

Afaik nuclear can't replace gas because nuclear ramp up/down times are way too long.

Modern nuclear plants can do this with control rods, but the fixed and sunk costs makes it prohibiting expensive. It is simply more economically to keep them running, even when wind/solar is producing. Changes in fuel costs could incentivize a more economical use, through that would only work if nuclear were made economical competitive compared to natural gas in the first place.

If we look at a map like https://www.electricitymap.org and imagine the carbon intensity to be a real economical costs then it would be a relative simple matter to determine how high those costs would need to be to make nuclear competitive against burning fossil fuels.

If one were to introduce a layered approach (eg adding in a battery storage layer), I wonder if this argument is reduced?

EG: When times of peak consumption out-paces the plant, it draws from battery system. When consumption is less than production, the batteries are recharged.

Pumped hydro, pumped heat, flywheels, batteries are all working solutions. Batteries are still expensive and need to be replaced every 10-15y. In order to use more nuclear and renewables in the mix, storage becomes a necessity.

https://electricenergyonline.com/energy/magazine/1142/articl...

Don't forget compressed air!

It can suppelement gas or whatever in the power mix. Just keep'em running and adjust the output in the designed operating range, pump water uphill or spin up flywheels otherwise.

That used to be the case a while ago, nowadays only 30min is needed to adjust the production.