Air pollution and health impacts of oil & gas production in the United States

Abstract

Oil and gas production is one of the largest emitters of methane, a potent greenhouse gas and a significant contributor of air pollution emissions. While research on methane emissions from oil and gas production has grown rapidly, there is comparatively limited information on the distribution of impacts of this sector on air quality and associated health impacts. Understanding the contribution of air quality and health impacts of oil and gas can be useful for designing mitigation strategies. Here we assess air quality and human health impacts associated with ozone, fine particulate matter, and nitrogen dioxide from the oil and gas sector in the US in 2016, and compare this impact with that of the associated methane emissions. We find that air pollution in 2016 from the oil and gas sector in the US resulted in 410 000 asthma exacerbations, 2200 new cases of childhood asthma and 7500 excess deaths, with $77 billion in total health impacts. NO2 was the highest contributor to health impacts (37%) followed by ozone (35%), and then PM2.5 (28%). When monetized, these air quality health impacts of oil and gas production exceeded estimated climate impact costs from methane leakage by a factor of 3. These impacts add to the total life cycle impacts of oil and gas, and represent potential additional health benefits of strategies that reduce consumption of oil and gas. Policies to reduce oil and gas production emissions will lead to additional and significant health benefits from co-pollutant reductions that are not currently quantified or monetized. 

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2752-5309/acc886

by Jonathan J Buonocore5,1, Srinivas Reka2, Dongmei Yang2, Charles Chang2, Ananya Roy3, Tammy Thompson3, David Lyon3, Renee McVay3, Drew Michanowicz4 and Saravanan Arunachalam2
1 Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA, United States of America jjbuono@bu.edu
2 Institute for the Environment, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, United States of America
3 Environmental Defense Fund, Washington, DC, United States of America
4 Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers for Healthy Energy, Oakland, CA, United States of America
Environmental Research: Health https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/2752-5309 via IPO Science https://iopscience.iop.org/
Volume 1, Number 2; Published 8 May 2023 

Why did renewables become so cheap so fast? And what can we do to use this global opportunity for green growth?

Summary

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Fossil fuels dominate the global power supply because until very recently electricity from fossil fuels was far cheaper than electricity from renewables. This has dramatically changed within the last decade. In most places in the world power from new renewables is now cheaper than power from new fossil fuels.

The fundamental driver of this change is that renewable energy technologies follow learning curves, which means that with each doubling of the cumulative installed capacity their price declines by the same fraction. The price of electricity from fossil fuel sources however does not follow learning curves so that we should expect that the price difference between expensive fossil fuels and cheap renewables will become even larger in the future.

This is an argument for large investments into scaling up renewable technologies now. Increasing installed capacity has the extremely important positive consequence that it drives down the price and thereby makes renewable energy sources more attractive, earlier.... Falling energy prices also mean that the real income of people rises. Investments to scale up energy production with cheap electric power from renewable sources are therefore not only an opportunity to reduce emissions, but also to achieve more economic growth – particularly for the poorest places in the world.

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Today fossil fuels – coal, oil, and gas – account for 79% of the world’s energy production and as the chart below shows they have very large negative side effects. The bars to the left show the number of deaths and the bars on the right compare the greenhouse gas emissions. My colleague Hannah Ritchie explains the data in this chart in detail in her post ‘What are the safest sources of energy?’.

This makes two things very clear. As the burning of fossil fuels accounts for 87% of the world’s CO2 emissions, a world run on fossil fuels is not sustainable, they endanger the lives and livelihoods of future generations and the biosphere around us. And the very same energy sources lead to the deaths of many people right now – the air pollution from burning fossil fuels kills 3.6 million people in countries around the world every year; this is 6-times the annual death toll of all murders, war deaths, and terrorist attacks combined.1

It is important to keep in mind that electric energy is only one of several forms of energy that humanity relies on....2

What the chart makes clear is that the alternatives to fossil fuels – renewable energy sources and nuclear power – are orders of magnitude safer and cleaner than fossil fuels.

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Fossil fuels dominate the world’s energy supply because in the past they were cheaper than all other sources of energy. If we want the world to be powered by safer and cleaner alternatives, we have to make sure that those alternatives are cheaper than fossil fuels.

The price of electricity from the long-standing sources: fossil fuels and nuclear power

The world’s electricity supply is dominated by fossil fuels. Coal is by far the biggest source, supplying 37% of electricity; gas is second and supplies 24%. Burning these fossil fuels for electricity and heat is the largest single source of global greenhouse gases, causing 30% of global emissions.3

The chart here shows how the electricity prices from the long-standing sources of power – fossil fuels and nuclear – have changed over the last decade.

To make comparisons on a consistent basis, energy prices are expressed in ‘levelized costs of energy’ (LCOE). You can think of LCOE from the perspective of someone who is considering building a power plant. If you are in that situation then the LCOE is the answer to the following question: What would be the minimum price that my customers would need to pay so that the power plant would break even over its lifetime?

G20 Nations Sending Billions in Finance to Fossil Fuels

Each year, G20 countries provide nearly four times more public finance to fossil fuels than to clean energy, according to a new report released July 5, 2017. Each year, G20 countries provide nearly four times more public finance to fossil fuels than to clean energy, according to a new report released July 5, 2017 by Oil Change International, Friends of the Earth U.S., the Sierra Club and WWF European Policy Office. In total, public fossil fuel financing from G20 countries averaged some $71.8 billion per year, for a total of $215.3 billion in sweetheart deals for oil, gas, and coal over the 2013-2015 timeframe covered by the report. Fifty percent of all G20 public finance for energy supported oil and gas production alone.

The report, for the first time ever, details public support for energy projects from G20 public finance institutions (such as overseas development aid agencies and export credit agencies) and multilateral development banks. It finds that just 15 percent of this energy finance supports clean energy, while tens of billions of dollars are funneled to oil, gas, and coal producers annually. The best available science indicates that at least 85% of fossil fuel reserves must remain in the ground to meet the aims of the Paris Agreement on climate change. Yet of the $71.8 billion in fossil fuel finance, $13.5 billion goes to activities that supercharge the exploration phase for even more unburnable reserves of oil, gas, and coal.These findings directly contradict the goals espoused in the Paris climate agreement — touted by these same governments — which specifically calls on countries to align financial flows with low-emission development.

The report, entitled “Talk is Cheap: How G20 Governments are Financing Climate Disaster,” can be found at http://priceofoil.org/2017/07/05/g20-financing-climate-disaster. In addition to the authoring organizations, it has also been endorsed by CAN-Europe, Urgewald (Germany), FOE-France, Re:Common (Italy), Legambiente (Italy), Environmental Defence (Canada), FOE-Japan, Kiko Network (Japan), JACSES (Japan), and KFEM (Korea).

“Our research shows that the G20 still hasn’t put its money where its mouth is when it comes to the clean energy transition. If other G20 governments are serious about standing up to Trump’s climate denial and meeting their commitments under the Paris Agreement, they need to stop propping up the outdated fossil fuel industry with public money,” said Alex Doukas, Senior Campaigner at Oil Change International and one of the report’s authors. “The best climate science points to an urgent need to transition to clean energy, but public finance from G20 governments drags us in the opposite direction. We must stop funding fossils and shift these subsidies.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum

An Economic Assessment of the Supreme Court's Stay of the Clean Power Plan and Implications for the Future

Summary
The Clean Power Plan is expected to contribute substantially to US greenhouse gas emissions reductions, but the Supreme Court has halted its implementation. However, the conditions supporting a stay based on economic harms to the coal sector are not met.

Key Findings

• Because of market, technological, and policy trends that are independent of the Clean Power Plan, combined with compliance flexibility, the economic conditions supporting a stay based on economic harms to the coal sector are not met.
• The same factors mitigate concerns about large increases in electricity prices and harms to the broader economy until at least the mid-2020s.
• The gradual phasing of the emissions reductions and the flexibility to reduce emissions by a wide range of approaches are well within the confines of the Clean Air Act.
• Existing trends suggest that the costs to the public of pushing back the Clean Power Plan deadlines likely far outweigh the benefits to the coal sector.
• Claims of irreparable harm arise frequently in environmental litigation. Our economic framework for analyzing the potential irreparable harm under the Clean Power Plan is applicable in other contexts.

Abstract
The Clean Power Plan is expected to play an important role in reducing US greenhouse gas emissions. On February 9, 2016, responding to appeals from the affected industries and states, the Supreme Court issued a "stay" suspending implementation of the Clean Power Plan until after the judicial review process. Industry groups stated the plan will pose large “irreparable” costs to the coal sector during the period of judicial review. However, modeling suggests that because of prevailing market, technological, and policy trends, the Clean Power Plan will result in near-zero costs beyond current trends until 2025, in part because of the plan’s built-in flexibility. These factors and lessons from option theory suggest the stay is economically unjustifiable based on claims of irreparable economic harm to the coal sector. If implementation of the rule proceeds, current trends imply the stay will have little effect on industry’s ability to follow the current compliance schedule. 

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[A variety of organizations have performed simulation modeling of the CPP on behalf of the electricity industry and environmental organizations, which they have shared in stakeholder dialogues, workshops, and private briefings. These findings are not generally available in a citable form, and we depend on our own modeling results, which are consistent with the results that other groups report. We have used RFF’s Haiku electricity model to simulate about 50 CPP scenarios, which differ in the compliance approach taken by states, the level of coordination among states, and the levels of future electricity demand and fuel prices. Here, we focus on a scenario in which all states are assumed to participate in a nationwide emissions trading program and choose to cover existing and new sources under their state caps (Burtraw et al. 2016). The assumption of national emissions trading (as opposed to regional or no trading) reduces overall implementation costs, but the coverage of new sources under the cap raises implementation costs. We assume (conservatively) that only half the level of new programmatic energy efficiency assumed by EPA in its modeling. These assumptions should yield a balanced estimate of the overall costs of the CPP and the effect of the CPP on the coal-fired fleet. In this context, we estimate total compliance costs of $6.3 billion per year in 2025 and $8.4 billion in 2030 (2011$). The 2030 estimate can be compared to EPA’s estimates of $5.1 to $8.4 billion for 2030 costs, depending on the approach states choose (EPA 2015). It is noteworthy that EPA finds the costs before 2030 to be substantially lower than in 2030. In 2022, EPA estimates costs of $1.4 to $2.5 billion, and in 2025 costs of $1 to $3 billion. These estimated costs are comparable in magnitude to the costs of existing policies, but not the most expensive among recent policies. For example, for the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, EPA (2011) estimates annual costs of $10.4 billion in 2016 (2011$). Barbose and Darghouth (2016) report annual compliance costs of $2.5 billion in 2014 for state renewable portfolio standards (2011$).

Photo: alohaspirit/iStock
It is also noteworthy that EPA estimates the CPP costs to be several times lower than the societal benefits of lower emissions. Burtraw et al. (2016) estimate that emissions allowance prices with multistate compliance (trading) rise to only $2 per ton of CO2 by 2025, meaning that existing technological trends and policies will reduce emissions nearly to the levels required for the initial compliance period (2022–24). By 2030, allowance prices rise to $17 per ton of CO2. For comparison, EPA analyzes state-level compliance and estimates allowance prices ranging from $0 to $14.59 per ton in the first compliance period (EPA 2015). Multistate compliance would be expected to have a much lower allowance cost. For an average coal-fired plant, the allowance price in 2030 implies a marginal cost increase of about $17 per MWh (47 percent) and for a natural gas-fired plant, the allowance price in 2030 translates into an increase of about $7 per MWh (15 percent). The CPP therefore provides a relative advantage to natural gas-fired plants compared with coal-fired plants. Without the CPP, generation from coal-fired plants would account for 32 percent of total generation in 2030; under the CPP, they would account for 27 percent of total generation. These shares contrast sharply with the 50 percent share in 2005 and even the 37 percent share in 2012 (EIA 2015a). The CPP is expected to increase the average wholesale generation price by about 4 percent, raising the revenue per MWh of generation at these plants and offsetting some of the higher generation costs caused by the policy. Table 1 shows that, in annual percentage terms, the effect of the CPP on operating profits is a fraction of the effect of the recent natural gas price declines on operating profits. The reduction in generation from coal-fired power plants will be felt at coal mines that face lower demand for coal.]