The shale-gas boom won’t do much for climate change. But it will make us richer: Stanford Uni. Forum
Key Points :
1) The shale-gas boom will provide a modest boost to U.S. economic growth. On average, the models in the Stanford study predicted that the natural-gas boom would raise GDP by about $70 billion each year over the next several decades (in current dollars). "Although this amount appears large," the report notes, "it represents a relatively modest 0.46 percent of the U.S. economy."
2) The shale-gas boom won't do much to solve climate change — at least not on its own. In recent years, a glut of natural gas has helped displace coal power in the U.S. power sector and reduce carbon-dioxide emissions significantly. After all, burning natural gas for electricity produces about half the carbon dioxide that burning coal does.
3) Natural gas will, however, help clean up other air pollutants. There's some good environmental news here. Natural gas is considerably cleaner than coal when it comes to other types of harmful air pollution, such as sulfur-dioxide and nitrogen-dioxide. These pollutants are expected to drop as shale gas becomes more plentiful.
Cleaner air, in turn, will make the country slightly richer by improving health and extending lives. "average emission damages decline by $1 billion each year (2010 dollars) for sulfur dioxide and by $0.25 billion each year for nitrogen oxides," the study notes.
4) One key variable is price: Some experts expect natural-gas prices to stay roughly flat between now and 2020, going from $4 per thousand cubic feet today to around $4.03 by the end of the decade. Others expect a sharper jump upward to $6.23 per thousand cubic feet by 2020 and even higher thereafter
Article : http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/21/the-shale-gas-boom-wont-do-much-for-climate-change-but-it-will-make-us-a-bit-richer/
Main Study Report : http://emf.stanford.edu/files/pubs/22532/Summary26.pdf
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