The Environmental Protection Agency’s recent flip-flop on hydraulic fracturing is another example of the agency’s pattern of prioritizing politics over scientific evidence and consumer concerns that the next administrator would do well to reverse.
The agency announced last year that its five-year, $31 million study of hydraulic fracturing found no evidence of “widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources.” While offering no information to contradict EPA’s initial findings, some members of its Science Advisory Board called on the agency to reconsider, and the agency walked back its conclusions this week, denying its own science.
It’s reminiscent of a recent University of Cincinnati study whose funders “were a little disappointed” the study affirmed fracking is safe. According to a geologist involved with the study, “They feel that fracking is scary, and so they were hoping our data could point to a reason to ban it.”
The United States would not lead the world in oil and natural gas production or in reduction of carbon emissions without hydraulic fracturing, which accounts for more than 43 percent of domestic oil production and 67 percent of natural gas production.
Evidence confirming the technology is safe is a good thing — unless you believe energy production and environmental progress are mutually exclusive. The record of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the EPA, suggests he understands it’s not only possible to balance economic growth and energy security with environmental stewardship, it should be the EPA’s focus.
Noting that his state’s residents “care about issues of air quality and our state policymakers are best-suited and specifically granted the authority by federal law to regulate these issues,” Pruitt has raised concerns about the costs to consumers of EPA regulations and argued that decisions regarding “how to achieve emissions reductions” should consider local impacts and consumer costs.
The EPA’s own data show that federal mandates are not the driving force behind U.S. success in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon emissions in the power sector have plunged to near 25-year lows over the same period the United States has emerged as the world’s leading natural gas producer.
That’s not a coincidence; the American energy resurgence has made natural gas more affordable and available, motivating power plants to switch to natural has in droves. Natural gas now generates more U.S. electricity than any other fuel source — not because of government regulations but because the free market favors the clean-burning fuel’s affordability and reliability.
Greater recognition of state expertise and more acknowledgment of consumer impacts would be a welcome change at EPA. Both are factors in a barrage of regulatory overreach that threatens to undermine U.S. energy production and raise consumer costs.
New ozone standards so strict even rural, undeveloped areas could struggle to meet them could place restrictions on virtually any economic activity nationwide. Ground level ozone in the United States declined 32 percent since 1980 — 17 percent just since 2000 — according to EPA data. Yet the agency is pushing ahead with regulations that a collection of 269 business groups warned “will make it difficult to manufacture products, build new projects, produce energy, improve infrastructure and hire the workers needed to make this all happen.”
The same disregard of economic reality is on display in the agency’s handling of ethanol volume requirements under the Renewable Fuel Standard. Extensive testing has shown that increasing ethanol content beyond the current blend of 10 percent can cause engine damage, and consumer demand for higher ethanol blends is virtually nonexistent. The EPA has the authority to adjust yearly ethanol targets to account for market realities and protect consumers from cost increases that the Congressional Budget Office warns the RFS could bring. Instead, EPA regulators substantially raised volume requirements for 2017.
As the world leader in both production of oil and natural gas and reduction of carbon emissions, U.S. success proves we can deliver the energy America needs in an environmentally responsible manner — without sacrificing jobs or raising costs for families and businesses. If Attorney General Pruitt brings a more market-based, consumer-focused approach to the EPA, the agency can be a partner, not an obstacle, in that goal.
