Hydraulic fracturing of subterranean rocks, known as fracking, is prominent in today’s energy news and is the the fastest growing source of fossil fuel energy. How it works is fairly well understood but there is less focus on its true long term costs.

Fracking employs millions of gallons of water, sand and numerous chemicals, all injected at very high pressure into dense rock that cracks or fractures it, resulting in the release of natural gas or oil. Here are only a few of the typically considered benefits and disadvantages.

Advantages:

• It is a proven technology.
• It is a job creator, but only for the length of time during which a well is being drilled and pumped. Moreover, the people employed, per megawat of power, are fewer than via renewables.
• It can be a domestic source of energy.
• For the equivalent amount of energy produced its fossil fuel emissions are less than coal or oil.

Disadvantages

• Fracking uses chemicals, some of which are toxic and can pollute drinking water.
• It can release radioactive material and has the potential to force natural gas into our limited water supply.
• It depletes our available water supply, although efforts are being made, thus far unsuccessful, for its full recovery.
• It’s production can leak methane into the atmosphere, which is among the most potent of greenhouse gases, exacerbating climate change.
• It can trigger earthquakes,
• Its external costs. I discussed externalities in my Alert of March 2012 as does this Australian study (no less applicable in the U. S.).

For those who still don’t believe our climate is dramatically warming here’s more undeniable scientific evidence that it’s happening and it is human caused. Make no mistake, fracking is less bad but it clearly continues us on our current course. And as a fossil fuel it will contribute to negative consequences that are impossible to predict precisely, but will clearly impact life as we know it throughout earth.