Fracking and Pollution: Can China Rescue Its Environment In Time?
英语缩写词
Meiyu Guo †, Yuan Xu †‡§*, and Yongqin David Chen †‡
Environ. Sci. Technol., 2014, 48 (2), pp 891–892
Publication Date (Web): January 9, 2014
In respon to concerns about energy curity and coal-related environmental degradation, China has outlined ambitious plans to develop its vast shale gas resources, with production targets of 6.5 billion m3 by 2015 and 60–100 billion m3 by 2020,(1) while in 2012 China’s total natural gas production was 108 billion m3.(2) Potentially rious environmental impacts require technological solutions with financial backing. However, an even greater challenge in China is a weak regulatory climate, in which environmental policies are rarely rigorously enforced.
Environmental regulation cannot be effective without qualified regulatory rules. Shale gas development is subject to existing rules for conventional oil and gas industries. Howe
ver, to address specific problems in this new industry, methodology and guidelines are inadequately detailed and often not pertinent. For example, our field trip in June 2013 to China’s shale gas wells found that although operators did pay rious attention to methane leakage due to safety concerns, the leaked methane had not been quantified for the purpo of controlling greenhou gas emissions, largely due to the abnce of regulatory rules.
Even when rules are more or less established, they are often difficult to enforce in the shale gas industry. For example, treating wastewater from shale gas wells, as our fieldwork found, costs about $45/ton. In a nonrelated enforcement campaign in early 2013, 88 firms found guilty of polluting groundwater were fined, on average, a mere $11,000.(3) Given such low penalties, a profit-oriented shale gas operator would comply only if fewer than 250 tons of wastewater needed treatment, and if offenders were always caught and penalized. Such conditions simply did not apply. We discovered in our fieldwork that about 20,000 m3 of hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) liquid were injected into China’s first horizontal shale gas well, with the potential to generate thousands of ton
s of wastewater alone.(4) Offenders could be fairly confident that they would rarely be detected, becau monitoring and site inspections are expensive. Even if detected, many offenders could escape procution by bribing inspectors. The pollution of surface water, in comparison to groundwater, is less damaging and easier to detect. As our fieldwork found, a rational shale gas operator would prefer to ignore water pollution regulations, and would also prefer to pollute surface water rather than groundwater, becau the potential penalties were lower. However, the formal penalty for surface water pollution, as prescribed in China’s 2002 Water Law, consists of a fine ranging from $8,000 to $16,000, who average is higher than the average penalty issued for groundwater pollution. If increasing attention to the environmental impacts is further disproportionately paid to visible surface water pollution to enhance the detection probability, rational operators might decide to pollute groundwater instead, thereby causing even greater damage.
Water withdrawal is another concern for policy enforcement. It is often cheaper to withdraw local water—either surface or groundwater—than to transport water from a distance, but the large volume required for fracking could threaten the local water supply
and ecosystem, especially in water-constrained regions. Incentives have not been strong enough for the operators to choo environmentally more friendly but more expensive options. China’s 2002 Water Law prescribes fines for illegal water withdrawal of between $3,300 and $16,000, or about $10,000 on average. Even only for the single horizontal well, the operator would prefer illegal water withdrawal if the excessive cost is greater than $0.5/m3. With similar problems in detection and procution to compromi the actual penalty, the threshold of excessive costs would be much lower.
One widely recognized method to alleviate water pollution and consumption concerns is to reu the wastewater in other shale gas wells.(4) However, the technical solution would not become a reality without effective policy enforcement as discusd above. If the transportation of wastewater were costly, for example, an operator could still illegally discharge wastewater and withdraw local freshwater.
The above analysis of regulatory weakness suggest progressive directions, particularly improving regulatory rules, raising penalty levels for noncompliance, increasin
2013海淀二模英语
g resources and optimizing strategies to detect more noncompliance cas, and providing sufficiently strong incentives for regulators to enforce the rules and punish noncompliance.清华姚班
词组Scientific knowledge is being accumulated rapidly on how fracking affects the environment in order to more accurately direct regulations.(4) Progressing technologies for pollution abatement could significantly lower the costs to tilt the balance toward compliance.(5) China’s shale gas production is still negligible, and at prent is considerably lower than its planned levels.(2) Paradoxically, its slow development offers a precious window of opportunity for regulatory rules and enforcement to catch up, take advantage of the scientific and technological advancement, and rescue its environment in time.
义母
Acknowledgment
Funding comes from the National Basic Rearch Program of China (2012CB955803), and the Geographical Modeling and Geocomputation Program under the Focud Invest
ment Scheme of the Chine University of Hong Kong. We thank Dr. Zhou Yipei for fieldwork support and Dr. David Wilmshurst for language editing.
Reference
经贸英语
1. NDRC; MOF; MLR; NEA, Shale GasDevelopment Plan (2011–2015);
i like it like that2. U.S. EIA Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government. .
writer
3. MEP Special Inspection on Groundwater Polluting Firms in North China. (accesd December 9, 2013) .提问题
4. Vidic, R. D.; Brantley, S. L.; Vandenbossche, J. M.; Yoxtheimer, D.; Abad, J. D., Impact of shale gas development on regional water quality. Science 2013, 340 ( 6134).[CrossRef], [PubMed]
5. Shaffer, D. L.; Arias Chavez, L. H.; Ben-Sasson, M.; Romero-Vargas Castrillon, S.; Yip, N. Y.; Elimelech, M.Desalination and reu of high-salinity shale gas produced water: Driv
ers, technologies, and future directions Environ. Sci. Technol. 2013, 47 ( 17) 9569– 83[ACS Full Text ACS Full Text], [PubMed], [CAS]
