Climate activist Bill McKibben recently penned an op-ed for Yale Environment 360 that laments the “Keep It In the Ground” movement’s failure to convince the public that natural gas is worse for the climate than other major fuels. McKibben’s entire argument is based on the oft-repeated anti-fracking claim that “most studies show that the [methane] leakage rate is at least 3 percent and probably higher.”

It turns out there is a pretty good reason the public isn’t buying what McKibben is selling — it’s completely false. But that didn’t stop Yale Environment 360 from giving McKibben a platform to perpetuate it,  a point EID calls out the publication for in this open letter.

The fact is, a vast majority of peer-reviewed studies and federal government assessments confirm methane leakage rates are well below the 3.2 percent threshold for natural gas to maintain its climate benefits, as the following EID graphic illustrates.

Here is what the most prominent methane leakage rate studies have actually found.

• Allen et al. (Leakage rate: 1.5 percent): This landmark 2013 EDF/University of Texas study was the first to measure actual emissions, and it found emissions “nearly 50 times lower than previously estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency,” confirming beyond a shadow of a doubt natural gas’ climate benefits over coal. Activists have attempted to discredit this study by claiming the use of a potentially malfunctioning measuring device by the researchers led to an underestimate of emissions, but that claim was recently debunked by an independent EPA audit. UT and EDF followed up with two more studies, which also found very low methane leakage rates.  These studies concluded that methane emissions from the upstream portion of the supply chain are only 0.38 percent of production. That’s about 10 percent lower than what they found in their 2013 study.
• 2017 EPA Greenhouse Gas Inventory (Leakage rate: 1.2 percent): Despite numerous flaws —including extrapolation of emissions data from larger facilities onto smaller facilities, potentially incorrect assumptions about pneumatic controller emissions, and methodology based on flawed so-called “super-emitter” assumptions — EPA’s latest methane emissions data show very low methane leakage rates.
• Littlefield et al. (Leakage rate: 1.65 percent): This 2017 U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory study used data from Zavala-Araiza et al. (see below) to synthesize emissions on a national scale. But even though the study finds low emissions, it is worth pointing out that it likely overestimates the leakage rate based to the fact that it extrapolates so-called “super-emitter” data from Zavala-Araiza et al. on a national scale. A recent NOAA study also reveals the “super-emitter” data Zavala-Araiza et al. relied on air measurements likely collected during episodic maintenance events, which skewed emissions higher than they typically would be.
• Lyon et al. (Leakage rate: 1.2 percent): Using “top down” measurements from aircraft over the Barnett Shale in Texas, this 2015 EDF/University of Houston study found very low leakage rates, despite the fact that a limitation of “top down” studies is the fact that methane detected can come from other sources such as agriculture and natural seeps.
• Marchese et al. (Leakage rate: 1.6 percent): This 2015 EDF/Colorado State University study took direct measurements from 114 gathering stations and 16 processing plants across 13 states. Using these measurements, along with EPA data from other segments of the natural gas supply chain, the study found an overall leakage rate that EDF’s Mark Brownstein noted is a “well below what most scientists say is advantageous for the climate.”
• Peischl et al. (Leakage rate: 1.1 percent): This 2015 Colorado University-Boulder/NOAA study used “top-down” measurements from five flights from a NOAA research aircraft over areas that collectively represent half of the U.S.’s total shale gas production (Haynesville, Fayetteville and portions of Marcellus shale). The report also notes: “[T]he regions investigated in this work represented over half of the U.S. shale gas production in 2013, and we find generally lower loss rates than those reported in earlier studies of regions that made smaller contributions to total production. Hence, the national average CH4 loss rate from shale gas production may be lower than values extrapolated from the earlier studies.”
• Zavala-Araiza et al. (Leakage rate: 1.5 percent): This 2015 EDF study analyzes data from 12 previous EDF Barnett Shale papers and finds low methane emissions despite being, as the report puts it, “biased toward high-emitters.” Notably, a recent NOAA study reveals the “super-emitter” data Zavala-Araiza et al. relied on air measurements likely collected during episodic maintenance events, which skewed emissions higher than they typically would be. As a result, these “peak” emissions data were inappropriately used to calculate a normal emissions profile.
• Zimmerle et al. (Leakage rate: 1.3 percent): This 2015 EDF/Colorado State University study finds low overall natural gas system methane leakage rates based on 2,292 onsite measurements from transmission and storage facilities along with additional emissions data from 677 facilities and activity data from 922 facilities.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has also noted that the climate benefits of natural gas are significant even at higher leakage rates and regardless of time-frame. As IEA explained in an analysis for its latest World Energy Outlook,

“… [T]aking into account our estimates of methane emissions from both gas and coal, on average, gas generates far fewer greenhouse-gas emissions than coal when generating heat or electricity, regardless of the timeframe considered.”

Coupled with the fact that increased natural gas use made possible by fracking is the primary reason the United States has led the developed world in carbon dioxide reductions since 2005, the evidence really couldn’t be clearer: Natural gas is a climate winner, and McKibben’s claims have absolutely no basis in science or evidence.

Predictably, when recently pressed by The Daily Caller to identify which studies he was referring to when he claimed “most studies show that the [methane] leakage rate is at least 3 percent and probably higher,” McKibben cites a highly-selective 2014 literature review authored by Cornell University professor and noted anti-fracking researcher Robert Howarth.

Not only was Howarth’s not-so-subtly titled “Bridge to Nowhere” report funded by the anti-fracking Park Foundation and the Wallace Global Fund, a major group behind the #ExxonKnew campaign, it prominently featured Howarth and fellow activist researcher Anthony Ingraffea’s thoroughly discredited and infamous 2011 methane study, while omitting all but one of the studies listed above that found low leakage rates.

This isn’t really surprising, considering Howarth has signed a “pledge of resistance” to hydraulic fracturing along with McKibben. Howarth has also never been one to shy away from misleading the public on methane emissions from oil and gas development, whether it be starring in willfully deceiving Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) videos or co-authoring “studies” based more on advocacy than science. As a result, Howarth’s work has been criticized by numerous reputable third parties, including a fellow Cornell professor and one of the authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment.

McKibben’s intellectual dishonesty on methane isn’t limited to misleading leakage rate claims. He also claims that methane emissions “have increased dramatically” as the shale gas boom has taken off. But the latest U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data actually show that methane emissions from oil and natural gas systems declined by nearly 14 million metric tons between 2011 and 2016 at the same time natural gas production increased 16 percent and oil production skyrocketed 57 percent.

Somehow mystified that the public seems to have caught on to all of this dishonesty, McKibben spends a majority of his op-ed lamenting the lack of political traction the “Keep It In the Ground” movement has achieved on the whole “natural gas is bad for the climate” narrative.

“Public opinion — and especially elite opinion — still accepts natural gas as a cleaner replacement for other fossil fuels. And this acceptance — nearly as strong among Democrats as Republicans — has meant that we’ve seen huge increases in the use of natural gas.

“Last week, the New Orleans City Council — all Democrats — voted 6-1 to approve a big new gas-fired power plant. Sometime in the coming weeks, in Orange County in upstate New York, another vast new gas power plant is expected to go on line — as soon as it’s hooked up to a new pipeline, one of literally dozens planned across the country. Local opponents — environmentalists, community activists — are fighting hard, but somewhere, almost every day, a new piece of natural gas infrastructure goes up.”

Indeed, prominent Democrats continue to reject McKibben and company’s anti-natural gas stance.

• Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has explained, “We’ve been improving our emissions in this country without agreeing to the Kyoto accords, without Congressional action because of innovation from the natural gas area.”
• Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, recently said, “You’re reducing carbon emissions by using natural gas. … That’s a move in the right direction. We can’t go 100% renewable in Virginia. It’s laughable to even discuss it.”
• Even California Governor and noted environmentalist Jerry Brown has criticized the extreme “Keep It In the Ground” agenda, saying that anti-fracking activists “don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”

Heck, even McKibben supported natural gas less than a decade ago, as The Daily Caller reported:

“McKibben was singing a different tune in 2009, when he felt so strongly about power plants switching to natural gas he was willing to be jailed in support of the cause. He was one of several celebrities who protested on Capitol Power Plant’s front steps in Washington, D.C.

“‘There are moments in a nation’s — and a planet’s — history when it may be necessary for some to break the law … We will cross the legal boundary of the power plant, and we expect to be arrested,’ McKibben told reporters prior to the March 3, 2009, protest.

‘[I]t would be easy enough to fix. In fact, the facility can already burn some natural gas instead, and a modest retrofit would let it convert away from coal entirely. … It would even stimulate the local economy,” he added.”

Though McKibben has flip-flopped on his opinion of natural gas’ climate benefits, he still acknowledges that “fracked gas was cheap enough that it produced much of the early economic boom that powered the Obama recovery” and acknowledges in the op-ed that natural gas is responsible for most of the carbon reductions the U.S. has achieved.

These facts essentially leave McKibben and his movement with just one option in its campaign to convince the public that natural gas is bad for climate change: perpetuating methane misinformation. And even McKibben admits in his op-ed, “I have no confidence that we will ever manage to get this message across.”

We couldn’t agree more and wonder why media outlets such as Yale Environment 360 continue to give the KIITG a forum to try to push a narrative that scientific evidence — and the general public — clearly reject.