September was a busy month for climate change-related events. Activists took to the streets in protest and presidential candidates spent hours detailing aggressive climate plans that include extreme measures like banning fracking. Meanwhile, the U.S. oil and natural gas industry continued to quietly combat climate change by producing an abundant supply of clean-burning natural gas.

As EID’s latest video shows, thanks to industry innovation and collaboration, the United States leads the world in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And these reductions are being driven by natural gas.

Natural Gas Is Fueling Environmental Progress

Innovations to the decades-old process of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), combined with horizontal drilling technologies, have unlocked tremendous opportunities for the United States and the world. Fracking has enabled the United States to produce an abundance of natural gas from shale, changing the way Americans power the country and in turn, helping to significantly reduce emissions. According to the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol:

“In the last 10 years, the emissions reductions in the United States has been the largest in the history of energy – almost 800 million tons.”

Prominent Democratic public officials have credited this progress to the transition to natural gas.

“We’ve been improving our emissions in this country without agreeing to the Kyoto accords, without Congressional action because of innovation in the natural gas area. And that moves us down the carbon density scale.”–  Sen. Tim Kaine

“The advances we’ve made have helped drive our economic output to all-time highs, and drive our carbon pollution to its lowest levels in nearly two decades.” – President Obama

In fact, the transition to natural gas has done more to lower CO2 emissions from power generation than renewable resources. The fuel has reduced 50 percent more U.S. emissions than wind or solar combined since 2005 and has prevented over two billion metric tons of CO2 – about 63 percent of total savings.

Natural gas’ climate-saving benefits aren’t expected to diminish any time soon: the transition to natural gas for electricity generation could prevent an additional 1.2 billion tons of carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere, according to the IEA.

Despite this, natural gas’ benefits were noticeably absent from discussions during the recent New York City Climate Week.

2020 Candidates Embrace Activist Talking Points, Rather than Science.

These significant reductions also starkly contrast with the rhetoric from top tier Democratic presidential candidates like former Vice President Joe Biden and Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Kamala Harris, who have all expressed their intention to ban hydraulic fracturing if elected.

There’s too much at stake.

Such a ban would have devastating economic and environmental consequences for the United States.  The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the oil and natural gas industry alone contributed $218.8 billion to the economy in 2018. Oil and natural gas development is helping to fill state coffers while funding public education, hospitals, and infrastructure projects across the country.

As Birol  recently warned, banning fracking “would have major implications on the market for the U.S. economy, for jobs growth and everything, and not good news for energy security, because for example U.S. natural gas provides a lot of security to the markets.” He added:

“[S]topping oil and gas production is something that I wouldn’t advise to the U.S. government or another government.”

We agree. Watch and share EID’s latest video, “2020 Campaign Memo: Fracking Delivers Climate Progress,” to help explain why.