Flammable water is just one negative side effect of natural gas drilling. Photo from "Gasland" --click on photo for more info.

Natural gas extraction is a serious environmental threat, yet natural gas  remains a widely-used fuel.

Thanks in large part to to T. Boone Pickens, we may not get competitively priced renewable energy for 10 years or more.  His push for natural gas to make himself even richer, and his “army” of gas supporters are proving to be a major obstacle to pricing renewable energy more affordably than fossil fuels.  Many people believe that pricing fossil fuels as more expensive than renewable energy is the only way that a capitalist country like the U.S. will ever get off fossil fuels and on to renewable energy.  Thanks to the proponents of natural gas, a fossil fuel, this now may not happen for a decade.  Our main hope to stopping the devastating pollution caused by natural gas fracking is EPA regulations.  (Predictably, the Republicans want to fill Congress this fall with anti-science, anti-renewable energy advocates who have protected the fossil fuel industries for decades.)

Most energy experts agree that the way to get renewable energy used widely in the United States depends in large part on making fossil fuels more expensive.  Natural gas has been portrayed as a “bridge fuel,” but the cheap price of this fossil fuel is going to make the bridge period itself last much longer than it would otherwise.  This means it will take many extra years before renewable energy becomes widely demanded.  Do Pickens’ supporters realize their very support for natural gas is delaying renewable energy implementation and use?  Fans of Pickens include many Democrats in Congress, like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, making this even more difficult to stomach.  (Some of these people have actually invested their own wealth into natural gas as a “bridge fuel”.)    Yet because of natural gas extraction, people in Wyoming can’t even drink their water.  A recent article explains why natural gas is threatening the use of renewable energy.

It’s a Gas, Gas, Gas

Unconventional natural gas is having profound effects on power prices, negatively affecting renewable energy’s competitiveness. The effect may last the rest of this decade.

Unconventional natural gas is often see as the bridge fuel that will further better integration of renewable energy resources, but now it is a power price depressant that will keep renewables at a cost disadvantage for the foreseeable future.

That view was part of a wide-ranging discussion on the current economic and policy landscape that affects renewable energy. The topic was one of several discussed in the recent American Bar Association-American Council on Renewable Energy webinar. The webinar is part of a series that assesses how renewable energy’s future will be affected by developments throughout the power sector, especially as they affect the wider acceptance of wind, solar, biomass and other resources.

One issue noted here previously is how the current low price of natural gas is making [...]