New Mexico’s State budget is dominated by money from oil and gas production. It has been for 70 years. During that time our state has dropped to the bottom in most national statistics of social well being. We also have the worst methane (a potent greenhouse gas) pollution in the United States. Yet the oil industry tells us natural gas is an answer to our energy problems. Natural gas is not the answer.
Electric utility companies like PNM also want us to believe that natural gas is a clean alternative to burning coal which produces large amounts of greenhouse gases and toxic pollution and wastes water. In fact natural gas is worse than coal in terms of climate changing greenhouse gas pollution and natural gas drilling is damaging our public lands and groundwater across the state.
Unless the New Mexico legislature passes a series of good bills on renewable energy this session, we could see continuously increasing global warming pollution in New Mexico – because of natural gas – when the coal burning San Juan and Four Corners Generating Stations close in the next few years.
Let’s dispense with the myth that natural gas is a clean power source. Sure it puts out less greenhouse gas pollution than burning coal. But mining and transporting natural gas produces a huge amount of potent pollution. Leaking drilling rigs, flaring, and leaking pipelines produce a 2,500 square mile methane cloud over the San Juan Basin that is one of the largest on earth. Methane is 34 times stronger than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in our atmosphere.
Why not capture the 900,000 tons of methane the oil industry leaks each year in New Mexico? It could be sold for about $180 million a year and generate $27 million in state revenues. But the oil industry isn’t interested and they lobbied Don Trump and Congress to repeal regulations meant to capture methane waste. They did and now the oil industry can waste natural gas at will, accelerating global warming and robbing taxpayers.
We can all feel relieved that heavily polluting coal fired power plants are closing at a record clip. 270 have closed in the US since 2010, but the amount of greenhouse gas pollution in the US overall is increasing at the same time because of pollution from natural gas production and power plants.
As New Mexicans we urgently need to do our part to slow global warming. One would think that economics and free markets will lead us to replace coal and natural gas with much lower cost solar and wind power. But the Public Regulation Commission (PRC) in the past has allowed utility companies to pass on high costs of polluting power sources on to consumers, raising our rates and increasing air pollution at the same time.
The New Mexico legislature this year will likely pass several bills that could lead New Mexico into a clean future. Bills requiring much higher renewable energy portfolio standards, if passed, will eventually force natural gas out of our energy mix. The Energy Transition Act and a bill to aid displaced coal workers, Community Solar, Local Choice Electricity, and energy efficiency bills will all help us diversify the economy. New jobs from new technology will spin off stronger economic activity and offer jobs to educated young people.
As a state we’ve grown complacent about the damage done by the oil and gas industry. We need to phase this industry out and find new opportunities for its workers. This is a tough fact particularly for a state government addicted to revenue from the oil industry. Let’s find new opportunities for the workers. The oil and gas industry is already rich and if it dies…. so be it.
by Tom Ribe
(A version of this piece was published by the Santa Fe New Mexican.)
Nice article, Tom! NM should go solar!