(85c) Navigating the Natural Gas Boom: Policy Option for Ensuring a Safe, Clean, and Economical Natural Gas Revolution

The recent revolution in natural gas has revealed incredible economic opportunity for this nation. There are copious natural gas reserves in the US, particularly in shale repositories. Capturing these reserves will yield massive economic growth in direct energy production, transportation, and downstream product synthesis industries. Despite these benefits, there are continual controversies on how best to utilize these newfound resources and how to mitigate the potentially severe environmental implications. It is important that policy makers decided on how best to incentivize safe shale gas mining, regulate global trade, and promote responsible utilization of these limited resources. Obtaining natural gas from shale repositories requires hydraulic fracturing which has controversial public health and environmental implications. Moreover, while gas is cleaner than coal and oil, it does not provide a completely nonpolluting and sustainable solution our scarce energy supplies problem.  Providing regulatory certainty to these challenges of natural gas would provide a strong foundation for growth.