Energy Policy

pThe academic literature has lagged both industry and public opinion in measuring and characterizing potential water quantity and quality concerns related to hydraulic fracturing. However, the science behind frackingrsquo;s water impacts has experienced its own boom during the 2010s. In this paper, we address this critical emerging environmental and energy issue, providing an overview of the current state of knowledge, with a particular focus on academic journal articles that have been published in the past five years. These studies generally find that the water quantity impacts of shale gas and tight oil development are, on average, not significantly worse than for their conventional counterparts, though the specific location and timing of withdrawals for energy development matter. On the other hand, recent findings also suggest that the water quality concerns associated with fracking may be more serious than water quantity concerns./p

pHydraulic fracturing of shale for gas production in Pennsylvania generates large quantities of wastewater, the composition of which has been inadequately characterized. We compiled a unique dataset from state-required wastewater generator reports filed in 2009-2011. The resulting dataset, comprising 160 samples of flowback, produced water, and drilling wastes, analyzed for 84 different chemicals, is the most comprehensive available to date for Marcellus Shale wastewater. We analyzed the dataset using the Kaplan-Meier method to deal with the high prevalence of non-detects for some analytes, and compared wastewater characteristics with permitted effluent limits and ambient monitoring limits and capacity. Major-ion concentrations suggested that most wastewater samples originated from dilution of brines, although some of our samples were more concentrated than any Marcellus brines previously reported. One problematic aspect of this wastewater was the very high concentrations of soluble constituents such as chloride, which are poorly removed by wastewater treatment plants; the vast majority of samples exceeded relevant water quality thresholds, generally by 2-3 orders of magnitude. We also examine the capacity of regional regulatory monitoring to assess and control these risks./p

Electricity resource adequacy is the most urgent and controversial challenge facing the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) market. The policy discussions have neglected some very simple steps that could be taken to promote demand response and reduce peak demand. An allocation of some of the responsibility for non-spinning reserves based on the contribution of a load serving entity (LSE) to peak demand would encourage LSEs to undertake programs to reduce their contribution to the peak. An extension of the four coincident peak (4 CP) pricing used to charge large industrial energy consumers for transmission services to smaller commercial and residential loads would encourage smaller consumers to reduce their peak usage. Narrowing the definition of