Those changes would go a long way toward defining what exactly constitutes RSG, how it is calculated, and whether it is a meaningful measure of environmental impacts. The latter would involve significant monetary penalties or expulsion from RSG programs when a gas well fails to comply with the environmental standards. The various “responsibly sourced” certification programs need more transparency, standardization, and punitive measures for companies that play fast and loose with the concepts and requirements underlying all manner of RSG schemes.
DEMOGRAPHICS AROUND FRACKED NATURAL GAS WELLS FULL
That practice mirrors the secretive nature of the fracked oil and gas industry, which also does not publicly disclose the full list of chemicals used during the fracking process. Quantifying methane emissions is central to most of the RSG programs, but none of them require full public disclosure of the methane levels that are actually released. And the company’s website is littered with language around using RSG certification as a tool that achieves “higher profit margins” and addresses climate concerns from the public, importing countries, and ESG investors. While this sounds promising, its methodology and data are not publicly available, making it difficult to assess their claims. Project Canary defines RSG as fracked gas that “has undergone an independent, third-party certification assessing sustainability through operational excellence and environmental stewardship across various categories, including air, water, land, and community.” The company Project Canary offers one such RSG certification program called TrustWell Responsible Gas. However, even independent auditing isn’t a perfect solution. That’s unlike many other sectors, such as in organic agriculture. Only two of these require the use of third-party auditors to verify the operators’ reporting via independent on-site measurements. Proponents of such voluntary standards are trying to simultaneously compete in the domestic and global energy market, increase profit margins, and attract environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investors, a hot trend in the investing world right now.īut the definition of “responsibly sourced” is inconsistent across the 20 such initiatives that are currently available. RSG programs are intended in large part to boost investor confidence by way of “strategic storytelling,” as one industry consulting firm put it. RSG is a new term used in the natural gas industry to describe voluntary reporting initiatives, centered largely around emissions of the powerful climate pollutant methane, but which may also include other criteria such as air quality, water stewardship, land impacts, and “ community interests.” Think of RSG as attempting to create an oil and gas equivalent of fair-trade labels for clothing or green building standards for architecture. Instead, we suggest a new ratio for more accurately calculating fracked gas’s full impacts so that the fossil fuel industry can’t use RSG standards as a thin green veil for continuing its polluting practices. We argue that right now it’s an inadequate and ill-defined measurement of the overall ecological and social burden imposed by fracking. Nevertheless, the industry has begun a new wave of branding around “Responsibly Sourced Natural Gas,” or RSG. Drillers are using ever-increasing amounts of water and sand in order to produce the same volume of gas, with a corresponding rise in the levels of solid and liquid waste created. The fracked natural gas industry has never been the most responsible or efficient consumer of resources.