Monday, Sept. 17, was the First Anniversary of the “Occupy Wall Street” protests.

The protesters at Occupy are/were demonstrating against the current economic system and to make “Fracking” illegal.  (See “Stop Spectra: Resist Fracking in NYC” or “City Limits, Occupy Wall Street, Opposes Fracking“) Energy Policy and Economics … the intersection of energy and economics in the bio-humanosphere – the memes we knit together at Popular Logistics.

My coverage of Occupy Wall Street started on Sept. 22, 2011, with “Protesting Marked Cards and a Stacked Deck.” Quoting Mr. Buffett’s op-ed in the NY Times, “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich,” and citing President Obama’s statement about the American Jobs Act, explained on White House . gov and Talking Points Memo, which Senate Republicans subsequently filibustered, I called for repeal of the “Bush Tax Cuts” on the wealthy, and for passage of Obama’s American Jobs, the so-called Buffett Rule.

I concluded,

Tax policy must be linked to fiscal policy. What we are doing today, Obama, Buffett, and the protesters would say, is using tax policy to make rich people more rich…. we should use tax policy to develop infrastructure… to build a 40 kilowatt photovoltaic solar array on each of the 92,000 public schools in the United States…. This would use tax revenues to pay for infrastructure upgrade – and tax revenues pay public schools electric bills. PV Solar systems provide energy without pollution, without toxic wastes, without greenhouse gases. And in the event of an emergency, if disconnected from the grid, we would have a network of 92,000 local emergency shelters with power during the day, when the sun is shining.

“Fracking,” short for “Hydrodraulic-Fracturing,” is the practice whereby methane is extracted from deep below the surface of the earth by explosions. The people who are for it say “It provides cheap, clean fuel.” Those who are against it say “It’s an environmental disaster.” When you factor in the costs to clean up the environment, it is very, very expensive.

If we really needed to frack and burn, we should require the entities engaged in “Fracking” to leave the environment, air, land, water – as clean as it was before any wells are drilled, before any methane (radon and other radioactive and toxic waste) are “produced” and before geological studies are done to determine the availability of methane.  The would increase the cost of methane, but it would more accurately model the true costs  of “Fracking.” Note that a complete accounting of the costs of “Fracking” would also factor in the environmental or biospheric costs of recapturing the carbon dioxide and water vapor produced by releasing and oxidizing the methane, as well as other by-products.

As with coal with carbon sequestration, estimated at $16 billion per gigawatt to $20 billion per gigawatt of capacity, (here), five to seven times the cost of solar energy, factoring in clean-up costs would probably raise the cost of methane from “fracking” to a point where alternatives are developed – solar, geothermal, wind for electricity.

For more on “Fracking,” see Citizens Campaign, Cuomo Proposal Restricts Fracking, in the NY Times, and “Waste Water Becomes an Issue in Fracking Debate, also in the NY Times,”Gasland“, the film by Josh Fox, and the American Natural Gas Alliance, ANGA, an industry group. (Note that the folks at Occupy Wall Street might regard ANGA as intellectually dishonest and their commentary propaganda – which is no doubt how the good people at ANGA regard Mr. Fox’ film.)

Note that these wells do not “produce” methane. They release methane and other substances, including radon, into the biosphere. Stay tuned.

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An analyst with Popular Logistics; I am available for research and analysis on a per project or a per diem basis. I can be reached at ‘L Furman 97” @ G Mail . com.