What Experts Say About the Environmental Risks of Shale Gas Development

Public discourse suggests a lack of consensus in the United States regarding the environmental impacts of shale gas development. Newly available shale gas has reduced the cost of electricity and heating and replaced coal, but public fears about the environment threaten to curtail those gains. We designed the first survey-based analysis of the views of government, industry, academic, and nongovernmental experts to identify their priorities for regulation and voluntary action among 264 routine and 14 accidental environmental risk “pathways.” We find that nongovernmental experts select many more problems but that there is considerable agreement on the most important ones, which can guide research, policies, and practices so that shale gas benefits continue and environmental impacts are limited.