Fracking is back in the news with MPs rejecting a call by the Commons Environmental Audit Committee to impose a moratorium on shale gas exploration.
The University of Nottingham have launched a Massive Open Online Course entitled ‘Shale Gas & Fracking‘ that looks at both the science and politics. I have signed up in order to arm myself with the facts. Is it too much to hope that our elected representatives might do the same?
The Government today announced that there would be no more public subsidies for new onshore windfarm developments.
It was also announced that future planning approvals for proposed wind energy developments would be placed in the hands of communities and their locally elected representatives and not dictated by Central Government.
Onshore wind is the cheapest form of renewable energy and is zero carbon in operation.
This week the Government also announced a proposal to grant additional rights to companies carrying out fracking for shale gas to extend their operations horizontally beneath the property of neighbouring landowners without the need for consent, thus appropriating the private property rights of these neighbours whose ownership is traditionally in English law seen as extending from the centre of the Earth below to the heavens above their allotted portion of England’s Green and Pleasant Land.
Licences to explore for oil and gas, including by fracking, are granted by Central Government and not the Local Planning Authority.
With the enthusiastic backing of the Prime Minister and Chancellor, a generous tax allowance (subsidy) regime has been put in place for shale gas exploration.
Shale gas, whilst less carbon intensive a fuel than coal, is still a fossil fuel, a non-renewable resource the burning of which adds to the CO2 emissions that are fuelling climate change. In the United States, fracking has been linked with environmental damage, pollution of groundwater, methane emissions, seismic events and adverse human health impacts. In the UK there is widespread public opposition to the prospect of fracking, significant protests in potential shale exploration sites such as Balcombe and Barton Moss which have led to the arrest of a Member of Parliament – Green MP and former Party Leader Caroline Lucas – who was recently cleared of all charges.
How can any sane individual claim that the Government’s blatantly contradictory stances on onshore wind and shale gas add up to a coherent energy or environmental policy?
Of course…there is an election looming and UKIP are in town and spreading panic in the Tory heartlands. Sanity has been ditched along with all the “green crap”.
Following increasing public disquiet about fracking, including the recent protests and direct action around the Sussex village of Balcombe, which saw the arrest of Green Party MP and former leader Caroline Lucas, cracks have started to appear in the coalition Government over energy policy.
Chancellor George Osborne has stated that he wants to “put Britain at the forefront of exploiting shale gas” and Prime Minister David Cameron, in an article for Lord Lawson’s climate-sceptic think-tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation, wrote: “we cannot afford to miss out on fracking”
But this enthusiasm for shale gas demonstrated by the holders of the two top jobs is not shared by all members of the government.
Mark Durkan, Environment Minister for Northern Ireland, criticised this headlong rush to exploit shale gas reserves and made his position more cautious position clear: “The scientific evidence is far from being established. No fracking for Fermanagh, no fracking for Northern Ireland, as things stand.”
Meanwhile, a policy paper produced by the Liberal Democrats in advance of their forthcoming conference puts clear daylight between the party and their coalition partners on a range of energy-related issues, including shale, where the paper’s authors flatly contradict the Chancellor’s views, stating: “There is no realistic prospect of a ‘shale gas revolution’ in the UK.”
In a more measured assessment of the potential role of shale gas in the energy mix that is in marked contrast to the wild enthusiasm shown by senior Conservatives, the paper goes on to conclude: “There is value in promoting domestic production rather than imports, so Liberal Democrats would permit measured shale gas extraction, ensuring that regulations protecting water and land pollution and local environmental quality are strictly enforced at a national level. Planning permission decisions should remain with local authorities however, and local communities should be fully consulted over local extraction, and fully compensated for all damage to the local landscape.”
The debate about fracking, as with that over wind farms, has tended to focus on the local environmental impacts, real or perceived, rather than the big picture issues such as climate change and the effect these technologies will have on efforts to mitigate future rises in global temperatures.
Given that wind energy generation causes no carbon emissions and shale gas is a fossil fuel that emits over 500 kgs of CO2 for each megawatt-hour of electricity generated, a rational approach to policy-making in the light of the Government’s own decarbonisation targets would seem to be that there should be a presumption in favour of the former and against the latter before the local factors are considered. However, in marked contrast to the rushing out of Planning Practice Guidance that stresses that Local Authorities have a duty to make an assessment of all oil and gas resources in their areas the planning regime for onshore wind energy has recently been tightened
Here again, the Liberal Democrats paper on energy policy shows a clear difference in approach to the Conservatives: “Onshore wind, currently the cheapest renewable technology, could provide up to a fifth of UK electricity consumption. In public opinion surveys wind farms consistently attract support from around two-thirds of the public, but the 10 per cent or so who are consistently opposed are usually more vocal. Liberal Democrats would require onshore wind farms to help fund local energy efficiency measures, thus reducing householders’ energy bills. Liberal Democrats would support developers who seek punitive damages against councils who do not follow National Policy Guidelines in determining consents, for example, many (particularly Conservative) councils have adopted criteria (such as minimum separation distances from dwellings), in contravention of government planning policy.”
This claim of two-thirds public support reflects the findings of a poll conducted for The Guardian in 2012, which found that 66% of Britons were in favour of wind power and only 8% against. Indeed, a similar poll found that 60% of people would support a wind farm development within 5 miles of their home compared to 20% support for a new coal-fired power station and 14% for a nuclear power station.
Conversely, only 40% of the public support fracking in their local area with 40% saying they would oppose it.
Given that the scientific evidence on the negative impact of shale gas exploitation on efforts to curb climate change is clear, the industry’s record on localised environmental damage is far from blameless and the lack of support from the public despite efforts by the tabloid press to cast the Balcombe anti-fracking protestors as benefit scroungers and extremists who do not represent the views of the local community, it is not difficult to see why elements of the coalition government are rushing to distance themselves from their leader’s wholehearted support for the technology as a potential answer to Britain’s energy worries. We wait to see whether this will lead to a permanent split or another policy U-turn.
This article was first published on the Sustainable Business Toolkit website in July 2013
Last month Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has announced plans to give generous tax breaks to companies involved in exploiting the UK’s shale gas reserves .
The proposals, which the Government are now consulting on until 13th September 2013 include a reduction in the tax paid on shale gas revenues from 62% to 30%. These reductions are planned as part of “This new tax regime, which I want to make the most generous for shale in the world” said the Chancellor.
Osborne revealed his priorities and the thinking that lay behind the announcement when he added “I want Britain to be a leader of the shale gas revolution – because it has the potential to create thousands of jobs and keep energy bills low for millions of people.”
Now for a Government facing the task of getting itself re-elected following years of ‘austerity’ budgets and cuts to public services, you can see why a technology that offers the prospect of both higher employment and lower energy bills is appealing, which only serves to underline the difficulty that politicians face in dealing with issues such as climate change and resource depletion: to tackle these problems requires a dramatic shift in the ‘business as usual’ model that will undoubtedly cause short-term pain and only deliver benefits in the longer term. This is a proposition that is of no use at all if you operate on a 4-5 year electoral cycle, which means that the short-term pain will see you ejected from office long before the long-term gains are realised, even if these gains include avoiding catastrophic climate change that threatens the very continuation of civilisation as we know it.
It is interesting that most of the media coverage and the debate around shale gas exploitation has centred on the localised environmental concerns surrounding the ‘fracking’ process such as groundwater contamination and the potential of these operations to cause earth tremors. Matthew Roberts’ SBT article of 28th June 2013 addresses the US experience of these issues.
In the UK, the British Geological Survey has a programme of research into the possible groundwater and seismic implications of hydraulic fracturing, as ‘fracking’ is properly known. Of far more widespread, indeed global, concern are the effects of the shale gas boom on efforts to reduce CO2 emissions in order to tackle climate change.
Much has been made of the US experience that this new ‘dash for gas’ has led to a reduction in carbon emissions. A recent report by the UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research says that this may be an over-simplistic interpretation of what has happened. According to the report, US CO2 emissions from domestic energy have declined by 8.6% since their peak in 2005 – equivalent to an annual reduction of 1.4% per year, which still falls far short of the rate of decarbonisation required to keep global temperature increase below the generally accepted ‘safe-ish’ limit of 2 Degrees. Not all of this reduction can be attributed to shale gas but the part that any switch plays in reducing CO2 emissions is due to the fact that burning natural gas in a power stations emits around 44% less Co2 per Megawatt-hour of electricity generation than using coal, which is the main fuel displaced. What tends to be overlooked in celebrating this reduction is the fact that using gas to generate electricity still emits around 300kg of CO2 per Megawatt-hour as opposed to 500kg for coal or less than 10kg for wind and nuclear.
The bottom line after cutting through all the hype is that shale gas may be ‘less bad’ than the coal that it displaces but it is not ‘good’. Furthermore, it is still a finite resource so its exploitation is only putting back the day when the lights go out, not offering a long-term sustainable way to keep them on.
Where shale gas could fit into a future energy mix, as with nuclear power, is as a short- to medium-term stop-gap until zero-emissions technologies such as renewables or nuclear fusion, are developed to a point where they are both technically feasible and economically viable sources of power. A clear long-term road map to a sustainable energy model could credibly include shale gas as an interim technology on the path to a low carbon future. In this context, offering tax incentives to companies to develop this embryonic industry would be justified and a perfectly proper thing to do as part of a taxation and regulatory framework that also incentivised work on developing the long-term solution and penalised the old, highly polluting technologies to increase the speed of the switch of investment away from them. Such a move would also address issues of energy security and the risk of relying on imports of vital energy sources from politically volatile parts of the world.
The problem appears to be that, almost inevitably, we are seeing a government pursue short-term advantage without appearing to consider the future. The problem is that the future, like the gas, is in danger of running out.
Peter Tyldesley 