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Fracking certainly isn't the answer. The people that have to live in these fracked places are super against it but it's being forced upon them anyway.
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In the US that’s not entirely true. Subsoil rights belong to the landowner, not the state, so the money has flowed into the local communities and has bought a degree of acceptance.
In the UK people are super against it but it hasn’t really happened yet at any scale. They’re against what they think has happened in the US, and against anything that isn’t renewable. I don’t think that’s an entirely reasonable position, although I have a lot of sympathy for it.
I’m not pro-fracking, for the record. I’m agnostic to be honest - I’d like to see us deploy more renewables, but the technology isn’t ready yet to displace all our fossil fuel needs. And if we need to rely on fossils for a while longer, I’d rather we burnt gas than coal or oil - it’s much less polluting. If fracking can be done safely and cleanly and stops us burning dirtier shit, then I think as a stopgap it works.
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On the energy chat
Scottish Power to use 100% wind power after Drax sale
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45873785 -
Having new homes built should have at least a bit of local input, but is different. Fracking may quite possibly fuck up the area for many years to come, with no direct plus points for those living there. They may have to contend with contaminated water, earthquakes, damage to wildlife and there's the massive amounts of water needed to actually do it, in a best case scenario with none of this house prices for locals will be affected. There is little to no support for it in places where it's earmarked, yet it's being forced through anyway. I'd much rather import more gas if necessary whilst looking at renewable alternatives than potentially damage our environment to possibly save some money on gas bills, but likely just make money for fracking companies.
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May have to. May not have to either. That’s part of the problem with the current state of the anti-fracking argument - it’s starting from the premise that everything will be the worst possible outcome imaginable.
Imports have to come from somewhere. The Norwegians can’t supply everything the UK needs, so we’re looking at Russian gas and LNG. Putting all our eggs in a Russian basket is risky geopolitically, and I don’t think the climate footprint of LNG is smaller than domestic fracking.
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I think when the worst possible outcomes are so bad, it's worth considering them as part of the argument. It's not like cuadrilla or oil/gas/mining companies in general inspire full confidence in their abilities. Plus if no one wants it anyway, should they really be forced to have it?
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We have moved over to solar power and a ground source heat pump. Long term we’d like a house battery so we produce and store our own electricity.
Hopefully this will offset my leaf blower and appease @andyp
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Nice setup, high five to you. Ground source heat pumps ought to be much more common in the UK. How long will it take to pay itself off?
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Plus if no one wants it anyway, should they really be forced to have it?
Local people are least able to make a rational decision in this regard. Lots of people are pro house building, but anti house building near them.
People are pro renewables, until someone wants to put a wind turbine in view of their house.
People want the thames cleaning up, but dont want any super sewer developments neart them. People want their waste collected and recycled, but don't want the tip to be near them.
I'm sure many people are pro cheaper energy bills and anti importing gas from Russia, but anti fracking near them. "I want gas for my boiler, I just don't want it to be sourced near me". There is limited clammer for good old "local Lancashire gas". Perhaps they need to work on their artisan/hipster marketing.
It's a perennial problem. Here local concerns have got mixed up with climate change protesting, and that's the problem. Protesting fracking is not going to help big picture climate change politics, so anyone doing this is wasting their time.
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Government funding repays our outlay over 7 years. After that we have cheap heating for many years to come.
This is some of the run of pipes, 50m long
1 Attachment
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Surely fracking is just an oil and gas industry answer to the question 'how do we keep making money as the domestic supply of gas drops?'
They have then sold it in to governments as 'this is a great way to secure your domestic gas supply'
Whereas the question the government should be asking is 'how do we reduce demand and phase out gas altogether?'
If they shifted the billions of pounds in subsidies that goes into oil and gas into insulating homes and buildings and installing ground source heat pumps in every house it would be a good start.
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Plus if no one wants it anyway, should they really be forced to have it?
Because unless you are running the show sometimes you have to clean the toilet. That's how it works in the UK if you are unlucky, and it's how it works in most of the developed world. Sometimes you have to accept things you don't like because you don't have the power to change those things.
You can either acquire the power to change it, move to escape it, or suck it up.
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Replacing the gas infrastructure in London strikes me as challenging. You could of course reduce total demand by addressing those areas of the country that could for e.g. install a ground source heat pump.
I’d love to have a water-wheel generating power from the river in my garden, but I live in a flat.
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Move!
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Surely fracking is just an oil and gas industry answer to the question 'how do we keep making money as the domestic supply of gas drops?'
No. I think its the answer to 'how do we ensure the maximum number of gas sources to remain competitive'.
The pitch to the government is on a number of counts; cheaper energy for voters, jobs, economic stimulus, tax revenue, energy security.
What confuses me is that everyone of these can be applied to renewables. Especially the economic case. The last government report I looked at in relation to AD/similar, estimated just the bioeconomy in the EU had a T.O. of €2t.
Edit: just in case anyone is interested in power / energy loads of info here, probably not very mobile friendly tho
http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=nrg_105a&lang=en -
ONS report from 2015 shows we don't heavily rely on Russia for hydro carbons and not at all for gas
The likelihood of that changing much is unlikely, the Russia argument isn't really there, we do get a fair wedge of petrol from them though.
This, redacted, paper from 2014 by UK Gov gives estimates of potential supplies of gas, ranging from 1.1% of consumption to 89% of current consumption, so they didn't really know how much gas they really do have and even if their optimistic results are in place, they would need to drill 1100 wells a year (they also state this is highly unlikely).
This article here shows the effect of shale gas on the UK economy would be tiny.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261918301764
In my opinion, the folk that will benefit the most are those that own, drill and frack these wells.
This is leaving out the potential ecological damage and the eyesore of thousands of wells having to be drilled to keep producing.
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Good question as I got made redundant last week.
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We continue to need gas for heating, as Scrabble said. Also for a lot of industrial processes where we haven’t yet figured out how to dispense with gas.
The pro-fracking argument has generally been that we should be able to do it in the UK with better, tighter regulations that prevent the kind of scary stuff people have heard of in the US. How realistic that really is, I don’t know. But the gas has to come from somewhere - the North Sea is in decline and we’re growing more import dependent.