Fracking won't crack our dependence on Russian gas imports
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Version 0 of 1. As tensions with Russia intensify, government ministers and conservative commentators have increasingly sought to capitalise on the crisis to sell fracking to the electorate. Over the weekend, Conservative energy minister Michael Fallon argued that the UK should reduce its reliance on gas imports by fracking for shale gas in the UK. The foreign minister, William Hague, wrote in the Telegraph that we need to "develop indigenous European energy supplies … such as shale gas", while commentators including Matt Ridley argued that if it wasn't for "the greens in suits, rather than kaftans" we could have a fully fledged fracking industry up and running already. The chutzpah of these attempts to build support for an increasingly unpopular fracking industry is astonishing. These are the same people who were arguing the case for the construction of up to 40 gas power stations. This would have left us even more dependent on imported gas. The Crimean crisis should be a catalyst for a rethink about whether the government's "dash for gas" is the wisest energy policy for a country with dwindling North Sea resources. But rather than admit that we should be reducing our dependence on gas, its proponents prefer to blame the green groups that have for decades been arguing for a reduced reliance on finite energy sources. Claims that fracking offers a panacea to dependence on Russian gas don't even stack up. A study for the oil and gas industry by consultants Pöyry, found that European supplies wouldn't even come on stream at scale for at least a decade. The study also shows that while the EU's dependency on gas imports could be reduced by up to 18% depending on the success of EU shale gas extraction, it is actually supplies of liquefied natural gas from Qatar that would be displaced by shale gas. Supplies that are deemed "secure" by Fallon. Even a shale gas boom will have no impact on Russian imports until well into the next decade, by which point demand for gas should be falling sharply in the EU as efforts to limit climate change bear fruit. It is, in fact, our efforts to tackle climate change that will reduce the UK's and Europe's exposure to energy imports. The EU has set a target of 80%-95% emissions reductions by 2050. In the UK, the government's independent climate advisers have suggested that we will need to largely remove gas from the power sector in the coming decades. Yet the government, including the energy minister, is opposing measures that could make this ambition a reality by blocking nationally binding EU targets for both renewables and energy efficiency. The European commission's assessment of the impacts of these targets found that they could cut net energy imports by more than half by 2050. Rejecting support for policies that make a significant contribution to both tackling climate change and delivering energy security, in favour of fracking, is irresponsible in the extreme. While Ridley and Fallon may like to cast themselves as rational men with pragmatic solutions, the truth is that nobody even knows whether the UK's shale gas reserves will be economic to extract, let alone are significant enough to reduce our reliance on gas imports. Meanwhile, a genuine source of indigenous gas that is could be brought on stream now – biogas from waste – is being hampered by frequent and seemingly arbitrary shifts in levels of support for its development. What we know for certain is that using less of something means you don't depend on it as much. Yet the government's efforts to make sure the UK uses its gas more efficiently have been an abject failure: January saw just 33 sign-ups to its flagship Green Deal programme. Meanwhile, the coalition's systematic dismantling of investor confidence in the renewable industry has been holding back billions of pounds of investment in the very energy sources that don't require imported fuel – wind, tides and sun. The same politicians who for years have happily let billions of pounds from imported energy costs flow into the pockets of oligarchs in countries like Russia and Qatar for years are now complaining about our dependence on imported gas. The only thing they've proven is that we should look elsewhere for our energy policy. |