Fracking subsidies would be better spent elsewhere
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Version 0 of 1. You quote the chief of the task force on shale gas, Lord Smith of Finsbury, as saying, “If someone demonstrated that developing this industry (fracking) in the UK would mean a substantial raising of greenhouse gas emissions, that would be a showstopper” (‘Too soon to decide’ whether fracking is good for UK, 15 July). In fact, many scientific papers have demonstrated the “substantial raising of greenhouse gas emissions” from fracking. A team at Cornell University has shown that, even at the lowest value of methane escape achieved in practice during fracking in the US, the greenhouse gas emissions of shale gas are higher than coal-burning. If, by some miracle, zero methane leaks were achieved in the UK, the carbon footprint of electricity generation from fracked natural gas would still be about 45 times higher than generation by biomethane from the anaerobic digestion of farm and food waste. Far better for the planet if the subsidies currently offered to landowners to accept fracking on their land were instead used to encourage farmers to send their animal and crop waste for anaerobic digestion. Additionally, the electricity and heat will probably be cheaper for the consumer, given the extraction costs and uncertain yield of fracking. Professor Keith BarnhamLondon • You describe the UK taskforce on shale gas as “independent but industry-funded”. This would seem to be a contradiction in terms. Time and again bodies that are industry-funded come up with reports that are supportive of the corporate position. It is impossible to know whether people are recruited because they already hold views that support the industrial position, or whether the funding censors them from holding different views. In practice it doesn’t matter, because their reports are almost always supportive of industry. This has become abundantly clear over the years with tobacco company-sponsored research so biased that leading medical journals, including the Lancet and BMJ, have announced they will no longer accept papers from this source. Similar strictures should be applied to the fossil fuel industry, particularly to an area as controversial as fracking. A truly independent view is provided by the report from the chief scientific adviser to the cabinet, or the environmental audit committee in the House of Commons, both of whom are opposed to fracking in the UK.Dr Robin Russell-JonesStoke Poges, Buckinghamshire |