May 8, 2012

expert reaction to Lord Smith’s speech on clean energy

At a keynote speech, Environment Agency (EA) chairman Lord Smith gave his support for the controversial method of shale gas extraction, known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking, qualifying this with the need for simultaneous Carbon Capture and Storage programmes.

Prof Quentin Fisher, School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, said:

“It comes as no surprise that Lord Smith has given his support to shale gas development given that hydraulic fracturing is a widely used industrial process that has been safely applied in over 2 million wells over the last 50 years.

“It is good that Lord Smith has recognized that shale gas exploitation can be conducted safely with minimal environmental impact. However, there still remain large questions regarding how much shale gas is present in the UK and whether it can be extracted economically.”

Prof Peter Styles, Professor of Geophysics at Keele University, said:

“Lord Smith has rightly seen that there is no single ‘magic bullet’; neither the renewable armoury, nor nuclear, nor fossil fuels can provide the whole desirable shopping list of energy security, environmental guarantees and economic advantage. We need a sushi menu, some parts of which we may like more than others.

“The key is to discover the right balance which delivers base-load and peak following at an affordable price and underpins growth while moving progressively towards decarbonising our fuel cycles without inducing unhelpful oscillations based on dogma and political prejudice. Shipping gas from Qatar in tankers through hostile piratical waters and piping natural gas thousands of kilometres with leaks of a few percent (leading to the greenhouse gas equivalent of pumping the total transported gas volume as CO2 directly into the atmosphere!) are NOT the answer.

“Shale gas (with its need for hydro-fraccing) can play a major part for the UK in avoiding some of these unforeseen climatic and political threats and can, as we suggested in the DECC report, be monitored and controlled. Please do not let us make the Perfect the enemy of the Good.””