Exxon has held eight exploration and production contracts in Colombia, including the fracking pilot. All either have been or are being ended, suspended or liquidated, Colombia’s National Hydrocarbon Agency (ANH) told Reuters.

The company had planned to develop the Platero pilot project for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, eyeing an investment of $53 million, under a contract awarded two years ago.

Colombia’s congress has been preparing to pass a fracking ban backed by leftist President Gustavo Petro, who took office nearly nine months ago.

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The proposed bill would ban development of non-conventional energy projects including fracking. It has already passed the Senate and is expected to get final congressional approval in the coming months.

The law would leave companies with few options to recoup investments, according to the text of the proposal, including options such as the chance to transfer their investments elsewhere or be awarded rights over other conventional blocks.

Exxon is “reviewing the mechanisms to reach a solution regarding the investments for exploring unconventional” energy resources it has in the country, an Exxon source in Colombia told Reuters.

“We will continue to have constructive dialogue with the Colombian government on a comprehensive assessment of our unconventional investments,” Exxon spokesperson Michelle Gray told Reuters.

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The term “compensation” does not exist in technical or legal terminology used by the ANH in its processes, the agency said, but Exxon is advancing an “accreditation” process regarding the Platero pilot project.

“The procedure is currently being studied,” the ANH said. It did not respond to follow-up questions about what an accreditation process could include.

After winning separate approvals to develop fracking pilot projects in Santander province, Exxon and Colombia’s majority state-owned oil company Ecopetrol said they would team up, with Ecopetrol as operator for both pilots.

The fracking projects in Santander inspired mass protests. The leaders of those protests were threatened with violence. Yuvelis Natalia Morales told Climate Home last March that armed men put a gun to her head and she fled the country as a result.

UN’s Green Climate Fund too scared of risk, finds official review

Also last year, the state-run company asked the ANH to temporarily suspend both licenses, citing uncertainty over their future. The two companies mutually agreed to end their alliance in November, an Ecopetrol spokesperson said this week.

Ecopetrol’s new CEO Ricardo Roa said this week he would analyze that company’s fracking contracts “with a magnifying glass.”

Exxon most recently decided to withdraw from its 70% participation in the VMM-37 block it shared with a subsidiary of Sintana Energy in Colombia’s Medio Magdalena region, it confirmed to Reuters this week.

Exxon said it continuously evaluates and prioritize investments, including those in Colombia.

The company will continue in the country through its petrochemicals and marketing businesses, the people said.

The post Exxon scrambles to save investments before Colombia bans fracking appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a letter to the Slovenian government, the company’s lawyers described the government’s actions as “arbitrary and unreasonable”. Environmentalists said it was the company whose behaviour was “outrageous”.

Friends of the Earth Slovenia accused Ascent of endangering the country’s drinking water supply and urged the new Slovenian government not to bow to pressure.

Paul de Clerck, economic justice coordinator for Friends of the Earth Europe, said: “It’s a scandal that, amid a climate and environmental emergency, a country like Slovenia can be sued for doing the right thing, protecting its water and environment from destructive fracking.”

London-based Ascent Resources is taking legal action using the UK-Slovenia bilateral investment treaty and the controversial multilateral Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), which the UK and Slovenia have both signed up to.

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The ECT has previously been used by a German energy company to fight the Dutch government over coal phaseout plans and by a Swedish company to sue the German state over its policies against nuclear and coal power.

In 2007, Ascent entered a joint venture with a state-owned Slovenian company called Geonergo to extract gas from Petišovci in eastern Slovenia and sell it to Croatian company INA. It says it has since invested €50m (US$59m) in the project.

In 2017, the company decided it needed to inject water underground to stimulate gas flow, known as fracking, and applied for government permission. Ascent’s lawyers say that they did not need to apply for this but Geonergo did so anyway “in an abundance of caution”.

In March 2019, the Slovenian Environment Agency (ARSO) ruled that the company must conduct an environmental impact assesment because the site is close to water sources.

Ascent’s lawyers said this decision went against expert opinions from several other government bodies and was “manifestly arbitrary and unreasonable”. They add that the Minister of the Environment and Spatial Planning’s public criticism of the company and leaks from ARSO to the press show that ARSO was “biased” and its decision was “politically motivated”.

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Geonergo challenged ARSO’s decision but, in May 2020, the Slovenian court ruled against the firms. In July, Ascent’s London lawyers told Slovenia they were taking legal action.

Lidija Živčič, from Friends of the Earth Slovenia, told Climate Home News she feared the Slovenian government elected in March 2020 would reverse the previous government’s opposition to fracking.

The previous government, led by Marjan Šarec, had been preparing a law which would ban fracking. It was voted out before the law could pass and, Živčič said, Janez Janša’s new government seems much more in favour of fracking.

If fracking went ahead in Petišovci, Živčič said, the nearby sources of drinking water and thermal waters could be affected by the fracking chemicals. In other countries, poorly-built shallow fracking wells have injected gas into underground freshwater aquifers.

Fracking could also damage nearby ecosystems and would contribute to global climate change, Živčič said. The site is near the borders of Hungary and Croatia.

Japan blocks green reform of major energy investment treaty

Friends of the Earth has brought attention to the case at the same time as members of the ECT are negotiating ‘modernisation’ of the treaty, which dates from the early 1990s.

The European Union wants to improve governments’ ‘right to regulate’ on climate change without facing legal action under ECT but nations like Japan and Kazakhstan are resisting reform.

Luxembourg’s energy minister has said his nation and others could leave the ECT if its environmental protections are not improved. Russia and Italy have already left the treaty after it was used to sue them.

An Australian mining company called Prairie Mining also announced ECT legal action this week. It says the Polish government has unfairly damaged its coal mining prospects by not renewing one of its concessions and granting part of another to a rival firm.

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Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, has transformed oil and gas production in the US, allowing the industry to tap previously inaccessible reserves in shale rock.

Geographic, regulatory and financial factors are preventing the rest of the world from following suit, the report finds.

“It is highly unlikely that Europe will experience the same level of shale gas development as in the United States,” says the report. “The development of shale gas resources in other countries remains marginal.”

The role of shale gas in a clean energy transition is controversial. Advocates point out gas emits half the carbon dioxide of coal when burned. Opponents argue methane leaks in production undermine the benefits – and investment in new fossil fuel infrastructure risks locking in dependence on dirty energy.

Global shale gas resources (Photo: EIA/ARI 2015)

Global consumption of natural gas will increase from 22% in 2015 to 25% by 2040, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates.

Alexandra Laurent, author of the Unctad report, said there are four main obstacles to developing shale gas. These include gas deposit and water availability, as well as the support of the local population.

The success of the US is due to “a combination of many factors that you don’t find in Europe or any other country,” said Janvier Nkurunziza, who supervised the report. “The [US] financial system is flexible, I don’t think you will find that anywhere else.”

Laurent added the scale of infrastructure in the US is “missing in other countries.”

Mining permits in the US are relatively easy to attain, and the country benefits from a huge network of pipelines and drilling contractors. “The US has been intensively explored and drilled for more than a century,” says Jean-Baptiste Dubreil, a senior gas analyst at the International Energy Agency (IEA). “I don’t know to which extent you can replicate that.”

Several countries outside of the US are developing their shale industry, including Canada, China, the largest potential world shale gas source, and Argentina, which Dubreil sees as the most promising.

The UK has had some success drilling and exporting shale gas, but further development is stalled by “high population density in some potential areas and anti-hydraulic fracturing campaigns” according to the report. The oil and gas industry has been declining in recent years.

“Since 2000, the UK’s indigenous production of energy has fallen by 56%, and we have gone from being a big net exporter to a significant net importer of energy,” says Ken Cronin, chief executive of UK Onshore Oil and Gas (UKOOG).

“Overall, if the appraisal flow-testing is successful, 400 shale gas sites, each with 10 wells, could allow us to reduce our gas imports in half over the next 20 years.”

A majority of European gas reserves are situated in built-up urban areas. France holds about 30% of total shale gas resources in Europe, but 95% of the country’s reserves are in Paris. The country has banned fracking and suspended exploration efforts.

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This month it released findings from its 19th survey, based on face-to-face home interviews with around 2,000 citizens.

For a government that is committed to exploiting the country’s shale gas resources through “fracking” it’s not good news – support is plummeting.

Wonder how @UKOOGroup feels about latest @beisgovuk polling? Record low support for fracking & it's trending down:https://t.co/WLZFoXsXou pic.twitter.com/aJPTrz1nHq

— Simon Evans (@DrSimEvans) October 27, 2016

An accompanying explanatory note suggests this may be because many people have a “lack of detailed knowledge” of what fracking entails.

Attitudes towards wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy paints an equally intriguing picture.

Despite lukewarm government support for these technologies support remains “consistently high” with solar, offshore wind and tidal power scoring approval ratings above 75%.

For the full data set check the government’s website. Excerpts on renewables and shale gas are below.

Renewables

Support for renewable energy has been consistently high since the survey began in 2012, at around 75-80%. This pattern has continued at wave 19, with 79% expressing support for the use of renewables. Opposition to renewables was very low at 4%, with only 1% strongly opposed.

Support for renewables was particularly high for people with incomes over £50,000 (89%), in social grade AB (85%), or aged 45-54 (84%). Support for renewables was lower amongst those with household incomes under £16,000 (75%), those aged 65+ (71%), or those in social grades DE (71%).

Support for specific renewable energy types has also remained consistently high over the course of the tracker, and remained stable at wave 19. Solar had the highest support (82%), followed by off-shore wind and wave and tidal (both 75%).

Fracking

Eight in ten (79%) were aware of fracking at wave 19, the highest level since the tracker began. Despite many people being aware of fracking, only a small proportion claimed to have detailed knowledge. At wave 19, 14% claimed to know a lot about fracking, whilst 45% said they knew a little, and 20% were aware of it but did not really know what it was. Awareness of fracking was higher for those in social grade AB (91%), home owners (88%), aged over 45 (89%) and with incomes over £50,000 (93%).

When asked whether they support or oppose extracting shale gas, half of respondents selected either the neutral option (48%) or said they did not know (2%). This is likely to partly reflect a lack of detailed knowledge about fracking. Of those who did offer an opinion, more people were opposed (33%) to fracking than supported it (17%). This is the lowest level of support for fracking since the tracker began. However, among those opposed to shale gas, the proportion who strongly opposed has fallen (11%).

The post UK public support for fracking is collapsing appeared first on Climate Home News.

More action to cut carbon emissions in other areas would also be needed to cope with full-scale fracking, despite the government already struggling to meet existing commitments.

But the government says it will take no regulatory action in response to the report from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), arguing that the current regime is “adaptive” and will change if fracking companies go into full scale production.

It says it is important to take advantage of the “fantastic opportunity” of fracking and that it is determined to meet its carbon targets.

David Cameron has said the government is “going all out” for fracking, which ministers argue can boost UK business and reduce the nation’s reliance on imported energy. But plans to frack in Lancashire and Yorkshire have attracted large protests from campaigners concerned about potential pollution, disruption and health impacts.

Interview: UK fracking furore will fizzle out says shale chief

On Thursday, campaigners applied to the high court for a judicial review of North Yorkshire county council’s recent decision to allow fracking exploration. Ministers will decide the fate of the application in Lancashire, which the county council rejected, by October.

The CCC report, published on Thursday, concluded that shale gas production on a significant scale would breach the nation’s targets for emissions cuts unless three tests are passed.

First, strict regulation is needed to ensure leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, are kept to a minimum. Second, shale gas must replace imported gas, not be burned in addition. Third, emissions from the production of shale gas itself must be offset by more carbon cuts elsewhere, such as increasing the number of electric vehicles.

The report found that fracking regulation today is below the “minimum necessary” to meet the first test: “It certainly requires that a strong regulatory framework is put in place now.”

Prof Jim Skea, at Imperial College London and one of the authors of the CCC report, said: “We need stronger and clearer regulation. UK environmental policy allows quite a lot of discretion to the regulator and, depending on how things develop, it would be necessary to be more precise if you are to regulate emissions effectively.

“Existing uncertainties over the nature of the exploitable shale gas resource and the potential size of a UK industry make it impossible to know how difficult it will be to meet the tests.”

Current UK regs –> fracking leaks of ~1.3%@theCCCuk says this *must* be tightened to ~0.5% https://t.co/zvCYbQCJuH pic.twitter.com/sJVg6mqqMo

— Simon Evans (@DrSimEvans) July 7, 2016

An official from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) said: “We believe our strong regulatory regime and the government’s determination to meet our carbon budgets mean those tests can be and will be met.

“We have a very well developed but adaptive regulatory system which allows regulation to grow with the challenges it faces.”

Andrea Leadsom, the energy minister and Tory leadership candidate, said: “Shale gas is a fantastic opportunity, which could create thousands of jobs and a secure homegrown energy source that we can rely on for decades to come. We’ve already put measures in place to limit and monitor emissions that meet the conditions set out in this report.”

Fracking is largely regulated by the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive. An official from the EA said: “It is a flexible approach, so as techniques get better, we require the best available techniques to minimise and monitor emissions and we are confident we can regulate the industry effectively.”

The CCC said a single regulator might be needed to oversee fracking, as did a 2012 report from the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering. But the Decc official said this would not happen “for the foreseeable future” and “is not in general an approach the government usually favours”.

John Ashton: Our weapon against fracking is the love of our land

Meeting the UK’s legally binding climate targets will be more challenging and potentially more expensive with a significant fracking industry, the CCC found, especially without carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to trap and bury emissions. The government cancelled a £1bn CCS programme in November, and without CCS, the nation’s gas use will have to fall 80% by 2050, compared with 50% with CCS.

Fracking results in emissions not only when the gas is burned, but also from the operations needed to extract and transport it. These could be 11m tonnes a year in 2030 of CO2 equivalent, 3% of the nation’s entire emissions.

“You would need to do other things to offset these emissions,” said Skea. But the CCC warned in June that the government had no policies in place to meet more than half the emission cuts required by law by that date. Ministers have promised a plan to plug this gap by the end of 2016.

Labour’s Barry Gardiner, the shadow energy and climate change secretary, said: “The CCC report lays out three fundamental tests [but] the government has decided to do precisely nothing to increase protection for the public or to deliver security for our climate targets. On this basis, it is currently neither safe nor reasonable to approve any fracking in Britain.”

But Prof Averil Macdonald, chair of the fracking trade body UK Onshore Oil and Gas, disagreed: “Today’s report confirms what we have long maintained – that shale gas production is compatible with the country’s need to reduce emissions.

As an industry, we look forward to continuing to work proactively with regulators to minimise fugitive emissions from our operations.” She said that with North Sea production declining, there was considerable room for shale gas to replace imported gas.

Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace, said: “The idea that fracking can be squared with the UK’s climate targets is based on a tower of assumptions, caveats and conditions on which there is zero certainty of delivery. The government now faces a clear choice between promoting this climate-wrecking industry or backing clean, homegrown, reliable renewable energy and smart technologies instead.”

This article first appeared on the Guardian. Climate Home is a member of the Guardian Environment Network.

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Oil and gas wells in Wyoming’s Jonah field (Pic: Ecoflight)

By Gerard Wynn

Investors backed a record amount of new share issuance by US shale oil and gas producers in the first three months of this year, even after a period of lower oil prices left some companies more battered than ever.

That’s the main finding in a new report by the Carbon Tracker Initiative, Beyond the Shale: Aboard the Price Roller Coaster.

Equity investors may be betting on bargains among US shale oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) companies, expecting a rebound in oil and gas prices.

But there are two grounds for caution.

US E&P valuations have fallen by an aggregate $340 billion since last May, the last time investors were betting on higher oil and gas prices.

Second, the analysis, which I co-authored, shows how more indebted companies are now even more leveraged than 10 months ago.

Some, including Chesapeake and Whiting Petroleum, have had to re-negotiate their borrowing terms after soaring leverage ratios looked set to exceed former credit facility covenants.

Below are four charts which illustrate some considerations for equity investors in U.S. shale.

Investors are pumping cash back into a weakened US shale industry in record amounts, with the first quarter this year seeing the highest E&P equity issuance since at least 2011.

Chart 1. US E&P equity issuance and WTI oil price, 2014 to late March 2016

But US E&P equity valuations have fallen by an aggregate $340 billion since May 2015, the last time investors were talking up the prospect of a rebound in oil and gas prices.

Chart 2. Market capitalisation of S&P US Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Select Industry Index, May 2015 to March 8 2016

In 2016, most E&P companies project lower output, and many will see less robust hedging.

The result will be lower pre-tax earnings, or EBITDAX. Creditors often specify a leverage ratio, in their borrowing terms to E&P companies, defined as net debt divided by EBITDAX.

Creditors often specify a maximum leverage ratio of four; a value of four is also the threshold which the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency uses to define “sub-standard” E&P bank loans.

The chart below shows how Chesapeake’s leverage ratio is expected to exceed four at any conceivable oil  and gas price this year.

Both Chesapeake and Whiting Petroleum have had to suspend total leverage ratios, under their credit facilities.

Chart 3. Scenario analysis of Chesapeake, 2016, Net debt/ Consolidated EBITDAX ratio

While equity issuance soared in the first three months of this year, US E&P bond issuance has remained below recent historical levels, suggesting prospective creditors are exercising greater caution.

Do bond investors know something equity investors do not?

Chart 4. Bond issuance by quarter, U.S. E&P companies, 2014-2016 (as of March 8)

Gerard Wynn has two decade’s experience in energy, climate change, the environment and economics. In 2014, Gerard founded the consultancy GWG Energy, providing communications and analysis services in the fields of energy and climate change.

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A still from infra-red footage shot by an Earthworks ITC-certified thermographer over the leak (Pic: EDF/You Tube)

By Joanna Peasland

A new study confirms the unprecedented Californian gas leak as the biggest ever, leading to a 20% spike in the state’s methane emissions.

An estimated 60 metric tonnes of gas spewed from the well near San Fernando Valley every hour, mounting to over 100,000 tonnes of methane and ethane during the 112-day blowout, according to a scientific study in the journal Science.

The figures exceed previous estimations and will leave an impact on the climate for the next 100 years, equal to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from 572,000 US cars, said the report.

At its worst, the ruptured well – finally plugged earlier this month – was California’s largest point source of methane.

The amount of gas being released was double that of a coal mine in Alabama and equal to one-quarter of the annual methane pollution from all other sources in the Los Angeles Basin combined, the report added.

Gas company SoCal detected the ruptured well on 23 October 2015, which continued to spew gas until it was plugged on 11 February.

The concentration of gases in the air was so high that experts could barely believe their readings. “This was just a huge event”, said lead scientist Stephen Conley.

Statewide methane emissions during the event increased by around 20%, according to the California Air Resources Board, undermining efforts to reduce greenhouse gas levels.

It was hoped that California’s ambitious targets to cut emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 would help progress towards a federal goal to cut emissions 26-28% on 2005 levels by 2025.

“Our results show how failures of natural gas infrastructure can significantly impact greenhouse gas control efforts,” said NOAA’s Tom Ryerson, a lead scientist on the study.

“Emitting just a little bit of methane greatly accelerates the rate of climactic change,” added EDF Chief Scientist Steven Hamburg.

-Methane is 84 times more polluting than carbon dioxide in the initial decades after it is released.
-Over a 100-year period, the effect of methane on warming the planet is 25 times that of Co2.

The report noted that rapid evaluation of episodes like the Aliso leak is essential to meet the requirements of the Paris climate agreement, which requires countries to be fully transparent in accounting for their emissions.

It also confirms the adverse human health impacts of major gas leaks. Scientists discovered above average levels of potentially dangerous compounds were found in the densely populated Porter Ranch in the San Fernando Valley, causing mass evacuations.

Sulphur-containing compounds such as mercaptan found in samples of the leaked gas can cause short-term loss of smell, nausea, headaches and other irritations.

SoCal are currently determining the cause of the leak and authorities aim to develop a climate mitigation program in response to the leak by March 31 this year.

University of California, Irvine (UCI) and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were among the institutions involved in the study.

The post Largest gas leak in US history leaves 100-year climate legacy appeared first on Climate Home News.

Protesters rallied outside Parliament in July as MPs debated fracking (Pic: Friends of the Earth UK/Twitter)

By Alex Pashley

Britain will come round to shale drilling, much like it did with nuclear plants and wind farms, the head of industry body UK Onshore Oil and Gas, Ken Cronin, has said.

A month after the government awarded new licenses to explore for oil and gas across England, the industry will step up its consultations with local communities to ease concerns about the controversial practice.

“The UK has seen protests with respect to onshore wind farms, nuclear power stations, solar farms over the last 20 years. Opposition to onshore energy production is not new,” he told Climate Home in an interview.

“Whether it is shale gas or onshore wind, there will be opponents and proponents. We’ll typically work through the fears and myths just like wind did a few years ago.”

Hydraulic fracturing has not taken place in Britain since a one-year ban was lifted in 2012, with energy firms running into heated local opposition.

Last year, Lancashire country council threw out a planning application for shale wells due to its adverse impact on the landscape, noise and increased traffic.

The UK government sees gas as the core element in its energy strategy, having announced coal plants will close by 2025 and slashed support for wind and solar, a move that has angered green groups.

Report: Fracking could hit UK house prices, health and tourism
John Ashton: Our weapon against fracking is the love of our land

Public ire continues apace. Hundreds of people took part in an anti-fracking demonstration just days ago in Merseyside, near to a test drilling site, the BBC reported.

The government has since moved to weaken local councils’ grip on planning decisions. It champions the extraction of natural gas from shale as a means to energy independence and cut carbon emission to counter climate change. Green groups see this at the expense of the fledgling renewables industry which has lost cash subsidies.

This week a pro-fracking Conservative MP resigned from a parliamentary shale gas group funded by gas companies after a campaign by constituents concerned about plans to explore for hydrocarbons near their homes.

Still, shale extraction had to be considered in the “totality” of UK energy policy, said Cronin, who joined in 2013 to fight the industry’s corner.

“What we have to do as an industry is work at the local community level to tell them how we’re doing it, what information we are giving them, what their option is before we do any planning applications.”

Myths fuelling opposition relating to fracking’s link to tremors or contamination of the water supply were due to “isolated events in the US”, he argued.

The US National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) recorded 1,427 quakes between 2014 and 2015 in Oklahoma, a major oil and gas producing state, leaving seismologists “concerned” about the potential impacts of fracking.

Report: UK government outlines plans to bypass fracking opposition
Report: UK political consensus on fracking for gas disintegrates

But densely-populated Britain had more robust safeguards in the design of its wells, chemicals used in frack fluid, and independent regulators than in America, which pioneered the technology, Cronin stressed. Given proper regulations, risks were “minimal”.

“We have been producing oil and gas for over 100 years in a heavily regulated industry with very few problems.”

Licenses have been awarded mostly in north England in the Bowland basin, the largest formation with predictions of over 2,200 trillion cubic feet of shale gas. Though there is no guarantee any is technically recoverable, or that drilling will be commercially viable.

Last year’s global warming accord confirmed natural gas’ role as a ‘bridge fuel’ from highly-polluting coal to lower carbon sources, making it central to meeting emissions targets. The UK is committed by law to cut emissions at least 80% by 2050 on 1990 levels.

Analysis: Is natural gas really a bridge to a greener future?

The fuel’s role in producing renewables technologies like solar panels to petrochemicals meant it was indispensable.

“I don’t see it as renewables versus gas. I see very much gas and renewables working together to meet the targets,” he said.

“I think if you look at the US, for example, that’s a very good example of what can be done… Texas has 30% of electricity from renewables despite the fact it’s one of the top shale gas producers.”

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Protestors opposing fracking gathered outside the UK’s Parliament, on the day lawmakers discussed new proposals (Pic: Flickr/RonF)

By John Ashton

There are two kinds of power. There is the power by which incumbencies impose themselves on the people. This is “power over”.

In the world of “power over” there is the inside and the outside, and only those on the inside have a voice.

In the world of “power over” those on the inside build the future while those on the outside can only accept it.

To live in the world of “power over” is not necessarily unbearable, even for those on the outside.

When the wall between inside and outside is not too high; when those on the inside act in the public interest instead of putting their own gratification first.

When there is trust to bind people together and maintain a decent prospect of progress for everyone: then under such conditions the consent of the people can be maintained and the centre can hold for a very long time.

But the world of “power over” has one big weakness, and this is its downfall. The world of “power over” can change at the margins, but it cannot easily transform itself. Incumbencies define themselves by the status quo from which they profit. It is hard for them to contemplate anything else.

In the world of “power over” you can do a bit more within the limits of the possible. But you cannot expand the limits of the possible.

So when there is a need for transformational change, the world of “power over” tends to cling with a zombie grip to the status quo.

First it denies the need for change in the first place. And when that becomes too ridiculous, it falls back to its inner citadel, pretending to embrace change while resisting it in reality.

Anyone who has followed the climate debate will know exactly what I mean.

And then, sooner or later, the centre gives way under the rising stress. Change comes anyway, from the outside, and sweeps the incumbencies away. And when change comes like that, by default not by design, it may not be change for the better.

Who do they serve?

Then there is the other kind of power. There is “power with”.

In the world of “power with”, you build your future together. You build it through the interplay of voices in a public conversation from which nobody is excluded. You build it through a project of collaboration, in a phrase I heard repeatedly in Edinburgh.

In the world of “power with” there is still an inside and an outside. Society cannot function without institutions after all. But there are no barriers.

Those on the inside never forget where they come from and whom they serve. Those on the outside are empowered and won’t let them forget.

In the world of “power with”, the status quo is always provisional. Incumbencies can still become powerful but they must measure themselves constantly against the public interest and open themselves to change, even to extinction, if the public interest demands it.

Only in the world of “power with” can there be a prospect of transformational change by design, brought about through common purpose and justice, woven together into a single story of a shared tomorrow.

Stirring shires

In the world of “power with” the centre always holds because the centre is everywhere. It is in the ground beneath your feet.

“Power with” is more unusual in history than “power over”. The impulse towards “power with” is easily hijacked by pied pipers or demagogues, and the cure becomes worse than the disease.

That could yet happen in Scotland. But right now, more and more Scots are glimpsing the opportunity to build a “power with” society. They are choosing to try and seize it. They are going to bed as subjects and waking up the next day as citizens.

In England we are still subjects. On paper we are subjects of the Crown. In reality we are subjects of our incumbent powers.

But in England too, if you look more closely, something is stirring.

From Lancashire in the northwest, across the Pennines to Durham, Teeside, North Yorkshire, and along the flank of the grey North Sea to Lincolnshire; westwards through the Midlands to the Derbyshire Peaks.

South to the rolling upland of the Weald and down to the Channel coast of Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and Dorset; and beyond into the West country: across the length and breadth of England something is happening.

In kitchens and living rooms, in public houses and community halls, people who have nothing in common except the place they inhabit are coming together.

People from all points of the political spectrum, from all backgrounds and professions, from the various cultural tribes and social classes for which we English are famous, people of all ages and levels of political engagement are coming together.

People with no shared language or experience are learning to talk and listen to each other, learning to build a conversation about the kind of community they want to belong to in a way that has never happened so widely across England since in the years after Hitler’s War we repaired our shattered country and built our welfare state.

Yes, in England too, albeit in a more fragmented, less reported way than in Scotland, subjects are waking up as citizens.

Community spirit

The prospect of fracking is waking up the English.

When people realize that fracking is heading for their community they inform themselves about it. They discuss it together. And the more they do that the more they feel on the wrong end of a very bad deal.

Intoxicated by what has happened in the US, and perhaps by an idealized memory of Margaret Thatcher’s windfall from the North Sea, our government wants to unleash a fracking frenzy across our country.

And aroused by this threat, like giants of old waking from slumber, in villages, towns and cities all over England, people are finding voices they never knew they had.

And they are using their voices to organize and mobilize so that they can resist the pressure they are being put under to open the door to fracking.

Curious benefits

Fracking is and only ever can be a “power over” process. It seeks to impose itself, like a cuckoo in the nest, on communities whether they want it or not, cloaking the self-interest of those who promote it in a false story about economic and energy security.

If there are benefits, they will be enjoyed by others. If there are costs, they will be borne by the communities themselves.

The offers now being made to communities that open their doors to fracking reveal that those costs are likely to be high. So does the refusal to accept full liability for any damage caused.

So does the practice in the US of using the law to gag those who have suffered harms already, not least to their health, as a condition for compensation, so that nobody can find out what those harms were and how they came about.

There is no place for fracking in a “power with” society. No community in Britain, whatever the inducement, has said or will say “yes” to fracking.

The disruption and disturbance from this intrusive, carpet-bagging industry in our crowded country would simply be too great.

The unanswered questions about the immediate and long-term consequences for physical and mental health are too troubling.

The risks to existing livelihoods, in farming, food and tourism; to the value of your house and your quality of life; and to the social fabric itself – each one of these risks is too threatening.

Rallying cry

Fracking in England will only be possible if it is imposed by “power over”. It cannot happen by consent.

And though I am telling here a story of England, exactly the same is true in Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland itself.

Friends of the Earth have been at the forefront of all of this, supporting communities, cross-fertilizing between them, and making sure they have access to the best legal and other advice.

There is no need for fracking, anywhere in my country. There is no national interest case.

The same investment can yield bigger dividends in jobs, prosperity, and energy security if applied to wasting less energy, speeding up the deployment of wind and solar energy, building modern dynamic power grids, and promoting the community energy systems that will themselves help drive our transition to a “power with” society.

And, realizing this, the communities saying no to fracking are beginning to organize also to say yes to efficiency, yes to solar and wind, and yes to  community energy.

And all that, important though it is, is before we come to the question of climate change.

To deal with climate change we need to build an energy system that is carbon neutral within a generation.

To embark on a fracking adventure now would take us backwards not forwards, locking in infrastructure, supply chains and vested interests, and strengthening the forces of high carbon incumbency. There is no place for this in a climate-compatible energy future.

You can be in favour of fracking. Or you can be in favour of dealing with climate change. But you cannot be in favour of both at the same time.

John Ashton was the UK’s Special Representative for Climate Change between 2006 – 2012. This is an excerpt of a speech he gave on June 4 at the Brussels Is Not For Shale conference. Read the full version here. 

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(Pic: DECC/Flickr)

By Ed King

The UK government has signalled its intention to break opposition to shale gas exploration by introducing tough new rules fast tracking planning applications.

Under the new measures released on Thursday central government could take control of the shale gas application process from “under performing” councils who fail to process plans in 16 weeks.

Ministers also warn that no shale gas proposal will “fall through the cracks” under new laws that mean rejected applications will face speedy appeals, potentially heard by a government minister.

“To ensure we get this industry up and running we can’t have a planning system that sees applications dragged out for months, or even years on end,” said UK energy secretary Amber Rudd.

Report: UK political consensus on fracking for gas disintegrates 

But Friends of the Earth said they amount to “bulldozing” fracking plans through the planning system and ignoring local democracy to suit the interests of “dirty industry”.

“It also threatens house prices and the environment of local communities and will cause more climate change,” a spokesperson added.

Nick Clack, senior energy campaigner at the Campaign to Protect Rural England, questioned why the government was keen to allow local people to decide the fate of wind farms but not shale gas.

“Why is greater localism appropriate for some new energy projects, but not for others?”, he said.

“It sounds disingenuous for the Government to claim that local communities will remain fully involved in shale gas and oil planning decisions if these decisions are ultimately taken by ministers.”

Mixed results

Despite branding shale gas a national priority, the government has been frustrated by slow progress to explore for reserves, largely due to strong local opposition at potential drilling sites.

In a June decision campaigners branded a “Waterloo” for the industry, Lancashire county council denied fracking firm Cuadrilla rights to drill at two sites in the county, citing visual and environmental concerns.

Ministers now say new regulations are needed as council decision making has been “slow and confused”. Further zones deemed suitable for fracking are set to be auctioned shortly.

The government says it also plans to release details of a new sovereign wealth fund later this year, which would  be filled from fracking revenues.

Report: Fracking could hit UK house prices, health and tourism 

Drilling firm iGas plans to submit several new applications over the next year, and supporters say they could start delivering a domestic source of gas by 2020.

But some experts warn a fracking revolution will damage UK efforts to meet domestic climate targets, and potentially hurt international carbon cutting efforts if supplies are exported.

“If shale gas replaces coal or oil that will reduce emissions, but if it slows the growth of renewables or nuclear that could put emissions up – and even for coal replacement, you only gain a carbon saving if leakage rates are kept to virtually zero,” said Richard Black, head of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.

“Just describing shale gas as ‘low carbon’ doesn’t make it so, and the government ought to be making clear how it expects the gas to be used and what leakage rates it will allow.”

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An LNG tanker in port (Pic: Shell)

By Megan Darby

Plans to liquefy North American shale gas for shipping around the world do not fit with a safe climate future, analysts have warned.

Worldwide, US$283 billion of mooted Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) projects are unlikely to pay off if efforts to curb warming to 2C are effective.

More than half of these are in Canada and the US, whence producers hope to export the fruits of their fracking boom.

These are the findings of a report by Carbon Tracker on the gas assets that will be surplus to requirements in a low carbon future.

Following similar analyses of the coal and oil markets, the London-based think tank is challenging the industry’s bullish expectations for natural gas.

“It is not as cut and dried a story as with coal,” report author Andrew Grant told RTCC.

Touted as a cleaner alternative to coal, gas is set to grow its share of the global energy mix even in a 2C scenario. “Switching from coal to gas is a good thing, provided the gas extraction is done efficiently,” said Grant.

But the report finds this room for expansion is “not anywhere near as much as the industry projects and certainly does not suggest a golden age of gas”.

The International Energy Agency projects that to 2040, gas will account for 24% of the “carbon budget” of emissions available under the 2C threshold. Carbon Tracker based its analysis on that assumption.

Analysis: Is natural gas really a bridge to a greener future?

From an investment perspective, some of the riskiest prospects are LNG terminals, which need a lot of upfront cash.

Transporting gas as LNG also ups its carbon footprint, as energy is needed to cool it to a liquid state.

Some 97% of LNG demand over the next decade can be met from projects already inked, Carbon Tracker’s analysis suggests.

A planned merger between Shell and BG Group will make them the most exposed company to LNG infrastructure, with US$59 billion of investment in the pipeline. That will all be surplus to requirements if climate action curtails demand.

The report also highlights the importance of capturing “fugitive emissions” – methane leaked during the extraction process.

Methane has more than 20 times the warming impact of carbon dioxide. If 1% of production is lost to leakage, scientists estimate that is equivalent to 12% of the emissions from burning the remaining gas.

While the evidence is limited, studies suggest on average 1.4% of gas is leaked from conventional wells and 2.9% from unconventional sources like shale.

Initiatives to regulate such leaks should be delivered fast, Carbon Tracker says.

“At the gas prices in our scenarios, capturing this lost product should more than pay for itself,” the report says. “There is little excuse for not dealing with the problem.”

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Protesters rallied outside Parliament yesterday as MPs debated fracking (Pic: Friends of the Earth UK/Twitter)

By Ed King

Drilling for shale gas could wipe 7% from house prices, pollute the environment and affect local residents’ health, a secret UK government report has found.

The official assessment of the impacts of fracking – which the government was forced to release under Freedom of Information rules – delivers a damning verdict on the sectors impacts.

Based on analysis in the US where fracking is common, it said there could be “potentially be a range of zero to seven per cent reductions in property values within one mile of an extraction site”.

The risk of explosions meant properties within a five mile radius could face higher insurance premiums.

Other risks included leaks from sites polluting water supplies and affecting human health, although it said UK rules on the composition of wells were likely to be more robust than the US.

Report: UK political consensus on fracking for gas disintegrates 

Domestic gas production would likely reduce UK emissions linked with imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), but if those supplies were used elsewhere this would see global emissions rise.

Agriculture, tourism, fishing and other outdoor pursuits could also be affected as a result of in the industrialisation of the countryside.

“Shale gas development may transform a previously pristine and quiet natural region, bringing increased industrialization,” it said.

The report – entitled Shale Gas Rural Economy Impacts – was heavily censored when it was first released last year, with 63 chunks of text missing.

But a ruling dated June 8 from the UK informational commissioner ordered the department of environment to issue a full version, saying it was in the public interest.

Government officials were at pains to stress the study was an “early draft of an internal document” and “not analytically robust”

“It includes early, often vague, assumptions which are not supported by appropriate evidence,” they added.

Green NGOs said the findings were more proof that the shale gas lobby and ministers had lied about the potential negative effects of fracking.

“Sneaking out this study late on the day of the Davies Commission [UK airport] announcement is further proof, if needed, of how desperate ministers are to bury evidence of fracking’s potential impacts on our communities and the environment,” said Greenpeace UK energy and climate campaigner Daisy Sands.

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Page 12 of the Defra report into fracking that the agency will now have to publish in full

By Alex Pashley

Ministers have been ordered to publish an uncensored version of a document assessing the impact of fracking on local communities.

The Information Commissioner Officer’s decision on Thursday came a week before a local authority delivers an anticipated verdict on an application by energy firm Cuadrilla to frack in Lancashire.

In a ruling dated June 8 but only released today the Commissioner said there was a “strong public interest in understanding any research conducted related to fracking, particularly on impacts that could affect the public.”

Last year the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) published a redacted version, with 63 chunks of text missing, including on issues like how fracking would affect house prices, rural businesses, and local services.

Greenpeace is urging DEFRA to make the full report available to Lancashire’s councillors before the decision.

The government has vowed to kickstart shale gas extraction to create jobs and lessen Britain’s energy dependency. But critics say it is environmentally destructive and will run counter to the UK’s carbon-cutting obligations.

The UK’s governing Conservative party looks set to go it alone on fracking after the likely leaders of opposition Labour and Liberal Democrats called for drilling for shale gas to be stopped.

The Scottish National party, which holds the third largest number of seats in the London Parliament, announced a moratorium on all fracking applications in January 2015.

Scottish energy minister Fergus Ewing said at the time he wanted to see a national debate on the technique, which involves injecting a mixture of water and chemicals into underground shale formations, which release gas after they are fractured.

In February the Welsh government said it too would impose a moratorium on fracking.

This week Lancashire country council authorised extraction firm Cuadrilla to explore for gas in two sites on the coast, with a final decision expected next week.

The company had to abandon a previous attempt to explore in 2011, after drilling was linked to small earthquake tremors in Blackpool.

A separate plan to frack for oil in the West Sussex village of Balcombe was abandoned in 2013 after sustained protests from villagers and green groups.

In 2012 the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering reported fracking was safe if stringent operating procedures were followed.

“The government’s stubborn refusal to publish this report in full is totally indefensible. By cherry-picking which evidence is released, ministers are misleading both the public and local councillors as to the real impacts of fracking,” said Greenpeace UK campaigner, Daisy Sands.

“Lancashire authorities are about to make a decision that will have huge repercussions for the life of their communities. They should have access to all the evidence, not just the sanitised digest produced by the government,” she added.

A Defra spokesperson said: “The Information Commissioner’s Office informed us of his decision which we will now consider in full.”

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Tim Farron (Pic: Liberal Democrats/Flickr)

By Ed King

The UK’s governing Conservative party looks set to go it alone on fracking after the likely leaders of opposition Labour and Liberal Democrats called for drilling for shale gas to be stopped.

Tim Farron, the favourite to win the Liberal leadership contest used a column in the Huffington Post to declare his party had “got it wrong” and should not have backed fracking at the election.

Farron cited warnings from doctors over the links between fracking and air pollution, birth defects and lung disease, and also said it would slow UK efforts to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

“If we’re to meet the UK’s Climate Change Act objectives, we’ll need to decarbonise power generation almost entirely by 2030,” he said.

“If these targets mean anything, we shouldn’t be planning to use significant volumes of gas for power at all, regardless of its source.”

NEWS: Britain rallies on climate in mass lobby

Earlier this month Andy Burnham – widely tipped to win the contest to replace Ed Miliband as Labour leader – called for a moratorium on the process.

“These things just seem to be handed out like confetti. That made me really focus on the issue. In my area, we are riddled with mine shafts as a former mining area,” he told the Guardian.

“Where is the evidence that it is safe to come and frack a place like this? No fracking should go ahead until we have much clearer evidence on the environmental impact.”

The Scottish National party, which holds the third largest number of seats in the London Parliament, announced a moratorium on all fracking applications in January 2015.

Scottish energy minister Fergus Ewing said at the time he wanted to see a national debate on the technique, which involves injecting a mixture of water and chemicals into underground shale formations, which release gas after they are fractured.

In February the Welsh government said it too would impose a moratorium on fracking.

Analysis: Is natural gas really a bridge to a greener future? 

This week Lancashire country council authorised extraction firm Cuadrilla to explore for gas in two sites on the coast, with a final decision expected next week.

The company had to abandon a previous attempt to explore in 2011, after drilling was linked to small earthquake tremors in Blackpool.

A separate plan to frack for oil in the West Sussex village of Balcombe was abandoned in 2013 after sustained protests from villagers and green groups.

In 2012 the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering reported fracking was safe if stringent operating procedures were followed.

Critics argue that together with health concerns, fracking leads to more CO2 emissions once the gas is burnt, and can also lead to the release of methane – a highly potent warming gas.

Asked today about the future of fracking in the UK chancellor George Osborne said it would generate more jobs and lower energy bills.

“I think that for this country to turn its back on one of these great natural resources which other countries are using would be to basically condemn our country to higher energy bills and not as many jobs,” he said.

“Frankly I don’t want to be part of a generation that says all the economic activity was happening somewhere else in the world and wasn’t happening in our country and wasn’t happening on our continent.”

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Last year 69 panels were installed in a solar pilot project in the village (Pic: REPOWERBalcombe)

By Ed King

The epicentre of anti-fracking protests in the UK two years ago is about to take a major step away from fossil fuels.

Residents in the small village of Balcombe, West Sussex have announced plans for a crowd-funded community solar farm that they say will power around 1,200 homes.

Working with local power firm Southern Solar and the climate campaign group 10:10, REPOWERBalcombe will shortly submit an application for the 5 megawatt energy plant.

The plant will generate enough electricity to power Balcombe and neighbouring village West Hoathly say supporters – fulfilling the community’s aim to go 100% renewables.

“If all goes according to plan we should hear back from planning at in September – and when we hear back we’ll start fundraising,” said Leo Murray from 10:10.

“We’re talking about it being installed by the end of the year.”

Report: Tea and flapjacks mark Balcombe’s fracking frontline 

Investors across the UK will be invited to back the project through the Abundance crowdfunding platform. Murray said he expected returns in the region of 5%.

REPOWERBalcombe was set up in the aftermath of the battle against fracking firm Cuadrilla, which culminated in a tense stand-off and saw green groups descend on the village in July 2013.

By January 2014 Cuadrilla announced it was suspending plans to use the controversial fracking technology in Balcombe to explore for oil, but only because the rocks beneath its site already had enough fractures.

A pilot solar project involving 69 panels on a local farm was set up in late 2014, and plans for a larger installation were backed by over 88% of the community in a recent vote.

“The investment for our solar installations at Grange Farm and the primary schools came entirely from local people. It’s been a wonderful show of local support for community energy,” said Joe Nixon, spokesman for the group in a statement.

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(Pic: Ken Doerr/Flickr)

By Michael Lazarus and Kevin Tempest

The shale gas boom has transformed the U.S. power sector, providing an abundance of low-cost natural gas that has enabled many electric utilities to switch from coal to gas.

It has upended US coal markets, and reduced air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions.

US experience has heightened interest in using natural gas as a “bridge” to a low-carbon energy future. Many argue that renewable energy and other non-carbon energy sources simply cannot ramp up fast enough to stem the continuing rise in global coal use, particularly for power generation.

Absent new policies and actions, the International Energy Agency expects more than 1,000 GW of new coal power capacity in the next two decades.

Once built, these plants could “lock-in” hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 emissions over their operating lifetimes, a significant fraction of the remaining global carbon budget for remaining within a 2°C warming path.

Cleaner and efficient natural gas plants can produce electricity with half the carbon and far less local pollution than coal. What then, if, globally, natural gas production and trade were scaled up? Would it put us on a path to a low-carbon future?

We considered these questions for the New Climate Economy project, an international initiative that identifies actions to strengthen economic performance while reducing climate risk. We examined the literature, consulted experts, and found the implications far from straightforward.

War on coal?

Expanding natural gas use can, indeed, help to avoid “locking-in” new coal power. But significant emission reductions are only possible if gas is predominantly used to displace coal in the power sector, and if the gas doesn’t leak excessively.

Methane, the primary constituent of natural gas, has 34 times the climate impact of CO2 over 100 years, and leaks during extraction, processing, transportation, storage and distribution could be significant enough in some cases to negate the overall emissions benefit from gas.

Low-cost technologies and management practices can minimize leaks, but they have yet to be fully adopted.

There is also no guarantee that any new gas supply would flow into the power sector.

Part of the appeal of natural gas is that it can be used across the economy: for building heat, in industry, and increasingly in transportation – mostly buses so far in the US, but also for cars in several countries (e.g. Peru and Argentina) with far more limited climate benefit.

There are also supply-side challenges, from lack of technical capacity, to financial risks, to local opposition.

Rising consumption

As the US experience with hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) has shown, responsible production requires expertise and capacity to drill and service thousands of wells, combined with strong legal and regulatory frameworks.

In most other countries, so far, attempts to expand shale and tight gas (which require fracking) have languished for lack of these factors, or faced outright bans.

Producers also need infrastructure to get the gas to market – pipelines, liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing facilities and terminals.

All of this is very capital-intensive, often requiring long-term take-or-pay contracts that create significant lock-in risks. And to the extent that low natural gas prices encourage added energy consumption, emissions could rise.

There are ways to mitigate these risks. Policy-makers who want to use natural gas as a “bridge” can add “guardrails” to limit added demand, to manage and reduce methane leakage, to steer added gas supplies to where it directly displaces coal in the power sector, and to enhance rather than slow the growth of renewable energy.

Key policy tools include carbon pricing, energy efficiency standards, methane regulations, and renewable portfolio standards.

A bridge to where?

Yet the bigger question is: Does it make sense to build this bridge at all? Natural gas may be a major improvement over coal, but it is still a fossil fuel.

If carbon capture and storage (CCS) can be scaled-up fast enough, we might be able to keep using natural gas for decades and still keep global warming below 2C.

Without large-scale implementation of CCS – which looks increasingly unlikely given its slow pace of progress – natural gas use must plateau and decrease within 20–30 years.

The evidence also suggests that the recent U.S. experience with natural gas may have been unique in terms of delivering significant benefits to both the climate and the economy. Even in the U.S., it is unclear that this “win-win” will endure, and elsewhere, it may be difficult to achieve in the first place.

Where policy-makers wish to pursue a natural gas bridge, they should be proactive in setting up the “guardrails” needed to ensure benefits to the economy, the climate, local communities and overall well-being.

If we’re going to build a bridge, let’s make sure it takes us to a destination we want to reach.

Michael Lazarus is a senior scientist and U.S. Center director at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), and Kevin Tempest is a staff scientist at SEI. Both are based in Seattle. Their paper, Natural Gas: Guardrails for a Potential Climate Bridge, is available here.

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(Pic: Nexen/Flickr)

By Gerard Wynn

Some major US shale oil and gas producers may be vulnerable to a sustained WTI crude oil price of around $50 and lower, even before their protective hedges expire this year, new analysis shows.

All the while, investors are backing the sector with record amounts of capital.

Oil prices have risen over the past month, but last year’s experience underlines their volatility.

The Carbon Tracker Initiative analysis, which I co-authored, investigated five major shale independents, and made three conclusions.

First, it found that at sustained oil prices below around $50 a barrel, some companies such as Whiting Petroleum would approach debt covenants agreed under their senior credit facilities.

Chesapeake appeared sensitive to oil prices below $50 coupled with gas prices below $2.25 per mcf. These covenants are lines which creditors expect companies not to cross.

This was a static, illustrative analysis.

In the real world, options for evasive action not to exceed covenants would include capital raisings, or a re-negotiation with creditors. But the findings illustrated their sensitivity to lower oil and gas prices.

Second, oil hedges on all five companies would decline this year, and expire altogether for most (see chart below).

The hedges will protect the companies in 2015, raising around $1.2 billion in the case of Chesapeake, for example.

The question is how companies will replace such revenues in 2016, given any replacement hedges will be at less attractive prices (perhaps around $60 compared with $75-95 or so this year).

And third, investors have backed the sector with a record amount of capital so far this year.

The first quarter and the month of March were both records for public equity offerings, by U.S. exploration and production energy companies.

And as of April 30 they had issued some $18 billion in high yield bonds, compared with $36 billion outstanding for the whole of last year.

What does it all mean? Investors should be aware that these relatively high-cost producers have still not felt the full effect of collapsing commodity prices.

This article was first published on the Energy and Carbon Blog. Follow Gerard on twitter @gerardfwynn 

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Pic: www_ukberri_net/Flickr

By John Ashton

We shouldn’t need a report by Medact to tell us what fracking means for our health. We have a Government led by politicians we elect to represent us in the public interest.

We have Government Departments and regulatory agencies we pay for with our taxes to act in the public interest.

Fracking for shale gas on the scale proposed by the Government would transform our nation. The direct physical impacts alone would be experienced by millions.

We should not embark on this without a strong national consensus based on full, rigorous, and transparent consideration of all the implications, particularly the implications for health.

Otherwise this project will end in tears.

If our leaders think any great endeavor is in the national interest, they have an obligation to promote a full, rigorous, and transparent debate, as a basis for building a national consensus.

Government departments and agencies that exist to serve the public interest have an obligation to ensure that such debate is built upon the best possible understanding of what will be involved.

On fracking, alas, our leaders and our public institutions are letting us down.

The long awaited report last year by Public Health England turned out to be if not a fully-fledged dodgy dossier then at least somewhat flawed.

Its terms of reference were drawn so narrowly as to exclude some of the most significant areas of risk, not least mental health and above all the systemic risks to health associated with climate change.

Report: UK lawmakers make climate case for fracking ban

The report drew, it is true, on the literature available at the time. But in this young field the evidence base is evolving rapidly.

Since the report was published a lot more evidence has emerged, including evidence of harms.

Even within its own terms of reference, the report was bound to fall quickly out of date. Its authors could have done more to highlight this.

But above all, as today’s report by Medact makes clear, PHE were naïve about what we do not yet know – if you like, the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns.

And the unknowns raise significant concerns, as the Governor of New York recognized in banning fracking recently in that State.

It would be irresponsible to expose communities here to further drilling until all health-critical unknowns are elucidated.

Report: Fracking caused Ohio earthquake in 2014 – researchers 

Above all, PHE concluded: “the risks to public health from exposure to the emissions associated with shale gas extraction will be low if the operations are properly run and regulated.”

When you think about it, that’s an extraordinary statement. It’s completely circular. It says, in effect, fracking will be safe if it is done safely.

When I read the PHE report, I found myself thinking “here is a public agency telling the government what it wants to hear, while leaving room to blame the regulators if anything goes wrong.”

This was just my personal inference, and I’m sure PHE would reject it. But I’d encourage anyone who finds my reaction surprising to read the report and form their own view.

Anyway, PHE’s conclusions have been used to suggest that there are no public health grounds for questioning the government’s haste and enthusiasm for fracking. The Medact report demonstrates that this is far from the case.

Report: Denmark to reconsider fracking ban after Total shale tests 

And sadly this is part of a pattern.

Fracking for shale gas is being offered to our country on a false prospectus. Potential benefits are exaggerated. Risks are airbrushed away.

Expediency overrides evidence. The people – especially those who face the prospect of fracking in their community – are taken for fools.

For a start, we are told by its champions that fracking will be good for the climate or at least compatible with a serious response to climate change.

No it won’t.

You can be in favour of dealing with climate change. Or you can be in favour of fracking at scale for gas. But you really cannot be in favour of both at the same time.

You can’t go in two opposite directions at once.

Fracking for shale gas will lock us more tightly into a wasteful and systemically destabilizing energy system based on fossil fuels when all our efforts should be directed at building a new energy system that is efficient and carbon neutral.

Fracking for shale gas will create new constituencies of interest in fossil energy, strengthening the already stiff resistance to the energy transition we actually need.

In the UK at least, fracking for shale gas will not displace coal from the energy system. So there will be no carbon dividend here.

But it will divert political attention and investment away from renewables and energy efficiency, which is where our focus really needs to be.

Economic doubts

And as we have heard fracking for shale gas leaks methane. How far this can be reduced in practice, and at what regulatory cost, is another known unknown.

But at the moment there is no reason to be confident that it would be cut to levels that make shale gas much better for the climate, even where it does displace some coal.

Other claims based on injudiciously optimistic or downright spurious assumptions have been made about benefits in jobs, energy bills, and energy security. No convincing case has been made on any of those grounds.

And even on the most optimistic scenario there is no prospect of affordable fracked gas flowing onto the system in significant quantities for at least a decade or more.

You can’t solve the problems of today with a solution that will only be available tomorrow if at all.

As for the risks, the Medact report offers the best assessment so far available to the British public of those that relate to public health.

But there are other significant risks as well: for example to jobs in other sectors such as tourism and farming; to house prices; and to the fabric of affected communities.

Neither government nor industry has yet been honest with the public about how disruptive this industry will be, and what it will do to the quality of life of those who live in the midst of it.

Warped debate

More disturbing than any of this has been the character of the debate. With the best will in the world it has not so far been conspicuous for thoroughness, rigour, or transparency.

There have been examples on all sides of willful exaggeration, deception, stereotyping, secrecy and intemperance. Coverage in the media has been sporadic and often shallow, and that has not helped.

But the systematic assault on thoughtful, honest discourse has come from those who want to go all out for fracking, from our Government and from the industry. Here are just a few examples.

A clause to allow the disposal of liquid wastes under householders’ land after drilling was added by the Government to its Infrastructure Bill (now the Infrastructure Act) at the last minute, after the period for public consultation had ended.

This was obviously going to be controversial.  The only conceivable motive for such a tactic was to suppress legitimate debate.

There is an industry association called the North West Energy Task Force, supported by the fracking company Cuadrilla.

Its purpose is ostensibly to demonstrate the backing of local businesses for fracking in Lancashire. Last week it was reported that more than half of its 343 members are based outside Lancashire.

They include an angling resort in Wales and a care home for the elderly in Yorkshire. This Task Force, it turns out, is not quite what it seems.

Until this month, the Environment Agency has made a point of consulting local communities as part of its permitting process for drilling at sites where there is a “high public interest”.

But consulting the public takes time. And the Environment Agency has been under pressure from the Government to streamline the issuing of permits.

So perhaps it was no coincidence that last week the Environment Agency published new guidance containing the following statement (and I promise you, I am not making this up):

Although it might seem at first sight rather unnecessary to define what a “site of high public interest” is, the fact that a site is generating a lot of public interest does not, for the purposes of this note, necessarily make it a “site of high public interest”.

Such a virtuoso piece of linguistic gymnastics is perhaps best left to speak for itself.

But each of these examples points in the same direction. If those responsible want debate at all, they certainly do not want it to be full, rigorous and transparent.

And the people can be forgiven for asking: “what are they trying to hide?”

Long term planning

We stand today at a crossroads. We are being asked to make a once in a generation choice that will to all intents and purposes be irreversible. It really matters whether or not our choice is based on a serious national debate.

We have been a global leader on climate change. If we choose fracking we will become at best a reluctant follower.

We can make it a national mission to build an energy system that liberates us from our current dependency on volatile international markets for oil and gas.

One that helps us end once and for all the national shame, highlighted recently by the campaign for an Energy Bill Revolution, of avoidable winter deaths in cold and draughty homes.

One that spurs growth in the real economy and across our country not merely in the southeast; that takes control over energy choices out of the hands of remote utilities and into those of householders and communities.

Or in contrast to our more dynamic competitors, we could cling for another generation to a carbon-intensive status quo, beguiled perhaps by the illusory prospect of a gas bonanza beneath our feet to match that enjoyed by our parents from under the North Sea. We could choose fracking.

Role of politics

So yes, our choice on fracking will have a big influence on our future climate security, energy security, and economic security. But although that matters a lot, it does not matter as much as what is most at stake.

In our country today, for most people, politics is something that is done to you. It is not something that is done with you.

No community in our beautiful, crowded country if offered a free and fully informed choice will choose fracking. When what is proposed is so disruptive, and perhaps so dangerous, on such a scale, those who resist it cannot be dismissed as NIMBYs.

For them this is another example of “to you” politics and their resistance is a sign that British people have had enough of “to you” politics.

A choice for fracking would be a victory for “to you” politics. But it would be a pyrrhic one and a temporary one. Those who would have us make it have taken their finger off the pulse of our nation. This would be a bridge too far for “to you” politics. It is a bridge the British people will not cross.

Well, you can see what I think of fracking. And I hope you can see why I think it. I will use my voice as best I can to say “no” to fracking and “yes” to “with you” politics.

But that is actually not the issue this evening. The issue this evening is whether, when we face a once in a generation choice, we should encourage or suppress debate.

With this excellent report Medact have not taken a position for or against fracking. But they have planted a flag in the ground for real debate, based on real evidence, and a real effort to answer the questions we do not yet have answers to.

Yes I will struggle against fracking. But I will struggle even harder for the idea that we should think before we act, that we should never as a nation be rushed into choices we do not need to make before we have understood what they mean.

This is such a choice.

Whether you agree with me or not on fracking, I hope you will join me in welcoming this contribution to real debate, and in endorsing its key conclusion that, if the drilling is to start, it should not do so until we have a far better understanding of its consequences for our health.

The writer was UK’s Special Representative for Climate Change between 2006-2012. 

The post Fracking: what is the British government trying to hide? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: Nelson L./Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

Denmark will consider removing its ban on fracking following the results of test drilling by Total.

The government issued a moratorium on new fracking licenses in 2012, but did not revoke two already granted to the French oil major in Jutland and Zealand.

Total plans to test the shale rock for gas in spring 2015 at a site near the town of Frederikshavn. If Total decides to go ahead with fracking, the government will conduct an evaluation to decide whether to lift the moratorium.

“We will put together and evaluate the experience from the well and the activity Total is going to conduct in northern Jutland, and also the experiences of other countries,” said Katja Scharmann, a geologist at Denmark’s Energy Agency.

“Then the government has to decide to remove the moratorium or not, depending on the results.”

Other countries, including France, Germany and the Netherlands, have bans on fracking. The governments in South Africa and Romania both decided to reverse earlier moratoriums.

Fracking involves injecting a concoction of water and chemicals into the ground at high pressure to extract shale gas.

Report: Denmark gears up for fight against fracking

In some cases, this has led to small earthquakes. Opponents say that it is inconsistent to extract a new form of fossil fuel while around two thirds of known reserves must be left in the ground in order to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.

Denmark is considered to be among the most environmentally conscious countries in Europe due to its stringent targets. The country aims to be completely rid of fossil fuels by 2050, and phase out the use of coal by 2025.

At the same time, its Alum Shale contains an estimated 6.9 trillion cubic feet (159 billion cubic metres) of undiscovered technically recoverable natural gas, according to the US Geological Survey.

In order to go ahead with fracking, Total must complete an Environmental Impact Assessment and gain permission from the government.

The company said this week that test drilling – originally scheduled to take place in January – had been pushed back to spring due to a delay in manufacturing the rig.

Scharmann said that the government is aware of public concerns regarding fracking, and had taken measures to ensure that the process is carried out responsibly.

“The government does not consider fracking as dangerous,” she said. “There has to be a full EIA to look at the consequences of fracking projects. They are not annoyed [that it will go ahead], and they also want to collect data and experience from the projects and licenses granted to Total.”

The post Denmark to reconsider fracking ban after Total shale tests appeared first on Climate Home News.

Copenhagen is the world’s greenest city, but its politicians could soon give a green light to fracking (Pic: Fc Nikon/Flickr)

By Sophie Yeo

The fight against fracking is about to get underway in Denmark, as French oil company Total prepares to explore for shale gas in the country for the first time.

A rig is expected to arrive near the northern town of Frederikshavn next month.

Drillers will test the shale rock lying four kilometres below the surface for gas. If the volume is large enough, then Total plans to use hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – to extract it.

So far, even in environmentally conscious Denmark, opposition to the industry has been muted. But activists are unwilling to take the latest developments lying down.

“We need to make it visible for ordinary people,” said Tarjei Haaland, a climate and energy expert at Greenpeace Denmark, who told RTCC that the group was launching an anti-fracking campaign next week.

“We have had other priorities until now and it’s time to start this more broadly. The government is not discussing it broadly in the public and it’s only the people directly involved who understand what’s going on.”

Europe’s greenest country?

Fracking involves injecting a cocktail of water, sand and chemicals into the ground at high pressure in order to fracture the rocks and release the trapped gas.

Total was granted licenses in 2010 to explore for shale gas in two regions of Denmark – including the area north of Copenhagen – but this will be the first time that they have broken ground.

The technology has been widely used in the US, but has been slow to take off in Europe, in part due to environmental concerns. Scientific studies suggest that the process could cause earth tremors and pollute groundwater. There are also concerns that burning gas will accelerate climate change.

Denmark is often cited as one of the world’s greenest countries, with an ambitious target to phase out fossil fuels by 2050.

Activists are therefore opposed to introducing another form of fossil fuel into the country’s energy mix, attacking a “schizophrenic” attitude by politicians towards climate policy.

“Denmark has a very strong climate change commitment, but the argument is also that we can’t leave gold in the ground. It’s a very strange logic,” said Mattias Soderberg, a senior advisor at Act Alliance Denmark.

Report: UK government pledges to consult scientists on fracking

Many of Denmark’s European neighbours have imposed a fracking moratorium on environmental grounds, including France, Germany, Romania and Bulgaria.

Poland and the UK, on the other hand, are keen to exploit their shale gas reserves.

Denmark’s centre-left government tried to align itself with the former group in 2012, when it also imposed a ban on fracking.

But the two licenses granted by the previous government remain valid, unlike in France, which cancelled licenses granted to Total and Schuepbach.

The central government retains some control over the role of fracking in Denmark’s future.

If the exploratory drilling reveals the presence of gas in commercially viable volumes, Total will have to submit another environmental impact assessment and gain another permit from the government in order to go ahead with fracking.

Denmark is due an election by September at the latest. Opinion polls predict a swing to the right, which would bring to power a more frack-friendly set of politicians.

Greenpeace’s Haaland told RTCC that their campaign will centre on providing more information on the dangers of fracking, in an effort to turn people against the technology across the whole political spectrum.

Cold feet

In the town of Frederikshavn itself, campaigners are taking a more direct approach.

For 184 days, locals have set up camp near the site where the drilling is to take place in an ongoing protest against what they perceive as a threat to their local community.

Aage Olsen, who has set up base on the camp, told RTCC that he had endured sub-zero temperatures and watched as a storm blew away his tent in order to keep fracking from his town.

“We have a demonstration every day. We walk to the site and sing some protest songs. When we have done that, we go back to the camp and get a cup of coffee and have some breakfast,” he said.

“It’s cold for the feet. I have socks, but today it was minus 6 degrees, so it takes a lot of socks. Even people who work for them say it is special that we keep going. They expected after two weeks it would go away but we are still here.”

There are five people at the camp permanently, with the majority of the original 50 occupants returning to more solid dwellings for the winter. But Olsen said they were visited by new people every day.

“It’s a very, very long process. It’s not easy to keep the spirit up when nothing happens, but I think when they are bringing in the rig people will come.

“There are people around who are working for ideas to make it difficult for them to bring the rig.”

Markets

Others in Denmark are less vehemently opposed.

One of the arguments in favour of shale gas is that it could replace other, dirtier fossil fuels such as coal, which still supplies around a third of Denmark’s electricity.

“If you want to limit greenhouse gases you should tax them. You can’t regulate it through the production of fossil fuels locally,” said Otto Brøns-Petersen, head of research at the Center for Political Studies, a Danish think-tank.

He added: “Probably with the present price of oil, it wouldn’t be economically feasible to extract gas from Denmark, but we don’t know. It might be cheap, and then we should do it.”

The time required to move from exploration to production means that the site would not start delivering gas until 2020 – the year when the UN is set to bring in a climate change deal that could drive a shift in the world’s energy mix.

The process is even less advanced around Copenhagen, but Haaland predicts that fracking companies would not be well received if they decided to descend in the back garden of Denmark’s politicians.

He said: “I’m sure if they do something there, there will one hell of an outcry.”

The post Denmark gears up for fight against fracking appeared first on Climate Home News.

Protesters rallied outside Parliament yesterday as MPs debated fracking (Pic: Friends of the Earth UK/Twitter)

By John Ashton

There is not one square inch of our beautiful land that is desolate.

We are all entitled to love the place we live in, and our love for our home and our community is worth just as much whether we live in the north of our country or the south.

Shame on those who say, don’t spoil my back garden but do whatever you like in places far away, where people count for less.

Now I have a confession to make. I’ve never spoken before at a public rally. I’ve never even been to a public rally, this is my very first time.

But I’m proud to stand with you today because whether we frack for oil and gas up and down our country really matters. Because those with the power to decide are on the verge of dragging us down the wrong path. Because only your voices, our voices, can stop them. And because with the votes on the Infrastructure Bill, and the planning decisions in Preston, now is the moment to make our voices heard.

For six years, I was Britain’s diplomatic envoy for climate change.

Believe me, you can’t be in favour of fracking in Britain and in favour of dealing with climate change at the same time. It’s an either/or choice. Those who say it’s not are being ignorant, or deceitful, or deceiving themselves. It’s that simple.

Sometimes in politics you come to a crossroads and you have to choose. If you pretend you don’t, that’s a choice too, and not an honourable one, it’s a covert choice to stick with the status quo. This is such a crossroad.

No community in Britain will ever benefit from fracking. If a few individuals or businesses do well, it will be at the expense of their communities. Fracking at scale is intrusive, disruptive, noisy, and unhealthy. It really does turn communities upside down. Look at what’s happened in the United States.

Comment: Fracking is no sensible solution to climate change

We’re told we will have gold-plated regulation to protect our communities from all those harms. It’s a hollow promise. Actually it’s a lie. It’s a lie because our regulators just don’t have the budgets, the skills, or the people to enforce it properly. It relies entirely on self-policing by the companies concerned.

We tried self-policing with the banks over there in the City. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Sometimes the interests of a community have to come second to the national interest. But there is no national interest in fracking.

Germany is showing beyond doubt that you can have clean energy, you can have energy efficiency, and you can give control over energy back to communities all at the same time without wrecking the economy. By getting ahead of us on clean energy, our main European competitor is actually widening its lead over us.

It’s time for Britain to catch up.

Let’s hear it for Repower Balcombe, showing the way, and all the other pioneers of community energy up and down Britain.

Fracking on an industrial scale won’t build us a future worth having, it would take us backwards, it would lock us further into fossil dependency. It would also turn our country into a global climate pariah.

Democracy

And this isn’t just about our climate and our energy. It’s about our democracy.

What’s been happening on fracking is not democracy in action. It’s democracy in free fall.

Take the Infrastructure Bill.

This odious, antidemocratic Bill would trample on rights and protections, including the ancient law of trespass, woven carefully over centuries into the fabric of our constitution. It would put corporate interests above the public interest. Wherever you live it would make your voice the last one to be listened to in any decision about the land and the community around you.

99% of consultees don’t want trespass watered down? I know, let’s ignore them.

An unrestricted right to dump wastes of all kinds under people’s land and houses? That’s not going to be popular! Let’s try and sneak it in at the last minute when nobody is looking, and if people still object, I know, let’s ignore them.

People complain that profit for developers and fracking companies is not the only thing that matters? I know, let’s ignore them.

Let’s make it an overriding legal requirement to maximize the so-called economic recovery of oil and gas.

When I joined the Civil Service 35 years ago, ministers and officials would have resigned rather than connived at such abuses.

In Britain today we have the forms but not the substance of democracy, and what’s happening on fracking is a symptom of that sickness.

Victory in the struggle to stop fracking will also be a victory, a crucial victory in the longer struggle to renew our democracy in Britain.

Moving the plates

Most of the time in politics things don’t move very much. The tectonic plates get stuck. You may gain a few inches here and there but progress is incremental.

But every now and again the plates start to slip and anything is possible.

This is such a moment. It may be the only such moment we get.

The plates are slipping on fracking. Suddenly it is dawning on our representatives that the political cost of forcing it through is going to be higher than they thought.

More and more of them are taking the trouble to listen to their constituents, and to get their heads round what’s involved. They are working out for themselves what a bad idea this really is.

That’s what the members of the Environmental Audit Committee have done today. They have shown real courage, defying their Party machines. Let’s now show them the thanks they deserve!

But too many MPs still think it’s more important to do the bidding of those Party machines and of their corporate friends than it is to listen to the people who put them in our Parliament.

The friends of fracking, in the Coalition parties and the Labour Party, including Tom Greatrex on Twitter today, are trying a bit harder to look as if they are listening. But what they are really trying to do is lock the tectonic plates back in place before they slip too far, before they make it impossible for the drilling to start.

Struggle

So now, just as we finally see some progress, now we must push even harder. And here’s what we should push for.

Let’s stop the headlong rush, with a full moratorium now, as demanded by the Environmental Audit Committee, followed by a proper national debate. No ifs not buts, and no more opportunistic spin from those who aspire to run our energy policy after May.

While we close the front door let’s stop the Bill from forcing open the back door, with its antidemocratic provisions on trespass and householder permission and so-called economic recovery.

And let’s take off the table right now, once and for all, any possibility of self-policing by companies whose main interest is in minimizing red tape not protecting the well being of communities.

David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband, Jenny Mein and the County Council you lead in Preston: please listen: moratorium now, stop the Bill, no more self-policing. Otherwise you will be betraying the people who put you where you are, and they will not easily forgive you.

Friends, over there, in Victoria Tower Gardens, is a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst.

Every struggle that has made our country better has been a struggle to make Britain a country for all the people not just a privileged few. We are struggling to give the people a voice on energy. Mrs Pankhurst struggled to give women a voice in politics. We are following in her footsteps.

We can be so proud of that.

So far, those who want to frack our country into an even deeper political stupor have been able to make progress by bullying and stealth. But now at last, thanks to your courage and determination, our opponents have been forced into the open and there is a real democratic choice to be made.

Our representatives will only make the right choice if they can hear our voice.

Are we today going to make our voice heard, not just here on the street but inside the thick walls of that Palace over there?

Let’s make the biggest noise, every one of us, let’s make the biggest noise we’ve ever made in our lives.

This text is an edited version of a speech given by John Ashton, the UK’s Special Representative for Climate Change between 2006-2012, made on 26 January at a public rally at Westminster, London. Watch the full speech delivered here:

The post John Ashton: Fracking push is an insult to democracy appeared first on Climate Home News.

UK MPs on Monday debated an Infrastructure Bill that would smooth the path for fracking (Pic: Flickr/Javier Díaz Barrera)

By Megan Darby

The UK government has moved to reassure fracking opponents that exploration for oil and gas will only happen if it is compatible with climate goals.

In a last minute amendment to its Infrastructure Bill, the government proposed to consult the independent Committee on Climate Change “from time to time” on the impact of oil and gas exploration on the carbon budget.

Energy minister Amber Rudd defended the government’s efforts to smooth the path a UK shale gas industry, following a report by MPs calling for a fracking ban and demonstrations outside Parliament.

“To meet our challenging climate targets, we will need significant quantities of renewables, nuclear and gas in our energy mix,” she said in a debate on Monday.

Shale gas is important for the country’s energy security “as we move towards a low carbon economy,” Rudd added.

The Infrastructure Bill includes an objective of “maximising the economic recovery of UK petroleum”, including shale gas. It proposes changes to trespass law that would make it easier for oil and gas companies to frack under people’s homes.

MPs passed the Bill with Labour amendments to toughen up certain regulations on the industry. Another amendment, to suspend the practice for at least 18 months, was rejected by 308 votes to 52. The Bill now goes for consideration in the House of Lords.

U turns don’t come much bigger than this – Govt facing defeat on fracking suddenly supports Labs tougher environmental regs #fracking

— Angela Eagle (@angelaeagle) January 26, 2015

Amid a plethora of concerns about the way the sector is to be regulated – and complaints at the short 90-minute slot available for debate – there was intense disagreement about its climate impacts.

The UK has a legal commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions 80% on 1990 levels by 2050, set out in five-year “carbon budgets”.

In a report published on Monday morning, the cross-party Environmental Audit Committee argued fracking was incompatible with that commitment.

The Energy and Climate Change Committee, on the other hand, examined the subject in 2013 and came out in favour of exploration.

“Our concern is they are going rather slowly on it,” said Tim Yeo, chair of the ECC Committee. “We should speed up the process.”

He dismissed the idea shale gas would increase emissions, arguing it would simply replace imports of more carbon-intensive LNG.

Earlier in the afternoon, anti-fracking protesters held a rally outside the building.

Actor-turned-activist Bianca Jagger, former UK climate diplomat John Ashton and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas were among those calling for a fracking ban.

‘If fracking is a panacea, why have France, Germany, NY state all banned it?’ – Bianca Jagger addresses rally pic.twitter.com/77hF2SShxF

— Guy Shrubsole (@guyshrubsole) January 26, 2015

‘Stop the infrastructure bill’: ex-FCO diplomat John Ashton rallies hundreds opposing fracking #banfracking pic.twitter.com/82Qt1DZxIq

— Guy Shrubsole (@guyshrubsole) January 26, 2015

Mr Frackhead has arrived outside Westminster! Loads of people here for rally to #banfracking pic.twitter.com/P31P938Eyd

— Guy Shrubsole (@guyshrubsole) January 26, 2015

The post UK government pledges to consult scientists on fracking appeared first on Climate Home News.

A fracking rig in Louisiana
(Pic: Flickr/Daniel Foster)

By Megan Darby

UK lawmakers are urging the government to ban fracking on climate change grounds.

In a report published on Monday, the Environmental Audit Committee argued exploiting shale gas was incompatible with commitments to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

This put them at odds with the chancellor, George Osborne, who the Guardian revealed is demanding ministers fast-track approvals for fracking.

Joan Walley MP, chair of the committee, said: “Ultimately fracking cannot be compatible with our long-term commitments to cut climate changing emissions unless full-scale carbon capture and storage technology is rolled out rapidly, which currently looks unlikely.

“There are also huge uncertainties around the impact that fracking could have on water supplies, air quality and public health.”

Infrastructure Bill

MPs will make the case for a moratorium this afternoon, in a debate on the government’s Infrastructure Bill.

Meanwhile, protesters will rally outside Parliament, where speakers including former UK climate envoy John Ashton, Bianca Jagger, Vivienne Westwood and several MPs will outline their opposition to fracking.

David Cameron, the prime minister, has promised to go “all out for shale”, which is seen as a significant economic opportunity.

Chancellor Osborne has led the charge, asking ministers in a leaked letter to make it a “personal priority” to smooth the path for the industry.

The Bill includes an objective of “maximising the economic recovery of UK petroleum”, including shale gas.

It also proposes changes to land access rights, making it easier for shale gas companies to explore underneath private property.

“Undemocratic”

Walley described the changes as “profoundly undemocratic”.

“The Government is trying to rush through changes to the trespass laws that would allow companies to frack under people’s homes without permission,” she said.

Former environment secretary Caroline Spelman has also come out against the government dash for gas.

Hydraulic fracturing or fracking, the practice of pumping high pressure water, sand and chemicals underground to release shale gas, has met fierce opposition in the UK.

Last week, planning officials recommended councillors reject an application by Cuadrilla to frack at two sites in Lancashire. The advice focused on “unacceptable” levels of noise and traffic around the sites.

Report: Fracking ban boosts New York governor’s approval rating

But this latest report by MPs represents the most systematic attempt yet to consider the climate change implications.

The UK is bound by law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80% on 1990 levels by 2050, which means reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

Advocates of fracking have contended that in the medium term, shale gas can help reduce emissions by displacing coal in the power generation mix.

After taking evidence from several experts, the MPs rejected that argument.

The UK shale industry is not likely to produce significant volumes of gas for another 10-15 years, they found. By that time, coal will have largely been forced out by EU regulations.

Report: Future of fracking in doubt as oil prices spiral

Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) praised the committee for “an excellent job of joining the dots” between shale gas and climate goals.

“The Committee is completely correct to say that if UK shale gas plays a major role in our electricity generation, that would have significant implications for our climate change targets.

“It could be useful in other applications, however – but before promoting the industry, ministers really ought to do some proper thinking about where shale gas can be used within carbon budgets, and where it cannot.”

The post UK lawmakers make climate case for fracking ban appeared first on Climate Home News.

Flaring oil and gas wells lighting the night’s sky in the US (Pic: NASA)

By Kieran Cooke

There’s no doubt that US-based fracking – the process through which oil and gas deposits are blasted from shale deposits deep underground – has caused a revolution in worldwide energy supplies. 

Yet now the alarm bells are ringing about the financial health of the fracking industry, with talk of a mighty monetary bubble bursting − leading to turmoil on the international markets similar to that in 2008.

In many ways, it’s a straightforward case of supply and demand. Due to the US fracking boom, world oil supply has increased.

But with global economic growth now slowing – the drop in growth in China is particularly significant – there’s a lack of demand and a glut in supplies, leading to a fall in price of nearly 50% over the last six months.

Fracking has become a victim of its own success.

The industry in the US has grown very fast. In 2008, US oil production was running at five million barrels a day. Thanks to fracking, that figure has nearly doubled, with talk of US energy self-sufficiency and the country becoming the world’s biggest oil producer – “the new Saudi Arabia” – in the near future.

The giant Bakken oil and gas field in North Dakota – a landscape punctured by thousands of fracking sites, with gas flares visible from space – was producing 200,000 barrels of oil a day in 2007. Production is now running at more than one million barrels a day.

Fuelled by talk of the financial rewards to be gained from fracking, investors have piled into the business. The US fracking industry now accounts for about 20% of the world’s total crude oil investment.

But analysts say this whole investment edifice could come crashing down.

Report: Fracking caused Ohio earthquake in 2014, say researchers 

Fracking is an expensive business. Depending on site structure, companies need prices of between $60 and $100 per barrel of oil to break even. As prices drop to around $55 per barrel, investments in the sector look ever more vulnerable.

Analysts say that while bigger fracking companies might be able to sustain losses in the short term, the outlook appears bleak for the thousands of smaller, less well-financed companies who rushed into the industry, tempted by big returns.

The fracking industry’s troubles have been added to by the actions of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which, despite the oversupply on the world market, has refused to lower production.

The theory is that OPEC, led by powerful oil producers such as Saudi Arabia, is playing the long game – seeking to drive the fracking industry from boom to bust, stabilise prices well above their present level, and regain its place as the world’s pre-eminent source of oil.

There are now fears that many fracking operations may default on an estimated $200 billion of borrowings, raised mainly through bonds issued on Wall Street and in the City of London.

In turn, this could lead to a collapse in global financial markets similar to the 2008 crash.

Existing reserves 

There are also questions about just how big existing shale oil and gas reserves are, and how long they will last.

A recent report by the Post Carbon Institute, a not-for-profit thinktank based in the US, says reserves are likely to peak and fall off rapidly, far sooner than the industry’s backers predict.

The cost of drilling is also going up as deposits become more inaccessible.

Besides ongoing questions about the impact of fracking on the environment − in terms of carbon emissions and pollution of water sources − another challenge facing the industry is the growth and rapidly falling costs of renewable energy.

Fracking operations could also be curtailed by more stringent regulations designed to counter fossil fuel emissions and combat climate change.

Its backers have hyped fracking as the future of energy − not just in the US, but around the world. Now the outlook for the industry is far from certain.

This article was produced by the Climate News Network 

The post Future of fracking in doubt as oil prices spiral appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: BHP Bilton)

By Kara Roanhorse

Fracking was responsible for an earthquake felt by Ohio residents in March 2014, a study has found.

Hydaulic fracturing near the Poland Township activated a previously unknown fault in the earth, say scientists, who identified 77 earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from 1.0 to 3.0 between March 4 and 12.

The strongest earthquake was unusual because it could be felt by people living in the area, revealed the research, published online in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

“These earthquakes near Poland Township occurred in the Precambrian basement, a very old layer of rock where there are likely to be many pre-existing faults,” said Robert Skoumal, co-author of the study.

“This activity did not create a new fault, rather it activated one that we didn’t know about prior to the seismic activity.”

In October 2014 another study in the same journal suggested 400 small earthquakes in Ohio were triggered by fracking in a three month period during 2013.

Report: Future of fracking in doubt as oil prices spiral

Fracking creates fractures in shale rock to release the fossil fuels trapped inside by injecting a mixture of water and chemicals at high pressure.

The technology has been widely adopted across the US, but in Europe the method is still controversial.

Earthquakes – both felt and unfelt – have increased over the past decade as the popularity of fracking has increased.

The drilling in Ohio was undertaken by Hilcorp Energy, which halted operations on 10 March after the 3.0 magnitude earthquake.

But the fact that no earthquakes occurred at nearby industrial areas suggests that the fault that was activated is limited in extent, concluded researchers.

The risk of earthquakes is frequently cited by anti-fracking campaigners as a reason not to embark upon the new method of extracting oil and gas.

Oklahoma’s fivefold increase in earthquakes during 2014 has led many residents to claim a link to the oil and gas rush. Well over 30,000 oil and gas wells litter the landscape, employing 1 in 6 of the state’s population.

Last year the Oklahoma experienced 564 quakes above a magnitude of 3.0. According to the EnergyWire website that makes it the most seismically active state in mainland US.

Governor Andrew Cuomo banned fracking in New York State in December. Earthquakes were among the risks cited in the 184-page report that underscored the decision, along with concerns over drinking water and climate change.

Skoumal underlined the difficulty of knowing when an earthquake will occur, and said it meant drilling companies and local authorities needed to evaluate risky areas carefully before proceeding.

“We just don’t know where all the faults are located,” he said.

“It makes sense to have close cooperation among government, industry and the scientific community as hydraulic fracturing operations expand in areas where there’s the potential for unknown pre-existing faults.”

The post Fracking caused Ohio earthquake in 2014, say researchers appeared first on Climate Home News.

Rusty Waters, Nova Scotia (Pic: Paul Bica/Flickr)

By Ed King

The Canadian province of Nova Scotia plans to ban fracking after an official enquiry warned of low levels of public support for the oil and gas extraction process.

Energy minister Andrew Younger said the government would introduce laws by the end of 2014 to place a temporary block on all drilling.

“Nova Scotians have indicated by a wide margin they are concerned about hydraulic fracking and the development of shales at this time,” he said.

The move comes in response to a government commissioned report published at the end of August, which recommended more research into the potential consequences of fracking.

It said: “Based on the analysis described in this report, a significant period of learning and dialogue is now required at both provincial and community levels, and thus hydraulic fracturing for the purpose of unconventional gas and oil development should not proceed at the present time in Nova Scotia.”

Nova Scotia is Canada’s second smallest province with a population under one million, located on the coast east of New Brunswick and the US state of Maine.

A 2013 poll revealed that 53% of residents opposed fracking, a technique which draws natural gas to the surface by forcing huge levels of a water and chemical mixture deep into the ground at high pressures.

The move is the latest indication that not all provincial governments agree with prime minister Stephen Harper’s hostile stance towards climate action.

Harper withdrew Canada from the Kyoto Protocol, which obliged the country to cut its carbon emissions. His last budget slashed environmental funding and proposed spending $28 million towards a new oil pipeline.

Last month the premiers of Ontario and Quebec, representing more than half of Canada’s population, outlined their own plans for tougher climate laws.

Wider debate

Speaking at a press conference, Younger said Nova Scotia’s government could permit shale gas extraction in the future, but only after further research by scientists.

“Our decision will allow the Nova Scotia legislature to have an opportunity for debate and comment should a decision to allow hydraulic fracturing in shale formations be allowed in our province at some future date.”

The report warned that the effects of chemicals used in fracking contaminating water supplies were not fully understood. It also emphasised the risk that methane, a potent climate-warming gas, can leak from fracking wells.

Proponents of fracking point out gas burns more cleanly than coal, producing around half the carbon emissions. They say it can be a “transition fuel” in the move to a low carbon economy.

Some studies suggest “fugitive emissions” from shale wells could undermine the carbon benefits of switching from coal to gas, however.

“The possibility of significant fugitive emissions of methane from hydraulic fracturing operations and associated downstream infrastructure – now or far in the future – does not enable us to make definitive claims about natural gas as a potential ‘transition fuel’ for Nova Scotia with the present state,” the report said.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers criticised the decision, saying fracking was a safe process and warning of “lost opportunities”.

The Chronicle Herald newspaper accused the government of an “Orwellian” move and said billions could be lost in revenues.

But Jennifer West, geoscience co-ordinator with the Ecology Action Centre, which has long campaigned against the process in Canada, welcomed the news.

“It really shows that Mr Younger was listening to the people of Nova Scotia throughout this process, that he was reading their submissions, that he was really reading the Wheeler report very thoroughly and really had a good sense of how complex this issue is,” she said.

The post Nova Scotia bans fracking in snub to Canada PM Harper appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: Eschipul/Flickr)

By Ed King

China’s plans to exploit its vast shale gas resources could be limited by acute levels of water stress, say researchers.

The country has the highest shale resources in the world, with estimates of its recoverable shale gas  ranging between 30-1,115 trillion cubic metres.

But in a new study published today, the World Resources Institute (WRI) warns limited availability of freshwater near potential drilling sites is likely to impact China’s ability to exploit these gas supplies.

“Companies operating in arid areas and in areas of high or extremely high baseline water stress (60% of China’s shale play area) will have to compete with other users for what is already a very scarce resource,” says the report.

“High levels of competition among agricultural, domestic, and industrial water users could represent higher costs, reputational risks and increased regulatory uncertainty for operators trying to access water for hydraulic fracturing and drilling operations.”

Fracking works by propelling millions of tonnes of water mixed with chemicals and sand into wells at high pressures, cracking open fissures in the rock and releasing gas.

While shale wells in the US are often at shallow depths of 5-9,000ft, experts say China’s gas reserves are likely to be deeper, consuming more resources and requiring more powerful drilling rigs.

But as the map below illustrates, many of China’s major shale gas plays are situated in regions already under severe water stress.

Parts of the country are experiencing the worst drought in 63 years, according to state news agency Xinhua, hitting two million hectares of crops.

China hopes to replicate America’s shale gas boom, which has seen energy prices tumble and led to calls in Congress for the country to start exporting excess supplies.

In 2012 its key planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission, made drilling for shale gas a priority.

Boosting indigenous gas supplies is seen as a way to slow coal burning, which releases high levels of climate warming gases and harmful pollutants, choking China’s big cities and making the country the world’s largest carbon emitter.

Globally, shale gas adds 47% to worldwide stocks, while underground stores of tight oil add a further 11%.

According to the WRI, about 40% of shale gas resources in the 20 countries with the largest shale gas resources are located in arid areas.

The land above those shale plays supports 386 million people, say the study’s authors, with around 40% relying heavily on irrigated agriculture to survive.

Mexico, South Africa, Pakistan, Egypt, India, Libya and the USA all have shale gas drilling zones in water stressed areas.

“Water risk is one of the most important, but underappreciated challenges when it comes to shale gas development,” said Andrew Steer, WRI President in a statement.

“This analysis should serve as a wake-up call for countries seeking to develop shale gas. Energy development and responsible water management must go hand in hand.”

The post Water shortage could hit China’s fracking plans appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: Adam Vaughan/Twitter)

By Ed King

UK anti-fracking campaigners have glued themselves to the doors of a government building as protests build across the country.

The environment department (Defra) redacted parts of a report detailing the effects of shale gas drilling on rural communities.

Activists from Reclaim the Power are demanding the full document is released and say ministers are trying to mask the negative effects of fracking on the local environment and house prices .

Lindsay Alderton, who was one of the protesters glued to the building, told the Guardian the blacked-out parts of the report were “outrageous” and called for a public debate on fracking.

Earlier this morning activists who climbed scaffolding displayed a banner that read: “What’s to hide Defra? Don’t frack with our future.”

In a series of staged events this morning, protesters blockaded the London headquarters of the UK’s largest shale gas company iGas, and claimed to have broken into the Blackpool offices of gas exploration firm Cuadrilla.

A picture from inside the office occupation #reclaim thrower pic.twitter.com/pyv9LpE7cQ

— No Dash for Gas (@nodashforgas) August 18, 2014

Hundreds of protesters also marched along Blackpool promenade, while others took a giant dragon to Cuadrilla’s HQ.

10+ anti fracking protesters have occupied energy firm Quadrilla’s offices in Blackpool, barricading themselves in. pic.twitter.com/LlXoOqdYXW — Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) August 18, 2014

In Swansea students staged a “lock-in” at the University’s new Energy Safety Research Institute, which they say will be used to enhance fracking techniques.

Somewhere over the rainbow.. a tripod of course! At Swansea Bay Uni campus action #ReclaimThePower pic.twitter.com/NaiDe14xEX via @nodashforgas — Occupy London (@OccupyLondon) August 18, 2014

While in Salford a banner was unfurled over the Manchester Ship Canal near the BBC studios, accusing Cuadrilla of dumping radioactive waste into the waters

Bannerdrop @ #Salford Quays. @CuadrillaUK dumped huge quantity of radioactive #fracking waste in #Manc ship canal: pic.twitter.com/EhZPqWl91f

— Frack Off (@Frack_Off) August 18, 2014

Meanwhile, sharp eyed fracking supporters leapt onto their high horses after spotting this mini #fail – Note to campaigners. Hide the gas canisters.

#GreenHypocrisy No267: @NoDashForGas activist camp uses natural gas for cooking this weekend via @NWTaskforce pic.twitter.com/O9fEfOYfnd

— Tim Montgomerie (@TimMontgomerie) August 18, 2014

The post Fracking protesters stage ‘day of action’ across UK appeared first on Climate Home News.

Protest at Balcombe last summer

By Megan Darby

UK anti-fracking campaigners are gearing up for a second summer of action, in an ideological battle with government and industry.

Hundreds of people are expected to join the week-long Reclaim the Power camp near Blackpool on Thursday. More than 50 have signed up for the Tour de Frack, a cycle ride past fracking sites of northern England to Hull.

The protests come as an industry-sponsored poll finds 57% of people back fracking and a government poll puts support at 24%.

Meanwhile, the department for environment has been accused of censorship after publishing a heavily redacted draft report into the impact of fracking on the rural economy.

Round two

The debate over whether the UK should exploit its shale gas reserves has intensified since a protest in Balcombe, Sussex, last year propelled the subject into the public consciousness.

Government ministers are keen to promote the energy security benefits of developing a domestic source of gas. Shale wells would also bring in tax revenues.

Opponents say exploiting a new source of fossil fuels undermines the government’s commitment to tackling climate change. They also raise concerns about local environmental impacts such as the risk of groundwater contamination.

Studies by the British Geological Survey have shown the greatest reserves lie underneath northern England, in the Bowland shale.

This area, estimated to hold some 38 trillion cubic metres of gas, is the focus of this summer’s protests.

Reclaim the Power expects 1,000 people to take part in its camp at Preston New Road, one of exploration company Cuadrilla’s proposed fracking sites.

They will join a group of local grandmothers and mothers who have been occupying the field since 7 August.

Hannah Jones of Reclaim the Power said: “Our government pretends gas is a clean fuel, but we cannot afford drilling for any new fossil fuels if our children are to have a chance for a safe climate and sustainable future.

“Gas will only make the climate more unstable, the energy companies richer, and the rest of us poorer. We need affordable, democratically controlled, renewable energy now.”

When the camp finishes on 20 August, some demonstrators plan a four-day ride across the country to an active drilling site in Beverley, East Yorkshire.

The “Tour de Frack” will stop at Total Environmental Technology in Driffield, a service provider to the shale gas industry.

On 23 August, the riders will join a march against fracking in Hull.

Polling

A survey published by industry lobby group UK Onshore Oil and Gas on Monday found 57% of people were in favour of fracking and only 16% opposed.

Ken Cronin, chief executive of UKOOG, said: “Shale gas and renewables are complementary, and our survey confirms that the public would like to see a balanced mix that includes both sources of energy.”

Critics swiftly found fault with the poll, which was carried out by Populus.

Leo Barasi wrote in public opinion blog Noise of the Crowd it was “one of the most misleading poll findings I’ve ever seen”.

It asked a series of leading questions and only represented half of the argument, Barasi, a polling analyst, said.

“This isn’t an attempt to find out what the public think about fracking. It’s message testing.”

Indeed, the latest tracker survey by the government’s energy department depicts a far more divided public.

The public attitudes tracker, which tests opinion on a range of energy questions every three months, found 24% for shale gas extraction and 24% against. Almost half of respondents (47%) were neutral.

Of the nearly 23,000 individuals and organisations who responded to a consultation by the European Commission, 37.5% opposed any exploration of shale gas.

Some 28.9% supported fracking with “proper health and environmental safeguards” and 32.5% supported it “anyway”.

“Censorship”

A draft government report released under Environmental Information Regulations showed evidence shale gas exploration could hit house prices near drilling sites and put pressure on local services.

Other impacts were redacted, however, leading Green Party MP Caroline Lucas to accuse the government of censorship.

The word “redacted” appears 62 times in the report, which also considers positive effects such as job creation.

In a letter accompanying the report, an official said the information was withheld to avoid the risk that “disclosure of early thinking could close down discussion”.

Lucas said: “It appears that the Government has a great deal to hide with regards to the risks of fracking for local communities. The number of redactions would be almost comical if it weren’t so concerning.”

She called for “absolute transparency” and said failure to publish the report in full “only increases people’s concerns”.

Want to know the findings of UK Govt report on the impacts of shale gas on rural communities? Me too. #redacted pic.twitter.com/hqcBm3u0IN

— Sarah Merrick (@SpeakSarahSpeak) August 11, 2014

The post Protest, dodgy polling and censorship – UK fracking latest appeared first on Climate Home News.

The first day of a summer of fracking protests in Balcombe (Pic: Sophie Yeo/RTCC)

By Megan Darby

A year ago on 25 July, activists converged on the West Sussex village of Balcombe for a quintessentially British protest.

Tea and flapjack circulated as locals, environmentalists and minor celebrities politely refused access to lorries carrying drills destined for a shale exploration rig.

They were objecting to efforts by oil and gas company Cuadrilla to exploit previously untapped reserves in shale rocks.

Activists feared that would involve the controversial technique of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”: pumping water and chemicals into the well at high pressure to break up the rock and release its valuable hydrocarbons.

Over the next twelve months, the fracking debate was to intensify.

Politicians hailed shale gas as the answer to Britain’s energy woes and set about enabling the fledgling industry.

Opponents superglued themselves to buildings, got themselves arrested and picketed prime minister David Cameron’s house to draw attention to environmental concerns.

A few days before the anniversary of Balcombe, West Sussex County Council rejected a bid by Celtique Energy to drill not far from the site. It is believed to be the first time a local authority has refused permission to a shale exploration company.

A few days after, the government opened up half the country to bids for shale exploration licences.

After all the hype and placard-waving, what future is there for fracking in the UK?

Political appeal

It is not hard to see the political appeal of shale gas. Widely credited with slashing energy prices in the US, shale gas offers the alluring prospect of cutting household bills at a time when the cost of living is top of the national agenda.

Politicians who also care about the environment point to the greenhouse gas emission cuts the US achieved painlessly by switching from more-polluting coal to gas. Using gas straight from the ground is also lower carbon than importing it as LNG, which involves liquefying, shipping and regasifying the fuel.

As production from North Sea oil and gas fields declines, onshore development could slow the UK’s increasing dependence on imports.

Energy security is a hot topic throughout Europe, as tensions between Russia and the Ukraine elicit fears of disruption to key gas and oil pipelines. The downing of Malaysian airliner MH17 over the Ukraine last week, reportedly by pro-Russian rebels, only raised the temperature.

While the UK is far less reliant on Russian imports than other European countries, the crisis has highlighted the geopolitical risks of buying in fuel. Domestic production provides a buffer against those risks.

Energy secretary Ed Davey: Shale gas development “should not come at the expense of the environment”

Then there is tax: the North Sea has historically been a major source of revenue. While the government is offering some tax breaks to the emerging shale industry, it can expect a net gain to the Treasury coffers.

For all these reasons, the government has been vocal in support of the shale gas industry.

Chancellor George Osborne says he wants Britain to be “a leader of the shale gas revolution”, which “has the potential to create thousands of jobs and keep energy bills low for millions of people”.

Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat energy and climate change secretary takes a somewhat less bullish tone than his Conservative coalition partners.

“We must explore the benefits and investment shale gas may bring but that should not come at the expense of the environment,” he says.

The Labour Party, in opposition, says much the same. Three years ago it was calling for a moratorium on fracking, but it has since come round to the idea.

“Gas will remain an important part of our energy mix in the future, and if shale gas can replace our rapidly depleting North Sea reserves it could help improve our energy security,” says shadow energy minister Tom Greatrex.

He stresses there must be “robust regulation and comprehensive monitoring” to address “legitimate environmental and safety concerns”, however.

Opposition

On the other side of the debate, shale gas fracking pushes plenty of buttons for activists.

Aside from the juvenile appeal of a drilling technique that resembles a certain four-letter word (why else would an opposition group call itself Frack Off?), it raises a potent mix of global and local environmental concerns.

These have filtered through into the public consciousness. The government’s public opinion tracker shows three quarters of people were aware of fracking, at the last count.

Some 22% of people opposed shale gas extraction, 29% were in favour and 44% stayed neutral.

On a global level, it is exploiting a new vein of fossil fuels at a time carbon sums show the world cannot safely burn its proven reserves.

That was the core objection of Caroline Lucas, the UK’s only Green Party MP. She joined the protestors at Balcombe and was arrested for her pains. Magistrates subsequently found her not guilty.

Speaking after her acquittal in April, Lucas said: “It is clearer than ever that exploiting new sources of fossil fuels such as shale gas is fatally undermining the government’s stated ambition to protect Britain from the worst impacts of climate change. The only safe and responsible thing to do with shale gas is to leave it in the ground.”

Caroline Lucas is the UK’s first Green MP and a veteran campaigner
(Pic: Flickr/Campaign Against Arms Trade/Patrick Duce)

The Carbon Tracker Initiative estimates 80% of known fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground if global temperature rise is to be kept to 2C. Beyond that warming threshold, scientists say runaway climate change is likely, with potentially catastrophic effect.

In the medium term, shale gas could deliver some carbon savings by displacing coal or LNG from the energy mix.

This is not as clear cut as it appears, however. Gas burns more cleanly than coal, emitting roughly half the carbon emissions for the same power output.

But that benefit could be undermined by so-called fugitive emissions, when methane leaks from shale wells. The jury is still out on how significant these leaks are.

What is more, activists argue a “dash for gas” could keep the UK locked into fossil fuel use for longer than would otherwise be the case. They would rather see the support go to developing renewables.

The UK’s former chief climate diplomat John Ashton puts it starkly in an article for RTCC.

He says: “You can be in favour of fixing the climate. Or you can be in favour of exploiting shale gas. But you can’t be in favour of both at the same time.”

Perhaps more obstructive to would-be shale gas developers are local objections, which range from fears of groundwater contamination to earth tremors.

A still from the film Gasland
(Pic: Flickr/darthpedrius)

In dramatic scenes of the 2010 film Gasland, residents near US shale wells set fire to water coming out of their taps. They blamed that and a number of chronic health problems on fracking activity.

The industry disputed many of the claims in the film and said hydrocarbons found in the water came from natural sources, not fracking.

There was plenty in the documentary to give regulators pause for thought, however. It has focused attention on the integrity of shale wells and the chemicals used in fracking fluid.

In the UK’s first fracking trials, it was seismic activity that raised alarm. Exploration company Cuadrilla suspended drilling in 2011 after a tremor was recorded near its site in northwest England.

At magnitude 2.3 on the Richter scale, the effect was reportedly similar to a heavy lorry driving past.

Experts from the British Geological Survey found fracking was the likely cause of the mini-quake, but said the risk of further rumbling was small and Cuadrilla could safely resume drilling.

UK regulator the Environment Agency has given cautious backing to shale exploration and promised robust safeguards.

American dream

Fracking proponents hope to replicate the US shale gas revolution in the UK. There are several reasons to suggest it will not be that easy – but the government is doing its best to smooth the way.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) has assessed three regions: the Bowland shale in Lancashire; the Weald Basin in the south of England; and Scotland’s Midland Valley.

It found substantial gas resources in only one of these, Bowland, with a central estimate of 38 trillion cubic metres. The Midland Valley holds around 2 trillion cubic metres and the Weald a negligible amount.

The Weald, which lies under Balcombe, and Midland Valley are estimated to hold around 11 billion barrels of oil. There may be an energy security case for extracting this oil, but certainly not a green one.

The BGS estimates are for “gas-in-place” and it is not yet clear how much can be recovered.

In the US, recovery rates typically range between 20% and 30%, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

The Marcellus shale, US (Pic: Flickr/Nicholas_T)

If the UK extracted 10%, it could supply household demand for around 40 years.

However, critics point out that the geology, land rights, taxes, regulatory regime and supply chain in the UK all militate against a high yield and cheap gas.

To state the obvious, the UK is more densely populated than the US. As we have seen, there is lively opposition to shale developments that seems unlikely to go away.

And the environmental regulations that must be robust to reassure doubters are also bound to slow down development and increase costs.

Then there are the technical issues. It takes time to gain permits, carry out geological studies and drill test wells.

Development is still at an embryonic stage.

Cuadrilla, which has led the charge, is two or three years away from knowing whether its UK operations are commercially viable, according to a Reuters report.

If all constraints were removed, chief executive Francis Egan says “it would take two, three or four years to get up to appreciable production rates”.

In the absence of emergency measures, it is likely to take a little longer, with commercial production ramping up in the early 2020s.

The UK government has set up an Office of Unconventional Oil and Gas (OUGO) to encourage shale gas development.

A Freedom of Information request showed OUGO has a budget of £1.8 million this year and the equivalent of 10 full time staff on the case.

In Europe, the UK has lobbied against tighter regulations and partnered with Poland on shale gas research.

Other countries that have taken a more cautious stance on fracking, such as France and Germany, will be watching the experiment with interest.

So what does the future hold for fracking in the UK? It’s increasingly clear the economic prize of shale gas is evidently too tempting for UK politicians to ignore.

But there is a broad swathe of opposition across the country that will slow the industry down. And perhaps most critically, the economics of extracting shale gas have yet to be proven.

The post Fracking hell: What’s the future for shale gas in the UK? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Activists fear relaxation of trade rules could lead to more fracking

By Megan Darby

Protest is ramping up against a transatlantic trade treaty critics say could weaken environmental protection.

The Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership is intended to boost commerce between Europe and the US, by cutting tariffs and aligning regulations.

Green groups on both sides of the ocean have expressed fears this could mean watering down environmental safeguards and increasing fossil fuel consumption.

A national day of action is planned for Saturday 12 July in the UK to highlight concerns with the TTIP ahead of further negotiations in Brussels next week. This will include a protest outside the business department building in London.

The UK Green Party, which supports the protests, said the TTIP was a “corporate power grab” that “must be stopped”.

Keith Taylor MEP said: “Though huge chunks of this trade deal are shrouded in secrecy what we do know is that TTIP poses a very real threat to the quality of life of people in the UK.

“This deal, favoured by multinationals, threatens to slash regulations that protect our environment and health. But, most worryingly, it represents a serious threat to democracy in our country.”

It follows an anti-TTIP demonstration in Brussels two months ago that resulted in 240 arrests.

Climate impact

One concern of greens is that loosening regulations could increase oil and gas exports from America, increasing European reliance on polluting fossil fuels.

A European position paper leaked earlier this week endorsed lifting restrictions on trade in gas and crude oil. It argued this would help with security of supply, an increasingly hot topic since tensions in the Ukraine highlighted Europe’s heavy dependence on Russian gas.

Natacha Cingotti, campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe, said: “This leaked proposal further confirms our concerns that, while the public is being kept in the dark, the EU-US trade deal is being used to trade away regulations that protect us from dangerous climate change…

“Europe needs to end its high import dependency and make an urgent transition to clean, renewable energy and greater energy efficiency.”

US grassroots environmental network the Sierra Club also raised concerns. Ilana Solomon, director of its responsible trade programme, said: “The EU wants a free pass to import dirty fossil fuels from the US, a run-around US law that would result in more dangerous fracking for oil and gas in our backyards and more climate-disrupting pollution globally.”

Steve Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International, called the proposals “climate denial, pure and simple”. German-based Power Shift executive director Peter Fuchs said communities and the environment would suffer.

German think-tank the Heinrich Boll Foundation, in contrast, said in a report the treaty presented an opportunity to phase out fossil fuel subsidies [FFS]. That would benefit low carbon sectors.

In principle, the European Commission has argued, increased economic cooperation should facilitate greater climate and environmental protection.

In practice, the think-tank pointed out a 2013 impact assessment from Brussels predicted an 11.8 million tonne increase in carbon emissions, in the most liberalised scenario.

The report added: “In the absence of FFS reform, the TTIP will be a step in the wrong direction.”

Precautionary principle

The other core concern for European environmentalists is the treaty could erode the precautionary principle. This is the tenet, long held in Europe, that an action or policy must be proved not harmful before it goes ahead.

In America, on the other hand, it must normally be proved something is harmful before it can be banned.

The philosophical divide is one reason that shale gas fracking has been slower to take off in Europe than the US, for example.

Blogging for the European Greens’ campaigning website against TTIP, MEP Jose Bove said: “Under TTIP, big business is teaming up on both sides of the Atlantic to challenge the precautionary principal, claiming it creates unnecessary ‘technical barriers to trade’. We are fundamentally against this dangerous assumption.

“If anything, we need to do more in the EU to safeguard our citizens and our environment from untested or risky substances or processes.”

The European Commission acknowledges the different approaches on its TTIP website, but insists the high level of environmental protection in Europe is “non-negotiable”.

“Both the EU and the US are committed to high levels of protection for our citizens, but we go about it in different ways. The EU sometimes relies more on regulations, the US more on litigation. Both approaches can be effective, but neither is perfect,” it says.

“This is not a race to the bottom.  Making our regulations more compatible does not mean going for the lowest common denominator, but rather seeing where we diverge unnecessarily.”

Transparency

Protestors’ concerns around the treaty have been compounded by a perceived lack of transparency around the negotiations, which are led by unelected officials.

The Corporate Europe Observatory accused the European Commission of favouring big business in its consultations around the treaty. It found that of the 560 lobbyist meetings and communications the Commission had with stakeholders, 92% were with business and just 4% with public interest groups.

Pia Eberhardt, trade campaigner at the Corporate Europe Observatory, said: “[The trade directorate] actively involved business lobbyists in drawing up the EU position for TTIP while keeping ‘pesky’ trade unionists and other public interest groups at bay.

“The result is a big-business-first agenda for the negotiations which endangers many achievements that people in Europe have long struggled for, from food safety rules to environmental protection.”

A European Court of Justice ruling last week could result in more TTIP documents being made public, but a lawyer told Euractiv it was a “modest step forward”.

The sixth round of negotiations on TTIP takes place in Brussels from 14 to 18 July.

The post Green groups protest transatlantic trade deal appeared first on Climate Home News.

Pic: Public Herald/Flickr

By Megan Darby

Indigenous shale gas could provide more than a third of the UK’s gas supplies in 2035. If the UK fails to invest in gas production it will depend on imports for 90% of its supplies.

These were among the conclusions of National Grid’s latest Future Energy Scenarios report, published on Thursday. The owner and operator of the UK’s core gas and electricity networks, National Grid also has a strategic role in predicting patterns of energy supply and demand.

While National Grid is not directly involved in developing the UK’s shale gas resources, it is well placed to monitor the market. Its models clearly show the controversial new energy source could become a significant part of the energy mix.

Richard Smith, head of energy strategy and policy at National Grid, said: “In our role at the centre of the energy industry, National Grid has a unique insight into the trends shaping the energy landscape.

“It’s really important that we have an open and transparent discussion about where we get our energy from and how we use it.

“Our Future Energy Scenarios document aims to help that dialogue, presenting a range of holistic, plausible and credible scenarios that can help our customers and stakeholders make informed decisions.”

Comment: fracking is no sensible solution to climate change

The report highlights the importance of both economic recovery and political consistency to meeting climate goals. It sets out four plausible trajectories for the next 20 years, of which only one – “gone green” – results in the UK hitting all its environmental targets.

Shale gas plays the biggest role in the “low carbon life” scenario, under which the economy grows but low carbon technology is hampered by political volatility.

Renewable energy is projected to supply between 21% and 32% of total demand in 2035, depending on technology development. In 2012, the figure was 4% and the UK has a target of 15% by 2020.

Fracking for shale gas has become a divisive political issue across Europe. Proponents say it could provide cheap energy, as has happened in the USA, while displacing more-polluting coal. Opponents raise concerns about developing new fossil fuel resources when effective action to tackle climate change means leaving some known reserves in the ground.

The UK government is bullish about the prospects for shale gas, but other European countries have halted development. The incoming European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, has said he personally opposes fracking.

The post Fracking could supply one third UK gas by 2035 – National Grid appeared first on Climate Home News.

Juncker addressed questions from Green MEPs today (Pic: greensefa/Flickr)

By Sophie Yeo

Future EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has said that he is personally against fracking.

Speaking to Green Party MEPs in Brussels today, Juncker expressed concern about potential unforeseen circumstances of using the controversial technology.

“I tend to be cautious even if that’s old-fashioned. I don’t rush into new technologies,” he said.

Fracking is a method of extracting gas and oil from shale rocks by injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals at high pressure into the ground.

The US has tapped into vast supplies of gas and oil using the technique, making it one of the largest fossil fuel producers on the planet.

Some European governments such as the UK and Poland believe it could be the answer to their energy security fears, but environmentalists have raised concerns on a number of grounds.

These include the potential of fracking techniques to pollute water supplies and lock countries into reliance on another source of carbon-emitting fossil fuels, diverting resources away from renewable energy.

France currenty bans the technique, while German lawmakers are reportedly considering blacklisting fracking.

Executive power

Juncker, whom Europe’s heads of states nominated for the EU’s top job, must now be approved by the Parliament before he can take on the role.

Margrete Auken, a Danish Green MEP, said that she felt the Greens should support Juncker following his “acceptable” answers today, although she added it was likely to be a divided debate.

“I think we’re going to look into whether he is so bad that we have to reject him. Personally I don’t think so. I think we can support him,” she told RTCC.

The EU has no control over whether countries choose to exploit their shale gas resources, but can monitor how they undertake the process.

Currently, regulations are determined at the level of member states, with no obligation at an EU level to undertake an environmental impact assessment.

In January, the Commission recommended certain controls on the fracking industry to be implemented by member states. These were a disappointment to anti-fracking campaigners, who had hoped for a stronger set of binding regulations.

But regulations could become a live issue once again under the new Commission, who will have to deal with ramped up concerns over energy security, thanks to a conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Report: Juncker: a potential climate champion for Europe?

Juncker will also have a seat at the EU Council, which has to finalise the EU’s 2030 policies on energy efficiency, renewables and greenhouse gas cuts by October this year.

The future Commission’s president views could sway the direction of the discussions, said Luca Bergamaschi, a researcher at environmental think-tank E3G.

“It could definitely influence the debate. I think the process of the next three to four months will basically decide whether shale gas will have a future or not,” he said.

Bas Eickhout, a Green Party MEP, tweeted that it “remains unclear” whether Juncker will push for stronger regulation, in spite of his personal dislike of shale gas.

He told RTCC that while Juncker admitted he is currently unfamiliar with the topic, he believed that “his intentions are good” and that he appeared to be “more on the positive side of the European People’s Party”, the conservative group of which Juncker is a member.

On shale gas Juncker states he’s against fracking personally. But whether he will push for tough regulation remains unclear. #JunckerTest

— Bas Eickhout (@BasEickhout) July 9, 2014

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By Caroline Lucas

Arriving at the beautiful village of Balcombe last August, ready to take part in the growing protests against Cuadrilla’s plans to start fracking deep in the Sussex countryside in southern England, my biggest concern – as I weaved my way through families with children and dogs, stepping over people picnicking on rugs on the grass verge − was whether we’d escape without rain.

I have to confess that looking out for Russian spies was not high on my list of preoccupations. Yet if Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO Secretary General, is to be believed, perhaps it should have been.

Speaking at a Chatham House conference in London last week, Rasmussen stunned his audience by asserting that Vladimir Putin’s Russian government was behind attempts to undermine projects using hydraulic fracturing technology in Europe.

He said: “… I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engages actively with so-called non-governmental organisations, environmental organisations working against shale gas – obviously to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas. That’s my interpretation.”

This is a pretty mind-boggling assertion − and it is one for which absolutely no evidence at all was adduced.

‘Dangerously deluded’

If this had been the “interpretation” of a fellow Balcombe protester who had turned to their homemade cider a shade early on in the proceedings, it would simply be odd. But the fact that these are the views of the man in charge of the biggest nuclear alliance on Earth is positively terrifying.

The allegation is, quite simply, ludicrous. I’ve met a good many anti-fracking campaigners over the years, and I have never heard anything so absurd. Indeed, Greenpeace gave the proposition admirably short shrift, saying: “The idea that we’re puppets of Putin is so preposterous that you have to wonder what they’re smoking over at NATO HQ.”

Quite. But Rasmussen’s assertion is also deeply worrying.

First, it besmirches the motivations of many thousands of sincere protesters who campaign in good faith against a technology that causes serious pollution to water, soil and air, and which will lock us into ever greater fossil fuel dependence at precisely the time when climate scientists are warning that we urgently need to invest in renewables instead.

It is a technology, moreover, that will not deliver the much-vaunted European energy independence claimed for it, since even under the most optimistic scenarios, shale gas is projected to meet just 10% of European gas demand by 2030.

Most commentators agree that 2%-3% is a more realistic estimate (International Energy Agency: World Energy Outlook 2012). Even in the best case scenario, the volumes of EU shale gas will be too small to impact meaningfully on EU security of supply concerns.

Second, it raises serious questions about the judgment of one of the most powerful men in the world. The head of NATO must be dangerously deluded if he genuinely believes his own rhetoric. And if his assessment is in such serious doubt over this, on how many other issues is his judgment falling short?

Growing campaigns

Perhaps one thing this episode does show, however, is how effective the growing anti-fracking campaigns are becoming, and therefore how much of a threat they pose to those shale gas enthusiasts who still believe − flying in the face of the evidence − that it will offer a low-cost, low-carbon energy future.

Fracking is already banned in five of the 14 EU Member States with estimated reserves − including in France, which has the second largest resources after Poland.

The reality is that one doesn’t need to fantasise about possible Russian attempts to discredit fracking. The evidence is doing that very effectively on its own.

The bigger conundrum is why, in a country with such plentiful renewable resources as the UK, we have a government intent on locking us into yet more fossil fuel dependence.

Judging by the bewildering lack of ministerial commitment in the UK to cheaper, more plentiful renewables − which, alongside a serious investment in efficiency and conservation, really could deliver energy independence − perhaps we should check whether the Russians have infiltrated the Department for Energy and Climate Change as well.

If so, they seem to have been remarkably effective.

This article was produced by the Climate News Network. Caroline Lucas is the UK’s only Green MP. She was arrested at a protest against fracking in Balcombe last year, though found not guilty of all charges.

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Pic: Public Herald/Flickr

By Valerie Brown

Since the onset of the fracking boom almost a decade ago, every state in the US has been examining its geological resources in the hope of finding oil or gas it can access through this extraction method.

Almost half the states are now producing at least some shale gas, with a few – Texas, Pennsylvania, California, Colorado, North Dakota – sitting on massive deposits.

Nearly half a million wells in the US were producing shale gas in 2012. But while many countries now seek to bolster their economies by following the American lead in exploiting this controversial new source of fossil fuels, campaigners in the US are warning of serious collateral damage to the environment: the depletion and contamination of vital water supplies.

The process of fracking, short for “hydraulic fracturing”, involves injecting water, sand and chemicals down vertical wells and along horizontal shafts − which can be several miles long − to open up small pores in the rock. This releases the methane for capture.

Fracking a well just once uses upwards of five million gallons of water, and each well can be fracked 18 times or more. Texas alone used an estimated 25 billion gallons of water for fracking in 2012, according to a recent report by Ceres, a not-for-profit group advising investors on climate change.

Demand accelerating

Where surface water is lacking, as in Texas, underground aquifers are being emptied at record rates. And while fracking’s water use still trails behind personal and agricultural uses, demand is accelerating even while much of the US is suffering extreme drought, which is probably caused or worsened by climate change exacerbated, ironically, by burning fossil fuels.

There is no overarching policy regulating how the industry uses water. In the Energy Policy Act of 2005, a provision known as the “Halliburton loophole” exempts oil and gas operations from almost all federal air and water regulations, leaving protection of these basic life necessities to the states.

Texas does not require operators to report groundwater use, but new regulations in California require operators to state where they will get their water and how they will dispose of their wastewater.

Even in the face of a drought emergency, the state’s well operators still plan to take most of their water from surface sources, says Kyle Ferrar, California state co-ordinator of the Fractracker Alliance, a not-for-profit data analysis group.

Disposing of the water when fracking is complete is also challenging. The wastewater is a mixture of the injected freshwater, fracking chemicals, and deep formation water, which is usually briny and often mildly radioactive. It can’t be recycled for typical water uses, as few public drinking water or sewage treatment plants are equipped to remove fracking contaminants.

In fact, some of these contaminants react with chlorine compounds to form trihalomethanes, which can cause liver and kidney damage.

The most reasonable wastewater solution appears to be re-using it in subsequent fracking operations − a practice that is growing in popularity among American well operators because it can reduce the amount of new water required. Waste can also be injected into spent oil and gas wells, much as CO2 is sequestered.

The US Environmental Protection Agency operates an underground injection control programme, which it administers directly in some states and allows state government to run in others.

But many operators still pump the waste into large surface ponds lined with plastic, allowing the water to evaporate and carry some contaminants into the atmosphere. Storm runoff can also transmit wastewater from ponds and landfills to surface and groundwater systems.

Pennsylvania is struggling to balance its resources in the face of the fracking boom. In 2011, the Department of Environmental Protection asked the state’s gas well operators to stop discharging waste into surface waters. Because Pennsylvania’s geology is not conducive to stable injection wells, operators now ship much of their wastewater next door to Ohio, which encourages the practice as an income source.

Shady practices

In 2011, at least half the wastewater stored in Ohio came from out of state, according to theEnvironment Ohio Research & Policy Center. Many Ohio environmentalists object to taking other states’ waste − partly because the fracking boom has resulted in some shady practices.

“Dumping seems to be a really ongoing problem,” explains Julie Weatherington-Rice, senior scientist at Bennett & Williams Environmental Consultants in Ohio. “We’re seeing dumping down old mineshafts and dumping on roads where the spigot at the end of the tank is [allowed] to dribble all the way to the [disposal] well.”

In March, a Youngstown company admitted it had dumped thousands of gallons of waste into a stormwater sewer feeding into a river system. Testing revealed that the waste contained benzene, which is a known carcinogen, and toluene, a nervous system toxicant.

If concrete wellbores or seals at the wellhead are misaligned or corroded, methane and chemicals can migrate into potable water aquifers − something that the small town of Dimock, Pennsylvania, learned the hard way in 2009.

Most Dimock residents have individual water wells. Shortly after Cabot Oil and Gas began fracking in the area, a resident’s backyard water well exploded. After it was determined that Cabot’s operations were the source of the methane contamination, a consent agreement with the state required Cabot to supply Dimock’s drinking water.

But the state allowed Cabot to stop supplying water in 2011, without testing residents’ well water, according to a report by StateImpact, a project of National Public Radio stations.

Potable water

Because many residents still don’t have potable water as a result of the contamination, volunteers from around the state are holding local events to raise money to supply water to Dimock, says Karen Feridun, an activist with Berks Gas Truth, an anti-fracking group. The situation remains unresolved for the long term.

Although Pennsylvania and Texas have been hit especially hard by the effects of shale gas extraction, no part of the US is exempt.

Even the Pacific Northwest, long insulated from fossil fuel extraction and burning by virtue of its massive hydropower projects and deep layers of flood basalt covering any oil or gas-bearing formations, is now vulnerable.

The region faces the prospect of liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipelines and a massive increase in trains carrying oil and coal through the scenic Columbia River Gorge to west coast ports for shipment to China. LNG terminals are also being planned for gas shipment from the US east coast to Europe.

At some point, campaigners warn, all Americans may have to choose between energy and clean water.

“Make sure [fracking’s] not taking your drinking water or your irrigation or the water that your herds need to survive,” says Weatherington-Rice. “When this happens, you’ve lost that water forever.”

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

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Pic: motiqua/Flickr

By Sophie Yeo

Across the EU voters are starting the process deciding who should represent them in the European Parliament up to 2019.

The result will help determine the region’s climate policies over the next five years – a critical period, as it encompasses UN attempts to sign off an international climate treaty.

The EU has so far played a critical role in these negotiations, but the rise of anti-climate right wing groups means that this agenda could be under threat.

RTCC has asked current MEPs from across the political spectrum how the outcome of this election will impact Parliament’s climate decision-making, and what they think its future priorities should be?

The answers were varied, ranging from curbing black carbon to opposing fracking, demonstrating the crucial role that this week’s elections will play in determining European – and global – climate policy for years to come.

Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy – Alliance of Liberals and Democrats
Netherlands

Pic: EU

Despite what many people believe – that the EU is a front runner on climate change in the world, that we have to fear our competitive position vis a vis the rest of the world because of our ambitious climate policies – it’s the other way around.

The US, China and other parts of the world are becoming much more ambitious. China is investing much more in clean technology than we do in Europe, so I fear that if we do not speed up in Europe in the future our industry will have to buy its clean technology in countries like the US and China, which will definitely damage our competitiveness.

The 2030 package was not a legislative resolution, and in the end we have to put things in legislation, so that we can force each other to really do what we promise. That is going to become a very difficult process because it’s much easier to agree on a non-legislative text than on strong legislation, so that is going to be a very difficult battle in the coming years.

We have to get rid, in the EU, of hidden and non-hidden subsidies on fossil fuels, because the fossil fuel industry is always complaining about subsidising clean energy, but the subsidies that are going into the pockets of the fossil fuel industry are much higher, and that is something we have to tackle as well if we want to tackle climate change.

Eiija-Riitta Korhola – European People’s Party
Finland

Pic: EU

I think we should concentrate on reducing black carbon. It should be a priority instead of CO2 because it is the most urgent problem of the moment. It melts away the glaciers and it has fatal consequences on human health. If it were the basis for the next global agreement in Paris, it could be more fruitful because for China it’s necessary to reduce black carbon pollution particles.

Our first priority is to have a global agreement, otherwise our own efforts will be counterproductive. We have increased the share of total emissions in the EU if we take into account imported products, and therefore it is fruitless to continue in this track.

In the 2030 climate package, my political group is going to concentrate on one target. We would like to have one clear emissions reduction target, but we are reluctant to tighten the target to 40% if we don’t get a global agreement, because in that case our efforts are counterproductive.

Jill Evans – Greens/European Free Alliance
UK (Wales)

Pic: EU

The economic crisis pushed climate change right down the EU agenda. Europe has to re-establish itself as a global leader. The political nature of the parliament will be critical in this respect. We need MEPs who will take ambitious action on climate change and building a sustainable economy.

The priorities should be higher and binding targets on emissions and energy efficiency are essential. I will continue to oppose fracking and work for much greater investment in renewables, especially from the Horizon 2020 research programme.

Jo Leinen – Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats
Germany

Pic: EU

I hope that the next European Parliament will be as ambitious as the previous one. Nevertheless, I have some doubts because we will have political forces in the next Parliament that are not really friendly to climate policy. We have a lot of populists and nationalists that deny the climate problem or don’t encourage a common solution on the European level, so it will be most probably harder to get ambitious climate protection decisions.

We will have the next big global summit in Paris 2015, and I think the world expects Europe to be a leader in climate protection, so we have to decide the next milestone – the targets for 2030 – and they should be in line with our long term 2050 goal to decarbonise our industry and society. The 40% CO2 reduction will only be met if you have other targets like renewables and efficiency.

There are a few other big questions, like the reform of the emissions trading system and refining the goal of biofuels in our strategy, to make biofuels compatible with biodiversity and preserving natural capital. These are the cornerstones of policy in the next few years. I also want to preserve the Ecodesign directive and to continue to have benchmarks for our energy consumption according to technological progress, because there are a lot of populist arguments against this.

Bas Eickhout – Greens/European Free Alliance
Netherlands

Pic: EU

The real problem lies in the centre.

Whenever we have made a progressive environmental policy in the past it was because we could play the two middle parties apart from each other, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, but maybe because of the oncoming election results, we won’t be able to do that because there will not be majority possible with one of the two.

This means you will always get the grand coalition in the centre, with the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats teaming up together on every point, and you get very grey policies, especially on environmental issues. We fear that Europe will not be as outspoken as we have been over the last five years.

Of course the push for more coordination with energy is certainly now on the agenda because of the Russian situation. There the extremes will become stronger. Both right wing and left wing extremes, they are very understanding towards Putin, to say the least, so that doesn’t help, but nevertheless there you see that energy is on the political agenda.

But the big question is if you hear people plea for an energy union, for example Tusk is doing that, the big question is what kind of energy union? If I hear Tusk talking about an energy union, he’s mainly talking about coal and nuclear. Very clearly that is absolutely not the energy union that we are talking about.

Chris Davies – Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
UK

Pic: EU

The growth of the fringe groups will mean the only way to secure a qualified vote will be to have support of the European People’s Party and, as things stand at the moment, they are unlikely to support the ambitious steps necessary to introduce measures to respond to climate change.  The EPP, while they may well endorse the principles, they will not want to endorse the practical measures necessary, especially not while many of the European continental economies are in the doldrums and unemployment remains very high.

My solution is we need to stop the top down approach and work with industry. I suspect there are more companies than we realise who are prepared to endorse and who would be enthusiastic in supporting an ambitious environmental agenda which was genuinely committed to building a competitive low carbon economy.

If I’m re-elected, then early next week I start making calls to a whole range of business organisations because I want to see the formation of a cross party group within the Parliament to press for progressive measures that are beneficial to business and can also promote a low carbon agenda. Absolutely top of my list on a whole range of environment issues is Unilever.

Pavel Poc – Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats
Czech Republic

Pic: EU

Everything depends on voters. Conservatives and Eurosceptics are not much interested in the climate change issue. If the socialists and democrats group is major in the Parliament, there is hope we may go further.

As the worldwide consensus on climate policy is far away, in my opinion we should see adaptation as the priority. Climate change is accelerating and we have to be prepared for the results. Our species has not yet been confronted with the hot state of the Earth and we can only estimate what will come in a few decades. We can easily be called to preserve our civilisation. And if we don’t succeed, discussion about mitigation or even reversing the processes we started is pointless.

Satu Hassi – Greens/European Free Alliance
Finland

Pic: EU

The thing I’m worried is if the right wing parties, EPP, ECR and the national parties, together have a majority in the parliament. In that case, the forecast for climate policies is pretty bad because the right wing national parties have been most strongly against ambitious climate policy.

It could have a real impact globally. It could prevent EU continuing its role as the locomotive of international climate protection. In the international climate negotiations there has never been progress without the EU being the driving force, taking initiatives, formulating proposals and encouraging other countries to join. But if the majority of the European Parliament says no, then the chances for the European Parliament and the Commission continuing the role of EU as driving force of climate policy are greatly reduced.

The recent news that most probably the melting of western Antarctic ice sheet is already irreversible is a very strong alarm bell showing that that it cannot wait. The more and more we delay action in reducing emissions, the more we are taking risks of irreversible, really huge changes on the planet which will have a dramatic impact on human society.

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Fracking rigs in British Colombia (Pic: Nexen/Flickr)

By John Ashton

You can be in favour of fixing the climate. Or you can be in favour of exploiting shale gas. But you can’t be in favour of both at the same time.

An effective response to climate change requires a shift, within a generation or so in all the major economies including Britain, to a carbon- neutral energy system.

We understand how to do that; we have the technology and engineering capacity to do it; we can afford to do it.

But we can’t do it while making ourselves more not less dependent for power and heating on any kind of fossil fuel.

It is sometimes argued that exploiting shale gas in Britain would be good for the climate. Gas, it is claimed, is a “transition fuel”, a bridge we must walk over to get to carbon-neutral energy.

It will buy us more time to get there, because the more gas we burn, the less we will burn coal, which as a fuel is even more carbon intensive.

That case does not stand up.

In Britain – in contrast to what has happened in the US – there will be no either/or choice between shale gas and coal.

In the next few years, there is simply no prospect of enough shale gas coming on stream to make a structural difference to our energy mix.

Strategic change

In the longer term, towards 2030 and beyond, we will be moving away from coal anyway, not least because of our carbon targets. Even on the most bounteous projections for shale gas, it will make little difference by that stage to how much coal we burn.

If – and it’s a big if – enough shale gas can be extracted cheaply enough, it might in due course displace some gas that would otherwise be imported.

But that would lock us further into gas dependency and chill the investment we actually need in renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Even if shale gas were going to displace coal, there would still be a problem.

It is true that when you burn it, methane gas gives you more energy for less carbon emitted than coal. But that’s not the whole story.

Methane has much more impact on the climate than carbon dioxide. You only need a bit of what you are extracting  – some 3% – to leak into the air between the well and the flame and the overall climate impact starts to exceed that of coal.

The industry promises minimal leaks. The Government promises regulation to prevent leaks. But the margin for error is very small.

We will need strict regulation, very strictly enforced. On the basis of what has happened in the US and elsewhere, there is no reason to think we would have a leakproof system.

The pressures on our own regulatory system – the budget cuts and the assault on red tape – will make it even harder to build such a system.

The Deregulation Bill going through Parliament now will make regulators responsible for “promoting economic growth”. The result will be enforcement that is more permissive not stricter.

When you think about it, the government has created a conflict for itself. It wants you to believe that it will enforce tough rules so that shale gas will be safe for the climate, for the local environment and for your health.

It also wants you to believe that that it will bear down on red tape, cutting costs for industry.

Something has to give.

As we have seen in the past, lots of people will be whispering behind closed doors in the ears of Ministers and officials that it should be those costly gold-plated regulations.

Diplomatic choice

There is another reason why shale gas can only be part of the problem, not part of the solution to climate change.

Success on climate change is vital for the security and prosperity of the UK. We need to use all the resources of British diplomacy to achieve it.

We won’t succeed unless a lot of the conventional reserves of coal, oil and gas still under the ground stay under the ground.

A diplomatic goal for us and for all like-minded partners must be to create the conditions around the world for the orderly retirement of those assets.

Britain has real authority and leverage around the world on climate change. It was a privilege to see that from close up in my six years as a climate change envoy for Margaret Beckett, David Miliband and William Hague.

My conclusion from that experience is that the diplomatic challenge now is, yes, a difficult one. But it is not by any means impossible.

Not at the moment that is.

It would soon become impossible if, just as we sought to persuade others to leave their conventional reserves in the ground, we went hell for leather to extract unconventional gas and oil from under our own feet. We would no longer be listened to.

Diplomacy starts with what you do, not with what you ask of others.

This text is an edited version of a speech given by John Ashton, the UK’s Special Representative for Climate Change between 2006-2012. Download a full version below.

John Ashton – God and Mammon

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(Pic: BHP Bilton)

By Gerard Wynn

Britain must simplify its environmental regulations to try and match US gains from exploiting shale gas, a panel of lawmakers said on Thursday.

The report, written by a panel of 13 Lords from the country’s upper parliament, described shale gas development as an “urgent national priority” and lamented “unnecessarily complicated” legislation which it said was hobbling the industry.

Its central recommendation was for the government to establish a high-level panel to direct shale gas policy, helping coordinate rules presently governed by a range of agencies and four government departments.

It found that the Environment Agency, which regulates the industry, had not received any requests for licences since a moratorium on fracking was lifted two years ago.

“We strongly support the Government in their objective to exploit these resources but believe they need to do much more to encourage exploration and get development moving,” said the report, “The economic impact on UK energy policy of shale gas and oil”.

“There is no reason why effective regulation should not be transparent and speedy as well as rigorous. Delay is not only costly and wasteful, it can also drive investors elsewhere.”

“A clearer, more coherent and less complex approach to regulation is needed to facilitate speedy development of the industry while providing reassurance to the public that development can go ahead safely.”

The report said Britain could emulate US success in shale extraction, which has slashed gas prices.

“The shale gas revolution in the United States has illustrated the economic opportunity offered to the United Kingdom by its own shale gas resources—if they can be developed successfully,” it said.

The report also found that UK shale gas extraction faced key differences which may make it difficult to match the US success, including a smaller resource, higher population density, wider environmental controls, and public rather than private landowner ownership of mineral rights which reduced local financial benefits from extraction.

Energy security

Shale gas development exploits a production technique using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to release gas from shale rocks.

The House of Lords report dismissed public concerns about the environmental impacts of fracking including methane leakage in the groundwater and atmosphere, finding “most of it unfounded”.

However, it acknowledged the problem of additional traffic, one of the biggest concerns voiced in shale gas protests, which rises sharply as a result of vehicle movements for example transporting water and waste during fracking.

“The Committee recognises that development of shale, like any other industrial activity, would cause an increase in traffic and disruption in some places, especially during periods when wells were being drilled. Although planning controls may mitigate disturbance, there should be a role for the industry’s community benefits scheme to compensate those affected individually.”

In the United States, massive shale gas development has helped cut wholesale natural gas prices sharply, to $2-5 per million Btu from 2009-2014, compared with $5-13 from 2003-2008.

US gas prices are now a fraction of those in the EU, causing concern among European policymakers that the bloc may lose its competitive edge.

The energy security benefits were a major focus of the British House of Lords report.

“It would reduce imports and help maintain security of supply,” the report said of UK shale gas.

“This would be especially valuable given the continuing fall in output from the North Sea and Europe’s reliance on Russia, its biggest gas supplier, highlighted by the crisis in Ukraine.”

“If the UK does not develop its shale resources in a timely fashion, it runs a serious risk of losing the energy intensive and petrochemical industries which depend on competitively-priced energy and raw materials and which employ around 250,000 people.”

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Wyoming’s gas fields, a small picture of the USA’s vast shale gas industry (Pic: Sky Truth/Flickr)

By Kieran Cooke

The fracking industry is the new star on the US energy scene, credited by its backers with bringing down domestic fuel prices and revitalising the US economy.

But amid the talk of an energy revolution, there are questions about just how long the fracking boom can last.

There’s no doubt that fracking – the complex process through which oil and gas is extracted from deposits of shale rock deep underground – has revolutionised the US energy sector.

Fracking, says the oil and gas industry, will bring an end to the country’s dependence on fuel imports: self-sufficiency is the stated goal.

Governments in other countries, including the UK, are jealously watching developments in the US: many are seeking to promote their own shale energy boom.

Though the oil and gas produced from fracking are fossil fuels, some green groups see the industry as potentially helpful in fighting climate change: the idea is that these fuels – particularly supposedly cleaner fracked gas – will act as transition energies till renewables like solar and wind power are properly developed.

When that happens, the theory goes, we can all embrace a fossil fuel-free future.

Earlier this month the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tentatively endorsed the use of shale gas, despite concerns that the fracking process releases considerable quantities of methane – a potent greenhouse gas – into the atmosphere.

Depleting aquifers

There are other questions about the future of fracking. The process uses vast amounts of water: the Ground Water Protection Council, made up of various US state water regulatory agencies, estimates that each fracking operation requires between two and four million gallons of water.

With parts of the US like a pincushion, punctured by thousands of wells, that’s an awful lot of water.

The US Government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says the more than 35,000 oil and gas wells engaged in fracking use up to 140 billion gallons of water each year, roughly equivalent, it says, to the annual consumption of a city of five million. A cocktail of chemicals is added to water in the fracking process, and most water used is not recycled.

Moreover, many regions where fracking is most intensive are also areas prone to serious water shortages.

A 2013 report by the Western Organization of Resource Councils (WORC), a network of community groups across four states in the US west including North Dakota, one of the main fracking areas, said water used in the extraction process threatened supplies for agriculture and for rural communities.

Bursting point?

“There is mounting evidence that the current level of water use for oil and gas production simply cannot be sustained and that projected increases in use may lead to a crisis”, says the WORC. “Something has to give.”

Then there are questions about the whole financial basis of fracking, with critics warning that the industry is a bubble that will soon burst – “the new subprime” threatening not only the energy sector but also the US financial system.

Billions of dollars have been sunk into the fracking industry. Fracking is a far more expensive process than most conventional oil and gas exploration, involving both vertical and horizontal drilling techniques.

At first shale wells produce large volumes of oil and gas but production tends to taper off fast. New wells then have to be sunk in order to maintain production.

Typically, shale companies operate on substantial levels of debt, continually faced with having to service their vast borrowings.

While up-to-date, detailed information on the overall state of the fracking industry is hard to come by, some analysts say production is already showing signs of peaking, causing nervousness among investors.

Export potential

Many operators focus on the extraction of shale oil, which commands higher prices in the market: infrastructure for shale gas – which involves the construction of compressor stations, storage facilities and thousands of miles of pipelines – is still relatively undeveloped.

That’s why, say some analysts, rather than spend billions of dollars developing domestic infrastructure, the US gas industry is urging the authorities to build terminals to export shale gas in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe and Asia, where it will fetch prices up to five times higher. Already two bills have been introduced into Congress aimed at fast-tracking LNG exports.

The fracking industry has repeatedly said that all the drilling and disruption is worthwhile in order to achieve US energy self-sufficiency.

But with production becoming increasingly difficult and expensive, and with the frackers anxious to recoup their expenditure by exporting to Europe and China, achieving that self-sufficiency looks more and more like a distant dream.

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

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Source: Flickr/wcn247

By John McGarrity

As the US and EU inch closer to a landmark trade deal, green groups in Europe have stepped up warnings that a new transatlantic compact would make fracking more likely by swerving environmental and planning laws.

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) aims to eliminate barriers for US companies investing in Europe and vice versa, but could be used to ride roughshod over public opposition to exploitation of shale gas, green groups warn.

“The talks are likely to favour safeguards for corporate investments over safeguards for citizens and the environment, allowing companies to seek compensation when government decisions affect their profits,” a coalition of green groups including Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club said in a recent report.

This could benefit companies seeking to exploit shale gas, whose activities may be affected by environmental or health regulations, the report added.

Opponents of shale gas are already relying on laws and regulations in the EU to slow or prevent fracking, which injects a highly-pressurised mix of chemicals, sand and water deep underground to free up reserves of gas and oil.

They also argue the method could pollute air soil and water, harm rural areas and wildlife and lock countries into the use of fossil fuels for many decades to come.

Following the latest round of talks with the US on a potential lowering of trade barriers, EU chief negotiator Barcia Bercero said it wanted an agreement to cut costs for businesses, “without cutting corners on health, safety, labour, environmental standards”.

EU Chief Negotiator Garcia Bercero: we want #TTIP to cut costs for #biz – without cutting corners on health, safety, labour, env standards

— EU TTIP Team (@EU_TTIP_team) March 14, 2014

A great corporate stitch-up – and its antidote. My column on the transatlantic single market: http://t.co/YOi1YQeThc #TTIP

— GeorgeMonbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 11, 2014

But environmental groups say a possible clause, known as the ‘investor-state settlement agreement’ , could enable companies to claim damages through an arbitration panel if they regard their profits as harmed by changes in laws or policies.

“Arbitrators have a strong bias towards investors – and no specialised knowledge about our climate or fracking. Companies are already using existing investment agreements to claim damages from governments, with taxpayers picking up the tab,” the report says.

A growing number of North American law firms have recently set up in Brussels to lobby the European Commission on environmental regulations, and countries such as Canada are pushing hard for a removal of an effective ban on oil products derived from its highly-polluting tar sands.

The European Commission in January dropped initial proposals to apply a new layer of regulation on fracking, pointing to existing legislation it says would safeguard against pollution, a major boon for plans by the UK and Poland to exploit shale gas.

The US unconventional oil and gas industry – particularly those corporations that make drilling equipment – would likely be a big investor in Europe if shale gas reserves turn out to be commercially viable.

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