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A creative protest action by Greenpeace is drawing attention to the ominous developments of fracking in the United Kingdom. Fossil fuel companies and the government are pushing for industrial-scale domestic shale gas and oil exploitation while hiding behind the shield of “energy security”. The international civil organisation is protesting against an upcoming law that would allow horizontal drilling for natural gas under British homes without the property owners’ permission.
The activists mimicked fracking company workers when they approached the prime minister’s home and set up a fence line around it. The information board on the fence warns you that they are just drilling under your home, and if you have complaints, you should call this number which is in fact the phone number of David Cameron’s office. A compensatory check for 50 pound sterlings was also left by the entrance. According to the bill, this sum is the upper limit of drilling compensations for the landowners.
Caging the bear through fracking?
In just several months, the ship of Cameron’s coalition government turned with swelling sails to fracking waters. What is behind this rush? Did the ongoing crisis in Ukraine cause so much concern about energy security that decision makers throughout Europe became so eager to follow the overseas example? If the pipelines from the East are running through a civil-war stricken failed state, maybe it’s reasonable to decrease energy-dependance from that direction.
They are eager in the United Kingdom for sure. Politicians and representatives from the fossil fuel companies released a whole barrage of statements about how fracking is desirable and the future of energy in England. It doesn’t seem to matter how much sceptical energy experts are trying to lessen the elevated mood, 10 Downing Street is crazy for shale gas.
Pic: Teacher Dude (Flickr CC)
Curiously, the United Kingdom is among the countries least dependent on imported natural gas in Europe. Still, up to 15 percent of its energy needs come from outside sources. Imported energy costs are bad for finances, and it gets only worse on the continent. By 2030, Europe will import 80 percent of its oil and gas. Twenty-one members of the EU out of 28 import natural gas from Russia. Some countries can import as much as 80 percent of their energy needs in the form of fossil fuels from the same source.
What can you do if you are British and don’t want to feed the landgrabbing bear more than now? Well, you can build more nuclear power plants (just make it sure that it’s not Rosatom which does it) — hardly an eco-friendly solution. You can burn more coal, but you will fill your carbon emission quotas in no time, and it’s pretty to hard to imagine a new army of coal miners in the same country where the government cracked down on miner unions so hard just thirty years ago. Or you can replace imported natural gas… with natural gas from domestic sources.
Fossil fuels just won’t go away by themselves
The template is on the other side of the Atlantic. The US had became a fossil fuel exporter in just a decade. The key was industrial level fracking. Now don’t make any mistake about it: environmentalists hoped not so long ago that a shortage of fossil fuel sources would force the green energy revolution sooner or later. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be the case. The global energy industry calculates that they can rely upon fossil fuels for decades if not centuries. If we don’t count shale gas and oil, we still have unimagineable amount of methane in the Siberian permafrost, just a few meters underground. Frozen methane is deposited on the continental shelves and coal-bed methane is another possibility, just to name a couple of examples. Humanity can heat the planet with carbon emission until the next ice age. The prospect is there with all the climate change implications. We haven’t even mentioned the oil- and natural gas-derivates among an army of products right in our households yet. It’s just not the green way.
Taking the American way — fracking — is not so straightforward for Europe, even if we don’t count the resistance of green parties, civil society, and so on. Even the most sanguine expectations don’t bargain for more than a 10 percent share of shale gas and oil in the energy supply of Europe by 2030, hardly an amount to substitute Eastern fossil fuels. To reach that otherwise unrealistic goal, literally hundreds of wells have to be drilled throughout Europe every year. Cost estimates warn us as well that the US fracking industry wasn’t born overnight; it took decades of researching, experiments and investments to support the shale gas boom of today. Shale gas from Europe will be never as cheap as natural gas from Russia, and the energy market will most likely follow its own logic and replace the even more expensive gas from different sources like Quatar or the Maghreb first instead.
What the frack…?
So what’s the rush in the UK then? The increased tax income through fracking companies must be a very appealing prospect in these times. In my opinion, shale gas is coming (sadly) at any rate, and the company that can gain experience and perfect the technology will be one step ahead of its rivals in Europe. The United Kingdom can be a trial ground and maybe a good starting point for British fracking companies that are targeting the European shale gas market, hence we have this outrageous bill in the homeland of liberal democracies, and the land enclosures… We need a revolution in energy but certainly not this kind.
Related pages:
An online debate about fracking in the UK
Europe’s Shale Gas Potential map on WSJ
Energy security: An excuse for fracking in Europe?
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