Unfortunately, Fracking is raising its ugly head again, in 2017 CSG member Barry Fox produced a report into Fracking which given the current climate we thought it’s time to share again. Comment from Barry below:
“At the time the paper was written some environmentalists thought fracking was acceptable from a climate point of view but my investigations convinced me that it was not. Now, 6 years on, coal has nearly gone and we need to be getting rid of gas; it is very clear that fracking for gas will only hinder that effort, particularly since fracked gas would probably take 5 years or more to come on stream and continue for 20 years or more.
Hopefully, fracking will not take off, but if it does, Cheshire is a likely location since licences to frack most of Cheshire were issued by the government in 2016 and are still valid, though some are now in different ownership.
Risk of earthquakes is scary, though perhaps more important is the industrialisation of the countryside that would be caused by the large-scale extraction of gas from the shale under Cheshire. The paper investigates fracking in some detail to assess these and other impacts.”