Shale Gas

Debate between Baroness Featherstone and Lord Young of Norwood Green

Tuesday 7th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Featherstone]

As my noble friend Lord Stoneham reminds me, their environmental standards are somewhat lower than ours. I am not saying that everywhere in America is unpopulated, but it is a very different territory from most of the United Kingdom.

There will be people—such as people in Ryedale, for example—who object strongly to what is projected for their local environment. They will use the planning process to object in the way that they are entitled to do. Promises were made that national areas of exceptional beauty would be protected and that local people would hold sway, but that has gone and the promises have been broken.

Putting all that to one side, the most damaging effect of developing the shale industry is one that to an extent was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Smith. It will set back our ability to reach our legally binding targets by 40 years and undermine the development to scale of renewable heat technology. Renewable heat is vital. Industry will develop the technologies we need for renewable heat if we have the right policy framework and incentives. There would have to be incentives that carry a cast-iron guarantee from the Government that they will not be taken away in a precipitate manner, as happened with the Government undermining investor confidence by the precipitate removal of agreed subsidies on wind and solar. The noble Lord, Lord Smith, raised the breaking of the manifesto pledge on carbon capture and storage.

The Government’s reputation will no longer be adequate to reassure investors; they will need an agreement that is literally written in blood. Additionally, as several noble Lords have said, all we have in the UK so far is licences for exploratory drilling. We are years if not decades away from producing shale gas at any scale, if it happens at all. The Environmental Audit Committee concluded that shale will not contribute to replacing coal because, by the time it comes on stream, coal will no longer be used. I do not believe that fracking is the answer. I do not put my trust in this Government. Everything we have seen since the end of the coalition—when the Liberal Democrats held sway in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, which is also no longer—is pretty indicative of the importance that the Conservative Government attach to climate change. Everything indicates that this Government do not favour a green approach, green understanding or the imperative, for both the planet and the economy, of taking our future energy supply seriously and not introducing something that is a stop-gap and not sustainable. If we had a Government who encouraged cutting-edge technology—renewables, energy efficiency, home energy improvements—

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

I hesitate to interrupt the noble Baroness, but twice she has referred to fracking being not sustainable. Can she therefore explain why she is in favour of gas being imported for at least the next 30, 40 or 50 years? That is the bit in her argument that I do not understand. I could dispute many things that she says on the environmental impact, for which she has produced no evidence whatever to back it up, but why is she in favour of us importing gas for the next 30 or 40 years rather than using our natural resources?

[Baroness Featherstone]

Other resources are coming on stream, such as green gas, hydrogen and so on. I object to creating a whole new industry, which will be a stop-gap, rather than encouraging our homegrown industries to develop the new technologies that we need to produce renewable heat. I do not see developing the shale industry as the answer to our question. I am not that keen on importing gas, but for the time being, that would be my preference rather than starting a whole new industry with the destruction it brings in its wake.

There is a list of what the Government should be doing in terms of regulation, intervention, sequestration and demand reduction—and then we would actually get somewhere. There seems to be a general prayer that somehow shale will save us. My faith in that not happening is based on the fact that the companies that are taking up the exploratory drilling licences are not huge companies but middle-sized companies, and because of the difference in geology and geography, they will find that it is not profitable. That is the main reason why I am hoping that shale will go away with its drills between its legs.