Fracking subsidies would be better spent elsewhere | Letters

You quote the chief of the task force on shale gas, Lord Smith of Finsbury, as saying, "If someone demonstrated that developing this industry (fracking) in the UK would mean a substantial raising of greenhouse gas emissions, that would be a showstopper" ('Too soon to decide' whether fracking is good for UK, 15 July). In fact, many scientific papers have demonstrated the "substantial raising of greenhouse gas emissions" from fracking. A team at Cornell University has shown that, even at the lowest value of methane escape achieved in practice during fracking in the US, the greenhouse gas emissions of shale gas are higher than coal-burning. If, by some miracle, zero methane leaks were achieved in the UK, the carbon footprint of electricity generation from fracked natural gas would still be about 45 times higher than generation by biomethane from the anaerobic digestion of farm and food waste.

Far better for the planet if the subsidies currently offered to landowners to accept fracking on their land were instead used to encourage farmers to send their animal and crop waste for anaerobic digestion. Additionally, the electricity and heat will probably be cheaper for the consumer, given the extraction costs and uncertain yield of fracking.
Professor Keith Barnham
London