Fracking will NOT reduce energy bills

David Beynon  (‘Let’s get fracking’, Evening Post, 31 October) should be careful what he wishes for.

Living in Pontarddulais, he and his neighbours are in the front line of unconventional gas development; caught between plans for Underground Coal Gasification in the Loughor Estuary and Coal Bed Methane extraction in the former coalfields.

The devastation that the frackers will wreak across the countryside will make them long for the days when all they were threatened with was “ugly” windmills spoiling their view.

The “subsidy” paid to green energy producers pales into insignificance when compared to public finance support for nuclear energy or the tax incentives being offered to frackers.

Although local companies might be involved in exploration for unconventional gas, when it comes to extraction the big multi-nationals will move in, sell the gas on the international market and export their profits.

Even the Secretary of State for Energy, Ed Davey, has conceded that unconventional gas is not likely to reduce energy bills in the UK, any more than scrapping “green taxes” will do.

The “big six” energy companies are interested only in profit; efficiency has nothing to do with it.

Their weasel words of complaint about green taxes are a smokescreen to hide their real intention of destroying any hope of an indigenous energy industry based on renewables in order to keep the UK hooked on dirty, damaging, unsustainable fossil fuels.

 

 

Advertisement