Fracking Lancashire

That democracy is a superior form of government to any other goes without saying. But in order to function, it has to be conducted in such a way and on such a scale as to ensure that the people or their elected representatives are making decisions based on genuine alternatives. With this week’s decision by Lancashire County Council to reject a second application for fracking on a site near Blackpool, something has gone seriously wrong. An important national issue has been allowed to be settled according to purely local concerns.

Warned by their lawyers that there were no environmental or safety grounds for rejecting the application, councillors instead voted to throw it out on the grounds that it would have an ‘adverse urbanising effect on the landscape’ — this, about a temporary drilling rig. While it might be understandable that locals should be concerned about development on their doorstep, they would have made a very different decision, of course, had the consequence of rejecting a fracking rig been to deprive themselves of an energy supply. Nationally, those are the alternatives on offer. The result of blocking the construction of energy infrastructure is a rapidly worsening energy crisis.

An energy policy which favours a switch to cleaner energy is a good thing, but not to the point where it threatens supplies. While planned closures of dirty coal power stations are well on schedule, the introduction of cleaner energy sources is falling well behind. During 2013, generating capacity in Britain fell by 4.9 per cent. Demand for electricity, on the other hand, fell by just 0.2 per cent. Year by year, we are creeping towards the point when power stations will be un-able to keep pace with peak demand, leading to blackouts along the lines of those experienced during Edward Heath’s three-day week.