Letters | 16 May 2013

The other side of fracking

Sir: Peter Lilley’s article on fracking (‘The only way is shale’, 11 May) is right to outline the role that shale can play in addressing Britain’s energy crisis, creating jobs, and generating tax revenues. But he is guilty of several errors and omissions.

First, he ignores the concerns of local communities in opposing drilling and extraction. Second, he fails to address questions around methane leakage which are concerning US legislators and executive agencies. Third, he does not set out a role for carbon capture and storage technology, which would reduce the carbon emissions of shale. Fourth, he fails to acknowledge the body of evidence which predicts that onshore wind will become cheaper than gas by 2020.

Fifth, he claims that ‘global temperatures have failed to rise for 16 years’ without acknowledging that the last decade was the hottest on record or that the Met Office claims the current pause is consistent with ‘a trend of continued long-term warming’. Sixth, he claims that China and the US will not decarbonise, when both have started piloting EU-style cap-and-trade schemes this year.

Finally, and perhaps most bizarrely, he claims that Cuadrilla were excluded from an inquiry on shale gas conducted by the select committee of which he is a member. In fact, Cuadrilla’s chief executive, Francis Egan, was a witness at a meeting which Mr Lilley attended. Mr Egan’s evidence was cited nine times in the committee’s report, which Mr Lilley signed off.

If Peter Lilley cannot even remember whose evidence he has heard, why should we trust a word he writes?
Will Straw
Institute for Public Policy Research,
London WC2


 
Sir: Peter Lilley is incorrect when he implies in his recent article that WWF-UK receives funding from the UK government for public lobbying — the funding we receive is used to undertake projects overseas.