FoE in support for fracking shock
Mar 6, 2015
Bishop Hill in Energy: gas, Energy: other

After years of campaigning against fracking, Friends of the Earth Scotland have made an extraordinary u-turn and are now vigorously campaigning in favour of the controversial* technique.

This shock news comes to us via the Scottish Government who have announced a £250,000 fund to accelerate development of geothermal energy in Scotland. The press release includes a statement from the minister involved Friends of the Earth's Richard Dixon:

Heating is our biggest source of climate emissions and geothermal energy can play a major part in replacing fossil-fuelled heating. We already know that there is potential to deploy geothermal energy on a very wide scale in Scotland This new funding is very welcome and will help good proposals get moving and attract further investment. Different techniques will have different impacts but geothermal energy is clearly worth serious investigation, and it is great that the Scottish Government is taking the lead in making this happen.

Now as readers at BH may well know, geothermal energy in Scotland involves extracting water heated by geothermal energy from old coal workings and the technique involves fracking the coal seams so that the water gets heated up as much as possible. With Friends of the Earth now in favour of fracking, it can't be long before Cuadrilla and iGas get the go-ahead.

*© BBC

Update on Mar 6, 2015 by Registered CommenterBishop Hill

On Twitter, geophysicist Ian Stimpson says that fracking is only required if they extract geothermal heat from granite. The fractures in coal are sufficient he says, comparing the process to coalbed methane. (Although having said that, coalbeds are sometimes fracked for methane I believe).

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