People often ask me what my job title as Professor of Environment and Spatial Planning actually means. It's a good question and one that challenges me as an academic to explain my research and ideas more effectively to policy and public audiences. My focus is on assessing the way policy and decisions are made that affect places, people and the environment. In so doing, I am looking to inform methods and outcomes to help deliver the kind of society that we want. Of course the key question here revolves around who are the 'we' in that statement. This blog looks at this challenge through the prism of the current fracking debate.
Any policy or decision associated with land use planning, necessarily, creates winners and losers. The planning system is the arena within which opposing arguments are mediated and assessed with decisions made through locally elected councillors that are rooted in the public interest. In so doing they are required, normally, to follow government guidance and policy.
So my starting point for unpacking fracking begins with a search for the current UK energy policy. Unfortunately, we have to journey back to 2007 for a White Paper entitled "Meeting the Energy Challenge" for any overall policy statement. The 2008 Climate Change Act provides a steer with a legal commitment for the UK to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% by 2050 and we do have an Energy Act 2013 focussed on securing affordable low carbon energy.
This lack of any national policy is problematic as we have seen various coalition government ministers' at loggerheads over the perceived impact of wind farms. Recent pronouncements strongly oppose any more on-shore wind farms or solar farms with ad-hoc changes made to subsidy arrangements as a consequence. Strong political support is also forthcoming for more nuclear power, albeit without any public subsidy. It is within this dynamic and uncertain energy policy mix that fracking has emerged as a 'game changer'.
The story of support for fracking has been really interesting to observe. The coalition government have embraced fracking's potential so completely that they state publicly that any opposition is irrational and against the national interest. From this position of absolute support they have rejected any new EU Directive that would look specifically at issues from the fracking process not covered by existing legislation such as cumulative impact, underground risk assessments, chemical mixes and methane emissions. They have even gone further to say that some environmental safeguards should be reduced due the complex burden of permissions and licenses.
A recent inquiry into fracking by a House of Lords Committee (Economic Affairs Committee, May 2014) lends further support, urging radical changes in law to enable the fast-track of fracking preventing any planning delays. The chair Lord Macgregor stated that "Developing a successful shale gas and oil industry should be national priority". On 23 May 2014, the coalition government announced an extra compensation package of £800,000 on average as compensation for those affected by fracking.
So is this 'dash to frack' a good way to make an energy policy decision in what we all surely recognise as a key area of public policy concern?
1. The case for shale gas/oil is based on the transformative effects that have occurred in the US fracking revolution leading to cheaper energy prices and improved energy security. However, there are huge dangers in thinking that the scale of exploitation in the US can be replicated in the UK, given our different geology and cost factors for extraction. Moreover, it has been widely reported that the US Energy Information Administration will publish a revised estimate of allegedly game changing major shale gas reserves in California downwards by some 96%. Amidst claims that inflated energy estimates had been calculated on the 'back of envelopes', we now have todays British Geological Survey announcement that in the Weald Basin there is no gas reserves and only limited oil.
2. The dismissal and denigrating of any opposition to fracking as irrational and against the national interest is not an effective way to win an argument. We need evidence-based policy and we have seen a debate that is more akin to a pantomime. The debate becomes stuck in a groundhog day mentality becoming sterile and increasingly polarised.
3. The lack of any proper government-led consultation on fracking risks becoming mired in legal challenges from the Aarhus Convention. This is a convention the UK government signed up to that enables the public a legal right of access to environmental information and, crucially, provisions for public participation in environmental decision-making. My view is that fracking has been pushed through centrally without any such information or debate. Why risk delay by openly flouting conventions the government have signed up to?
4. The rush to provide incentives to people and communities affected by fracking is troublesome in social and environmental justice terms, given that many people in the UK have to experience unpleasant planning developments, such as mineral extractions but do not receive anything like the compensation on offer for fracking. On what basis is the compensation package on offer fair when compared with the impacts of other extractive industries?
5. The House of Lords Committee that reported on the case for fracking, contrary to public perception, was not entirely independent. Five members of the committee stand to benefit directly from the successful development of the UK shale industry. Rightly or wrongly, this reduces the credibility of such reports which should be independent and clear from any perception of vested interests.
6. Continual government attacks on environmental safeguards as restricting development encircle the fracking debate. Despite recent inquiries on EU environmental designations which found that such designations do not significantly stifle development, these popular planning myths still get circulated and are not helpful when there are legitimate environmental concerns over fracking impacts.
7. It seems strange to me that government ministers are quick to condemn 'unsightly' solar and wind turbine developments, but seemingly embrace landscapes of fracking infrastructure. There is a clear contradiction in argument here.
So in my position I am looking for a policy and decision- making framework within which to locate fracking; a coherent energy policy, independent scientific evidence, active public engagement and debate, transparency of policy making, effective safeguards for the public and the environment and effective monitoring arrangements.
My current assessment is that actions falls far short of meeting ANY of these criteria; rather I see a hasty dash to frack, incentives to reduce opposition, flouting their own commitments to public engagement, cherry picked evidence to support fracking and unsubstantiated claims of huge energy reserves and benefits to override local concerns.
I am afraid that the government in their approach are failing those very interests who support fracking as much as those who oppose it. Indeed, the approach seems to me to be part of a culture of top down Whitehall-driven government policy and decision-making which fails to engage with local and user concerns. Ironically it is this very approach which is driving the current climate of disaffection and lack of trust in politicians; of whatever political persuasion.
The lessons from the recent local elections is that the government must listen more to the concerns of people and perhaps that message needs to be prioritised within this fracking debate sooner rather than later.
