Climate Change: Fracking; How does this affect the planet?

This article explores the benefits and drawbacks of fracking. Climate Change is vastly affecting the way that humans live on Earth. How much trouble is caused by fracking, and what can we do to reduce the contribution to Climate Change?

What is Climate Change?

Climate Change is the shift in the temperature and weather patterns over a long period of time (30 years to be exact), These shifts can be natural, Climate Change would usually be caused by; volcanic eruptions, changes in Earth’s orbit, and changes in the sun, and moon. Since the 1800’s things like the industrial revolution, the discovery of cars, leading to the mass burning of fossil fuels have vastly contributed to Climate Change. Human activities have been the main cause of Climate Change because of the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas.

Data shows that the United Kingdom has been the country to contribute to Climate Change, this is primarily due to the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Although the United Kingdom takes most of the responsibility for the human contribution to Climate Change, they are also doing many things to tackle it.

What is the UK doing to tackle Climate Change? Information provided by “GREENPEACE”

oliticians in the UK have known about climate change and its likely consequences for many years — even going back to Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

The UK was the first country in the world to create a legally-binding national commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions. This was the Climate Change Act of 2008, which pledges to cut our emissions as a country by 80% by 2050, from 1990 levels. This also created a Climate Change Committee, which puts forward carbon budgets to the government.

Carbon budgets are five years long and are set a decade ahead, to allow the government time to prepare, plan, make laws and get the right kind of investments in place. The first (2008–12) and second (2013–17) carbon budgets have been met, and the UK is on track to meet the third (2018–22).

The 80% target was updated in 2019 with the target of achieving an effective 100% reduction by 2050. This is known as the “net zero” target. This is where any remaining emissions of greenhouse gases in 2050 are balanced by removing and absorbing the same amount of carbon from the atmosphere, such as through schemes that plant trees and preserve forests.

The UK has also joined the world’s largest legally-binding international treaty, the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, which has the goal of limiting global warming to well below 2ºC and ideally to 1.5ºC.

The UK is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, with immense industrial and technological knowledge, and business and political influence across the globe. What happens here in the UK — and in our relationships with other countries — can inspire stronger action worldwide.

In 2021, this is particularly true as the UK is hosting the flagship international climate conference, COP26, in Glasgow.

The UK is well-placed to be a leader in international negotiations on climate change. But, like many wealthy nations, the UK’s economy has long been heavily dependent on burning fossil fuels — both at home and abroad.

Recently, there have been government commitments to reduce state funding of fossil fuel projects abroad, which is definitely progress. But the generous UK contribution to international aid that is sent to the UN to help fund climate solutions is being cut. And private financing of fossil fuels from the UK’s finance industry continues to worsen climate change across the world. By funding polluting projects all over the world, the UK’s finance industry creates 1.8 times more emissions than the whole of the UK. This needs to be addressed urgently.

What is Fracking?

Fracking is the process of extracting natural gas from deep below the Earth’s surface. The type of gas that is extracted by this process is called Shale Gas, this type of gas is used to power over a quarter of the population’s electricity.

Shale Gas is widely used, and fracking will increase due to the low amount of natural recourses that we now have in today’s world. It is predicted that by the year 2058, the current natural resources that we have access to, such as coal, and oil, are ‘running out’. There have been many studies trying to provide evidence, which will squash this theory. Thus has not been successful.

How does the UK contribute to Fracking? provided by “Energy&ClimateIntelligenceUnit”

The UK contains shale formations bearing oil in the south and gas in the north. The Bowland Shale in the north of England is thought to contain about 1,300 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of gas. By comparison, the UK consumes about 3 Tcf per year.

How does fracking affect the climate and the planet? information provided by “GREENPEACE”

Fracking has so many problems

Energy experts say that much of the gas we’ve already found needs to stay in the ground. Otherwise we won’t be able to meet our emission reduction targets and limit the effects of climate change. So it doesn’t make sense to go after even more, especially as fracked fuels can be even more damaging to the climate than regular oil and gas. That’s because fracking uses more energy to extract it than conventional oil and gas, and because fracked gas appears to leak more into the atmosphere. Gas itself is a greenhouse gas so the overall climate impact it produces is greater.

Not only is fracking bad for our climate, it risks causing air, water and sound pollution. It uses toxic chemicals where regulation may not be adequate. An accident could mean that these chemicals leak into water supplies or cause pollution above ground. In fact, this has happened many times in the US. On top of all this, the impact on the British countryside would be enormous. Thousands of wells would be needed to produce just half of the UK’s gas demand. This industrial operation would also require huge numbers of trucks delivering chemicals and taking away contaminated wastewater. Fracking won’t even bring down our energy bills because the way the energy market works means any gas from fracking will be sold to the highest bidder, which won’t help reduce bills.

Fracking releases large amounts of methane, a dangerously potent greenhouse gas. Fracked shale gas wells, for example, may have methane leakage rates as high as 7.9 percent, which would make such natural gas worse for the climate than coal. This is how fracking affects the climate and the planet.