Fracking will resume in Britain after a shale gas company tricked protesters blockading its site and delivered a drilling rig while they were sleeping. Cuadrilla breached a condition in its planning permission requiring daytime deliveries by sending 30 lorries at 4.40am yesterday to its site on Preston New Road near Blackpool. The lorries were carrying parts for the rig that will drill 3,500m-deep wells next month. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is due to start before the end of the year, six years after being suspended in Britain because it caused earth tremors at another site in Lancashire. Hundreds of anti-fracking protesters have spent the past six months trying to prevent Cuadrilla from building a concrete platform on farmland beside Preston New Road and subsequently from getti ng its drilling rig on to the site. A rig belonging to the company was vandalised at a depot in Derbyshire in May with parts destroyed by sledgehammers and drills, but Cuadrilla obtained another rig.
Times 28th July 2017 read more »
Guardian 27th July 2017 read more »
As the renewable energy market share grows so does the apparent demise of the coal industry, BAIS numbers suggest. Overall renewable sources, excluding non-biodegradable wastes, provided 9.2 per cent of the UK’s total primary energy requirements in 2016, up from 8.8 per cent in 2015, according to the Digest of United Kingdom Energy Statistics. By contrast, in 2016, coal comprised 5.8 per cent of UK primary energy demand, half that of the previous year. Demand for coal halved, falling from 38 million tonnes in 2015 to 18 million tonnes in 2016 (BEIS, July 2017). The share of energy that comes from fossil fuel is ‘at a record low level’ – although it remains the dominant source of energy supply at 81.5%, according to the Government (BEIS, July 2017).
Energy Voice 28th July 2017 read more »