![]() ![]() ![]() Robert Habeck, Germany's vice chancellor and a Green Party member disagrees with his coalition partners that fracking is a potential energy crisis solution. Holger Weiß, member of the German parliament's expert committee on the technology, told the Sunday edition of German daily FAZ that fracking can be done "nowadays with an acceptable residual risk." He added that it's contradictory to support the import of fracked gas from the US while opposing domestic fracking. "Fracking does not cause any relevant environmental damage under modern safety standards," Torsten Herbst, parliamentary director of the FDP, opined in a June interview with German weekly newspaper Welt am Sonntag. Such views have not stopped the pro-business FDP party - one third of Germany's governing coalition - from talking about fracking as a way out of the crisis. "Germany is densely populated and developing the necessary tens of thousands of drilling wells would be nearly impossible without major resistance," Boden said. Fracking divides Germany's coalitionĪ recent German poll showed that just 27% of respondents embraced fracking as a short-term energy solution - compared to 81% support for an expansion of wind energy. "This is hardly enough to make Germany independent of Russian gas," he said. But for Sascha Boden, only half might be economically viable due to the high drilling infrastructure costs, for example. Shale deposits could cover 20% of current demand, as estimated by German Federal Association of Natural Gas, Petroleum and Geoenergy (BVEG). German shale gas is primarily found in the northwestern states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia and has the potential to provide 3 to 20 times (between 320 and 2,030 billion cubic meters) the amount of conventional gas, according to the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ). ![]() Yet drilling for gas in "conventional" and more accessible sandstone gas seams is permitted under strict regulations in Germany, and currently provides around 5% of supply - even if critics say the extraction method is akin to fracking and was simply labeled conventional to imply "good" fracking is possible. Methane leakage from tens of thousand of wells in the Permian Basin in the US states of Texas and New Mexico, for example, has helped create a " climate bomb " that is nullifying mitigation measures. The process uses vast amounts of water and could contaminate groundwater that is already receding due to persistent drought in Germany.įracking also leaks the greenhouse gas methane - the global heating impacts of which are over 80 times higher than CO2 over a 20-year period, noted Sascha Boden, an energy and climate advisor at NGO, Environmental Action Germany. Here fracking fluid made up of water, sand and chemicals is injected up to 5 kilometers (3 miles) under the earth to break up the bedrock and extract gas. The ban, which was due to be reviewed in 2021 but remains in place, extends to deep-lying "unconventional" shale gas deposits that can only be extracted through hydraulic fracturing. But Europe's largest economy banned shale gas fracking at home in 2017. Germany is already building infrastructure and terminals to facilitate the flow of LNG from the United States that comes primarily from fracked sources, which is the result of an EU-US gas deal struck in March. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Germany loves gas, but fracking is banned Germany prepares for worst-case energy scenario
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |