Around 30 people attended Simon Tytherleigh's talk Fracking - Dead Duck or Golden Goose on the 26th March at the Boniface Centre.

Simon spoke for about 30 minutes and then there was a similar period of questions, answers and general discussion.

Simon's general conclusion with which no one really disagreed was that fracked gas in the UK will prolong our dependency on fossil fuels and may divert investment away from the more important task of developing and rolling out renewables, and cracking the problem of electrical storage as part of a really sustainable long-term energy strategy. No government truly serious about meeting its carbon reduction targets would contemplate fracking for gas. The fracking industry will need to meet stringent environmental standards, that may yet prove to be beyond their capability, and the UK public will need to tolerate the intrusion of heavy vehicle traffic into rural areas on a significant scale. Fracked gas is a short-term policy, prompted by panic on the part of politicians who are clutching at straws rather than discussing a proper energy strategy. We no longer have any good solutions on offer, only a range of poor options. Fracking may be among the poorest. It may rise and fall quickly, as the US is likely to do, but in 10 years' time it will largely be seen as an irrelevance. In other words " A dead duck" !

The full presentation and speaker's notes can be downloaded by clicking on the links.

Following some refreshments we than got onto the business of the Sustainable Crediton AGM.

Details of the meeting are available at this link.