UK missing a trick on hydraulic fracking to cut eye-watering energy bills

Sir, –Surely historians will record that one of the biggest political blunders of the 21st Century is the unbelievable and conscious lack of carrying out hydraulic fracking technology in the UK.

This idiocy has resulted in the general public, business and industry facing everincreasing eye-watering energy bills. But the sad fact is that it need not be so, as the horrendous price we are now paying for our energy is simply due to the hysteria, misunderstanding and false information being perpetrated by environmentalists, who claim fracking will result in significant earthquakes and the poisoning of ground water supplies.

Our gullible and incompetent politicians have swallowed the propaganda hook, line and sinker. It is all utter nonsense of course – fracking has not only turned the US economy around but proven the technology is safe when carried our correctly – and it has transformed the US from being a net energy importer to a net energy exporter. The environmentalists should recognise that natural gas, although a fossil fuel, produces fewer carbon emissions than oil or coal.

A modern efficient CCGT gas-fired power station produces 60% less pollution than its dirty coal-fired cousin. We are where we are in our technological and electrical-dependent society, such that common sense demands that unless we wish to avoid a return to a medieval style of existence, we should employ natural gas and fracking, instead of embracing risible large-scale wind and solar generation.

Horrendously expensive, potentially dangerous and environmentally was-te- threatening nuclear fission power stations should not even come into the equation.

Predominantly, the current UK energy strategy should call for efficient gas-fired power stations complemented with sensible and intelligently designed tidal and hydro schemes – that is, until electricity from space and nuclear fusion power stations become a reality.

Our cousins across the pond must wonder why we tolerate the political energy dunderheads that mis-rule us. Putin has outsmarted Western European leaders by creating a dependency on Russian gas and it is rumoured that Russia has generously funded naive environmental campaigners to discourage fracking in the west, so as to ensure a continuing demand and reliance on its gas.

Dave Haskell. Brithdir, Cardigan.