To What Extent Is Fracking a Sustainable Energy Option for the Uk? in the Situation for the Usa with Regarding Fracking Different to That of the Uk’s?

To what extent is fracking a sustainable energy option for the UK? In the situation for the USA with regarding fracking different to that of the UK’s?

Introduction:

Fracking is the process of recovering natural gases from rocks with water; sand and chemicals. The sand is there to prevent the cracks from closing up; the water is there to wash away bacteria and to add pressure to open up the rocks for natural gases. Why have we results in this process? The demand for energy in HICs countries is increasing and we need a new way to satisfy this demand. The uses of coal and fossil fuels aren’t enough as they are running out. We have tried other methods of using natural gases but they have become eradicated as we have used up the amount that we could reach thus we had to find a new way to reach other natural gases beneath the ground. By using this renewable source this means that the co2 emissions in the US are decreasing in fact it has decreased by 12% from 2005 to 2012. It has become very popular in the US and has proved to be very profitable.

Disadvantages within the product:

There haven’t been any long-term studies on the consequences of this process as the water won’t stay in one place and is continually flowing this means that we can’t do any studies on the process to see the amount of damage that we are causing. The 700 chemicals used haven’t been looked at fully but they have seen that the chemical involved is Methane which is a very harmful greenhouse gas which is worst and more harmful than co2 in fact it is 30 times more potent than co2. Each fracturing job would require 1 to 8 million gallons of water to complete. In a 2014 report, as much as 35 million gallons of freshwater were removed from nearby aquifers in Michigan to be used in just one frack well. Currently the world has a huge inequality with water and by using it for fracking we are wasting water that people in Africa could drink and decreases the amount of droughts. Processes of fracturing have been linked to several earthquakes which would require a lot of money to fix any damages from the earthquake.

Advantages of fracking:

 With the chemicals injected deep under the earth, they would cause lesser to no damage, as opposed to when they are released on the surface or in the air. They are less likely to pollute bodies of water; ensuring that humans stay safe and healthy. Chemicals out of the way also mean improved air quality. It also means an increase in job opportunities in fact in 2012,the oil and gas industry in America employed more than 1.2 million people, which further increased due to fracking. With a growing population we need more job opportunities as it is harder to become employed and people need to sustain a healthy life to afford food, water and education.  We are using too many fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas for energy and they are slowly running out thus we have resulted in using fracking to buy us some time until all the finite resources will run out completely. With oil and gas produced locally, industries that greatly rely on these fuel resources can become more competitive due to lower energy cost. This is why many believed that fracking has positively transformed the energy situation in the U.S. This can also result in lower taxes, especially when exporting oil is minimized.