Better safe than sorry: A sealed borehole in Barnstorf
Image: Daniel Pilar
Even before the war in Ukraine, a commission of experts from the federal government determined that the risks of fracking are manageable today. But the traffic light pretends that this report never existed. And she shies away from conflict with environmental activists.
Germany has enough gas. It’s right here, under our feet, 1300 billion cubic meters. That’s a lot, our whole country could heat with it for 14 years without importing anything. If we were to promote a little bit for a hundred years, we could at least push prices down. That is the good news.
Justus Bender
Editor in the politics of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.
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Morten Freidel
Editor in the politics of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper
consequences
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The bad news is that no one wants to pump the gas. Because it’s shale gas, and to get to it you have to frack. Most citizens have an intuition that fracking can be very dangerous, they know stories from America and pictures of burning tap water. In the worst case, earthquakes can occur, methane can escape into the atmosphere, groundwater can be contaminated. That is why the grand coalition banned fracking in 2016 and commissioned a commission of experts to research the risks of fracking. Based on their report, the Bundestag should consult again in 2021. The commission was filled with nothing but environmentalists, from the Federal Environment Agency, the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research and so on. Perhaps the politicians thought that this would find out just how dangerous fracking is. The opposite happened.