<
https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20250219-kirby-misperton-the-former-fracking-site-now-tapped-for-clean-heat>
'As the police moved in, Mike Potter gritted his teeth. It seemed to him that
he and his fellow protesters were being "kettled" – surrounded by police and
constrained from moving. "No fracking here!", the demonstrators chanted,
gripping their colourful placards.
Fracking, the process of injecting fluid deep into subterranean rock to force
out natural gas, emerged during the US Civil War in the 1860s and was first
used commercially in the late 1940s. By the 1970s, it had arrived in the UK;
over the next 30 years, around 200 gas wells were fracked across the country.
But, aside from the question of contributing to further carbon emissions,
fracking is potentially dangerous, as it can sometimes trigger earthquakes or
contaminate groundwater.
In 2016, the prospect of it came to the tiny village of Kirby Misperton in the
north of England, close to Potter's home. That year, a local council granted
the energy firm Third Energy planning permission to begin fracking at the site.
"I thought, until all these people, governments and companies, can actually
prove to me that they can and will do this safely," recalls Potter, "I'm going
to be anti-fracking."
It was a risk. He had a government job with security clearance – if police
arrested him, it could have been highly damaging to his career. In the end,
widespread opposition to fracking led to the UK government banning the practice
in England in 2019.
Potter and his fellow protestors were relieved. But questions remained –
namely, what was going to happen to the would-be fracking site, a roughly
rectangular patch of ground packed with industrial equipment and surrounded by
North Yorkshire fields?
For years, deep boreholes had yielded gas here, but that gas is now depleted.
(And this explains Third Energy’s previous attempts to repurpose the wells for
fracking, to squeeze some more gas out of the site.) Now, the firm, acquired in
2024 by renewables company CeraPhi Energy, says it has a new and very different
idea: geothermal energy.'
Via
Positive.News
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
