good old backward solcialist european countries with strong union movements (and strong economies); did i forget that after WW2 the US forced all German corporations to have 50% of the boards of directors be workers - to prevent the rise of Facism! (Hmmmmmm). Way beyond us in Solar and energy efficiency, now the Germans want to prevent the poisoning of their water and prevent earthquakes (as happened in Swizterland) from fracking.
I'm hoping they can hold on against the forces of capitalism and at the same time require the frackers to release the list of chemicals we in the US aren't entitled to look at due to the might os the US Chamber of Commerce types.
Cheers.
Frack off. Germany's environment minister Peter Altmaier doesn't want fracking.
Germany may be looking for new sources of energy following its decision to abandon nuclear power, but it seems determined to avoid “fracking,” the controversial method for extracting natural gas that is booming in the United States.
“The message is we want to limit fracking, we don’t want to facilitate it,” environment minister Peter Altmaier told Deutschlandfunk radio, as reported by Reuters in The Guardian. “And anyway I don’t see in the forseeable future that fracking will be employed anywhere within Germany.”
Germany’s Parliament has proposed rules that would tighten restrictions on fracking, a technique that blasts water and chemicals into shale rock to release trapped natural gas. Critics say the process - also known as hydraulic fracturing - can pollute water supplies and trigger earthquakes.
Corporate giants including ExxonMobil and Germany’s BASF - the world’s largest chemicals company and owner of an oil and gas division called Wintershall - want to explore fracking possibiilties. Under Germany’s federal structure, individual states can decide whether to issue permits.
Since deciding to walk away from nuclear power in the wake of Japan’s Fukushiuma nuclear meltdowns nearly two years ago, Germany - Europe’s largest economy - has had to find substitute sources of energy. Ironically, it has been importing nuclear power from France. It also has a strong renewables program, but that has not prevented it from increasing its use of fossil fuels like coal and thus adding to its CO2 emissions. Natural gas is a fossil fuel that does not emit as much CO2 as coal.
Germany currently supplies only 14 percent of its natural gas and imports 40 percent of what it consumes from Russia, according to the Reuters article.
Some energy observers say that fracking in the U.S. is setting that country on the road toward energy independence.
Photo by Christian Doppelgatz/KUXMA via Wikimedia
Cracking the fracking story on SmartPlanet:
- True or false? Fracking equals cheap gas
- The murky future of U.S. shale gas
- PA study uncovers no hydrofracking pollution
- Hydrofracking drives new water treatment solutions
- Farmers hope to cash in on fracking phenomenon
- EPA: hydrofracking may have tainted Wyoming groundwater
- Ohio: frackers caused earthquakes
- Fracking triggered British earthquakes
More German power plays:
