Fracking research: the only way is ethics

By Liam Herringshaw (@fossiliam)

Britain for shale? (Image from Wikimedia Commons, via DECC)

If the contentions of the UK government's energy policy are summed up in a single word, it's probably this one: fracking. According to the August 2015 government survey of public opinions about energy, 28% of UK people are opposed to it, 21% of people support it, and 46% neither oppose nor support it (I'm not sure what the other 5% think!).

Originally a shorthand for the process of hydraulically fracturing low permeability rocks – particularly shales – to extract hydrocarbons from them, the term 'fracking' has evolved and mutated. To some, it is a byword for energy independence and prosperity. To others, it is a swear word of greed and pollution. Fracking is now so variously (mis)used and (mis)understood that it's often hard to know exactly what it encompasses.

If fracking has issues of semantics, then the subject has clearly not been communicated very well. This is a consequence of many factors, but two are particularly pertinent: a lack of fundamental research, and a reluctance of experts to speak out about what is correct or incorrect, and what is known or unknown.

The latter is a consequence of the former. Most people – geologists included – know little about shales, or shale gas, or fracking; only recently have they become a focus of much scientific attention. Even if you are an expert, the need to try and bring sense into the debate is often counter-balanced by the chastening experience of sticking your head above the parapet. Nonetheless, we should try to provide information whenever we can.

Carboniferous shales in the Peak District, UK (Photo by Liam Herringshaw / ReFINE)

Despite all the recent hype about Britain's onshore shale gas potential, for example, we actually know very little about the deep geology of the country's shale basins. Only multi-disciplinary investigations, gathering and interpreting large datasets and then communicating the findings to the public, can help address such uncertainties. But how should research into fracking be funded? And what ethical issues are raised?

If you're implacably opposed to shale gas extraction, you might argue that there should be no funding at all. Since the combustion of fossil fuels is a key driver of climate change, using new techniques to extract and burn them is wrong, and shouldn't happen. That argument has been made to me at meetings I've attended.

Most people, however, recognize the need for peer-reviewed scientific research, even if they are opposed to unconventional hydrocarbon extraction. Fracking is already happening, and will continue to happen. Many impacts – positive and negative – have been claimed on its behalf, but few have been proven with empirical data. To properly inform the debate we need more facts about fracks.

ReFINE - Researching Fracking In Europe

To this end, the main project I have been involved with over the last couple of years is ReFINE (Researching Fracking In Europe). Led by Newcastle and Durham universities, with contributions from many other institutions (including GEES at Hull), ReFINE aims to investigate the key topics of public concern and communicate the findings as widely as possible.

 

As the consortium is part-funded by the hydrocarbon industry, though, there were concerns that the public would see ReFINE as potentially biased. A unique set of ethical procedures were therefore put in place to ensure that funders did not have direct influence over the research outputs. These are:

• Peer review – all ReFINE papers are submitted to recognized journals for peer review by scholars not involved in the project;
• Disclosures of interest – all members of the project are required to declare any current or past interests that may compromise their impartiality;
• Independent Science Board – comprising impartial scientific researchers from across the world, the Independent Science Board (ISB) directs and oversees all ReFINE research, ensuring it is accurate, relevant, and free from industry bias;
• Offsite archives – correspondence and data relating to the project are recorded using a secure email archive, and made publicly available on request.

No matter how transparent you attempt to be, there will always be those who regard your work with suspicion. Perhaps the best indication of independence is when pro- and anti-fracking groups both perceive your findings as supporting their opponents' position. Having been described as 'frackademics' after publishing one peer-reviewed publication, and then 'nettle wine tasters' after publishing another, members of ReFINE are certainly discovering this.

Ethics are an increasingly important consideration in research projects, particularly those investigating contentious topics. I've not been involved in a project like ReFINE before, with such a detailed ethics policy, but it is surely the right approach. As researchers we need to demonstrate that we are engaging properly with issues of trust and impartiality, especially in relation to funding. As the most recent ReFINE publication has also demonstrated, we must discuss fracking with the public using non-technical language. Only then will people begin to be able to make more informed decisions about the real risks.

ReFINE will be a case study in a future issue of the journal Research Ethics, subject to final approval. To find out more about the project, visit http://refine.org.uk/.

Guest post: EU- China Partnerships on Climate Change – Are They Effective?

by Professor David Gibbs, Department of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, University of Hull.

Later this year in December 2015, the next Climate Conference will be held in Paris. This will be the 21^st Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.  Once again, 196 governments will meet to try and agree a new climate change agreement for the coming years.  Previous meetings have been notable for their lack of agreement and for the fact that the world’s top two contributors to carbon emissions – the USA and China – have been opposed to action.  For China, the flip side to its increasing economic importance and role as the ‘workshop of the world’ - exporting consumer goods to Europe and the US - has been its growing contribution to world carbon emissions as domestic power demands have been met by opening new coal-fired power stations.  Not only has this led to international concern, but the resulting pollution and decline in air quality has led to concerns and protest within China itself. 

image from Asia-Europe foundation here

Recently, I’ve been working on a project funded by the British Academy and the Sino-British Fellowship Trust looking at how the European Union and Chinese government have been working together to address climate change.  Obviously the two are already connected in other areas – this is perhaps most evident in terms of economic and trade links.  China is now the EU’s second largest trading partner and fastest growing export market, while the EU is China’s biggest trading partner as well as the most important export destination.  The focus of my research though was not on the economic challenges to the West or even the global environmental consequences from China’s recent development, but in examining the two-way benefits that partnership between the EU and China could bring on climate change.  The EU sees itself as a world leader in action on emissions and has sought to work with China through negotiation and joint working.  As an EU official said to me – “involvement in climate change talks involves a lot of finger pointing and blaming which doesn't work with China - informal negotiations work much better than this”.  Through interviews with Chinese and EU officials and politicians in Beijing and Brussels, I was interested in seeing how climate change partnership policy and joint working has evolved.  In addition, I was also keen to examine whether the Partnership has served China’s domestic sustainable development agenda, as well as the EU’s ambitions for global leadership on climate change.

Through looking at the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) it appeared that the EU and China by working together initially stolen a march over other players, especially the USA.  The CDM allowed developed countries to offset emissions through investment in CO₂ mitigation projects and developing countries to receive payment for voluntary efforts to reduce emissions. As a developing country, China has not so far had specific quantitative targets for CO₂ reductions, but needs to promote the CDM in cooperation with western industrialised countries.  The EU and China were leading stakeholders in CDM – China was the dominant host country, whilst member states of the EU collectively became the leading investing parties for CDM projects. By default, CDM projects served as a new opportunity for further developing EU-China relations in which both sides would gain. The benefits were not simply in terms of reducing carbon emissions.  Interviews with EU officials in both China and Brussels showed that an important outcome for them has been the development of greater trust and the opportunity for policy learning.  For EU officials, China's involvement in CDM had made it much easier to start the debate between the two sides around climate change issues. Thus engagement with the CDM by Chinese policy makers and businesses has led to growth of climate change know-how in China. In particular, the CDM has helped China make the step towards seeing how these types of market instruments could work and this has formed the basis of joint working on developing China’s Emissions Trading Scheme, informed by EU experiences.  The people I spoke to emphasised that this has to be a genuine two-way process – Chinese officials will be involved in dialogue and discussion with their EU counterparts, but (understandably) are not keen on being told what they should do in policy terms or how to do it.

Despite these initial successes, it appears to be an uphill struggle for the objectives of the EU-China Partnership on Climate Change to be achieved. On the one hand, the extent to which the CDM can be used as a new market tool contributing to China’s sustainable development and low carbon growth by generating additional renewable energy is very limited.  While CDM wind farms have mushroomed in the remote regions of China such as Inner Mongolia, and the north-eastern and north-western provinces, these are thousands of kilometres away from the economic heartland and power demands of the export-producing eastern and south-eastern regions. In the absence of an advanced and efficient grid infrastructure, long-distance transport of electricity leads to significant loss of energy and due to the limitations of storage technologies, electricity produced by wind farms in remote areas cannot be stored locally and this makes it difficult for grid operators to cope with the uneven pattern of energy supply.

The initial enthusiasm of the EU to become a world leader in climate change may therefore not prove viable in the long run and we can question how effective the EU approach of dialogue and ‘soft power’ has been.  Despite their past differences, in November 2014 China and the US signed a bi-lateral agreement to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions which suggests that despite all the years of informal efforts by the EU, it has been less effective than the US in encouraging China to take action.  Not only have the US and China agreed to reduce their own emissions, but their agreement may break the deadlock that has affected previous climate talks.  In their common mission of searching for low carbon growth whilst mitigating climate change, the EU and China will continue to be constrained by their own vested interests, which have been responsible for diluting their partnership.  China’s further rise as an industrial and economic power, which is beyond doubt, will pose new challenges to its already troubled trade relations in the renewable energy market. However, the reality of policy and political disunity within the EU dictates that member states will not hesitate to explore the China market with regard to their own domestic interests and agendas. In the future it is likely that ‘partnerships’, rather than ‘partnership’, will prevail so far as EU-China relations are concerned.

 


This blog post is cross-posted from the British Academy blog, here.

David can be contacted by email at d.c.gibbs@hull.ac.uk, and you can find out more about his work from his university web page here.