Tuesday 7th October 2014
14:30 – 16:00
Room 1.007, Roscoe Building
Followed by a wine reception
In recent years, shale gas has emerged as a potentially significant and hotly contested energy source. Despite huge uncertainties, a nascent shale gas industry looks set to impact on the UK’s energy mix. There has, however, been very little reasoned discussion on the impacts of a shale gas or ‘fracking’ industry at different scales.
The public forum for debate on fracking in the UK has become highly polemical, with academic and expert views reduced by both media and participants to either ‘for’ or ‘against’. In part this is because of the sensitive nature of the topic. Nevertheless, more nuanced interpretations have generally been marginalised.
This panel seeks to place the debate within a context of energyvulnerability, which is, broadly speaking, concerned with understanding how different energy ‘scenarios’ impact on actors from a household to a nation-state scale of governance. The focus is intended to create a discussion that moves the conventional polemic toward a discussion on how fracking could impact energy vulnerability in the UK.
Using an expert interdisciplinary panel, the meeting will look at the adequacy of the evidence base to help inform how a fracking industry might form part of Britain’s energy future and what impact that could have in practice on energy vulnerability in the UK .The implications of fracking for real world issues like risk / perception of risk, energy poverty and how regulation and mitigation measures might work in practice, will be looked at afresh through the lens of energy vulnerability.
Organisers:
The event is organised by Craig Thomas from the Centre for Urban Energy and Resilience and is supported by the ESRC North West Doctoral Training Centre.
Chair:
Prof. Stefan Bouzarovski, University of Manchester
Panel:
Prof. Erik Bichard, Salford University
Dr. Karen Bickerstaff, University of Exeter
Dr. John Broderick, Tyndall Centre
Prof. Ernest Rutter, University of Manchester
Please register your attendance at: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/beyond-the-fracking-polemic-energy-futures-and-vulnerability-tickets-13285578523?aff=eac2
People and Energy Collective 