Local Politics and the Derailing of the UK's Shale Gas Ambitions

Local Politics and the Derailing of the UK's Shale Gas Ambitions examines how the 2013 UK government declared it was going “all out for shale”, but why, a decade later, no commercial shale gas had ever been produced, the industry had packed up and gone, and ministers were moving from moratorium to outright ban. The book explains why, and locates the answer not in Westminster but in the council chambers, village halls and roadside verges of Lancashire, North Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. Drawing on a systematic comparison of nine proposed drilling sites, the book shows that Britain’s shale gas failure was political rather than geological or economic, and introduces a distinction that reaches far beyond frackin between consent, the formal approvals a project can win, and Permission, the working political legitimacy without which those approvals cannot be used. Cuadrilla secured consent at Preston New Road and had to abort operations; North Yorkshire approved fracking at Kirby Misperton and no gas was ever extracted. A comparative chapter on the United States shows the same forces at work under very different institutions. As governments race to build the wind farms, pylons and nuclear plants of the energy transition, this is a study of what happens when national power meets local power, and loses. Local Politics and the Derailing of the UK's Shale Gas Ambitions will appeal to students and scholars of Political Science, Environmental Politics and Policy and Social Movement Theory.