Have you been following the recent controversy over "fracking" for gas in this country? You might find it hard to know whether it's a good or a bad idea and who to believe.  Will it pollute our water supplies? Will it cause earthquakes? What would all the new wells do to our landscape? Will it entail unacceptable releases of Methane with 23 times the global warming effect of Carbon Dioxide,- or here's no need to worry about any of these and it's going to give us fabulous quantities of really cheap gas which will kick-start our economy?

Methane is the gas we use for our mains gas supply. It does seem  a little odd though, that another much less contentions source of Methane seems to be almost completely ignored,- Biogas. This is a mixture of Methane and Carbon Dioxide produced from household waste, sewage and farm manure. According to the government, its' exploitation, using the process called anaerobic digestion (AD), could generate £3bn a year and 35,000 jobs.  This process is all around us,- it's just fermentation of organic material by microbes without Oxygen.  Commercial  fermentation and home brewing both use it, as does silage production on the farm. And what's left over can be used as fertiliser. Added to that operators of AD plants can apply for payments if they burn the gas to make electricity or to produce renewable heat or transport fuel.  So AD makes a lot of sense. You decide about fracking.

Peter Hanson