Winchester residents favour renewable energy sources and home insulation to combat the energy crisis despite lift of fracking ban

Members of Winchester Action on the Climate Crisis (WinACC) asked the public their favoured solution for addressing the energy crisis.

On Saturday, October 1 WinACC hosted the energy survey stall in St Maurice’s Covert as part of Winchester Green Week. Across five hours, members of the public streaming past the busy spot were invited to place milk bottle tops in glass jars representing five possible options for combatting the energy crisis.

READ MORE: Winchester residents are being encouraged to write letters to the future to call for political action on climate change as part of Green Week

The result from the 110 members was predominantly in favour of insulating homes and using more wind and solar energy. By contrast fracking, building more nuclear power stations and rationing gas each received less than 10 votes (see image below).

WinACC member and project officer for Winchester Area SuperHomes, Stuart Mills, said: “We were very pleased with the results. It basically reflected where we think things should go. We didn’t know how people would respond and we were very pleased that people supported the push for more renewable energy and to reduce energy use in homes.

“Home energy accounts for about 20 per cent of all direct carbon emissions nationally and locally. To reach net zero we’re going to have to change how we heat our homes and how we produce energy. How we reduce our energy use in the home by insulating more and the other is how we produce the energy to do that.”

The informal survey follows the government’s removal of the fracking ban, after it was suspended in 2019 due to earthquake concerns. Fracking is the process of removing gas and oil from shale rock.

A seem of shale gas that runs along the South Downs makes Winchester a favourable location for the controversial method of extraction. A total of five sites have been permitted for drilling in the city making Winchester the most affected place in Hampshire.

SEE ALSO: Lift on fracking ban leaves Winchester at risk as five sites licenced for drilling

Stuart added: “There’s a lot of issues around fracking. We need to move away from using fossil fuels rather than extracting more fossil fuels.

“The issue with fracking apart from increasing carbon emissions is that the technology that’s used to extract shale gas uses a lot of toxic chemicals at a very high pressure pumped into rock formations. And those chemicals remain in the rock after the fracking process. As well as issues around earthquakes which is why fracking was put on hold.

“The government has an attitude that for the purpose of energy security it would make sense to extract more fossil fuels in the UK. But because all these prices are determined globally, it’s not going to reduce the price of energy in this country.

“We would encourage the government to look at producing more renewable energy and increasing the amount of solar and wind power rather than fracking.”

Campaign group Friends of the Earth put together an interactive map showing the areas of England covered by onshore oil and gas licences. Companies with such licences have the right to search and bore for petroleum.

Many of the licenced areas overlap with potential areas of fracking for shale gas, identified by the British Geological Survey.