MOSCOW (Sputnik) — UK Labour made a pledge at the party conference on Monday to ban fracking if they win the next general elections.
"Today I am announcing that the future Labour government will ban fracking," Barry Gardiner, Labour shadow energy and climate change secretary, said in his speech delivered at the party conference held on September 25-28.
Gardiner stressed that fracking hampers the national economy's transition to clean energy.
"The real reason to ban fracking is it locks us into an energy infrastructure that is based on fossil fuels long after our country needs to move to clean energy," Gardiner said.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a technique of extracting shale gas and oil by injecting pressurized toxic liquid into the ground. Opponents of fracking argue the process poses numerous health, safety and environmental risks, including the potential for fracking fluids and waste to leak into water as well as the large volume of water used.
