Fracking arguments: Jenny Jones and IGAS' Andrew Austin

Fracking sites takes up a "miniscule" area compared with wind farms, said the chief executive of IGAS, a firm wanting to extract shale gas using the fracking technique.

Andrew Austin said it was "certainly cleaner than other fossils fuels" and UK energy would be cleaner if less coal could be used.

Addressing claims about water contamination and pollution, he said that fracking involved "drilling more than a mile beyond any aquifer that you would be using to generate drinking water".

But Jenny Jones of the Green Party said it was "still fossil fuel and still undesirable".

And she said wind farms "can be very beautiful things", claiming that "public opinion was now way in favour of wind farms".

She told Jo Coburn on the Daily Politics: "There are risks and I just don't think they are worthwhile when we have known technologies that don't pose those same risks."

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