There is a growing body of evidence, across the entire global gas supply chain, of more than 2% leakage. Individual companies may be good at controlling their emissions, but their industry as a whole clearly fails the test.

As long ago as 2011, scientists from Cornell University estimated that gas leakage from a US shale well could be 7.9% over its lifetime.

Gas industry lobbying has ensured that there has been astonishingly little systematic monitoring, but since 2013, a steady stream of measurements and observations of high leakage has emerged, as summarised in my book The Winning of the Carbon War. Worrying evidence has continued to clock up since its publication in January.

In March this year, researchers from Harvard University used satellite observations to show a "startling" increase in US methane concentrations, and suggested that shale fracking is the most likely explanation. As Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy puts it, "methane emissions from existing sources in the oil & gas sector are [much] higher than we previously understood".

Most US gas, fracked from shale or otherwise, is stored underground in abandoned oil and gas fields. In October 2015, one such field near Los Angeles started to leak so profusely that it became California’s biggest source of methane emissions. When it was finally plugged 112 days later, almost 100,000 tonnes of methane had escaped: the amount of gas consumed annually by a medium-sized European country.

During the public outcry, it has become clear that shoddy regulation means many more of America’s 400 storage fields are at risk of leaking. This is before we start on the rest of the supply chain.

In April, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published data from airborne monitoring about the US shale belt, suggesting leakage on a massive scale as a result of gas production.

Doomed business model

How, you may ask, can the gas industry stick to its "gas is good for the climate" mantra in the face of this kind of worrying evidence? The least uncharitable answer is enculturated wilful blindness.

Which introduces a third reason for solar to avoid this proposed partnership: the demonstrably malign nature of much oil & gas lobbying.

One recent case illustrates the point. The US and Canadian governments have decided to face up to gas leakage, as best they can, announcing a commitment to cut methane emissions from their oil & gas industries by 40-45%.

The reaction of the American Petroleum Institute has not been to welcome much-needed help in a crucial route to emissions limitation. It will instead take the Obama administration to court for loading "unnecessary" costs on the shale revolution.

The revolution they speak of is in fact a slow-motion bust as company after company goes bankrupt because they can no longer service the mountain of junk debt they have been permitted to build as they prosecute a doomed business model wherein drilling costs exceed revenues.

We don’t have that cost problem in solar. Which is another reason for steering clear of any industry-wide partnership with gas.