Pie in the sky! Then we die!

Q. Goodness gracious me! Is that Rishi looking at a pothole in Darlington?

A. By golly! So it is! At last, something has his full attention. Local elections in May!

This has been a week when the UK government, led by Rishi Sunak, has abdicated its responsibility to protect the inhabitants of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland from an impending climate disaster. Having hosted COP26 in Glasgow with a stated ambition to lead the world in aiming for a limit to global heating to 1.5c, this Tory government has shredded any and all of its "world leading" credibility. 

Greta Thunberg was right, it's just 

BLAH, BLAH, BLAH! 

Exclusive: Activist says there are many fine words but the science does not lie – CO2 emissions are still rising is the subheading for the Guardian's Damian Carrington Environment editor (Tue 28 Sep 2021). He writes: 

Greta Thunberg has excoriated global leaders over their promises to address the climate emergency, dismissing them as “blah, blah, blah”.

She quoted statements by Boris Johnson: “This is not some expensive, politically correct, green act of bunny hugging”, and Narendra Modi: “Fighting climate change calls for innovation, cooperation and willpower” but said the science did not lie.

Carbon emissions are on track to rise by 16% by 2030, according to the UN, rather than fall by half, which is the cut needed to keep global heating under the internationally agreed limit of 1.5C.

“Build back better. Blah, blah, blah. Green economy. Blah blah blah. Net zero by 2050. Blah, blah, blah,” she said in a speech to the Youth4Climate summit in Milan, Italy, on Tuesday. “This is all we hear from our so-called leaders. Words that sound great but so far have not led to action. Our hopes and ambitions drown in their empty promises.”

The Cop26 climate summit starts in Glasgow, UK, on 31 October and all the big-polluting countries must deliver tougher pledges to cut emissions to keep the goal of 1.5C within reach.

“Of course we need constructive dialogue,” said Thunberg, whose solo climate strike in 2018 sparked a movement of millions of young climate protesters. “But they’ve now had 30 years of blah, blah, blah and where has that led us? We can still turn this around – it is entirely possible. It will take immediate, drastic annual emission reductions. But not if things go on like today. Our leaders’ intentional lack of action is a betrayal toward all present and future generations.”

Research published on Monday showed that children born today would experience many times more extreme heatwaves and other climate disasters over their lifetimes than their grandparents, even if countries fulfil their current emissions pledges.

Officials from the UN, UK and US said Cop26 would not produce the breakthrough needed to fulfil the aspirations of the Paris agreement but the broader goal of the conference – that of “keeping 1.5C alive” – was still possible.

Thunberg, Vanessa Nakate from Uganda, and hundreds of other young people from across the world are attending the Youth4Climate Summit. It is hosted by the Italian government, the UK’s partner in running Cop26.

The youth summit will consist of working groups of young people debating how to increase their participation in decision-making, their role in helping to transform energy use, nature conservation and climate adaptation, and how education can create a climate-conscious society. It builds on a youth climate summit held at the UN headquarters in New York in 2019.

Thunberg said: “They invite cherry-picked young people to meetings like this to pretend that they listen to us. But they clearly don’t listen to us. Our emissions are still rising. The science doesn’t lie.

“We can no longer let the people in power decide what is politically possible. We can no longer let the people in power decide what hope is. Hope is not passive. Hope is not blah, blah, blah. Hope is telling the truth. Hope is taking action. And hope always comes from the people.”

HOPE? 

For all the hopes that governments across the world would protect their citizens from the consequences of global heating, the UK and the US, among the richest nations of the world, choose to support the oil industries as they go about destroying our future. 

Hope began to dim this week with th Guardian's Environment editor Damian Carrington's report (Wed 29 Mar 2023) headlined: 

UK ‘strikingly unprepared’ for impacts of climate crisis

The subheading of his story runs: 

Government’s official advisers point to ‘lost decade’ in efforts to protect lives and livelihoods

He writes: 

The UK is “strikingly unprepared” for the impacts of the climate crisis, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which said there had been a “lost decade” in efforts to adapt for the impacts of global heating.

The CCC, the government’s official climate adviser, said climate damages will inevitably intensify for decades to come. It has warned repeatedly of poor preparation in the past and said government action was now urgently needed to protect people and their homes and livelihoods.

The extreme heatwave in 2022, when temperatures surpassed 40C for the first time, was both an example and a warning, the CCC said. More than 3,000 people died early and 20% of hospital operations were cancelled at the peak of the heatwave, while rail lines buckled, wildfires raged and farmers struggled with drought. “It won’t be long before those kinds of very hot summers are a normal summer,” said Chris Stark, CCC chief executive.

Areas where needed action is missing include heat-proofing homes, stemming leaks from water supply pipes and preparing for flash floods and shortages of food and other imports from nations struck by climate impacts.

“The government is not putting together a plan that reflects the scale and the nature of the risks that face the whole country,” said Stark. “This is completely critical. There is no option but to adapt to the change in the climate. The question is only whether we do that well by doing it early or wait until later.”

Acting early would be cheaper and better, he said, than acting in a “panicked way” later.

Julia King, chair of the CCC’s Adaptation Committee, said: “The last decade has been a lost decade in terms of preparing for the risks we already have and those that we know are coming.”

A recent IPCC report showed that climate damages are hitting harder and faster than expected, she said, and that the global temperature will not stop rising until carbon emissions reach net zero, a target set for 2050 by many countries.

“It means we’ve got at least 30 more years of escalating hazards,” she said. “Every month that passes locks in more damaging impacts. Action is needed, and we need it now.”

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said on Tuesday: “Climate chaos is wreaking havoc on economies, businesses, supply chains and public finances, and we are on a trajectory for far worse.”

The CCC report said “fully credible” UK government planning for climate change, where nearly all the necessary policy milestones were in place, was found for only five of the 45 adaptation requirements examined. Plans to cope with river and coastal flooding was one positive example. However, the report found there was not sufficient implementation of adaptation plans in any of the 45 areas.

A UK government spokesperson said: “We welcome the CCC’s recognition of our progress so far and will factor its recommendations into our updated National Adaptation Programme, which will be published later this year and will ensure we robustly address the full range of climate risks to the UK.”

The last National Adaptation Programme was published in 2018 and the CCC said: “It lacks a clear vision. It is not underpinned by tangible outcomes or targets. It has not driven policy and implementation across government.”

The CCC assessment highlighted the lack of reporting by major food companies on climate risks to their supply chains. The UK imports about half its food, and recent shortages of imported vegetables have shown its vulnerability to weather-related impacts, the CCC said. Among its recommendations were for farmers to consider new crops, such as peaches and apricots in Kent.

The committee said homes are still being built in areas at future risk of flooding, while on the coast plans are inadequate to deal with people losing their homes to rising seas. The CCC also said that, while standards for new homes included protection against heatwaves, there was a lack of policy to tackle overheating in existing homes.

The new National Adaptation Programme will be a “make-or-break moment”, the committee said, and would have to increase public funding for adaptation as well as remove barriers to private investment.

“The National Adaptation Programme we have at the moment is just nowhere near the kind of cross-government, powerful framework that would be equivalent to the climate risks that we face,” said Stark. “In fact, it’s a document that sits in a relatively dusty cupboard somewhere in [Whitehall].” 

Then . . . 

. . . on the following day Fiona Harvey, an environment editor at the Guardian, posted this story on the Guardian webpages (Thu 30 March 2023). The headline runs:

UK government gambles on carbon capture and storage tech despite scientists’ doubts 

A government prepared to gamble with the future habitability of the environment shows scant regard for the people it governs.

The print version of the Guardian for Thursday 30 March 2023, that carries this story under the main headline on its front page, has a different subheading to the web version naming the Tory ministerial mediocrity Grant Shapps as the instigator of this "plan". Grant Shapps is quoted in the red cartouche saying:   

We need oil and gas . . . I think there are huge opportunities for us

Who is "Us" exactly? 

Opportunities for Tory politicians certainly! But what about our collective future? Activist Sharon Wilson who has spent more than a decade documenting methane leaks at sites operated by ExxonMobil and other oil and gas companies says: 

“We can have a future, or we can have oil and gas, but we cannot have both.” 

Fiona Harvey and Jillian Ambrose write:  

Controversial technology is at centre of ‘powering up Britain’ strategy, but critics argue it has ‘little merit’ and ‘delays real cuts in emissions’

The UK government will defy scientific doubts to place a massive bet on technology to capture and store carbon dioxide in undersea caverns, to enable an expansion of oil and gas in the North Sea.

Grant Shapps, the energy and net zero secretary, will on Thursday unveil the “powering up Britain” strategy, with carbon capture and storage (CCS) at its heart, during a visit to a nuclear fusion development facility in Oxford.

(Re:LODE Radio notes that the prospect of carbon capture and storage as well as nuclear fusion as a source of energy by 2050 is just more "pie in the sky when you die"!)

Shapps said the continued production of oil and gas in the North Sea was still necessary, and that the UK had a geological advantage in being able to store most of the carbon likely to be produced in Europe for the next 250 years in the large caverns underneath the North Sea.

“Unless you can explain how we can transition [to net zero] without oil and gas, we need oil and gas,” he said. “I am very keen that we fill those cavities with storing carbon. I think there are huge opportunities for us to do that.”

Shapps pointed to the £20bn the government is planning to spend over 20 years on developing CCS, which he said would generate new jobs and make the UK a world leader in the technology.

Among the 1,000 pages of proposals to be published on Thursday will be boosts for offshore wind, hydrogen, heat pumps and electric vehicles. A green finance strategy, to be set out by the chancellor of the exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, will be aimed at mobilising private-sector money for investments in green industry, and there will be a consultation on carbon border taxes, aimed at penalising the import of high-carbon goods from overseas.

But the plans contain no new government spending, and campaigners said they missed out key elements, such as a comprehensive programme of home insulation and a full lifting of the ban on new onshore wind turbines in England.

Ministers are also thought to have rejected or modified scores of the 130 policy recommendations made by Tory MP Chris Skidmore in his review of the net-zero strategy, published in January. For instance, oil and gas companies will not be forced to stop flaring, and the ban on sales of new gas boilers from 2035 will not be brought forward.

Meanwhile, the government is in the midst of a new licensing round for North Sea oil and gas development, which will run until next June, and oil and gas companies, which have made record profits in recent months, are proposing new developments, encouraged by tax breaks for investment in fossil fuel assets under the windfall tax.

Proposals under consideration include a potentially massive new field called Rosebank, which campaigning group Uplift said could receive an effective subsidy of £3.75bn under the windfall tax.

Scientists told the Guardian that an overdependence on CCS was ill-advised. More than 700 scientists have written to the prime minister asking him to grant no new oil and gas licences, describing CCS as “yet to be proved at scale”, and the UN secretary-general called on governments last week to stop developing oil and gas.

Bob Ward, head of policy at the Grantham Institute, said CCS technology would be needed for certain industries, but that using it to enable the continued use of fossil fuels was a mistake. “What does not make sense is to carry on with further development of new fossil fuel reserves on the assumption that CCS will be available to mop up all the additional emissions. While the costs of CCS will come down, it will make fossil fuel use even more expensive, and it will not eliminate all the risks resulting from the price volatility and energy insecurity of fossil fuels. A successful and competitive economy in the future will be powered by clean and affordable domestic energy, not unreliable and insecure fossils fuels,” he said.

“CCS is not required if the government moves to renewables as quickly as possible – especially as I am unaware of any CCS that works,” added Mark Maslin, professor of earth science at UCL.

Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate at Manchester, said: “When it comes to energy emissions, the claimed prospect of CCS continues its long-established role in supporting the development of the oil and gas industry and in further delaying real cuts in emissions. Given the huge cost, very high-life cycle emissions and appalling record of working as promised, there is little, if any, merit in pursuing CCS as a major plank of UK energy strategy.”

Emily Shuckburgh, director of Cambridge Zero at Cambridge University, who organised the letter by scientists, said: “Advancing CCS is important because there are some sectors that are hard to decarbonise which will require it if we are to rapidly reach net zero. However, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear that the level of greenhouse gas emissions this decade will determine whether temperature rise can be limited to 1.5C [above pre-industrial levels]. In that context, the focus of our energy strategy must be on scaling up proven renewable technologies, developing energy storage, supporting energy efficiency and reducing demand.”

The government’s plans could also face legal challenge. The “powering up Britain” strategy is in large part a response to a high court ruling last year, when a judge agreed with campaigners that government policies at the time were inadequate to meet the legally binding commitment to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The court ordered a rethink, with a deadline of the end of this month.

Mike Childs, head of policy at Friends of the Earth, which led the case, said lawyers would closely examine the documents and return to court if the proposals did not add up. “These plans look half-baked, half-hearted and dangerously lacking ambition,” he warned. “These announcements will do little to boost energy security, lower bills or put us on track to meet climate goals.”

Alok Sharma, Tory MP and former president of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, said: “The announcements made are a very welcome step in the right direction and rapid delivery is now vital. However, what we still need to see is that big bazooka moment, commensurate with the scale of the challenge. We cannot afford to wait for the government to set out the UK’s strategic response to green growth initiatives from other nations, like the US Inflation Reduction Act, which is helping to hoover up billions in private-sector investment right now.” 

"Pie-in-the-sky fantasies of carbon capture and geoengineering are a way for decision-makers to delay taking real action" 

So, says Rebecca Solnit as quoted in the opinion piece featured in the previous post: 

Forget geoengineering. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. Right now

Delay is the new denial!

So far, and NOT so good, this post addresses the vast discrepancy that exists between the blah, blah, blah promises on fossil fuels, but there remains a glaring omission when it comes to planning for 1.5 as an achievable target to save the habitability of the planet. This omission is exposed in Damian Carrington's report for the Guardian earlier this month (Mon 6 Mar 2023) headlined: 

Meat, dairy and rice production will bust 1.5C climate target, shows study

Damian Carrington writes: 

Emissions from the food system alone will drive the world past 1.5C of global heating, unless high-methane foods are tackled. 

Climate-heating emissions from food production, dominated by meat, dairy and rice, will by themselves break the key international target of 1.5C if left unchecked, a detailed study has shown.

The analysis estimated that if today’s level of food emissions continued, they would result in at least 0.7C of global heating by the end of the century, on top of the 1C rise already seen. This means emissions from food alone, ignoring the huge impact of fossil fuels, would push the world past the 1.5C limit.

The study showed that 75% of this food-related heating was driven by foods that are high sources of methane, ie those coming from ruminant livestock such as cattle, and rice paddy fields. However, the scientists said the temperature rise could be cut by 55% by cutting meat consumption in rich countries to medically recommended levels, reducing emissions from livestock and their manure, and using renewable energy in the food system.

Previous studies have shown the huge impact of food production on the environment, particularly meat and dairy, but the new study provides estimates of the temperature rises their emissions could cause. These could be a significant underestimate, however, as the study assumed animal product consumption would remain level in the future but it was projected to rise by 70% by 2050.

“Methane has this really dominant role in driving the warming associated with the food systems,” said Catherine Ivanovich, at Columbia University in the US, who led the research. “Sustaining the pattern [of food production] we have today is not consistent with keeping the 1.5C temperature threshold. That places a lot of urgency on reducing the emissions, especially from the high-methane food groups.”

“We have to make the goal of sustaining our global population consistent with a climate-safe future,” she said.

The contribution of global food production to the climate crisis is complex because it involves several important greenhouse gases, all of which have different abilities to trap heat and persist in the atmosphere for different amounts of time. Previous studies have converted the impact of methane and other gases into an equivalent amount of CO2 over 100 years, but this underplayed the high potency of methane over shorter timescales.

The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, treated each greenhouse gas separately for 94 key types of food, enabling their impact on climate over time to be better understood. Feeding this emissions data into a widely used climate model showed that the continuation of today’s food production would lead to a rise of 0.7C by 2100 if global population growth was low, and a 0.9C rise if population growth was high.

“As we had already reached more than 1C warming above pre-industrial levels by 2021, this additional warming [from food production] alone is enough to surpass the 1.5C global warming target,” the scientists concluded. “Our analysis clearly demonstrates that current dietary production and consumption patterns are incompatible with sustaining a growing population while pursuing a secure climate future.”

Food-related temperature rise could be curbed, the researchers said. If people adopted the healthy diet recommended by Harvard medical school, which allows a single serving of red meat a week, the rise could be cut by 0.2C. Such a diet would mean a big cut in meat eating in rich nations but could mean an increase in some poorer countries.

Cutting methane emissions from cattle using feed additives and better management of manure could avoid another 0.2C, the researchers said, while switching to green energy in the food system would cut 0.15C. Ivanovich said the emissions reductions options included in the study were those possible today but that future technological advances might be able to reduce emissions further.

“We already know that livestock production has a disproportionate contribution to climate change – even using traditional metrics, in 2021 we showed that 57% of emissions from the food system arise from animal agriculture,” said Prof Pete Smith, at the University of Aberdeen, UK. “This very neat study uses a simple climate model to show the disproportionate impact of methane emissions from agriculture on temperature increases, and throws light on the importance of reducing methane emissions from the food system.”

Only a third of the world’s countries have included policies to cut emissions from agriculture in the climate plans they have submitted under the UN Paris agreement. 

(Note: Re:LODE Radio recommends the new Climate Watch platform allowing anyone with web access to explore historical and projected emissions, countries' climate targets and their linkages with the Sustainable Development Goals.)

The researchers said their work was aimed at increasing the understanding of the impact of global food consumption on future global heating. Ivanovich also said policies to cut emissions had to protect access to food and livelihoods for vulnerable populations.

Carbon Brief published a Q&A on 1st February 2023 on the question of: 

Will the UK's new farm payments cut emissions and help nature?

The new system of “environmental land management schemes” (Elms) has been described by the government as the “biggest change in agricultural policy in half a century”.

So what do people think about how Elms will help the UK to meet its climate and biodiversity targets?

Agriculture, which accounted for 11% of the UK’s overall greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, has a key role to play in reaching climate and nature goals. It is the fifth-highest emitting sector in the UK, according to government statistics. The government has its aims, but how likely is it that these aims will lead to plans that will deliver?

In England, the government says it aims to reduce agricultural emissions by up to 6m tonnes of CO2 equivalents each year under the 2033-37 carbon budget. This will be achieved in part through Elms as well as a fund to develop new technologies and practices that reduce climate impacts. 

This is starting to change as more details emerge about the UK’s plans for farming payments. A five-year Environmental Improvement Plan released by Defra this week sets out a “blueprint” to halt and reverse nature decline in England by 2030. 

This plan connects the nation’s environment and biodiversity actions with the various targets committed to on a domestic and global scale. It sets out an aim that 65-80% of landowners in England will adopt nature-friendly farming practices through government schemes on at least 10-15% of their land by 2030. Defra will also establish a species survival fund to create and restore habitats. Under the first round of landscape recovery projects, 400 miles of river will be restored and 3,000 hectares of new woodlands will be established along rivers in England.

Tony Juniper, the chair of Natural England, says the government’s targets and plans can be achieved “so long as priority is attached to it and we remain focused on joined-up delivery”. 

Speaking to BBC Radio 4, he added that this will “require a step up in delivery, not only a step up in setting more ambitious targets”. 

Joan Edwards, director of policy at the Wildlife Trusts, told the same programme that the new plan is “a good step, but it’s just one of many documents”, adding that “our wildlife continues to decline”. She said: 

“They’re setting out some targets and a plan, but where’s the funding? We need significant funding to make this happen. We need to put the plan into action. We also need all government departments to take notice of this plan. 

“We need to do something really big and different over the next few years to reach 30×30.” 

(Re:LODE Radio note: "30 x 30" refers to the COP 15 biodiversity summit in December 2022 promise to protect 30% of land and ocean by 2030) 

There are overall UK targets to reach in the years ahead, but devolved nations also develop their own environmental and agricultural policies. Northern Ireland, for example, has legislated to reduce emissions by at least 48% by 2030.

Dr Mary Dobbs says she does not believe the post-Brexit agricultural policies in Northern Ireland go far enough to meet environmental aims. She tells Carbon Brief: 

“They may help to an extent, but I do not think that they are sufficiently ambitious to address both the biodiversity and climate crises that we are facing.”

On UK policies as a whole, Dobbs adds: 

“The environment is in a very bad state. There’s some good content in the various documents, including in the Elms ones that have come out, and they do incentivise. But there is a need for large-scale overhauls if we’re to actually address the problems that we’re facing.”

The Climate Change Committee has noted the UK government’s lack of action on ambition or policies around reducing meat and dairy consumption, something the NFU has resisted, saying “choosing British-produced meat and dairy is part of the solution to the global climate challenge”.

Alice Groom from the RSPB says that the UK government will “really struggle” to meet its climate and biodiversity targets “based on how the schemes are currently looking” and the strategies to encourage farmers to partake in the schemes.

She says that farmers should be further encouraged and advised on the “co-benefits” of the schemes, telling Carbon Brief: 

“It’s not about asking farmers to choose between birds and producing food…In light of the government’s report that showed that the biggest risks to domestic food security were the loss of soils, climate change and loss of biodiversity, we would like the government to actually be having that conversation with farmers about the benefits of bringing nature on to the farm.” 

Current policies for cutting emissions from land are off track and peatland restoration and tree-planting rates are “falling well short of targets”, according to WWF’s analysis of a freedom of information request. Government data suggests tree-planting rates have flatlined since the UK announced its target in 2019. 

So, going back to the question on whether Elms will help the UK to meet its climate and biodiversity targets?

The answer is probably NO!

Today's print edition of the Guardian for Friday 31st March has a double page spread, pages 8 and 9, featuring a mosaic of stories relating to the government's "half-baked" energy plan. On page 8 the headline runs: 

PM's 'half-baked' energy plan too weak to hit Paris goals, experts say 

Fiona Harvey and Jillian Ambrose write:

The UK's new energy plan unveiled yesterday is a missed opportunity full of "half-baked, half hearted" policies that do not go far enough to power Britain's climate goals, according to green business groups and academics. The 1,000-page strategy has ben criticised by many within Britain's green sectors who fear the country could surrender its leading role in climate action because of the government's "business as usual" approach to delivering green investments. 

Harvey and Ambrose's report then covers the "unveiling" of the government's plans in a photo opportunity that includes Sunak and Shapps visiting a development facility for nuclear fusion. The theme is clear, future technology is the solution to the climate crisis. But it will be too late for the planet! 

"You'll get pie in the sky when you die!" Joe Hill 1911

Harvey and Ambrose continue:

However, most of the plans are based on existing government commitments and lack new funding. 

Environmental groups said the plans also risk falling short of legally binding climate targets, which could trigger further court action.  

Ana Musat, an executive director at Renewable UK, which represents onshore wind developers, said the plans did "not go far enough to attract the investment we need in the renewable energy sector" amid "global competition for investment in renewable energy projects [which] is fiercer than ever". 

We need much more than a business as usual approach to kickstart investment on the level we need to boost energy security, cut customer bills and reach net zero." Musat said. 

Mike Childs, Friends of the Earth's head of policy, said the group's lawyers were poised to act if the revised plan fell short. He said the government should be scaling up and accelerating the race to net zero, but the latest plans looked "half-baked, half hearted and dangerously lacking ambition". 

"These announcements will do little to boost energy security, lower bills or put us on track to meet climate goals," he said. 

Mark Maslin, a profssor of climatology at University College London, said: "Yet again th UK government has missed th opportunity to radically change the UK energy production and market. This is the time that innovative business-led initiatives are needed." 

The UK government has insisted it is still on track to meet its international climate commitments under the Paris agreement.  

However, its own analysis showed that th nw policies would only meet 92% of the emission cuts required and, without further changes, the target would be missed. 

At the heart of the strategy is the UK's legally binding requirement to reach net zero emissions by 2050, and its commitment under the Paris agreement to a plan - a nationally determined contribution (NDC) - to cut emissions by 68% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels. 

Chris Venables, the head of politics at the Green Alliance thinktank, said: "Our analysis shows that ven that 92% is a very generous reading. It is hard to celebrate an announcement that says itself it's not enough. The bottom line is that this plan doesn't plot a route to net zero. There are only so many times we can claim climate leadership while falling short of our own targets." 

Ed Miliband, the shadow climate and net zero secretary, told MP's: "A target for less than seven years' time, and they [the government] are miles off . . . All of the policies, all of the hot air, don't meet the targets they promised on the world stage."   

Harvey and Ambrose's last paragraphs in this story diligently report on the government's position which is reducible to . . .  

. . . blah, blah, blah!

But here's what the government says anyway!

A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said: "We remain committed to delivering our international commitments, including the 2030 NDC, under the Paris agreement, which we fully expect to meet. We are on track to deliver our carbon budgets, creating jobs and investment across the UK while reducing emissions. Our carbon budget delivery plan is dynamic, long term plan for a transition that will take place over the next 15 years, setting us on course to reach net zero by 2050."  

But don't you believe them!

Enter: The unicorns! Exit the science! 

The new plan involves support for carbon capture technology, but again with no new money. The government has stressed its already announced £20bn investment in carbon capture technology and new projects. 

Scientists said on Wednesday that an overdependence on carbon capture was ill-advised, describing it as "yet to be proved at scale". 

The Guardian website version of this story has a somewhat different textual emphasis and includes a section at the bottom of the report on the winners and losers: 

A few of the winners . . .

Electric vehicles

Car manufacturers must ensure a proportion of their sales are of electric vehicles – 22% of cars and 10% of vans by 2024 – under a zero emissions vehicle mandate, though campaigners said the proportion had been set too low. About £800m in capital funding is being made available for electric vehicles, and there will be a boost to EV charging infrastructure.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS)

Much of the government’s strategy for continuing with fossil fuel development – with decisions on potential new oil and gas fields imminent – rests on the deployment of technology to capture and store carbon dioxide in geological formations under the North Sea. The government shortlisted eight projects to move ahead in its funding scheme, including one backed by oil giant BP, and expects to make £20bn of investment available over 20 years in CCS.

Hydrogen and nuclear

The government named 20 new hydrogen projects that are on track to receive a share of £240m, to help the development of a fuel the government sees as central to the UK’s low-carbon future. It comes despite doubts among experts over some of its applications – particularly in home heating – and some of its sources, as fossil fuel companies are looking to hydrogen to allow them to continue drilling. Great British Nuclear will be a new organisation intended to come forward with small nuclear projects that the government believes will be key to its aim of generating a quarter of the UK’s electricity from nuclear by 2050.

And some of the gaps and the losers . . .

Onshore wind

The government dashed hopes that its new strategy might lift the ban on onshore windfarms in England. The lack of action has frustrated leading academics and green groups because onshore windfarms could begin powering the grid far sooner than nuclear reactors, and would help to reduce energy bills. Dr Daniel Quiggin, ​a s​enior ​r​esearch ​f​ellow​ at Chatham House​, ​said onshore wind could bring greater real emissions reductions than removing emissions from the air via carbon capture technology.

Grid connections

While the government hopes to boost renewable power generation, and nuclear energy, there was little detail on how to solve one of the most pressing problems for the UK’s ageing electricity network. New windfarms and other sources of power, and the battery storage facilities needed to smooth out the intermittency of renewable power, can wait years for the grid connections they need, partly owing to the difficulty of getting planning permission and partly to a lack of grid capacity.

Andy Willis, the founder of Kona Energy, said: “Without significant grid connection reform, the vast potential of clean energy development will linger, trapped behind red tape and bureaucratic delays.”

Farming

There was little reference to agriculture, even though farming and food prices are highly sensitive to energy costs and agriculture is one of the biggest single sources of UK emissions. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was involved in the Whitehall discussions around Thursday’s announcements, but a key land use strategy is not due until the end of June. Then, both the future of farming emissions and the potential for growing trees and restoring landscapes to store carbon – and offset the UK’s remaining emissions by 2050 – will be addressed.

Biomass

There was drama on the stock market on Thursday as shares in Drax, which operates the UK’s biggest power station burning biomass, fell early on after the government appeared to reject its plea for increased subsidies for a project to capture and store the carbon dioxide from its wood burning. But Drax quickly pointed out that the main decisions on subsidies will follow later, by the end of June, when a biomass strategy is promised. The market confusion arose, the company claimed, because the government had separated its process for supporting hydrogen, gas and CCS projects from its consideration of biomass subsidies.

Falling behind 

Again on page 8 of the Guardian print edition, Friday 31 March 2023, the heading Falling behind stands out in red ink, foolow by the headline Tory rifts holding Britain back in the global green tech race. On the Guardian website the analysis by Fiona Harvey is headlined: 

Hasty changes to Sunak’s climate strategy reveal a warring Tory party

She writes: 

Rishi Sunak, the UK prime minister, headed to Oxfordshire on Thursday to visit a development facility for nuclear fusion, the early-stage concept that promises unlimited clean energy at an unspecified future point, if only some hefty physical constraints can be overcome.

He was accompanied by Grant Shapps, energy and net zero secretary, for the biggest energy and climate change announcement of his premiership, a comprehensive package of measures encompassing everything from onshore wind and solar power to carbon taxes and heat pumps.

“When global energy supplies are disrupted and weaponised by the likes of Putin, we have seen household bills soar and economic growth slow around the world,” said Sunak, of the “powering up Britain” energy package. “We have stepped in to shield people from its worst impacts by helping to pay around half the typical energy bill. But we are also stepping up to power Britain and ensure our energy security in the long term, with more affordable, clean energy from Britain, so we can drive down energy prices and grow our economy.”

Yet, only a few days before, the plan was to hold the launch in Aberdeen, the oil and gas capital of the UK. Local businesses had been primed, oil and gas specialists were ready, shoving their minor interests in green alternatives – such as hydrogen – hastily to the fore, for an event to be hailed as “energy security day”. Fossil fuels would be a necessary part of that energy security, they had been assured.

And, only a few days before that, the plan was not to foreground energy security at all – the event was to be called “green day”, and the focus would be clearly on renewable energy, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and tackling the climate crisis, as well as bringing down household bills through supporting clean power.

Tom Burke, co-founder of the thinktank E3G, and a veteran government adviser, said the whirl of changes in the run-up to the launch were both bewildering and revealing. “This is a level of chaos that reveals the extent of the internal unresolved disputes within the party on these issues,” he said. “There is an anti-green faction in the Tory party, and this chaos has been all about them.”

The energy strategy, running to well over a thousand pages across its reams of documents, covers everything from nuclear fusion – which some experts regard as an unconvincing distraction, when technology to cut emissions today should be the priority – to electric vehicle charging points.

Sunak had little choice but to publish some form of strategy this week, as last year the high court ruled that the government’s existing strategy to meet its legally binding target of net zero emissions by 2050 was inadequate. The judge in the case, brought by Friends of the Earth and other campaigners, ordered a revamp by the end of this month, also the deadline for the government to publish its response to the review of net zero by Tory MP Chris Skidmore, published in January.

To complete the package, the chancellor of the exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, decided to publish his strategy for green investment at the same time, setting out how the private sector is expected to fund the comprehensive overhaul of the UK’s economy needed to reach the net zero target.

For the government, this marks a major cross-Whitehall operation, encompassing policy that spans the Department for Transport, Department for Levelling Up, Department for Business and Trade, and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as well as the Treasury and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and Downing Street.

The government’s focus is timely, given rapidly growing concerns that the UK is falling behind internationally, which have been given new urgency by the war in Ukraine and the soaring price of energy. The US is pushing forward strongly with its $369bn Inflation Reduction Act, which aims to make America a superpower for clean energy technologies and offers tax breaks to manufacturers.

Europe, after initial outrage that it was losing its green leadership status, is now hard at work on its response. Hundreds of billions of euros of investment are at stake, and the sacred cow of state aid rules is likely to be slaughtered in pursuing them.

So the key question is: does the UK’s new energy and climate package measure up to what other countries are planning? For most of the experts and campaigners delivering their verdict on Thursday, the answer was a clear no.

Mel Evans, head of climate at Greenpeace UK, summed it up: “Ministers talk about leading the world, but the UK is not even making it to the starting blocks of the green tech race. A good government would go all in on renewable, efficient energy to give millions of people warm homes, clean air, lower bills and a safe climate – but powering Up Britain is a far cry from what this country needs.”

Despite the support for offshore wind, the talk of electric vehicles and the focus on carbon capture, there were too many misses. Plans to insulate 300,000 homes were dismissed as puny, compared with the 14m that need upgrades. Onshore wind turbines are still, in effect, banned, despite small changes to the planning rules. Hydrogen is still being touted for home heating, despite studies showing it will not work. Solar panels will not be mandated on new-build housing, and the heat pump scheme is still flawed.

Burke laid the blame at the door of a prime minister besieged by a warring party. “This feels like a party that is internally divided, that can’t come up with a coherent story, that can’t even agree what the story is,” he told the Guardian. “And this is what is spooking investors: this anti-green faction of losers who are going to turn the UK into a loser, in the global race for green prosperity.” 

Delay is the new denial!

The reasons behind this abdication of responsibility by the UK Tory government are evident in the story occupying the bottom right hand corner of page 9 in the print edition of the Guardian Friday 31 March 2023. The heading in red runs: Party funding, followed by the headline: 

£3.5m linked to pollution and climate denial 

Helena Horton reports (Thu 30 Mar 2023): 

The Conservative party received £3.5m from individuals and entities linked to climate denial, fossil fuels and high-pollution industries last year, according to new analysis.

The climate website DeSmog analysed Electoral Commission records, which show that the party and its MPs received funds from the aviation and construction industries, mining and oil interests, and individuals linked to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a thinktank which has denied the legitimacy of climate science.

The analysis comes after the government announced an underwhelming suite of energy policies, which rely on carbon capture and storage and which campaigners have said lack the ambition to properly phase out fossil fuels.

Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, said the government’s so-called green day “couldn’t be any more of a misnomer, when the Conservative party is raking in millions of pounds’ worth of dirty donations from fossil fuel interests and climate deniers”.

The Tories gained large sums from those with direct ties to fossil fuels, including more than £62,000 from Nova Venture Holdings, a firm wholly owned by Jacques Tohme, who describes himself as an “energy investor” on LinkedIn and lists his current role as co-founder and director of Tailwind Energy, an oil and gas company.

The party also received £10,000 from Alan Lusty, the CEO of Adi Group, a “leading supplier of engineering services to the petrochemical industry”, while Centrax, a firm that manufactures gas turbines, gave £35,000 to the party.

The party received £23,900 from Amjad Bseisu, CEO of the oil and gas firm EnQuest, who has argued that the North Sea could still yield further discoveries to extend its lifespan.

The largest donor to the Conservative party last year was the aviation entrepreneur Christopher Harborne, who gave £1.5m. The entrepreneur is CEO of a private jet company and also runs AML Global, an aviation fuel supplier operating in 1,200 locations across the globe with a distribution network that includes “main and regional oil companies”, according to its website.

Harborne has previously provided gifts to the Conservative MP Steve Baker, who co-founded the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, and was once a GWPF trustee. Harborne has previously given £6.5m to the Brexit party – now Reform UK – whose co-founder Nigel Farage has called for a referendum on the government’s net zero targets. The entrepreneur hasn’t publicly spoken out on the climate crisis.

The largest single donation to the party – £973,000 – came from Mark Bamford, who is part of the JCB construction empire. According to the government’s environmental audit committee, the UK’s built environment is responsible for 25% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, and “there has been a lack of government impetus or policy levers to assess and reduce these emissions”.

The Bamfords have also invested in hydrogen power, a form of energy which could help to decarbonise heavy industry if it is produced sustainably. The government has been trialling the use of hydrogen to heat homes, but a comprehensive review of scientific papers has concluded that it is unsuitable for use in home heating, and likely to remain so, despite the hopes of the UK government and plumbing industry.

Sir Michael Hintze, who was one of the early funders of the GWPF, donated £17,500 to the party.

The Conservative party and all companies and individuals mentioned have been contacted for comment. 

This is the DeSmog article by Sam Bright on Mar 30, 2023. 

“It’s clear this is not a strategy, just an assembly of lobby interests”

On Wednesday 29 March 2023 George Monbiot's opinion piece in the Guardian on Fossil fuels and "green day" covers similar ground.

The UK’s ‘green day’ has turned into a fossil fuel bonanza – dirty money powers the Sunak government

In prioritising oil and gas over renewables, ministers are doing the bidding of the polluters. And we’ll all pay the price

Money for the criminals, prison for the heroes: this, in brief, is the government’s climate policy. If something is damaging to the public interest, it’s likely to be rewarded and subsidised. If it’s beneficial, it will find itself in a hostile environment.

This government represents the denouement of the Pollution Paradox: as dirty money has the greatest incentive to invest in politics, it comes to run the whole system. Across these 13 years of misrule, we have seen the perversities of Conservative government multiply and intensify.

Thursday was supposed to be “green day”, when the government, forced to act by a court ruling, would unveil a new, more detailed plan for achieving net zero emissions. Instead, the occasion has been rebranded “energy security day”.

Rather than announce the comprehensive change required to defend Earth systems, Rishi Sunak’s government will defend the fossil fuel industry from its competitors. It is likely to set no meaningful new green targets: instead, it will pump money into false solutions, such as carbon capture and storage, which has not materialised at scale for 20 years and never will. This fabled technology’s purpose is to justify fossil fuel extraction, on the grounds that “one day” the carbon emissions could be buried. Sunak will also promote “sustainable aviation fuel”, though there is, and can be, no such thing.

Worse still, he is likely to announce the licensing of a huge new oilfield: Rosebank. Its development, by the Norwegian state company Equinor, will be almost entirely subsidised by the UK’s tax relief for new oil and gas development. While Sunak will doubtless justify this generosity by claiming that it helps secure our future energy supplies, 80% of the oil the field produces is likely to be exported.

This tax relief is a massive but little-known scandal. The government hands back 91p out of every pound it harvests from the energy profits levy, to fund oil and gas investments. It thus creates a major incentive for fossil fuel companies to open new wells. Yet the science is clear: if we are not to push global heating past 1.5°C, there can be no new fossil fuel development. Almost 60% of oil and fossil gas reserves must be left in the ground to permit just a 50% chance of preventing this degree of heating. For a higher chance of averting planetary disaster, more or less all of them should remain unexploited. The countries that should move first are the richest ones, which have the greatest capacity to invest in alternatives.

Amazingly, no such generosity is extended to the development of new renewables. They must survive the market forces the Tories claim to celebrate, but mysteriously suspend when it comes to their favoured (ie filthy) industries. There is no equivalent investment relief from the electricity generator levy that renewable power must pay when prices are high, which incidentally stands at 45%, in contrast to the 35% levy on oil and gas.

There is neither a moral nor a business case for this outrageous policy, which protects a dying industry against clean technologies. The new oil and gas fields for which it pays will start producing only when all such fossil fuels should have been retired. This incentive, and others like it, has nothing to do with energy security. Like the PPE procurement scandal, it’s just a gift to favoured interests.

While the government splashes money around like an arsonist with a petrol can, it has done almost nothing to reduce energy demand. Its general funds for improving the energy efficiency of our homes – the green deal loan scheme and the green homes grant scheme – were destroyed by the breathtaking incompetence and nihilistic vandalism that have become Conservative hallmarks.

The continued absence of a coherent insulation policy is almost impossible to believe. The government is, however, uncharacteristically happy to keep supporting household energy bills. Why? Because these discounts encourage us to consume more gas. Never mind that the heat they pay for, in the leakiest homes in western Europe, pours straight through our roofs and walls.

Scandalously, homes being built today will need to be expensively retrofitted to meet the government’s net zero obligations. If they were built right, properly insulated, with heat pumps instead of gas boilers, the extra cost would amount to an average of £4,800. But because the government has allowed the construction industry to save money, they will need to be upgraded at an average cost of £26,300. In the meantime, those who buy them must also spend more on energy.

Elsewhere in Europe, heat pumps are becoming standard. In Norway, two-thirds of households use them, and gas fitting is almost extinct. Even in Poland, scarcely renowned for climate policies, sales more than doubled last year, to over 200,000. In Italy, 500,000 were sold in 2022. Yet in the UK, we bought only 60,000, one tenth of the government’s “ambition”. Why? Because there are no incentives. The money that might have been spent on them has gone instead to the oil and gas companies.

There are similar failures, powerfully documented in the report by environmental organisation Zero Hour, in every field: surface and air transport, business emissions, land use, marine carbon. The government has failed to upgrade its greenhouse gas policies in the light of new science, failed to include emissions from imported goods, failed to account for aviation, shipping and trawling. It has awarded the UK more than twice its global share of greenhouse gases, even under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s global carbon budget calculations, which are far too generous to the rich nations.

Such perversities are baked in. They are not an accidental outcome of Conservative politics, but the reason for this government’s existence. The Tories were always close to dirty money. Now they represent nothing and no one but the most destructive and inhumane commercial interests, which reward them handsomely for the favour. They are, to a remarkable extent, bankrolled by petro-capital. Dirt is the fuel on which their election machine runs.

The government’s destructive policies will break its own laws, leading to more legal trouble. Like Donald Trump, it will revel in every adverse ruling, using them both to demonstrate its loyalty to filthy capital and to provoke the outraged reactions on which it thrives. For Sunak and his chums, this is a game, played for political advantage. For those who understand the implications, it’s a matter of life and death.

Hoist by their own petard?

"Hoist with his own petard" is a phrase from a speech in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet that has become proverbial. The phrase's meaning is that a bomb-maker is blown ("hoisted") off the ground by his own bomb ("petard"), and indicates an ironic reversal, or poetic justice. 

The recent announcement of "half-baked" and "half hearted" government plans has only occurred because of legal action by ClientEarth, Friends of the Earth and the Good Law Project that resulted in a High Court ruling from July 2022 that found the government’s net zero strategy was unlawful.

The UK government has conceded that its plan to cut carbon emissions is inadequate, and must now come up with a better one.

The GOOD LAW Project 13th October 2022

It's hard to see how this latest plan meets legal requirements on reaching net zero by 2050, especially with the prospect of the UK Tory government allowing emissions from new oil and gas fields in the North Sea.

The GOOD LAW Project is clear about its position on this question; 

has the Government done enough this time?

It is vital that the Government has a proper plan to ensure that carbon budgets and the 2050 Net Zero climate target are actually met. We will be reviewing what the Government has published today very carefully with our lawyers.

If we come to the conclusion that the Government’s new plan has once again fallen short of the mark, we will not hesitate to take further legal action. We have already arranged to meet again with Friends of the Earth and ClientEarth to discuss our next steps.

The Government has a moral and legal duty to get this right. So, at a first glance, it is disappointing to see that a number of the policies announced today have either been recycled from previous pledges or are not backed up with proper investment. 

Last week’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was yet another stark warning about our chances to stop the world from warming by more than 1.5C. If our planet is to survive, there’s no future for coal, oil and gas.

So it is extremely concerning that the Government has proceeded to open a new licensing round for companies to run oil and gas exploration schemes in the North Sea.

We must meet our climate targets to protect the planet and we are poised to continue to hold Ministers to account to make sure this happens.  

The ballad of Joe Hill 

The phrase "pie in the sky" (when you die) is originally found in the "The Preacher and the Slave", a song written by Joe Hill in 1911. Joe Hill (1879 – 1915) was born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund, a Swedish-American labour activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World, familiarly called the "Wobblies". A native Swedish speaker, he learned English during the early 1900s, while working various jobs from New York to San Francisco. Hill, an immigrant worker frequently facing unemployment and underemployment, became a popular songwriter and cartoonist for the union.

Don't mourn! Organise! 

Three clips from the 1971 film "Joe Hill", beginning with the famous "pie in the sky when you die" song, and intersected with versions of the ballad including Paul Robeson singing to Scottish miners, Joan Baez at Woodstock in 1969, and Bruce Springsteen in concert in 2014.

Joe Hill's song was written as a parody of the hymn "In the Sweet By-and-By". Copying or using the musical style of the hymn was also a way to capture the emotional resonance of that style of music and use it for a non-religious purpose. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, also commonly known as the Wobblies) concentrated much of its labour trying to organise migrant workers in lumber and construction camps. When the workers returned to the cities, the Wobblies faced the Salvation Army, which they satirised as the "Starvation Army", who were said to have tried to drown out IWW with their religious music. Joe Hill's song subverts the idea that a hope for a sustainable future can only exist in the questionable state of an afterlife, a heaven, while acceptance of the hellish state of things is the only option.

The UK government, just like many other governments along the LODE Zone Line, is stealing our future for the sake a few capitalists to make quick, and massive profits. And whatever happened to the idea that the polluter pays? The polluter in this scenario makes billions and the citizen and the Earth pays the price.

Talking of preachers, long haired or otherwise, William Blake's "An answer to the parson" is succinct in its rejection of oppressive ideological frameworks:

Q. Why of the sheep do you not learn peace?

A. Because I don't want you to sheer my fleece!

In another age William Blake's couplet exemplifies his refusal to tolerate the passivity enforced by the powers that be upon the general population, a false message that activists such as Joe Hill in the 20th century and Greta Thunberg in the 21st, will challenge to the very end.

Steve Bell's cartoon in the Guardian (Mon 7 Nov 2022) has it thus: 

SHITE EXPELLING FART GAS - OR - THE SUN OF CONSERVATISM RISING SUPERIOR TO GLOBAL CATASTROPHE

After James Gillray's "Light expelling darkness" (1795).

Don't mourn! Organise! 

Reject the blah, blah, blah, of the liars and deceivers paid to uphold "the way things are".

DW News 01/17/23

Images emerged on Tuesday showing German police carrying Greta Thunberg away from a part of the major coal mine protests at the now-uninhabited village of Lützerath in western Germany. 

Protesters have been occupying the site in large numbers for well over a week, opposing the demolition of the derelict buildings now owned by the RWE energy company.

Police started clearing the site in earnest last Wednesday. Thunberg arrived there on Friday, in time for a major demonstration on Saturday.

Bigger than a pothole?

 

This is the Tagebau Garzweiler, a surface mine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is operated by RWE and used for mining lignite. It is the plan to extend the area of this open caste mine, currently covering 48 km2 (19 sq mi) that has resulted in the protests to stop the demolition of the village of Lützerath. The mine got its name from the village of Garzweiler which previously existed at this location and destroyed to make way for a big hole in the ground. All in all, during the early 1980s, it is estimated that more than 30,000 people had to be moved for the Garzweiler mine.

DW ran this story at the end of 2022:  

Lützerath: How Germany's energy crisis reignited coal

Kristie Pladson writes (December 29, 2022):

Germany had been winding down its brown coal production. Then an energy crisis hit. Now, thousands of people have promised to resist January plans to demolish a village and dig up the coal beneath it. 

"If this village goes, then Germany's 1.5-degrees commitment to the Paris Agreement goes, as well."

It's an October afternoon in a rural corner of western Germany, the village of Lützerath in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). The morning rain clouds have moved out, and the sun is glistening off the damp grass and leaves in the small meadow where we're walking.

Scattered among the tall trees, small makeshift houses on raised wooden platforms loom over us in all directions. A couple of people move around on the ground below. Just out of sight, 200 meters (220 yards) away, is Garzweiler II, one of Europe's largest coal pits.

"It's a very, very important space, not only as a symbol, as many politicians tend to say," Alma (family name withheld), the press officer for the initiative Alle Dörfer Bleiben (All Villages Stay), tells DW on a tour of the village. "It's a very practical place of climate justice because there is so much coal below." 

Hundreds of towns lost to coal

Lützerath has been occupied by protesters since 2020, when plans emerged to demolish the village and dig up the brown coal — or lignite — beneath it. Since the end of World War II, around 300 towns in Germany have been demolished for lignite mining, causing more than 120,000 people to be resettled.

In recent years, aside from activists, only one farmer and a few tenants were still living in Lützerath. A visit to the town reveals little more than one main road and a dozen old, brick farm houses covered in protest graffiti.

But it's not just about saving the town, people opposing the demolition say. It's about keeping coal in the ground. Globally, coal is still the largest source of electricity generation as well as the largest source of carbon dioxide. In 2021, around 30% of Germany's electricity was generated by burning coal.

Coal production to increase in the short term

Germany says it wants to be carbon neutral by 2045. In 2020, it announced it would stop burning the climate killer, gradually phasing out its coal-fired plants by 2038.

But attempts to save Lützerath got more complicated after Russia's invasion of Ukraine triggered an energy crisis in Europe. Cut off from Russian natural gas, Germany has scrambled to secure an alternative energy supply. That included crawling back to its homegrown coal industry. This year, the government has moved to bring around a dozen plants back on the grid, and extended the lifespan of several that were meant to be shuttered.

To compensate for the unexpected increase in coal production, the government cut a deal with energy company RWE to move the coal phaseout deadline in NRW, a major coal-producing region, to 2030. 

"We have to bring power plant units back onto the grid in the short term and need more coal," said Markus Krebber, the CEO of RWE, when German magazine Der Spiegel asked him in November about his company's plans to clear Lützerath. "That said, we will then phase it out twice as quickly as planned."

Protesters argue that the early phaseout doesn't matter: burning the coal below Lützerath will cause Germany to overshoot its CO2 emissions targets. It's a claim backed up by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW).

Their arguments and protests have not convinced the courts or politicians. In December, it was announced that the activists will be cleared from Lützerath in January and that the demolition of the village will begin. 

An ambivalent image

Looking at the pit itself is like looking at a boring version of hell: no fire and brimstone, just a massive, gray, obviously man-made hole, dotted here and there with giant excavators scraping away mechanically at its walls. They run 24 hours a day. A local from a nearby town tells me that when the wind blows a certain way, you can hear them at night. The pit's edges stretch out and wrap around, leaving you with no sense of where it ends. A wind turbine on the other side provides some sense of scale.

A handmade sign warns people to stay at least 10 meters back from the edge. But aside from a strip of yellow police tape lying crumpled on the ground, there's nothing keeping anyone from walking right up to the edge. Someone has set out a few folding chairs, anticipating the urge to stop and take in the view.

"It's totally ambivalent for me," Sascha Solbach, the mayor of the nearby town of Bedburg, tells DW in a conversation in his office, explaining his feelings on the coal pits in his region. "I look into this hole and I see the past. I see the future. I see jobs. I see the loss of jobs. I see the whole economy. I think it's a chance for a new economy when they're gone. So everything here in the region depends on where this industry is going."

Hydrogen ambitions

There are major ambitions to expand the production of climate-neutral hydrogen in NRW, partly to replace the economic hole that will be left when the coal industry dies. The new phaseout timeline complicates things.

"We're talking about seven years to finish the plants and have the hydrogen basically ready to use," says Andre Wantke, a RWE employee and local politician in Bergheim, a town about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from Garzweiler II and home to the Niederaussem coal plant. Niederaussem is the seventh most polluting coal plant in the world, according to a study by the University of Colorado Boulder.

It's evening and we're standing outside on a street not far from the plant. As the sun sets, the cloud of vapor billowing from the massive cooling tower fades into the night sky. A Bergheim local tells me that as a child, when his family would drive home from vacation, he'd see that cloud from the highway and know he was almost home.

A phaseout in 2038 was already very ambitious, Wantke says. "What will happen next for the younger employees? There are many question marks. Let's take a look at where the jobs will be in the end, where they will be created. Yes, renewables create new jobs, but on this scale, as things are now, it will be very difficult."

Protesters holding strong

It also raises questions about the landscape.

"If you cut this industry eight years from now, it's like an emergency stop to a running system," says Solbach, Bedburg's mayor. "It's not just that we won't burn coal anymore. The whole landscape transformation process comes to an unexpected end."

In the long term, eight local coal pits, including Garzweiler II, will be filled with water, turning the area into a lake district. But that transformation will take several decades to complete and is little comfort to those affected by changes to the coal phaseout strategy.

Nor is it a fate accepted by the protesters. More than 11,000 people have signed a pledge promising to show up and resist the destruction of Lützerath,the initiative "Alle Dörfer Bleiben" said in a recent press release. Resistance to other coal projects in the region has historically involved physical resistance and the destruction of property.

We finish our walk of the meadow, and Alma and I come out on the road separating the trees from the edge of the coal pit. I ask if she really thinks they have a chance at saving the village.

"If we start thinking it's impossible, then it's never going to happen. And I don't think it is possible to give up on 1.5 [degrees of global warming]," she says gesturing at the protest camp. "And the fact that this is possible makes me feel like good things must be possible as well."    

DW reported January 10, 2023:

Climate activists face off with police in Lützerath

The village of Lützerath in western Germany is set to be bulldozed and mined for coal. Climate activists being moved out of the village by police say the country's energy policy is on the wrong track. 

"Down" instead of "out" in Glasgow!

The change of one word in the plenary session of COP26 in Glasgow from "phase out" to "phase down" prompted tears from its President, Alok Sharma.

A Guardian analysis on COP26 by Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi (Sun 14 Nov 2021) begins: 

It was a dramatic 11th-hour decision, portrayed as a devastating blow to the success of Cop26.

After pressure exerted by India and China, the wording of the final deal was watered down to a pledge to “phase down” rather than “phase out” coal. Alok Sharma, the president of Cop26, was on the brink of tears as he explained what had happened and the last-minute alteration brought sharp words of rebuke from the US and other nations.

While it was China that reportedly pushed hard for a softening of the language over coal in the final negotiations, it was India’s environment minister, Bhupender Yadav, who read out a new version of the Glasgow pact that used the watered-down commitment to a “phase down” of coal. Many speculated that it had fallen to India alone to announce the softening of the language over coal because it was seen as more palatable than an intervention by China.

India was not the first to push for a “phase down” of coal at Cop26. The US and China had already used the “phase down” language in the bilateral climate agreement signed on 10 November.

Among many climate experts, the consensus was that India was not the villain it was being portrayed as. Many said the criticism of India’s position highlights how the issues of climate injustice are still rife, with developing countries expected to meet the same commitments as wealthy developed countries, who have historically emitted the most and also have access to vast financial resources and alternatives such as natural gas.

“India setting a net zero target and agreeing to phase down of coal is surely a step forward from where it was in terms of national policies and commitments before arriving at Cop this year,” said Sunil Dahiya, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air in India.

This was the first time that any explicit commitment to phasing out any fossil fuel had been included in an international climate pact signed by India, which many said was still significant progress alongside India’s pledge to go net zero in 2070, announced on the opening day of Cop26 by the prime minister, Narendra Modi.

From Bad COP to Worse COP 

The Guardian reporters Sandra Laville and Bibi van der Zee (Thu 17 Nov 2022) pointed out that the draft COP27 agreement fails to call for a 'phase down' of all fossil fuels (let alone a 'phase out') as India and the EU had requested. 

Meanwhile . . . 

Just as the village of Lützerath in western Germany is set to be bulldozed and mined for coal, villagers and indigenous tribal groups in the Indian state of Odisha (along the LODE Zone Line) are being removed from their lands and their livelihood.

Displaced villagers clash with police over mining at Jamkhani Coal Block in Odisha’s Sundargarh Nov 6, 2022. 

Unbridled coal extraction and concerns for livelihood: evidences from Odisha, India is a paper published 15 June 2021 by Tattwamasi Paltasingh and Jayadev Satapathy. 

When it comes to looking at holes in the ground, the huge scarring of the Earth's once pristine environment in these open cast mining operations by Talcher Coal Mines in Odisha, and as viewed from above in this aerial drone footage, is staggering.

The sheer celebratory hubris involved in the aestheticization of this coal extraction project by the Cultural ODISHA YouTube channel is equally "staggering". 

This 2016 report by Amnesty International India exposes the huge scale of yet another example of the process of "accumulation by dispossession". 

  

Where there was pristine forest there is now only "spoil". Where there were indigenous tribal peoples conducting a "way of life" embedded in environmentally sustainable ways of interaction with the forest, they find themselves "dispossessed" of their lands and their livelihoods. 

Reports such as this have not gone down well with an increasingly authoritarian, nationalist and sectarian Indian government led by Narendra Modi. In September 2020 Amnesty International India was forced to shut down after the Indian government froze all its bank accounts.

Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Ben Doherty reported (Tue 29 Sep 2020):

Amnesty International has been forced to shut down operations in India and lay off all staff after the Indian government froze its bank accounts.

The Indian enforcement directorate, an agency that investigates economic crimes, froze the accounts of Amnesty’s Indian arm this month after the group published two reports highly critical of the government’s human rights record.

Amnesty said the move was the culmination of a two-year campaign of harassment by the home affairs ministry, and more broadly part of an “incessant witch-hunt” of human rights groups by the Hindu nationalist government of the prime minister, Narendra Modi.

Amnesty’s departure starkly illustrates the shrinking space for dissent in India, where critics of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party face investigation and detention, often under draconian terrorism laws. It also comes at a time when human rights violations, particularly against India’s 200 million Muslims, are on the rise.

This crackdown on critics – including lawyers, activists and students – has increased during the coronavirus pandemic. Courts are only partly functioning and protest gatherings have been banned.

Avinash Kumar, the executive director of Amnesty International India, said: “Treating human rights organisations like criminal enterprises and dissenting individuals as criminals without any credible evidence is a deliberate attempt by the enforcement directorate and government of India to stoke a climate of fear and dismantle the critical voices in India.”

He added: “It reeks of fear and repression, ignores the human cost to this crackdown, particularly during a pandemic, and violates people’s basic rights.”

Amnesty International India’s bank accounts were frozen this month by the enforcement directorate without any prior warning. The human rights organisation has had to lay off 140 staff and cease operations immediately.

Authorities have been pursuing Amnesty for two years for alleged money laundering, a process described as an “incessant witch-hunt” by the group. Since 2018, a number of raids have been carried out on its offices and the homes of its executives by several government agencies.

Amnesty has denied all allegations of financial misconduct and said it stood in full compliance with all applicable Indian and international laws. No charges have been filed against the organisation.

In a statement, the ministry of home affairs said that the “stand taken and the statements made by Amnesty International are unfortunate, exaggerated and far from the truth”.

The ministry accused Amnesty India of bringing foreign funding into the country illegally and failing to comply with regulations, adding: “All the glossy statements about humanitarian work and speaking truth to power are nothing but a ploy to divert attention from their activities which were in clear contravention of laid down Indian laws.”

Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, which has also produced reports on the mounting human rights abuses under the BJP, condemned the crackdown on Amnesty India and said it was “yet more evidence that prime minister Modi’s government is failing to uphold freedom of speech and association”.

Shashi Tharoor, a politician from the opposition Congress party, said: “India’s stature as a liberal democracy with free institutions, including media and civil society organisations, accounted for much of its soft power in the world. Actions like this both undermine our reputation as a democracy and vitiate our soft power.”

Most recently, Amnesty published two reports critical of Indian authorities: one alleging rights violations and involvement of police in communal riots in Delhi, and another condemning restrictions on civil liberties in Jammu and Kashmir a year after the government revoked the region’s political autonomy.

“The continuing crackdown on Amnesty International India over the last two years and the complete freezing of bank accounts is not accidental,” the organisation said in a statement.

There has been a particular focus from the Indian government on organisations perceived to be funded from overseas. This month, it tightened restrictions on foreign-funded charities and has previously frozen the bank accounts of Greenpeace and raided the offices of human rights lawyers.

Julie Verhaar, Amnesty International’s acting secretary general, said: “This is an egregious and shameful act by the Indian government, which forces us to cease the crucial human rights work of Amnesty International India for now.”

DW reports on: 

How coal mining is displacing millions

Just transitions? 

The Mongabay series: Just Transitions asks the question: Are the transitions in the mining sector in India “just” for the environment and the community? 

The answer recognises that: World economies are in transition for two reasons. One is the routine growth or deceleration of different national economies, and the other is the changes that public opinion is forcing upon economies as almost all parts of the world feel the impact of climate change. Both the factors are at play in India. The Indian economy has been decelerating in the past half-decade due to various reasons. There is also an increasing public opinion and governmental will to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, move from fossil fuels to renewable energy, make industrial processes carbon neutral and increase green cover to strengthen sequestration. While transitions are happening in the mining sector – fossil-fuel and non-fuel mines – due to economic reasons, the question is whether these are happening in a 'just' manner. 

The first question is whether the transitions from mining to other operations are reducing the environmental destruction? The second question is whether those losing employment due to the closure of mines are able to find sustained employment in less- or non-environmentally destructive sectors? If not, the transition is neither just nor sustainable for them. The problem is that unjust changes are happening, and in the long run, the transitions loose their long-term sustainability. Greater awareness of the vicious cycle of environmental destruction, which has to a disproportionate impact on poor and marginal communities, is need to support just transition away from extractive industries. Mongabay-India intends to increase awareness about "just transitions" in this series. 

One such article by Mayank Aggarwal on 13 August 2020 was titled: East and west: The parallel worlds of India’s coal and renewable sectors, and looks at how:

• India over the past few years has pushed for rapid adoption of renewable power, mainly solar. Due to factors such as the non-availability of appropriate land and lack of political will, renewable power right now is concentrated mostly in western and southern India.
• Along with the push for renewable power, India continues to boost coal production. This means six states in central and eastern India, which have 90 percent of India’s coal reserves, may not see a just transition to clean power.
• Experts working in the renewable power sector and those working with communities point out that the livelihood ecosystem driven by coal mining-based jobs is a major hindrance in the transition to clean energy. 

More recently in the Just Transitions series an article by Manish Kumar on 16 December 2022 looks at recent developments on renewable energy policy in Odisha: 

With a new policy, Odisha aims at 10 GW of renewable energy by 2030

The article begins with these three bullet points:

• The Odisha government recently issued its latest State Renewable Energy Policy 2022 to attract investments in clean energy in the state, with a focus on new areas such as green hydrogen, green ammonia, floating solar, and wind energy, among others.
• The state, which has around 627 MW of installed capacity of renewable energy, plans to increase this to 10,000 MW by 2030.
• Odisha, currently one of the leading coal-producing states in India, has also made a provision for energy transition in this policy for the welfare of people associated with coal mining to transition in a smooth manner as coal mining is like to be phased out in the future.

And ends with coverage of Odisha's new approach to a "just" transition:

Energy transition in policy

Odisha hosts the highest coal reserve of power-grade coal in India, in its Talcher coalfields, and a number of its districts like Angul, Sundergarh and Sambalpur are involved in coal mining. A large number of people are directly or indirectly engaged in coal-related works for their livelihood.

A railway loading centre at Talcher where coals mined in Talcher are loaded into the trains.

For the first time, the state’s renewable energy policy also introduced the concept of “Energy Transition” and talked about training energy-related workers in renewable energy technologies to ensure a smooth transition as coal mines in the state, where many of them work, are likely to see a phased-wise closure given the Indian government’s net zero ambition.

Chandra Bhushan from iForest, the organisation which recently conducted a detailed study on the issue of Just Transition in Angul district of Odisha, told Mongabay-India that the policy is futuristic and not theoretical. He also appreciated the inclusion of energy transition into the policy to pave the way to prepare the next generation for the rising demand for renewables in the country.

Ashok Choudhury, a retired official from the Odisha Renewable Energy Development Agency (OREDA) who is now an independent energy consultant, told Mongabay-India that the current policies show the seriousness of the government to bring renewable energy into the mainstream of dialogue, and this is likely to pave the way for a better green energy ecosystem in the state.

“The new policy shows the activeness of the government with the concept of solar parks and a lot of incentives for investments. Even the new industrial policy also is offering many new incentives. It appears that the government is trying to make renewable energy and to make it mainstream,” he said.

Meanwhile . . . 

Pothole Update 14 April 2023

Cllr Jonathan Dulston pointing at the filled pothole. (Image: Ben Houchen) 

Phoebe Abruzzese reports for The Northern Echo:

A notorious pothole that was pointed out by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak two weeks ago has finally been filled

Job done then?