Crooked Bough News Round-up

— The Telegraph Ramps Up Anti-Climate Coverage During Labour’s Early Months

 

at 10/29/24 10:32am

Columnists at The Telegraph newspaper repeatedly attacked the new Labour government’s climate policies during its first 100 days in office, DeSmog can reveal.  A DeSmog analysis of over 1,600 opinion pieces and editorials from The Telegraph’s website found that 94 percent of those written about environmental issues were anti-green – attacking or undermining climate science, policy and technological solutions, or environmental activists.  DeSmog found anti-climate claims in 16 percent of all of The Telegraph’s opinion pieces and editorials published over the 100 days, and in one fifth of all articles that focused on the Labour Party.  These attacks are consistent with “discourses of delay” – arguments that don’t explicitly deny climate science, but instead seek to stall climate action by calling into question the cost and implications of green policies. Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); Only 1 percent of Telegraph editorials and opinion pieces published in this period adopted a pro-green stance – framing climate policy, technological solutions, campaigners, or champions in a positive light.  The Telegraph focused its attacks on Labour’s Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband, with its columnists regularly using nicknames like “red Ed” and “mad Ed” in an attempt to disparage his policies. This comes after the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), which regulates The Telegraph, last week upheld a complaint brought against it by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) over a misleading climate claim made by the newspaper in April. The Telegraph’s print circulation at the end of 2019, when it last released the data, was over 300,000. It had an online audience of 18.3 million in July this year. During Labour’s first 100 days, The Telegraph published multiple articles by known climate deniers, including Canadian author Jordan Peterson, those with links to the UK’s leading climate science denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), and figures associated with Reform UK, which campaigned during the 2024 general election to scrap the UK’s net zero emissions targets and increase fossil fuel extraction. Selwin Hart, the assistant secretary general of the UN, has warned that policies designed to reduce emissions are being hindered by a “prevailing narrative… pushed by the fossil fuel industry and their enablers – that climate action is too difficult; it’s too expensive.” A previous DeSmog analysis found that, during the six month period to 16 October 2023, 85 percent of The Telegraph’s editorials and opinion pieces on environmental issues were anti-green. “The British public knows that urgent climate action is needed to protect our future – but parts of our media continue to sow confusion, downplaying the threats and undermining the solutions with dangerous misinformation,” said Richard Wilson, director of the campaign group Stop Funding Hate. “Britain urgently needs a media that tells the truth and upholds the public interest, rather than acting as a megaphone for the fossil fuel industry. “In the meantime, advertisers need to steer well clear of The Telegraph, GB News and other media pushing the same toxic talking points and misleading narratives.” The Telegraph is currently up for sale, and New York Sun proprietor Dovid Efune has emerged as the frontrunner to buy the paper.  Efune is reported to be courting Stand Together, a conservative philanthropic organisation founded by the fossil fuel tycoon Charles Koch, to provide funding for his bid.  Charles Koch and his late brother David have been leading sponsors of climate science denial in the U.S. over recent decades.  According to Semafor, Efune also has links to Lord Michael Farmer, who is a major Conservative Party donor, an investor in the New York Sun, and a GB News shareholder. ‘Mad’ Miliband On average, The Telegraph published opinion pieces or editorials about the Labour Party five times a day in its first 100 days in office.  Many framed the government as untrustworthy because of its plans to fulfil the UK’s legally binding net zero commitments, focusing on Ed Miliband as the father of Labour’s green agenda.  Authors often argued that net zero would harm the UK’s economy, threaten its energy security, or lead to “rolling blackouts”. In reality, extreme weather is behind most power cuts, while evidence from Europe in recent years shows that as the share of electricity generation from wind and solar increased, interruptions decreased. The UK’s plan to hit net zero carbon emissions by 2050 is consistent with scientific recommendations of how to stave off the worst effects of climate change, including poverty, extreme heat, and drought.  Headlines like “Ed Miliband’s energy madness makes blackouts a terrifying possibility” or “Ed Miliband is trashing Britain”, or “Ed Miliband is the new face of Britain’s net zero folly”, were typical during Labour’s first 100 days. Conservative peer Lord David Frost, a trustee of the GWPF, penned multiple opinion pieces both criticising and insulting Ed Miliband, even referring to him as “perhaps Labour’s battiest minister.” Regular Telegraph columnist and fellow GWPF trustee Allison Pearson labelled Miliband “thoroughly mental Mili”. Framing Ed Miliband as ‘mad’ has been a common trope across hard-right media outlets during Labour’s first few months in power. This trope has appeared in Spiked, GB News, TCW Defending Freedom (penned by a GWPF report writer), the Daily Express, The Spectator, and the Daily Mail. A number of Telegraph articles portrayed fossil fuel companies operating in the North Sea as victims of Labour’s plan to block new oil and gas licences, claiming that the government was “pummelling” the sector, that oil workers would soon be “extinct”, and that BP and Shell are in check with “reality” by rolling back on their climate action plans. Columnists repeatedly argued that Labour’s policies would leave Britain more vulnerable to international price shocks, a claim that Miliband himself debunked in the House of Commons while responding to Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice on 3 September. As Miliband correctly pointed out, “whether fossil fuels are produced in this country or internationally, they are sold on the international market.”  Two article headlines suggested that net zero was “economic suicide”, while others stated that net zero was “an act of self harm” that “will destroy” and “wreck” Britain, and “devastate” its industries. Another raft of articles attempted to frame climate activists as deranged, selfish, or lacking a legitimate cause. Headlines included: “These art vandals are just self-indulgent idiots”; “Soup-throwing protests only happen because we indulge Just Stop Oil’s moral toddlers”; “Rich, entitled eco activists loathe the working poor”.  Multiple articles framed technologies necessary to decarbonise the economy, like renewables or heat pumps, as dangerous. In a piece entitled “Ed Miliband’s socialist energy plans will leave Britain in the dark”, Karl Williams argued that “if Labour genuinely cared about cheap and reliable energy, it wouldn’t be gleefully pummelling the North Sea oil and gas sector.” Other articles included the claims that “heat pumps are awful”, “Windmills and sunshine will never deliver net zero”, and “Heat pumps could bring the German economy to its knees”.  In another piece entitled “This is just the start of Ed Miliband’s green energy madness”, the author argued that the net zero secretary had set out to “inflict relatively inefficient solar on rural communities”. In reality, the cost of solar power has dropped by nearly 90 per cent over the last decade. Climate Denier Columnists A number of Telegraph authors have close links to think tanks and pressure groups that advocate in favour of oil and gas expansion, including those in the Tufton Street network. Individuals associated with the GWPF wrote at least 48 articles during Labour’s first 100 days, yet their ties to the climate denial group were not mentioned once by the newspaper.  The country’s leading climate denial political party, Reform UK, was also well represented in The Telegraph’s column inches.  Three Reform UK MPs, including party leader Nigel Farage, deputy leader Richard Tice, and Rupert Lowe, had all articles published by the newspaper, along with party chairman Zia Yusuf. Telegraph columnist Isabel Oakeshott, who is Tice’s partner, also published pieces endorsing the party.  Reform’s 2024 election manifesto included a pledge to scrap net zero. The party has suggested that climate change “has happened for millions of years based on multiple factors completely outside human control or influence” and therefore “those who think that getting to net zero will stop climate change are in fact just denying reality.” Since being elected to Parliament in July, Farage has himself suggested in an interview with Jordan Peterson that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant because “plants don’t grow without carbon dioxide.” The world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought” – all of which “will put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.” Among his Telegraph pieces, Farage called London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) scheme, intended to reduce the most harmful tailpipe emissions in the capital, “legitimised theft” on the part of Labour’s London Mayor Sadiq Khan. In another piece, Farage defended his record as a broadcaster on GB News, which also repeatedly platforms climate science denial and attacks on net zero.  The Telegraph did not respond to DeSmog’s request for comment. Methodology DeSmog reviewed every Telegraph opinion piece and editorial published online between 4 July and 12 October 2024 – 1,602 in total. Articles were then searched for the presence of the following keywords and their variations: “oil”, “gas”, “coal”, “fossil fuel”, “global warming”, “CO2”, “nuclear”, “environment”, “green”, “net zero”, “climate”, “carbon”, and “ULEZ”. Those which do not match any of the keywords were excluded from the sample, leaving a total of 809 articles for review.  The context in which the keywords were used was then checked to determine if the articles referenced environmental issues and in which ways. Articles were categorised in the following ways: is the article about a green topic; is there a large mention of green issues in the article; is there a passing mention of green issues; does the article attack climate science, climate action, green actors or green policies; does the article endorse climate science, climate action, green actors or green policies. The post The Telegraph Ramps Up Anti-Climate Coverage During Labour’s Early Months appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— The Friendly New Face of Dark Money: How Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard helped wealthy donors pour $171 million of dark money into Project 2025

 

at 10/28/24 7:12pm

Since 2020, three major financial services companies — Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and Vanguard — have helped affluent philanthropists funnel at least $171 million to the nonprofits behind Project 2025, whose central platform rejects the climate crisis, DeSmog has found. The contributions, which include hundreds of donations to 68 different Project 2025 groups, were distributed on behalf of outside philanthropists via the companies’ “donor-advised funds,” or DAFs. DAFs provide donors with complete anonymity, a legal loophole that makes it virtually impossible to follow the trail of money back to its source — which is why some donors use them for their most controversial giving.  “They’re being used for the kind of political giving that donors probably wouldn’t want disclosed,” said Helen Flannery, a research fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive research organization that supports DAF reform.  The $171 million figure underscores the significant, underappreciated role that well-known asset management firms now play in the larger dark money ecosystem. Though politically charged funding began shifting into DAFs more than a decade ago, right-wing donors historically relied on bespoke vehicles with an explicitly conservative focus. The biggest players attracted a lot of scrutiny. Journalists only need to review the annual grantmaking of a DAF like DonorsTrust, which Mother Jones has called “the dark-money ATM of the right,” to map out vast amounts of shadowy funding.  Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); But the larger financial firms have generally been able to avoid the same kind of attention — in part because their controversial bequests are buried within a sea of mainstream charitable donations, including significant funding to progressive causes. For comparison, DonorsTrust, widely deemed the most influential conservative DAF, has distributed so far roughly $612 million since 2020. Together, the DAFs operated by Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard have doled out a whopping $63 billion in grants since financial year 2020 — more than 100 times what DonorsTrust disbursed.  In order to find their Project 2025-specific funding, DeSmog analyzed datasets with hundreds of thousands of entries. The sheer size of overall giving by Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard has helped to obscure their growing role as a financial conduit for causes on the political fringe. Still, the $171 million they donated to Project 2025 far surpassed the impact of DonorsTrust, which only disbursed $66 million to 53 different Project 2025 groups in the same timeframe.  That number will grow proportionately, as DonorsTrust’s 2023 return is not yet available. But the broader dynamic is clear: the for-profit financial services companies are now the biggest sources of DAF dark money. Other DAFs run by for-profit asset management companies — including the Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust, Goldman Sachs Charitable Fund, and others not analyzed in full for this story — sent additional funds to Project 2025 groups.  It’s not hard to see why donors might want to keep their Project 2025 donations secret. Just 4 percent of Americans support the initiative to radically reshape federal governance to the right, according to an NBC News poll. And some of the nonprofits involved hold policy stances that are extreme by any measure.  In our analysis, DeSmog found that Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard’s DAFs all sent untraceable money to Project 2025 groups that actively engage in climate science denial and obstruction, as well as several classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights watchdog.  Related: Mapped: How 6 Billionaire Family Fortunes Fund Project 2025 These findings are especially striking because all three financial companies tout their strength in for-profit environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing, which is marketed to conscientious investors as a way to align their capital gains with the greater good. The companies’ donor-advised giving undermines the very causes their ESG funds claim to support, DeSmog’s analysis shows.  “We take a cause-neutral approach to grantmaking, giving our donors the right to recommend their donations to the qualified public charities of their choosing,” Elaine Kenig, chief communications officer of Vanguard Charitable, told DeSmog in a statement. That makes it sounds like the decision to invest in climate disinformation groups rests only with the original donors, and not the DAFs themselves.  But Chuck Collins, executive director of the Institute for Policy Studies, said that excuse rests on a “legal fiction.” DAF donors receive large tax benefits from giving up their ability to decide where the money goes. And by law, once a DAF like Vanguard becomes steward of a donor’s giving, it has the legal right to refuse to give to certain causes, or organizations that are not in line with its values.  “It technically is no longer the donors money,” he said.  DeSmog also reached out to Fidelity and Schwab asking for comment on the findings in this story. Neither had responded by press time.  A Vast Network of Untraceable Funding  DeSmog identified 111 groups that are heavily involved with Project 2025 — organizations that contributed to the initiative’s central “Mandate for Leadership” blueprint, or serve on its advisory board, or both. DeSmog was able to track exactly how much money each organization received since 2020 by matching its unique, federally assigned employee identification number to donations made by the three DAFs: the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, the Schwab Charitable Fund, and the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program.  68 Project 2025 groups, or about 61 percent of the total, received donations via at least one of those three DAFs since 2020. Of the three, Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund donated by far the most money to Project 2025 nonprofits — over $82 million to 68 groups since 2020. In that span, Schwab donated at least $54.1 million to 50 groups, while Vanguard donated at least $28.8 million to 50 groups. Many of the Project 2025 groups that received funding are listed in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database, which tracks organizations that cast doubt on the need for climate action. Together, the three DAFs gave $11.7 million to Turning Point USA, which organizes for conservative causes on college campuses and is closely linked to the Trump campaign. Turning Point, which has acknowledged that some of its funding comes from the fossil fuel industry, has a history of platforming climate deniers. The DAFs also sent $10.2 to the Heritage Foundation, a Project 2025 lead organizer with a long history of climate obstruction.  Some of the Project 2025 groups Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard funded are among the most notorious purveyors of climate disinformation. DeSmog found the three DAFS gave more than $3.4 million to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which argues that “socialism, not climate change, is the real threat” and “nobody’s kids need to be scared about climate change.” Media Research Center, which platforms climate action opponents like Steve Milloy and publishes regular blog posts on climate change “alarmism” in the press, received $3 million from the three DAFs. And they funneled more than $1.3 million into the Heartland Institute, which publishes reports suggesting that “nature,” not human activity, are the primary source of climate change.  Theres no way to really beat DAFs for making gifts completely anonymous. Helen Flannery, Institute for Policy Studies Conservative DAFs seem threatened by the amount of money the major financial services companies are throwing into the right-wing money machine. In a panel next month that includes the current vice president of DonorsTrust, a roundtable of conservative philanthropists appears poised to accuse the mainstream DAFs of not being conservative enough — and is encouraging donors to steer their money back to “reliable alternatives.”  “DAF accounts overseen by financial giants often deny grants to nonprofits because of their right-of-center pedigrees,” according to the event listing (which also refers to the mainstream funds as “donor-advised fiends”). But the data DeSmog reviewed shows that the mainstream funds are doing plenty of giving at the far end of the right wing. More than that: They’re outpacing the competition.  How Donor-Advised Funds Became a Dark-Money Behemoth  Today, more than $50 billion annually flows through donor-advised funds — more than 10 percent of all charitable giving, according to Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, a Notre Dame Law School professor who researches nonprofit advocacy.  But DAFs weren’t really designed to be a major player in the nonprofit sector. They first came into play without fanfare in the 1930s, as community foundations looked for ways to make it easier to give. By contributing to a donor-advised fund, philanthropists could claim an immediate deduction from a single large check — but decide where the money should go later. This approach helped ease the logistical burden of annual financial planning, while helping local foundations get money in the door.  “They’d go to a donor and say, ‘Look, contribute to us. Itll go into what well call your donor-advised fund. We control it, but you can recommend where you want it to go within the community once you decide what to do,” Mayer said. “‘But just to be clear, we control it. We can make grants out of it without your okay. We dont have to follow your advice.’” When donor-advised funds were formally codified into the U.S. tax code in 1969, they were still almost exclusively used in this way, according to Flannery, who directs the Institute for Policy Studies’ charity reform work. It wasn’t until the 1990s when the first big financial services company got interested: Fidelity Investments. Fidelity executives realized that they could get paid to manage nonprofit giving, unlocking a whole new market. Even better, clients could pay their money managers out of tax-deductible funds — a publicly subsidized win for both the funds and their clients.  “It started with Fidelity, but Schwab got into the act, and Vanguard, and then Goldman Sachs, everybody,” Flannery said. “It became a lucrative proposition for these commercial investment firms, and they started really marketing them aggressively.”  Related: Trump Megadonor Tim Dunn Has a Plan That’s More Extreme Than Project 2025 As DAFs grew in popularity, other benefits for donors became clear. The caps on deductibility are higher than they are for private foundations, allowing donors to get even higher tax breaks. And the flow of money becomes completely untraceable. Once a DAF takes in a donation, it has complete control of those funds — which go into a big pool of charitable money. It becomes impossible to link any subsequent gifts to the priorities of any specific donor.  “Theres no way to really beat DAFs for making gifts completely anonymous,” Flannery said. “Theres no way for grantees or the public or even the IRS to know where the money behind them is coming from. Theyre essentially completely impenetrable.”   In Vanguard’s statement to DeSmog, Kenig said that 96 percent of its donors voluntarily include identifying information with their donation. But disclosing that information isn’t mandatory, and it’s not available to the public.  That impenetrability has made them an increasingly popular vehicle for dirty political work and dark money. In a recent report, the Institute for Policy Studies and the Climate Accountability Research Center found that DAFs funneled almost $1 billion to climate disinformation groups between 2020 and 2022. That amounts to 73 percent more than private foundations gave to the same groups during the same period.  Shining a Light on Dark Money  Legally, DAFs are not required to obey their donors’ wishes on where the money should go.  “Theyre not obligated to do anything,” said Ray Madoff, a professor at Boston College Law School, who studies philanthropy. “Theyre not even obligated to distribute it to other charities. They could take the money and just pay themselves salaries.” This also means that Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard could decline to fund organizations that are out of line with professed company values, or that conflict directly with the goals of their much-touted ESG portfolios. They’ve refused to give to a specific organization at least once: In 2019, both Fidelity and Schwab halted donations to charities affiliated with the National Rifle Association. But that decision appears to have been due to an Internal Revenue Service investigation that threatened the NRA’s charitable status, rather than any kind of ethical or ESG-related determination. “We are [] scrupulous about our responsibility to ensure grants from Vanguard Charitable abide by IRS guidelines that require all charitable dollars be used to advance the public good,” Kenig said. “Only charitable organizations that are in good standing with the IRS that qualify as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) and are classified as public charities under Section 509(a) of the Internal Revenue Code are eligible for consideration.” But so far, the big DAFs have refused to filter out climate disinformation  groups from the pool of organizations they’re willing to fund — perhaps part of a general reluctance to start setting limits with donors around controversial causes. As the Vanguard Charitable spokesperson told DeSmog, the emphasis is on “cause-neutral” giving.  “The reason is very simple, because they want people to give them more money,” Hayes said. “If I give you the money, and you dont listen to my advice, then Im not gonna give it to you. Next time, Im gonna give it to the other guy.”  “The DAF sponsor could say, ‘Its our money now and were not going to fund what you wanted to fund,’” Collins said. “Of course, they would be out of business if they did that.” That’s why DAF critics tend to call for policy reforms that would make it harder to use the funds as the major, and hidden-in-plain-sight, dark money vehicles they have become. In their report on the growing role of DAFs in climate disinformation funding, the Institute for Policy Studies and the Climate Accountability Research Center argued that DAF sponsors like Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard should be required to disclose the names of individual donors that contribute $10,000 or more.  “Disclosure on an account by account basis would go a long way,” Collins said. “It would hold the donor accountable for what theyre funding. You could follow the money much more easily.”  The post The Friendly New Face of Dark Money: How Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard helped wealthy donors pour $171 million of dark money into Project 2025 appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Mapped: How Big Ag, Pharma, Pesticides and Other Industries Hope to Sway the UN Biodiversity Talks

 

at 10/28/24 5:01pm

Under thundery tropical skies, and amid ever more dire warnings on the precarious state of the world’s ecosystems, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference is unfolding in Colombia. This year’s summit, known as COP16, follows on from the last biodiversity conference held in Montréal in 2022, when negotiators struck an historic deal – the equivalent of the Paris Agreement on climate change – to “halt and reverse” nature loss. Now, government representatives from nearly 200 countries along with scientists, Indigenous groups, and environmental activists are gathered in the southern city of Cali to negotiate how to put this plan into action: protect earth’s habitats and the people who depend on them.Joining them in Colombia are delegates and observers from powerful industry groups, which represent the companies whose operations are actively depleting the natural world. They range from the pesticide and biotechnology trade group CropLife International, to the commodities giant Bunge. Oil and gas majors such as ExxonMobil and Shell have sent staff to the summit, as have pharmaceutical giants such as GSK, and the multinational mining company Anglo American (see Map, below).Some of these groups have lobbied against regulations to protect nature. The agrochemicals industry has helped defeat EU pesticide-reduction reforms aimed at protecting its plummeting bird and bee populations. Major soy and grain traders have blocked the EU deforestation regulation.  There are many points of contention at this year’s negotiations. Environmental and rights-groups are calling for a strong agreement that finds ways to regulate and limit sectors like industrial agriculture, the leading cause of biodiversity loss worldwide. This approach prioritises putting those most affected by nature loss – such as Indigenous peoples, local, and Afro-descendent communities – in the driving seat of conservation.A weaker outcome would let “business as usual” go on. Under this scenario, COP16 couldbroker an agreement that favours voluntary commitments from business, emphasises using high-tech and complex financial instruments to stem nature loss, and allows pharmaceutical companies to continue earning billions from using nature’s genetic data for free. Often seen as the little sister to the more high-profile UN climate process, the biodiversity summits so far are seen as being better protected from corporate influence. But some environmental groups have concerns that this is starting to change.  Corporate Presence Grows This interactive map shows the access points for major industry groups from agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and finance, as well as mining and fossil fuels, to the 2024 UN biodiversity summit. Credit: Rachel Sherrington Corporations have turned out in large numbers at COP16, as they did at the last biodiversity summit in 2022. Compared to climate summits, where corporate logos and lobbyists are more visible, here they are flying under the radar. Yet they have found ways to tap into the negotiations. DeSmog’s map of business participation in COP16 reveals the presence of a range of powerful industry associations and multinationals from the agriculture, pharmaceuticals, finance, mining, and fossil fuels sectors.  They include mixed trade groups such as Brazil’s Confederation of National Industry (CNI), which represents powerful Brazilian agri-interests, and has been explicit about its intentions to lobby for its member interests during COP16. Some individual corporations are participating through such trade groups. This has been the route into the summit for Suzano, a major player in the pulp and paper industry, which causes large-scale forest destruction. Other companies present from industries that take a heavy toll on nature include dairy giant Danone and fertiliser company Yara, along with Rabobank, which is a major investor in industrial farming.  Banks that finance biodiversity destruction are at COP16, as well as those that are seeking to “monetize biodiversity” by creating new markets for biodiversity offsets, and companies looking for business opportunities in these emerging markets. The map also shows the participation of conservation and industry coalition Business for Nature, which encourages the private sector to fall into step with biodiversity targets, and the voluntary Taskforce on Nature Related Disclosures (TNFD) initiative. Both have notable presences at the summit. “The involvement of business representatives at COP16 can be a double-edged sword,” said Oscar Soria, director of the thinktank Common Initiative. “While their participation brings critical financing and innovation potential, it also brings risks” “If the voices of Indigenous leaders, civil society, and biodiversity experts are sidelined,” said Soria, “there’s a danger that the integrity of biodiversity commitments could be compromised by greenwashing or profit-driven solutions that don’t address the systemic causes of biodiversity loss. It’s up to the states to bring a balance.” Influence Over Negotiations As the meeting heads into its second week, on the table are negotiations over payments for nature’s genetic data, how to measure progress against conservation targets, and how to fill the yawning finance gap for nature restoration – without which poorer countries cannot act. While much lobbying took place before ministers arrived in Colombia, COP16 itself has offered a gamut of fresh opportunities for businesses to weigh in on words in the negotiating text, share their talking points, and advocate their preferred solutions at side events, receptions, and dinners. Some corporate representatives are attending as “country delegates”, which enables insider access to the negotiations. The delegations of Switzerland and Japan, for example, were expected to include representatives from the pharmaceutical sector, which is a major part of the economy in both nations.  The International Federation for Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, a major trade group in attendance at COP16, has strongly opposed a proposed 1 percent levy on profits gleaned from accessing genetic information, intended to channel income to communities at the sharp end of protecting nature. The conservation arm of the Keidanren, Japans leading voice for business – also on the ground in Cali – has explicitly stated that any contributions should be voluntary. Corporations have also found common cause with major producer countries when it comes to agriculture – the leading driver of biodiversity loss worldwide. The interests of trade groups featured in the map – such as the Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development (CEBDES) and Confederation of National Industry (CNI), along with fertiliser and pesticide trade groups – appear to overlap with those of major meat-exporting countries such as Brazil and Argentina, which have battled to keep industrial production in the negotiating text of the biodiversity agreement.Observers say that at the 2022 summit in Montréal, these Latin American meat powerhouses forced the phrase “sustainable intensification” into the text. The term is strongly supported by agri-interests as it underpins the idea that industrial farming can continue to grow while causing less environmental damage.  Agro-ecology  advocated as a deeper and transformative shift to nature-friendly farming – ended up taking second place in the text.  With UN agreements, the devil is the details – which in draft texts sit in square brackets denoting areas of disagreement. The climate group Carbon Brief documented 3,071 such brackets in COP16 negotiating documents as of 24 October. Along with membership in country delegations, industry is also attending COP16 as part of observer groups – putting them shoulder to shoulder with longtime civil society participants. Observers are able to attend “contact groups”, a type of breakout session held to help build consensus when negotiations become deadlocked.It’s in these settings that the pesticide industry can push its preferred positions on what metrics will be used to track progress towards reaching nature protection goals. CropLife has called for softer “risk management measures” for agrochemicals, in the hope of unseating the current text’s metric requiring countries to report on volume and cumulative toxicity of pesticides used. The pesticides target is under serious threat according to observers, though many countries have signalled their intention to defend it. As of Monday, the pesticides target was under serious threat according to observers, though many countries have signalled their intention to defend it.In the two years between summits, business groups have also joined advisory groups known as “Ad Hoc Technology Groups” (Ahtegs), which draft documents and guidance that inform later negotiations.   Responding to a request for comment, CropLife International said, “The private sector holds a crucial role and responsibility in the implementation of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, working to create and deploy scalable, sustainable agriculture solutions that preserve biodiversity, mitigate climate impact and provide enough food to those who need it”.  ‘Offsetting’ Nature Destruction Another way that industry groups are exerting influence at COP16 is by pushing business-friendly fixes to saving and restoring biodiversity. The environmental advocacy group Friends of the Earth brands many of these approaches as “false solutions” that avoid tackling the root causes of nature destruction.One popular topic at COP16 is biodiversity offsets or credits, which are defined by Carbon Brief as “a system for placing a value on a habitat, plant or animal, meaning the ‘credit’ or ‘unit’ can be bought or sold to ‘offset’ damage being done” elsewhere.  The idea is supported by many large conservation organisations, which see biodiversity credits as a way to raise private funds for cash-strapped communities trying to implement environmental conservation or restoration projects. “It’s a convincing narrative and they push it everywhere,” noted one observer with a civil society group, “a way to avoid regulation” that will allow sectors like agribusiness and mining continue their destructive practices.Offsets are far from universally supported, however. Some Amazonian Indigenous communities have dubbed Western offset companies “carbon pirates”, while a coalition of civil society organisations including Avaaz, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace believe that “the promise of restoration should never be used to allow destruction elsewhere”.On the ground in Cali, Colombian farmer’s representative Noraldo Diaz Ordoñez is wary that offsets will erode the land rights of communities. “They come with these biodiversity offsets”, he said. “They destroy on one hand with their projects and then offer up some small change, to clean up their image, acting as saviours. But the commitment needs to be that the land belongs to us. The farmers, Indigenous people. Not to toxic agriculture, or mining companies”. Offsets, and accompanying ideas like “net nature positive”, have been appearing all over the COP16 programme, along with booths run by companies offering the accompanying kit needed to “count” nature, such as drones, big data, and satellite technology. Also in attendance are established carbon offsetting companies – such as South Pole, which spoke at a side event in Cali and plans to move into biodiversity credits. Another company attending the meeting, standards-setter Verra, was the subject of a major investigation questioning the integrity of carbon offsets in 2023. Business Opportunities  With the funding gap for global conservation efforts estimated at $700 million annually, new markets and products linked to biodiversity have caught the attention of the banking sector. Bloomberg has reported that several global banks, such as JP Morgan, are attending the biodiversity summit for the first time.The new product opportunities for banks include buying government debt with “green bonds” to generate funding that allows countries to invest in conservation projects.Newer, more agile financial institutions are also attracted by the promise of biodiversity-related finance products A private equity firm called the Landbanking Group, which joined food giant Nestlé at side event at COP16, openly advertises that its work can help “extend the operating licence” of large industrial projects.However, some say that private finance will not be a “silver bullet” for filling the biodiversity funding gap. Oscar Soria, from Common Initiative, advocates re-directing the $500 billion in public funds that prop up destructive industries such as fossil fuels and industrial agriculture, as stated in agreement adopted at COP15 in 2022.“Repurposing harmful subsidies, especially those that fuel environmental degradation, would directly address the root causes of biodiversity loss,” he says “Countries should follow that framework if theyre serious about protecting their economies, since half of the worlds economy depends on biodiversity.” Corporate Narratives Take Centre Stage  Industry groups have been active on side panels and events during COP16, in both the “Blue Zone,” which is limited to UN-registered and accredited attendees, and the public “Green Zone” located in central Cali. T​he International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA), whose members represent 60 percent of the worlds total oil production, has been bringing large numbers of fossil fuel company representatives to UN biodiversity summits since they began in 1994. In 2022, IPIECA brought in 33 delegates to COP15, including representatives of Shell, the Malaysian national oil company Petronas, and Canadian tar sands extraction company SunCor. It is not yet known how many delegates the group has brought to COP16. One event co-hosted by IPIECA in Cali showcased small-scale projects that oil companies have been undertaking to protect biodiversity in Colombia, Papua New Guinea, and Canada.  The featured speakers represented ExxonMobil, Shell, and Ecopetrol, Colombia’s largest oil company. Oil, gas, and mining concessions pose major threats to global biodiversity and Indigenous lands, and global warming impacts such as drought and forest fires are major drivers of the biodiversity crisis. Neither topic was broached during the session, however. Elsewhere on the COP16 agenda, Nestlé – which has emissions three times the size of its home country Switzerland – spoke at a side event showcasing projects involving “regenerative agriculture”, a vague term that companies have begun adopting in their public sustainability plans.  It’s a tactic that companies have long used at annual climate summits: touting their sustainability credentials without acknowledging the harms caused by their operations. “You can see industry is here from all these side events,” says Marciano Toledo de Silva, of the Movement of Small Growers in Brazil, gesturing towards the conference centre monitors scrolling through the programme. “They come disguised as foundations and all sorts. The private sector involvement in the multilateral system is a problem – it’s unacceptable.” Bruna Campos, oil and gas campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said the presence of fossil fuel corporations at COP16 was “extremely problematic” and was leading to “vested interests dominating the agenda.”  The summit “is meant to be about people and making peace with nature,” she said, “and yet negotiators are avoiding acknowledging the impact of oil and gas on ecosystems, biodiversity, Indigenous peoples and communities.”Melissa Lem, president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, shared Campos’ view. “Historically they are the ones who are obstructing progress,” she said. “Even now we’re seeing fossil fuels walk back on commitments to renewables. They’ve shown over and over again their interest is not in our health or our environment.” IPIECA was approached for comment. Industry Focus on Voluntary Initiatives Industry-led projects aimed at moving the private sector towards nature protection have also had a presence in Cali.These include the Taskforce on Nature Related Disclosures (TNFD), one of the most influential reporting initiatives to have cropped up as shareholders and investors show a growing interest in biodiversity.  Some 400 companies have signed on to TNFD.  At a baseline level, the TFND only requires companies to report on the risks that nature degradation poses to their business – such as through rising costs of raw materials or the scarcity of freshwater. Participants that choose to report beyond the baseline also contribute information about the impact of their operations on nature.  While TFND has been widely embraced in the corporate realm, campaigners say this approach is insufficient, and have raised a litany of concerns about the initiative.By allowing self-reporting by extractive corporations, some activists contend, TFND could become another vehicle for misleading the public and investors about human rights and environmental abuses caused by the operations of mining firms such as Vale and Rio Tinto, which have both adopted the TFND framework. The Rainforest Action Network has filed a complaint with the United Nations Environment Programme over its support for TFND. “In all my years of activism I have never heard an Indigenous person say what is needed is more corporate self reporting”, said RAN’s Shona Hawkes during a press conference. The group wants the rights of forest peoples to be centred in mandatory reporting frameworks, rather than industry preferences. Activists have also pointed out that despite a range of corporate disclosure initiatives, the financing of biodiversity destruction continues to rise. A report released in early October by the Forests & Finance environmental coalition found that in the last 18 months, $77 billion had flowed into “forest-risk sectors”. In response to a request for comment, a TFND representative stated that Rainforest Action Network’s recent complaint was a good example of how its disclosure system could be used to better hold companies to account for their impacts, while acknowledging that tougher mandatory measures were also needed. “We do not review, validate or certify the reporting produced by companies,” the spokesperson said. “Assessing the quality and completeness of an organisation’s disclosures is up to investors and other stakeholders.”  Business for Nature (BfN), another influential initiative to encourage private sector involvement, has also been active at COP16. The group is a coalition of large conservation groups, such as WWF, the Nature Conservancy, and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and corporate partners such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), an environment-focussed trade group. Many of the corporations in the WBCSD have lobbied against stronger environmental protections at national and regional levels.  It is unclear who is in WBSCD’s delegation to COP16, as organisers will not release such information until the end of the summit. In 2022, the group brought over a hundred delegates to COP15, including representatives from oil major Shell, the multinational food company Cargill, pharmaceuticals company GSK, and Drax, a UK bioenergy company that has received billions in government green subsidies.  In a February broadcast, BBC Panorama linked Drax to the destruction of primary forests in Canada. Drax denied the claims, saying that its wood pellets were “sustainable and legally harvested”. A 2022 Friends of the Earth report criticised some of the umbrella groups attending UN biodiversity summits, including Business for Nature and WBCSD, for relying on voluntary solutions and schemes over stronger regulations to decisively halt destructive business practices.Responding to a request for comment, Business for Nature CEO Eva Zabey  agreed that “voluntary action alone is not enough” and called for governments to strengthen incentives.  “This year at COP16, over 230 leading businesses with combined revenues of $1.7 trillion have signed a joint statement calling for renewed policy ambition on nature to speed up the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework,” Zabey stated. “The fact that so many large companies now publicly support stronger environmental regulations represents a significant shift from historical positions.” In response to a request for comment, a WBCSD spokesperson said that the group “is at COP16 supporting the nature agenda and business contributions to the Global Biodiversity Framework.”  They added that the WBCSD had “co-designed with Business for Nature and other partners, a set of detailed policy asks, which show how the level of ambition businesses are calling for could be implemented by governments.” The Convention on Biological Diversity was approached for comment.The post Mapped: How Big Ag, Pharma, Pesticides and Other Industries Hope to Sway the UN Biodiversity Talks appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Fracking Pioneer Gwyn Morgan Gave $530K to Anti-Climate Website ‘True North’

 

at 10/28/24 11:39am

A far-right Canadian website whose contributors have disputed the extent to which fossil fuels are warming our atmosphere, attacked the science demonstrating that climate change leads to more destructive wildfires and suggested climate advocates are “the real conspiracy theorists,” is quietly getting large donations from a former oil and gas executive.  Canada Revenue Agency tax records reviewed by DeSmog reveal that the True North Centre for Public Policy, a charitable organization that is the parent group of conservative website True North, has received $530,000 since 2019 from the foundation of fracking pioneer Gwyn Morgan.  Morgan, who claims credit for overseeing some of the first fracking wells drilled in North America and was later CEO of the international oil and gas company Encana, is an outspoken opponent of climate action, arguing in a 2022 op-ed for the Financial Post that “the road to hell is paved with green intentions.”  Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); Yet Morgan’s role as a significant behind-the-scenes funder of True North, which hosted a Calgary event on Saturday called True North Nation featuring Alberta Premier Danielle Smith as keynote speaker, hasn’t been made public until now.  “I’m really not too surprised,” said Shane Gunster, a communications professor at Simon Fraser University who studies climate obstruction on social media, after learning about Morgan’s six-figure financial contributions.  Gunster’s research has shown that True North is one of the loudest and most effective anti-climate media sources in Canada in terms of social media engagement. “From [Morgan’s] perspective it could be seen as money well spent,” he told DeSmog.  DeSmog reached out to True North and Morgan about the contributions but didn’t receive a response. Ties to Premier Danielle Smith True North describes itself as “a Canadian digital media platform that seeks to provide Canadians with fair, accurate, truthful and fact-based news reports, analysis, investigative reports, podcasts, interviews and documentaries.”    Its founder and editor-in-chief is Candice Malcolm, a former columnist with Sun Media who has longtime connections to Alberta’s conservative leadership. She became press secretary in 2011 for then-Conservative immigration minister Jason Kenney, who went on to become premier of Alberta. Earlier in her career she was a special assistant for the Wildrose Party, the political organization formerly led by Smith, now the current Alberta premier.  When True North contributor Rachel Parker got married in 2023, Premier Smith attended the wedding. Her husband is David Parker, the far-right strategist behind the group Take Back Alberta, which helped advise the B.C. Conservatives in the recent provincial election.  “There has been a very, very close relationship between True North and the Smith administration,” Nate Pike, executive producer and host of an Alberta politics podcast called The Breakdown which has covered the outlet, told DeSmog.  Smith’s office didn’t respond to questions about the premier’s ties to True North.  True North runs articles and YouTube videos about a range of culture war and political topics from a rightwing perspective, but its coverage of climate change and energy seems to perform particularly well online, engagement data shows.  When Gunster looked at 10,000 Facebook posts referencing these topics between August 2022 and August 2023, he found that True North generated over 300,000 interactions, which is more than CTV New and CBC News combined. At least until Facebook banned news sites from its platform in 2023, resulting in large social media traffic drops for most Canadian media outlets, True North “was getting a ton of engagement,” he said. Spreading Climate Disinformation Those energy and climate posts frequently feature fringe claims about climate science. Multiple videos with True North host Harrison Faulkner have attempted to blame arsonists for the 2023 wildfires that were some of the most destructive blazes in Canadian history, with one video from earlier this year stating, “Arsonists set Canada on fire. NOT Climate Change.” That echoes Premier Smith, who as the fires blazed out of control last year said “we are bringing in arson investigators from outside the province.”    While it’s true that some of the Canadian fires were started intentionally, the vast majority — 93 percent according to a report from the Canadian Climate Institute — were due to natural causes like lightning. And the reason experts say the fires burned so aggressively was because of extremely warm and dry conditions caused by climate change.  Global temperature rise “doubled the likelihood of extreme fire weather conditions in Eastern Canada,” according to a team of scientists from Canada and Europe.  True North for years has run content disputing that the climate emergency is serious — or even real. In 2020 it hosted climate denier Patrick Moore for an interview “to discuss why CO2 is a positive, not a negative, for the environment, and how to push back against hysteria from climate alarmists.” And in 2019, Gwyn Morgan wrote in an op-ed for the site that “the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would have us believe that fossil fuel emissions are the sole reason for climate change. But what about urbanization and deforestation?” Though those factors are contributors to global temperature rise, he neglected to mention in his piece that nearly 90 percent of all carbon emissions come from oil, gas and coal.    Donor and Writer Morgan’s contributions to True North come via the charity he runs with his wife, the Gwyn Morgan and Patricia Trottier Foundation. Tax records show that in 2023, the foundation donated $250,000 to True North, along with several other anti-climate organizations, including $50,000 to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and $200,000 to Second Street.   Over the years True North has provided a platform for Morgan’s views on climate, energy and politics without disclosing that he’s contributing financially. When the Calgary-based oil and gas company that Morgan founded, Encana, announced that it was moving its headquarters to the U.S. and rebranding as Ovintiv, True North covered the news in a post entitled “7 oil and gas companies that Trudeau has driven out of Canada.” It quoted Morgan, the CEO of Encana until 2005, as saying, “The destructive policies of the Trudeau Liberals have left the company with no choice but to shift its asset base and capital program south of the border.” A separate opinion piece on True North authored by Morgan blamed in part “carbon taxes that will hit the industry particularly hard.” (That year Morgan’s foundation contributed $80,000 to True North, tax records show.)  Yet the company’s CEO Doug Suttles didn’t appear to share Morgan’s view about the relocation. “It has no political overtone, it has nothing to do with roles and jobs, its quite simply trying to make sure, over time, were doing everything we can to get the value of the company reflected in the share price, he told Radio Canada at the time. True North earlier this year featured Morgan on the site’s Andrew Lawton Show. Lawton described Morgan in the episode as “a legend in the Canadian oil and gas sector,” saying that “he’s always been a tremendous supporter of True North.”  The post Fracking Pioneer Gwyn Morgan Gave $530K to Anti-Climate Website ‘True North’ appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Norway’s Equinor Admits It “Over-Reported” Amount of Carbon Captured At Flagship Project for Years 

 

at 10/28/24 3:01am

This story is the fifth part of a DeSmog series on carbon capture and was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe. Norwegian oil and gas company Equinor has admitted over-reporting the performance of a flagship carbon capture and storage project by about 30 percent due to defective monitoring equipment, underscoring risks associated with plans to scale the technology as a climate solution, DeSmog can reveal. In a footnote in its latest sustainability data, Equinor said a malfunction in equipment used to measure the amount of gas flowing through a pipeline at its Sleipner gas field in the North Sea had caused it to over-report the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) stored from 2017 to 2021.  “Due to a flawed flow transmitter at Equinor’s CO2 injection facilities at Sleipner, the figures for CO2 injected were over-reported in the period 2017-2021,” the footnote said. “The transmitter was replaced in March 2021, and the figures have been updated accordingly.” Equinor did not quantify the extent of the over-estimates in the footnote on Sleipner. The 28-year-old project is often cited by carbon capture advocates as proof that it’s technically feasible to trap and store large quantities of CO2 underground.  A DeSmog review of publicly available company data suggests that Equinor captured and stored a cumulative total of 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 at Sleipner from 2017-2019, compared to its initial estimate of 2.1 million tonnes — implying that it had previously over-reported the amount of gas stored during that three-year period by about 30 percent. [See note on methodology at the end of this story]. A lack of comparable data made it harder to estimate how much the company may have over-estimated CO2 capture at Sleipner in 2020 and early 2021, although partial numbers suggested that the figure was also about 30 percent.  Equinor declined to say when the broken equipment at Sleipner was first detected, or how the company arrived at its revised estimates for CO2 capture. A spokesperson referred DeSmog to the company’s website and sustainability reports for further information on its carbon capture projects.  Equinor says on its website that it captures 1.0 million tonnes of CO2 at Sleipner each year, and a further 0.7 million tonnes from a similar project at the Snøhvit gas field in the Barents Sea. Figures in the company’s sustainability reports, however, suggest that it is routinely failing to achieve this level of capture.   In 2021, with the Snøhvit facility shut down due to a fire at the associated Hammerfest LNG (liquified natural gas) plant, Equinor captured and stored a total of 0.3 million tonnes of CO2, all at Sleipner, according to its annual sustainability report — less than 20 percent of the total advertised on its website.  Last year, with both CCS sites operational, Equinor captured and stored a total of 0.8 million tonnes of CO2, according to the company’s online sustainability data — about half the advertised total.  The drop in CO2 capture and storage could be linked to waning natural gas production at Sleipner, said Grant Hauber, a researcher for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis think tank, who wrote a 2023 report on Norway’s carbon capture projects. “As production from the Sleipner field declines, the quantity of CO2 being handled declines,” Hauber said. “Equinor has not disclosed if there is a practical minimum where the processing facilities are no longer effective in handling CO2.” Separately, Hauber’s 2023 report showed that Sleipner and Snøhvit encountered unforeseen issues with CO2 storage, with Equinor having to drill a new CO2 injection well at Snøhvit between 2010-2016, and unpredictable underground CO2 migrations at Sleipner. The company says that its CO2 storage is now fully operational.  The downward revision of capture estimates at Sleipner and Equinor’s frequent failure to run its two carbon capture projects at full capacity echo a long history of missed targets, cost-overruns and economic problems at CCS projects in North America and Australia. These challenges have convinced many environmental groups that fossil fuel companies primarily see the technology as a cover for continued expansion of oil and gas production, rather than a viable tool for curbing emissions on a global scale.  Nevertheless, Equinor has leveraged its experience at Sleipner and Snøhvit to position itself as a key player in the UK’s plans to ramp up carbon capture capacity with the support of £22 billion of subsidies announced by the new Labour government this month. The Norwegian company is also partnering with France’s TotalEnergies and the UK’s Shell on the Northern Lights carbon storage project in the North Sea  — a key component of the European Union’s target to boost carbon capture to meet its climate goals. Equinor says that it aims to increase its CO2 storage capacity to 30 to 50 million tonnes by 2035 from projects planned in Norway, the UK, Denmark and the United States. That would require a massive build-out: Today, the world’s combined CCS capacity amounts to about 50 million tonnes of CO2 a year.  Although the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) sees a significant roll-out of carbon capture to meet net zero targets, it has also warned of the dangers of over-reliance on the technology.  “The [fossil fuel] industry needs to commit to genuinely helping the world meet its energy needs and climate goals —which means letting go of the illusion that implausibly large amounts of carbon capture are the solution,” wrote Fatih Birol, IEA executive director, in the introduction to a report on clean energy transitions for oil companies published in November.  Oslo-based think tank Bellona, which also sees a role for carbon capture, emphasised the importance of companies providing reliable capture data. “Bellona believes that reliable monitoring, reporting and verification is important. It is clear we need CCS, and we need to be able to trust that the system works as it should,” said Olav Øye, the organisation’s senior advisor for industry and climate.  Venting CO2 into the Atmosphere Equinor (then known as Statoil) began capturing carbon in 1996 at the CO2-rich Sleipner field in the North Sea as a way to reduce its exposure to a new Norwegian tax on CO2 emissions.  The company promotes its carbon capture operations as a key part of its clean energy strategy, with CCS featuring in its advertising campaigns. Nevertheless, Equinor’s records indicate that its Sleipner facility did not capture and store the majority of the field’s CO2 emissions in recent years, but rather vented them into the atmosphere.  Emissions from operations at the Sleipner field amounted to about 0.7 million tonnes of CO2 in 2023. That same year, in 2023, Equinor captured and stored a combined total of about 0.8 million tonnes of CO2 at Sleipner and Snøhvit, implying that the Sleipner field released more CO2 than was stored. In 2021, the year that Sleipner stored a reported 0.3 million tonnes of CO2, about 0.8 million tonnes of CO2 were vented into the atmosphere from operations at the site, more than double the amount captured, the data showed.  Sleipner was also one of the dirtiest offshore projects in Norway last year, when measured in terms of “CO2 intensity” – the amount of carbon dioxide released from oil and gas production per unit of energy. Equinor lists the combined CO2 intensity of Sleipner and the nearby Gudrun gas field at 19.1 kilograms of CO2 per barrel of oil equivalent, which was the third highest among 19 listed oil and gas production sites operated by Equinor in Norway.  According to Equinor’s 2023 reporting, Sleipner emitted 658,000 tonnes of CO2, 41 times higher than Gudrun’s 16,000 tonnes  — despite only producing about a third more natural gas  — meaning the Sleipner field’s individual CO2 intensity would be much higher if reported individually.  The Snøhvit gas field has also proved highly CO2-intensive, even when its carbon capture facility has operated at maximum capacity, due to the energy needed to liquefy natural gas for export at the associated Hammerfest LNG facility on Melkøya Island.  Equinor reported 0.9 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from its Hammerfest LNG facility last year, making it the company’s third most polluting project overall, behind its Mongstad oil refinery and Oseberg gas field.  In August 2023, the Norwegian government approved the “Snøhvit Future” project, which includes plans to electrify operations at the LNG export plant with an approximate $1.2 billion investment announced from Equinor and project partners Petoro, TotalEnergies, Neptune Energy and Wintershall Dea.  The developers say that the new infrastructure will reduce emissions by an estimated 850,000 tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030.  While additional CCS infrastructure was considered to reduce emissions at the LNG export plant, Trond Bokn, head of project development for Equinor, wrote in an article in the company’s online magazine that expanding carbon capture at Snøhvit to meet that target would have cost at least $3.4 billion — about three times the electrification plans. While Equinor says that carbon capture would be too costly for the LNG export facility at Snøhvit, the company aims to apply the approach in other sectors in Norway and abroad, where government subsidies are available.  In September, Equinor inaugurated the Northern Lights offshore carbon transport and storage project near Bergen, its joint venture with TotalEnergies and Shell, which it says will store 1.5 million tonnes of industrial CO2 emissions a year from a cement works and waste-to-energy plant on the Norwegian mainland.  The majority of the project is financed by $1.19 billion in funding from the Norwegian government and an additional $141 million grant from the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility fund.  Even if Equinor reaches its 2035 goal of storing 50 million tonnes of CO2 a year — a more than 50 times increase over the CO2 the company captured and stored in 2023 — it would only offset about a fifth of the 262 million tonnes of CO2 emitted from its operations and burning its oil and gas last year, according to company data reviewed by DeSmog. Methodology and Sources Equinor initially reported that it had captured and stored a cumulative total of 4.2 million tonnes of CO2 over 2017-2019 according to a tally of yearly data from the company’s online sustainability data (see initial report: “Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Captured and Stored”; see current report for comparison).  The company does not break down the amount of CO2 captured and stored from its two active CCS facilities at the Sleipner and Snøhvit gas fields in its sustainability data, but DeSmog was able to estimate the amount using a separate Equinor document related to the Snøhvit project. (see: “Informasjon til allmennheten om risiko og beredskap: Hammerfest LNG”, page 4). A chart in this document (“CO2 Lagring” or “CO2 Storage”) indicates that Snøhvit was operating at a capacity of about 0.7 million tonnes of CO2 a year over the period 2017-2019, which equates to a cumulative total of 2.1 million tonnes of CO2 stored. Subtracting that figure from the total of 4.2 million tonnes of CO2 that Equinor reported storing during the period gives the remainder stored at Sleipner, also 2.1 million tonnes.   Equinor later revised its estimate for the cumulative total of CO2 stored over the period 2017-2019 for both sites down to 3.7 million tonnes, with all changes attributed to the flawed flow transmitter at Sleipner. That implies that Snøhvit would have still captured a total of 2.1 million tonnes of CO2 during this period, but Sleipner would have only captured a revised 1.6 million tonnes.  The difference between the 2.1 million tonnes of stored CO2 initially attributed to Sleipner and the revised figure of 1.6 million tonnes suggest that Equinor initially over-reported CO2 storage by about 31 percent during the period 2017-2019. Given that the company provided figures rounded to the hundred thousand, it was impossible to arrive at a more precise percentage.  DeSmog was not able to obtain specific CO2 capture and storage totals for Sleipner or Snøhvit in 2020, when Equinor initially reported 1.1 million tonnes of total CO2 stored, before revising that figure to 0.9 million tonnes. However, the total amount of over-estimation attributable to Sleipner — 0.2 million tonnes of CO2 — suggests a similar percentage of over-reporting as the period 2017-2019.  Equinor’s sustainability dataset also indicated over-reporting for Sleipner in early 2021, but DeSmog was unable to find comparable data to calculate the size of the overestimate. The company appears to have revised the totals sometime in 2022, based on a comparison of its yearly sustainability reports.  Equinor’s webpage “CCS: Carbon capture and storage — making net zero possible” says that the company captures and stores about 1 million tonnes of CO2 a year at Sleipner and its webpage “Snøhvit” indicates that the company captures and stores about 0.7 million tonnes of CO2 a year at the field.  Equinor’s yearly emissions total of 262 million tonnes of CO2 was calculated by adding up the companys Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions reported in its 2023 sustainability data. DeSmog shared its calculations with Equinor. The company did not respond. The post Norway’s Equinor Admits It “Over-Reported” Amount of Carbon Captured At Flagship Project for Years  appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— WisdomTree Hit with $4 Million Penalty for Misleading Investors on Fossil Fuel Holdings

 

at 10/25/24 12:43pm

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week fired a shot over the bow at Wall Street companies that promise to help investors avoid putting their money into fossil fuels and tobacco — but steer funds towards those companies anyway. In a little-noticed settlement, the SEC fined investment adviser WisdomTree $4 million for claiming that three of its investment funds were fossil- and tobacco-free — when in reality, they were loaded up with investments in oil, natural gas, and tobacco companies. The three funds combined managed roughly $119 million worth of investors’ assets. Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); The WisdomTree settlement marks the first time the SEC penalized a U.S.-based fund simply for falsely marketing itself as fossil-free. It comes on the heels of a European Union Deutsche Bank “greenwashing” criminal scandal that led to a German police raid of the bank’s headquarters in 2022, the resignation of a top executive, and a $19 million SEC settlement last year — but the range of allegations was broader in that case. “At a fundamental level, the federal securities laws enforce a straightforward proposition,” Sanjay Wadhwa, acting director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said in a statement announcing the settlement, “investment advisers must do what they say and say what they do.” WisdomTree did not respond to a request for comment from DeSmog. The investment advisory firm consented to the SEC order, the $4 million penalty, and an SEC censure and cease-and-desist without admitting or denying the agency’s findings, the SEC noted. The SEC’s complaint faults WisdomTree for promising to make fossil-free investments — but then steering investors’ money into a wide array of fossil fuel companies. Those investments included companies involved in fracking, natural gas distributors, a natural gas pipeline builder, and the part-owner of an oil refinery. Investments were also made in a freight company that hauls coal, fracking sand, and crude oil and a company that makes chemicals used for pipelines and oil and gas drilling, the SEC said. The WisdomTree ESG funds had also invested in dozens of companies that made retail tobacco sales, the SEC added. WisdomTree is hardly alone. Investigative reporting into so-called “environmental, social and governance” or ESG funds has repeatedly found that many funds — even those claiming to be fossil-free — have actually driven investors’ money into fossil fuel stocks. “A total of 82.8% of sustainable funds contain at least some exposure to companies producing fossil fuels,” EnergyMonitor reported last year. Often, the fine print on “sustainable” investments leaves room for investment in fossil fuel companies, with many ESG-themed funds promising only to steer clear of companies whose fossil fuel revenues represent more than a given percentage of their total revenues. Using those definitions can mean many companies that actively drill for oil, mine coal, or run natural gas pipelines can slip by. And sometimes, as with the three WisdomTree ESG funds, the fine print specifically promises no fossil investments — but the fund invests in companies involved in fossil fuels anyway. On Wall Street, industry insiders say ESG promises are viewed as toothless — in part because it’s easy to make a promise that’s too vague to be meaningful or enforced and also because, even when violations are clear-cut, the SEC remained on the sidelines. This week’s move against WisdomTree, however, suggests the agency might be taking enforcement more seriously. Divestment Demand As the climate crisis has continued to escalate, investment advisers like WisdomTree have found themselves on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, investors today are clamoring for ESG investment options — many people and organizations want to keep their money out of fossil fuels.  On the other hand, there’s been political pushback from the fossil fuel industry’s backers. In the first half of 2023, 16 states adopted laws designed to undermine ESG investing. Despite that backlash, demand for climate-conscious investment options is off the charts, and not just among European investors. A stunning 84 percent of American individual investors are interested in “sustainable” investing, according to a survey earlier this year by Morgan Stanley, with most citing “new climate science findings” as the top reason for their growing interest. Fossil fuel stocks are particularly unpopular. Worldwide, 21 percent of individual investors said they would outright refuse to invest in oil, gas, or coal companies because of climate change, Morgan Stanley’s survey found. Another 51 percent said they would only be willing to invest in energy companies if the company has made “robust plans” to cut their climate-altering pollution. ESG investing isn’t only a matter of morality or climate concerns — it also affects returns. “In terms of performance, sustainable funds outperformed and generated better returns than traditional funds in 2023, with a median return of 12.6% versus 8.6% for traditional funds,” a report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis this summer concluded. “This is not an anomaly as sustainable funds have outperformed traditional funds’ returns every year from 2019, except in 2022.” Adding to the surge in demand from individual investors, a growing number of organizations and institutions have sought to divest from fossil fuels. Over 1,600 institutions worldwide — including major universities, religious organizations, and pension funds — have made fossil fuel divestment commitments, representing over $40 trillion in assets under management. With that much money looking for a home, a flood of investment plans marketed as “sustainable” or “fossil-free” has swept Wall Street in recent years. That included, until recently, WisdomTree’s three ESG offerings. WisdomTree shut down all three of its “fossil-free” funds at the start of 2024. Though it’s not clear from public disclosures which investors held interests in WisdomTree’s three funds, there are some potential signs that nonprofits or universities could have been among those who bought in. For instance, one of the major holders of WisdomTree’s ESG funds was Disciplina Capital Management, according to a review of SEC filings and disclosures, which show Disciplina at one point held over $60 million in one ESG fund (more than half of the valuation for all three funds combined). Disciplina offers to act as an “outsourced chief investment officer” for clients, a service the company says “is exclusively geared to institutional investors.” It specifically lists “university endowments and charitable foundations” among its clients. Outsourcing Research — But Not Liability Like many ESG investment advisors, WisdomTree relied on subcontractors to help screen out fossil fuel companies from its ESG funds. The SEC’s complaint suggests that, in this case at least, the fault for misleading investors lies with WisdomTree, the investment advisor, and not the data vendors. “WisdomTree used data from third-party vendors that did not screen out all companies involved in fossil fuel and tobacco-related activities,” the SEC wrote. Even though WisdomTree was aware of those gaps, it failed to add its own “policies and procedures over the screening process to exclude such companies,” the SEC added. WisdomTree promised its ESG funds would screen out fossil fuel companies “regardless of revenue measures” — but it bought data sets designed to make exceptions for companies based on revenue percentages. WisdomTree also didn’t actually buy the full collection of lists of fossil fuel companies offered by its primary data vendor, the SEC alleged, saying the company failed to subscribe to lists that identified “Shale Energy” and “Oil and Gas” companies for funds to avoid. Strikingly, the SEC also took a broad view of what it means to be “involved” in fossil fuel production, including not just oil and gas drillers or coal miners but also companies involved all along the fossil fuel production and distribution supply chain, like chemical suppliers and freight haulers. Some of the largest ESG data vendors do not make it clear if they are equipped to offer comprehensive “fossil-free” screenings. Morningstar Sustainalytics, one of the largest providers of ESG data worldwide, declined to say whether the company currently offers any “fossil fuel” data sets that could be used to screen out companies involved in fossil fuels comprehensively — or whether it would consider offering that sort of data set in the future. The wide range of faults the SEC identified could signal trouble for any other ESG funds that, for example, define “involvement” more narrowly than might be implied in their marketing. And there’s a huge amount of money on the line. This year, about seven percent of the world’s total assets under management were held in sustainable funds, according to Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing — meaning that over one out of every 15 dollars invested worldwide was in a fund marketed in its prospectus or regulatory filings as “focusing on sustainability, impact investing, or environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors.” ESG Task Force Disbanded — But Leader Promoted The timing of the WisdomTree settlement could suggest the SEC plans to continue its interest in ESG fraud — even though the agency recently disbanded its Climate and ESG enforcement task force, a move Bloomberg first reported last month. That task force, launched in March 2021, was just a few years old. “The strategy has been effective, and the expertise developed by the task force now resides across the Division,” the SEC told Bloomberg at the time. The chief of the ESG task force was Wadwha, who was promoted to acting director of the Division of Enforcement this month after Gurbir Grewal, known for extracting relatively large penalties from corporations, left the SEC. Outside observers had predicted that the SEC’s interest in ESG themes could grow on Wadwha’s watch. “With Sanjay Wadhwa and Sam Waldon at the helm, the Division is well-positioned to continue its rigorous enforcement efforts and maintain its focus on emerging issues, such as digital assets and ESG disclosures, while building on the strong foundation laid by Mr. Grewal,” the law firm Anderson, P.C., which defends corporate clients, noted in an advisory to clients. The WisdomTree enforcement action comes after the investment firm changed the prospectus for its ESG funds in November 2022, which the SEC alleged was in response to the Commission’s questioning.When investment advisors say they’ll follow certain criteria, they have to follow through, Wadhwa said in the SEC’s announcement statement. “By contrast,” he said, “the funds at issue in today’s enforcement action made precisely the types of investments that investors would not have expected them to based on WisdomTree’s disclosures.” The post WisdomTree Hit with $4 Million Penalty for Misleading Investors on Fossil Fuel Holdings appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Mapped: How 6 Billionaire Family Fortunes Fund Project 2025

 

at 10/25/24 11:15am

As scrutiny of Project 2025 continues to grow, defenders of the Heritage Foundation-led initiative, which would reshape federal governance and give the next Republican president unprecedented new powers, say its the criticism — not the 922-page plan itself — thats too extreme.  In a piece published last month, Fox News cited prominent conservatives who feel there’s “nothing radical about the endeavor. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has accused detractors of panic-mongering and tried to reframe Project 2025’s sprawling “Mandate for Leadership” blueprint as more boring than scary — a milquetoast white paper that simply melds the work of some 400 scholars and analysts from an eclectic mix of center-right groups. This echoes Heritage’s insistence that Project 2025, while conservative, is anything but fringe. Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); But the findings from DeSmog’s recent investigation into Project 2025’s funding sources tell a very different story. Our wide-ranging analysis of public financial disclosure forms found that the groups on Project 2025’s advisory board — whose experts largely helped to draft the plan — are heavily funded by just six family fortunes. Since 2020, foundations linked to these billionaire families have contributed over $122 million to Project 2025 groups, including at least 290 individual donations to 49 nonprofits that contributed to the Mandate for Leadership documents or are on the initiatives advisory board. We’ve mapped the funding ties between the billionaire families and the Project 2025 individuals and organizations in an interactive graphic, below. Groups that received funds from the six family fortunes are far from the political mainstream, according to DeSmog’s analysis, including entities that actively deny the science of anthropogenic climate change — as well as organizations that have been classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. DeSmog’s review also uncovered additional ties between the six families and the Trump/Vance ticket, though both candidates have tried to distance themselves from the initiative in recent months. Indeed, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein — the billionaire founders of the Uline packaging company, whose charitable donations tie them closely to Project 2025 — are among the former president’s biggest donors.  Project 2025 styles itself as populist, moderate, and far from the politics of Washington. Heritage Foundation President Kevin D. Roberts hails it as a plan for the perennially downtrodden, hard-laboring folks “who shower after work instead of before.” Its funding sources — elite, extreme, and closely tied to the Trump campaign — suggest exactly the opposite.  The Donors  Though the Mandate pledges to prioritize the economic prosperity of ordinary Americans and pry influence away from Americas corporate and political elites, the funding that produced it comes from the upper echelons of the billionaire class.   And not just any billionaires. The six family dynasties providing significant support to Project 2025 — Bradley, Coors, Koch, Scaife, Seid, and Uihlein — all have long histories of fighting for financial and environmental deregulation. Three of the six families have promoted climate denial consistently enough to appear in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database, which tracks the people and organizations doing the most to undermine decarbonization efforts. They include oil and gas magnate Charles G. Koch and his Koch Family Foundations; the Scaife Family Foundations, which tap vast wealth from the Mellon aluminum, oil, and banking fortune; and chemicals-and-electronics industrialist Barre Seid, whose recent, record-setting $1.6 billion gift to a nonprofit controlled by Federalist Society co-chair Leonard A. Leo has been a major source of Project 2025 money.  While the Heritage Foundation suggests a diverse conservative coalition gave rise to the Mandate for Leadership, the six family fortunes giving patterns were remarkably similar. Of the 49 Project 2025 groups, 37 percent received funding from at least three of the six families. 70 percent of the 49 groups received funding from at least two of the families. (In a few cases, the donations were to sister 501(c)4 lobbying arms that share offices and staff.) The average donation was over $420,000. Related: See DeSmogs coverage of Trump Megadonor Tim Dunn Has a Plan More Extreme Than Project 2025 Links to Climate Denial  For decades, oil and gas magnate Charles G. Koch and his late brother David fought vigorously for environmental deregulation, including by supporting groups that sow doubt about the science of manmade climate change. Foundations linked to Koch gave at least $9.6 billion to 15 Project 2025 groups since 2020. But four of the lesser-known families — Bradley, Scaife, Seid, and Uihlein — gave even more, and all six family fortunes helped to fund Project 2025 groups that have denied the science of manmade climate change.  Of the 10 groups that the six families funded most heavily, seven are in DeSmogs Climate Disinformation Database. That includes more than $11 million to the Heritage Foundation; $8.3 million to Turning Point USA, which has provided a platform for well-known climate deniers like Alex Epstein; and $4.6 million to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which in 2015 published an op-ed claiming warming is obviously not initiated by the burning of fossil fuels. In total, foundations linked to the six families gave to 15 Project 2025 groups with entries in DeSmog’s Climate Disinformation Database.  That wasn’t the only form of extremism DeSmog uncovered. Four Project 2025 organizations that received donations from the six billionaire fortunes since 2020 are classified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a leading civil rights watchdog group. These include the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBTQ group that received over $1.6 million in donations from Bradley and Koch; The Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigrant group that received $650,000 from Scaife; Eagle Forum, an anti-government and anti-immigrant group that received over $100,000 from Koch and Uihlein; and Family Research Council, an anti-abortion group that received $25,000 from Seid.  Of the six billionaire families, only Coors-linked foundations — run by heirs to the Coors brewing fortune — did not donate to at least one SPLC-designated hate group.  Links to the Trump Campaign  For months, Donald J. Trump has publicly disavowed Project 2025, claiming to know nothing about the initiative. That stance conflicts with subsequent media reports, including resurfaced video of the former president and current Republican presidential nominee saying, as a keynote speaker at a 2022 Heritage Foundation event, that Heritage would “lay the groundwork & detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.” The Washington Post reported that Trump flew in a private plane to the event with Heritage President Kevin Roberts.  Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, has also been the subject of intense scrutiny for numerous ties to Project 2025 — including writing the foreword to Roberts’ forthcoming book. DeSmog’s investigation also uncovered numerous ties between Vance and Project 2025 advisory groups, including a previously unreported 2017 keynote speech at a Heritage event.    But while the candidates continue to downplay any Project 2025 connections, one link is unavoidable: a billionaire family that heavily supports Project 2025 groups is among their campaign’s biggest donors, according to Federal Election Commission data.  In May, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, the founders of the Uline packaging company, each donated $5 million to Make America Great Again, Inc., a super PAC supporting Trump’s reelection. That’s not including the more than $48 million Richard contributed to Restoration PAC, a pro-Trump political action committee, last quarter alone. Restoration PAC has spent over $12.9 million this year on political advertising, including ads supporting Trump and attacking his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.  Since 2020, the Ed Uihlein Foundation, which is run by the Uihleins and named in honor of Richard’s father, has donated at least $13.4 million to 13 different Project 2025 groups.  The map below is interactive. Click on a donor to see the groups it funded with dollar amounts, or a nonprofit to see which of the six family fortunes made donations. Credit: Joe Fassler, Sari WilliamsThe post Mapped: How 6 Billionaire Family Fortunes Fund Project 2025 appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— ‘Money in Exchange for Silence’: Behind Neom’s Green Image, Western Firms Cash in on Saudi Commitment to Oil

 

at 10/25/24 3:00am

The video opens with the voice of a child. “Since the beginning, we’ve changed things,” she says. “It’s in our genes. It’s what makes us human.” The viewer zooms through stages in human development — agriculture, science, air travel, space flight. A dramatic musical score rises steadily in volume. “Now, we have a chance to change everything,” the narrator intones, as the camera comes to rest on a blank canvas. After a beat, water explodes across the screen, soaking the frame. “Let’s change water,” she says, “so it flows forever. Energy, so it powers our lives sustainably.” From climate change and food security to aging and mobility, the video proceeds topic by topic, issuing an inspiring call to action — one seen more than 22 million times on YouTube, and by countless others on massive screens in New York City’s Times Square. “This is where we can change it all,” the narrator intones. “Neom,” she concludes, is “made to change.” Neoms made to change campaign in Times Square, posted by a company executive on LinkedIn in December 2021. “Neom” is the brainchild and flagship construction project of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the ruler-in-waiting and de facto leader of Saudi Arabia. Designed hand-in-hand with elite Western consulting firms McKinsey & Company, Oliver Wyman, and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and named for a combination of “neo” and “mustaqbal” — the Greek and Arabic words for “new” and “future” — Neom is portrayed as a futuristic, emissions-free utopia in the country’s northwest Tabuk province, which sits along the coast of the Red Sea. The mega-development is chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed and owned by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia’s $900 billion sovereign wealth fund, which the crown prince also chairs. As the “made to change” video suggests, Neom’s promotional efforts often consist of fanciful digital renderings of luxurious resorts and futuristic cityscapes replete with lush greenery, vibrant natural wonders, and promises of ecological and environmental preservation. “Sustainability is a very big theme in everything that we do,” Rayan Fayez, Neom’s deputy CEO, told an audience in Rio de Janeiro in June.  Fayez was addressing an event organized by the Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute, a PIF-led nonprofit that convenes investors and global power players in cities around the world. Some of America’s wealthiest investors and chief executives will be speaking at this year’s flagship FII gathering known as “Davos in the Desert” — which will take place in the Saudi capital of Riyadh from October 29-31 — including Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google; Stephen Schwarzman, the head of the private equity giant Blackstone; and Larry Fink, CEO of the asset manager BlackRock. The FII Institute counts Neom as a “strategic partner.” Paradoxically for a project cloaked in green branding, Neom — or at least the idea of Neom — has emerged as an important asset in the Saudi government’s campaign to preserve global demand for fossil fuels. “Mohammed bin Salman wants to be part of this … global concern with the climate,” said Madawi Al-Rasheed, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics (LSE) Middle East Centre. “But also, let’s not forget that the [Saudi] economy is based on oil, and this is one of the most polluting industries that you can imagine. … The whole country’s based on an oil company. They have to show that they’re diversifying, investing in other things.” This dilemma has made Neom a core plank in Crown Prince Mohammed’s plan for the future of Saudi Arabia. Known as “Vision 2030,” the McKinseyconceived roadmap ostensibly charts a course for the country to open itself to the world — primarily through tourism and foreign investment — while reducing its dependence on oil. Key to this transformation is an aggressive rebrand of the kingdom as a leader in the global fight against climate change. It is a delicate challenge to portray the world’s largest oil exporter — and a documented opponent of global climate action, particularly at UN climate talks — as a champion of sustainability. But it is not a challenge that the Saudi government is attempting alone. DeSmog found that at least two-dozen communications firms mentioned in this story — including agencies specializing in PR, consulting, advertising, and video and graphic design — have together earned tens of millions of dollars helping Crown Prince Mohammed and the Saudi government develop and sell the idea of Neom. To build up a picture of these companies’ activities, DeSmog reviewed hundreds of internal company documents; industry award submissions and press releases; social media posts and case studies published by staff and executives at Neom and many of the individual firms; as well as thousands of pages of documents filed with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). (The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires American companies who advocate or lobby for foreign governments to disclose information about those activities, as well as the names of the employees involved in them, to the DOJ.) If Neom’s marketing materials are to be believed, the city will soon offer a globally integrated, carbon-free home for billions of dollars’ worth of investor capital and millions of people from around the world, thanks to engineering and urban development marvels like The Line, a 170-kilometer-long, 500-meter-tall city “powered by 100 percent clean energy,” and Trojena, a mountainous region that promises to deploy cloud seeding to create an outdoor ski resort in the desert. The Line provides “a blueprint for how people and planet can co-exist in harmony,” says a Neom press release distributed by Chicago-headquartered Edelman, one of the largest PR agencies in the world. Trojena, which is scheduled to host the Asian Winter Games in 2029, “confirms our commitment to be part of the global effort to protect the environment,” Crown Prince Mohammed says in another release, this one distributed by the New York City-based communications firm Teneo. In fact, all of Neom’s regions and projects “will be aligned in their respect for the environment and achieving balance, because Neom’s ambitious vision seeks to shape the future in which living and working are integrated in a sustainable way,” Teneo’s release says. Edelman distributed this press release and graphic in early 2021 as part of its promotion of The Line. Edelman included the image with a Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filing to the U.S. Department of Justice. Experts told DeSmog that whether or not Neom is ever built, the reward for the Saudi government of involving so many prestigious firms goes beyond branding the country as green and legitimizing the crown prince’s hold on power. The scale of Western entanglement creates a financial dependence on Saudi largesse that makes it more difficult for these firms to disengage from Saudi Arabia — or for business leaders and government officials to speak out publicly — because of the Saudi state’s human rights abuses, its repression of civil and political liberties, or its efforts to obstruct global climate negotiations. Following the October 2018 abduction and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi — an operation that Crown Prince Mohammed “approved,” according to a U.S. intelligence assessment — Western elites’ shunning of the kingdom ultimately proved as fleeting as their governments’ promises to isolate the crown prince. But the outcry, while short-lived, nonetheless served as a wake-up call for the crown prince and his allies, experts said, particularly as the government has faced criticism over allegations of forcibly evicting residents of the Tabuk province to make space for Neom. “What they want is to create a substantial Western interest and personnel in Saudi Arabia in order to make Saudi Arabia defended by Western interests, should Saudi Arabia need that,” said LSE’s Madawi Al-Rasheed. “If you have a big population of Westerners in a country … then it becomes like a satellite state that has to be protected because Western interests are really intertwined with the local economy, and you can’t just abandon your people.” The crown prince is “thinking about alternative ways of keeping Western interests alive in Saudi Arabia,” Al-Rasheed said. “These projects, these consultancy firms, the PR companies are all meant to create that bondage — an alternative to just one commodity, and that is oil.” I. A ‘Golden Cash Cow’: Elite Agencies Capitalize on Neom According to the documents reviewed by DeSmog, the list of firms that have signed contracts with Neom includes some of the world’s biggest marketing, advertising, and communications conglomerates and their subsidiaries, such as: Omnicom Group, including subsidiaries TBWA\Raad and adam&eveDDB; Publicis Groupe, including subsidiaries Starcom Worldwide, Leo Burnett, Publicis Media, and Saatchi & Saatchi; WPP, including subsidiaries ASDA’A BCW and Landor, as well as BCW and Hill & Knowlton (now Burson); Interpublic Group (IPG), including subsidiaries McCann Enterprise, McCann New York, and Craft Worldwide (all part of the McCann Worldgroup network); S4Capital, including subsidiary Monks (formerly Media.Monks); and, Avenir Global, including subsidiary Hanover Communications. Independent agencies, such as Edelman, Teneo, KARV (formerly KARV Communications), Ruder Finn, and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck have together won millions of dollars’ worth of additional work for Neom, as have countless smaller creative agencies, many headquartered in New York City and London. This list of companies working to shape Neom’s image, which is not comprehensive, omits many of the lobbying and public affairs firms that work to shape the Saudis’ reputation in Washington, DC and other capitals. It also omits the 23 architecture studios shaping the city’s actual construction, according to a tally compiled by the architecture publication Dezeen. Other U.S.-based companies, including FleishmanHillard and Prosek Partners, have been hired by the FII Institute, which frequently promotes Neom at its events. Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the head of the PIF and the chairman of the board of Saudi Aramco, the country’s state-run oil giant, also serves as chairman of the FII Institute. (There is no indication that FleishmanHillard, which is part of Omnicom, or Prosek Partners have worked for Neom directly.) The FII Institute is run by Richard Attias, a former Publicis Groupe executive and longtime producer of the World Economic Forum (WEF), an annual gathering for global elites in Davos, Switzerland. These days Attias, who has close ties to the Saudi royal family, and his communications firm, Richard Attias & Associates, are largely known for hosting the FII’s “Davos in the Desert” in Riyadh. (The crown prince publicly launched Neom at the gathering in 2017.) Beyond the FII, however, Attias and his company have also done significant work for Neom, including organizing “Discover Neom” tours to solicit foreign investment in cities ranging from Boston and Miami to Berlin, Paris, and Seoul, according to news reports and social media posts. The PR agency KARV’s work for Neom, which remains ongoing, is also run through Attias’s company. A spokesperson for the office of Richard Attias told DeSmog in an email that Richard Attias & Associates “is a global strategic communications and events firm that works with more than 50 clients worldwide annually, including Neom. We have provided events services for the Discover Neom Roadshows from 2022 to 2023, and communications advisory since 2023.” The FII Institute, the spokesperson said, “counts more than 30 international and regional entities as strategic partners, and Neom is indeed one of them.” *** DeSmog’s findings suggest that many PR and consulting companies have anchored themselves in the lucrative ecosystem of Neom and the Saudi government, in part by capitalizing on Crown Prince Mohammed’s desire to be perceived as taking action on climate change. Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the nonprofit DAWN (Democracy for the Arab World Now), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that was co-founded by Jamal Khashoggi, said the Saudi government is willing to spend vast amounts of money for purported Western expertise with little oversight. Put simply, Neom contracts are a “golden cash cow,” Whitson said. (One Neom-focused job opening in London, which was posted by a Publicis subsidiary, appealed to potential applicants by describing Neom as a client offering “unlimited content budgets.”) In conversations with DeSmog, a former employee of a sustainability-focused subsidiary of one of the world’s biggest communications conglomerates described witnessing an aggressive, even desperate, push to win a contract with Neom. The pitch, which eventually involved some of the conglomerate’s most senior executives, was for work to promote one of Neom’s widely touted environmental projects. The advertising agency’s history of working with clients seeking to advance their climate and environmental goals formed a key part of its appeal. The former employee, who requested to share their story anonymously for fear of professional repercussions, expressed concerns to executives within the agency that Neom could be largely a greenwashing exercise for a government funded by, and committed to, oil extraction. The former employee also cautioned that the firm, by doing this work for Neom, could contribute to sanitizing the Saudi government’s human rights record. When this employee shared their concerns internally, they were told that the agency’s participation in the pitch was vital because the agency had such a strong reputation for sustainability. After escalating concerns to more senior executives throughout the company, the former employee came to believe that they had been silenced and excluded from the project. Eventually, the employee chose to leave the company after concluding that their position was no longer tenable — and that their concerns about sustainability and human rights, despite featuring prominently in the company’s code of conduct, would continue to be ignored. As this employee’s experience suggests, for the Western creatives and communicators cashing in on Neom contracts, whether Neom’s flagship projects are actually green — or whether they are even ever likely to exist — appears to be of secondary importance to the task of portraying them that way. For these companies, “why not get in on the action? It’s easy money, with more to come,” said DAWN’s Sarah Leah Whitson. II. ‘A Blank Canvas’: Crafting a Convenient Narrative In response to a series of detailed questions, as well as requests for an interview and comments for this story, a spokesperson for Neom emailed a statement to DeSmog: “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2060. Neom is supporting that goal by investing in emerging green technologies, including hydrogen production at scale, such as the world’s largest hydrogen plant … We are also committed to making our developments net zero emission zones upon completion, as we continue to focus on leveraging 100 percent renewable energy sources with sun and wind being abundant in this region of Saudi Arabia. In the construction phase of our developments, we are focused on decarbonizing, with the integration of circular economy principles including the use of carbon capture and utilization technology in our cement manufacturing plants. “Sustainability is deeply woven into Neom’s ethos, values, business practices, and operations. One of our core commitments is to preserve 95 percent of Neom for nature. We are also regreening and rewilding native landscapes as part of our Neom Nature Reserve. Five native species have already been reintroduced to two native habitat zones, and more than three million trees, shrubs, and grasses have been planted across 750 hectares as part of our program to restore extensive natural habitats with 100 million native plants.” In addition to Neom, as part of this investigation DeSmog contacted the firms mentioned in the story to request interviews and comments about their work for Neom. DeSmog also submitted a comment request to the Saudi embassy in Washington, DC. Most firms either declined to comment or did not respond. The embassy also did not respond. In order to work for the Saudi government, many companies agree to aggressive confidentiality and nondisclosure terms. Earlier this year, for instance, McKinsey, Teneo, M. Klein & Company, and BCG defied a subpoena from the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which was examining the Saudi government’s efforts to influence U.S. policy through tactics such as “sportswashing,” telling senators that Saudi officials would not allow them to discuss their work. “It’s simply staggering to me that American companies are not only willing to accept this claim, allowing the Saudi government to determine what is permitted to provide this subcommittee, but also that they would use it to justify their refusal to comply with a duly-issued congressional subpoena,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, the chairman of the subcommittee, said in a prepared statement for a February hearing with executives of the four firms. Despite these strident nondisclosure terms, however, some companies have been more vocal about their work for Neom on their websites and on social media. “From introducing a new model for urban sustainability powered by 100 percent renewable energy to creating hyper-connected communities centered around nature, not roads — [Neom’s] ‘living laboratories’ will embrace technology and innovation at scale to enhance liveability and answer some of humanity’s most urgent challenges,” McCann Enterprise wrote in a case study about its role in Neom’s “made to change” video. “Designed to inspire, it offers a tantalizing glimpse of what the future could look like.” Slides from The Story of NEOM, an internal document created for Neom by McCann Worldgroup. Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do, the presentation stated.  McCann Enterprise is part of the global network McCann Worldgroup, which itself is the creator of a 168-slide presentation titled “THE STORY OF NEOM.” This internal document, which was obtained by DeSmog, features detailed overviews of Neom’s regions and provides promotional language and graphics that have appeared repeatedly across Neom’s website, social media activity, videos, and other materials. The words “sustainable” and “sustainability” together appear 58 times throughout the document. McCann Worldgroup declined to comment. “Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do,” the presentation states — a message McCann Enterprise has carried forth in much of its work for Neom. In the case study about the “made to change” video (part of what the agency called a “spectacular” campaign), McCann Enterprise described Neom as “a place designed to concentrate and accelerate the human drive for progress.” The city, the company said, is “a blank canvas for a new era of sustainable living.” “The creative idea from McCann London positions Neom as a change-maker that will inspire the world as it reimagines a healthier, more responsible, efficient, sustainable, and balanced way of life, starting from a blank canvas,” echoes a LinkedIn post by Joy Films, a production company that worked on the “made to change” video and has been involved in promoting numerous Neom projects. The “blank canvas” narrative is one that the Saudi government has promoted eagerly. “Since we have [an] empty place, and we want to have a place for 10 million people, then let’s think from scratch,” Crown Prince Mohammed said in a 2023 documentary about The Line on Discovery UK. The blank canvas in Neoms made to change video. Now, we have a chance to change everything, says the narrator, as water explodes across the screen and drenches the canvas. But the Tabuk province in northwest Saudi Arabia, where pieces of Neom are slowly being built, was neither blank nor empty before it was claimed for the city’s construction. The land’s longtime residents include members of the Huwaitat tribe, who the Saudi government began forcibly evicting at the beginning of 2020, according to a report from the international nonprofit ALQST for Human Rights. The tribal community, whose members had lived for centuries in what Western creative agencies repeatedly portray as empty, “was terrorized into submission,” DAWN’s Sarah Leah Whitson told DeSmog. “[We] haven’t heard a peep from them since.” ALQST has documented that at least 15 Huwaitat people who opposed being displaced for Neom’s “blank canvas” have been sentenced “to prison terms of between 15 and 50 years.” Another five have been sentenced to death. In 2020 Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti, a prominent Huwaitat protestor, was killed by Saudi special forces in his home. Earlier this year a former Saudi intelligence official told the BBC that the government had “licensed the use of lethal force against whoever stayed in their home.” The forced eviction of the Huwaitat tribe and the death of Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti have not captured global attention in the same way as the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. But these developments have nevertheless been widely reported in the media and publicized by human rights advocates. In May 2023, a group of independent experts appointed by the UN warned that three members of the Huwaitat tribe were facing “imminent execution” for opposing their eviction for The Line. “We urge all companies involved, including foreign investors, to ensure that they are not causing or contributing to, and are not directly linked to, serious human rights abuses,” the UN experts wrote. A handful of companies have proven willing to walk away from Saudi contracts. In July 2018, Gladstone Place Partners, an independent New York City-based communications firm, signed a nearly $200,000 agreement to promote Neom in U.S. markets and introduce the city’s CEO to Fortune magazine and other “top-tier media.” Gladstone terminated the contract shortly after Khashoggi’s disappearance. More recently, Malcolm Aw, the CEO of the renewable energy firm Solar Water, told Business Insider that he scrapped a $100 million contract with Neom to build solar-powered water desalination plants in the city after learning of the government’s aggressive eviction of the Huwaitat people. But rather than walking away, most Western companies doing business with Neom appear to have chosen the more lucrative path of looking the other way, a pattern that appears likely to continue. “Spreading such large amounts of capital … through such a broad spectrum of elite American companies precludes that kind of blowback from happening again,” said DAWN’s Sarah Leah Whitson, referring to the global backlash that followed Khashoggi’s murder in 2018. In fact, the Saudi government’s explicit commitment to extracting fossil fuels and obstructing global climate diplomacy, as well as its human rights abuses, ongoing political repression, and intolerance of dissent — such as decades-long prison terms for social media posts critical of Neom or the government itself — seem only to have created more demand for elite reputation cleansing. One PR industry award framed that challenge as an opportunity: “The global sentiment around Neom … was one rooted in cynicism and confusion rather than excitement.” III. ‘What is Neom?’: A Sprawling Web of Contracts In 2023, the year after it painted Neom as “made to change,” McCann Enterprise returned for another piece of work, this time to present Google searchers, YouTube streamers, and social media scrollers with the question of “what is Neom?” — and then align their answers with a Neom-approved narrative. As it had during the “made to change” campaign, the London agency teamed up with Monks, a “digital operating brand” of S4Capital, an advertising and marketing company founded by Sir Martin Sorrell, the founder and former head of the global conglomerate WPP. (Neom is “one of the most visionary, ambitious, thrilling, and motivating projects I have ever seen,” Sir Martin wrote of “made to change.”) Monks referred DeSmog to its statement on modern slavery and its code of conduct. Sir Martin Sorrell, the founder and former head of the global conglomerate WPP, posted to his LinkedIn account in December 2021 that Neom was one of the most visionary, ambitious, thrilling, and motivating projects I have ever seen. Additional contributors to the new campaign included Google; Mathematic, a Paris-headquartered design studio that had also worked on videos for Trojena; Whisper, a UK-based production company; and Starcom, Leo Burnett, and Saatchi & Saatchi – all subsidiaries of the French holding group Publicis. Whisper and McCann Enterprise had previously collaborated on videos for Tonomus, Neom’s so-called “hyperconnected cognitive city,” which both Edelman and the DC lobbying shop Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck have also helped promote. “What is Neom?” featured a particularly close partnership between Neom and Google Creative Works, an operation within the tech giant that helps companies monetize Google users’ data and attention. According to a February 2024 case study written by a former Neom marketing executive and published by Google, “what is Neom?” sought to use detailed tracking and targeting of browsing behavior by Google search and YouTube users to change how viewers thought about Neom. The campaign’s entry point was a series of “15-second teaser video ads” on YouTube and other platforms. If viewers engaged with the teaser videos, they were then “automatically shown” a longer video that “used simple, conversational language to demystify the complexity of the Neom project, which was critical to the campaign’s storytelling element,” the case study said. Many of the videos emphasized Neom’s environmental claims. Neom is “an entirely new model for sustainable living,” stated one video. “Call it what you want, but it’s a place that’s going to change the way we live on this planet,” said another. Parts of two industry award submissions by Monks (top) and McCann Enterprise (bottom) for their work on the “What Is Neom?” campaign. Creating the campaign involved “an incredibly fast turnaround shoot that spanned the globe,” said one Whisper employee in an interview published on LinkedIn. “A real feat of impressive logistics delivered by the team!” For McCann Enterprise’s part, the “what is Neom?” videos involved a team of at least 14 employees, according to a celebratory LinkedIn post by the company’s chief creative officer. “Exaggerated and negative commentary overwhelms the media and online landscape, drowning out credible information about many topics including Neom,” McCann Enterprise wrote in a separate case study. “We needed to bring the truth to the front page. And today’s front page is the Google results page.” According to McCann Enterprise, for the 2023 project it hired Ipsos, a survey firm, in part to track Neom’s “brand health.” In May, a few months after “what is Neom?” launched, some journalists opened their inboxes to find that they were being asked to fill out an “Ipsos Survey for Neom.” The request came from KARV, the independent PR agency based in New York City. (It is unclear whether the Ipsos survey distributed by KARV is the same one referenced in the McCann Enterprise case study.) Earlier that year, KARV had signed a $980,000 contract to provide “Neom leadership” with “strategic communications and media relations,” including “strategic positioning counsel” and “messaging and editorial support,” via Richard Attias & Associates. This wasn’t KARV’s first time doing business with the Saudi government. In February 2019, barely four months after Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance, KARV head Andrew Frank personally signed a contract with the PIF. Crown Prince Mohammed’s position as chair of the investment fund means it is effectively controlled by him. The PIF “is just MBS [Mohammed bin Salman] himself,” Abdullah Alaoudh, the senior director for countering authoritarianism at the DC-based Middle East Democracy Center, told DeSmog. “I don’t know why they call it [a] sovereign wealth fund. It’s just MBS’s wealth fund, basically.” (KARV’s work for the PIF would eventually bring in more than $3 million.) A portion of KARV Communications contract with the Public Investment Fund. KARVs CEO personally signed the contract in February 2019, barely four months after journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by Saudi government agents. In a statement emailed to DeSmog, a KARV spokesperson said, “KARV works in conjunction with Richard Attias & Associates in providing strategic communications, messaging, and media relations support to Neom as it aims to address the world’s greatest challenges through advancements in healthcare, education, economic opportunity, and sustainability.” *** Among the numerous projects that “what is Neom?” sought to introduce to the world was Trojena, Neom’s ski resort and one of its most heavily promoted endeavors. In fact, another arm of McCann Worldgroup had already been involved in Trojena: In early 2022, around the same time that McCann Enterprise was portraying Neom as “made to change,” the U.S.-based McCann New York had been gearing up to help launch the mountain resort. Trojena, according to the “STORY OF NEOM” internal branding document created by McCann Worldgroup and obtained by DeSmog, will house “The Vault,” a “folding village” and “vertical city inside of a mountain with its own microclimate,” as well as “the first outdoor ski resort in Saudi Arabia” with “30 km of planned ski slopes.” Slides about Trojena from McCann Worldgroups internal branding document, The Story of Neom. To bring this implausible-sounding concept to life, McCann New York worked with Joy Films — which was also involved in the “made to change” and “what is Neom?” campaigns — to create a video portraying a group of skiers and snowboarders racing uphill in the snow, through an avalanche, before shooting into the sky under the slogan, “journey to new heights.” The video has racked up more than 17 million views on YouTube, though experts cautioned that these numbers are to be interpreted with some skepticism, given the Saudi government’s record of using bots and troll farms to boost social media numbers and harass critics. Neom also took the companies’ work beyond social media. With the help of Pixel Artworks, a UK-based “immersive experience” company, Neom splashed the agencies’ Trojena imagery across huge moving billboards in Riyadh, Times Square, and London’s Piccadilly Circus. On LinkedIn, Neom touted its massive Times Square billboards promoting Trojena in this April 13, 2022 post. A wide array of firms, including Teneo, McCann New York, Pixel Artworks, Joy Films, Squint/Opera, and KARV, are among the firms that have been paid by Neom to promote Trojena. This campaign put Neom’s commitment to sustainability front and center. Sometimes the message was implicit: Winter sports, by definition, require water and cold temperatures. Other times, the agencies were more direct. “Trojena will redefine mountain tourism for the world by creating a place based on the principles of ecotourism, highlighting our efforts to preserve nature and enhance the community’s quality of life,” read one unattributed quote included in a case study published by Squint/Opera, a UK-based creative shop owned by the U.S. agency Journey. The same quote was also attributed to Crown Prince Mohammed in a press release — distributed by Teneo — that accompanied Trojena’s launch. The release also quoted Nadhmi Al-Nasr, Neom’s CEO, describing Trojena as “a major contribution to achieving Neom’s long-term ambitions by adhering to the principles of sustainability.” Pixel Artworks, Joy Films, and Squint/Opera have each won other contracts with Neom. All three, for instance, have promoted The Line; Pixel Artworks says its video about the hypothetical horizontal city has generated more than 157 million YouTube views. And many continue to generate revenue from Neom. In March, Joy Films posted a video on Instagram about its ongoing work for Elanan, Neom’s “unique wellness retreat embedded in nature.” (KARV and Teneo have also promoted Elanan.) Whether projects like Elanan, Trojena, and The Line actually come to life or remain in the digital realm of slide decks and social media promises, the image of Neom — and the sprawling, interconnected web of contracts that helps create that image — serves an important function for the Saudi government. “I think what happened with Neom is that there’s so much money at stake that … what it managed to do is to buy people’s silence, including companies and states,” Lina Alhathloul, the head of monitoring and advocacy for ALQST, told DeSmog. Alhathloul’s sister, Loujain, an activist for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, was jailed by the government for more than three years and is still banned from leaving the country. “Everyone [is] accepting Saudi money in exchange for silence,” Lina Alhathloul said. IV. ‘Hydrocarbons…for Many, Many Decades to Come’: A Kingdom Committed to Oil In January 2024, Neom invited investors, politicians, corporate executives, and other attendees of the World Economic Forum in Davos to drop by “Neom House,” a pop-up space branded with Neom’s logo and emblazoned with environmental imagery. Some of the building’s walls appeared to be covered in greenery. A nearly floor-to-ceiling graphic described Neom as “redefining the circular economy” and “powered by 100 percent clean energy.” Interactive screens showed visitors how Neom would “redefine livability, business, and conservation,” Neom later said. A look inside Neom house at the World Economic Forum in 2024. Source: Neoms YouTube channel. Throughout the week, Neom House, which was designed in part by the same Pixel Artworks that had done work for Trojena and The Line, hosted a series of conversations about the city’s progress and potential. Many of these events seemed designed to create the image of a government leading the fight for global climate action. (Among those touting the promise of Neom to investors was Eric Cantor, the former majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives.) Despite the green imagery and messaging surrounding the events, some officials who spoke at Neom House offered a different take on the government’s climate agenda. During a discussion about “mitigation through proactive action,” Adel Al-Jubeir, the Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs — and, since 2022, the country’s climate envoy — told the audience, “We want to be a realistic partner, and we want the world to be realistic,” employing a common rhetorical tactic of Saudi officials to caricature calls for the phase-out of fossil fuels as naïve or a “fantasy.” “We are saying that hydrocarbons will be the main source of energy for the world for many, many decades to come,” Al-Jubeir said. Flanked by a banner reading Redefining Life for People and Planet, Saudi climate envoy Adel Al-Jubeir (left) told Neom deputy CEO Rayan Fayez (right) that the Saudi government believed in hydrocarbons for many, many decades to come, at a talk held in NEOM house during the 2024 World Economic Forum. Source: Neoms YouTube channel. Saudi Arabia is the biggest exporter of oil in the world. Nearly two-thirds of government revenues stem from oil. Saudi Aramco, the state-run oil giant valued at around $2 trillion, is one of the world’s most valuable and most profitable companies. The kingdom controls around 82 percent of Aramco; the PIF, which owns Neom, also owns around 16 percent of Aramco — a stake worth around $160 billion. (McCann Worldgroup, Hill & Knowlton, Publicis, BCW, IPG, Mathematic, and FleishmanHillard are among the Western advertising and PR firms named in this story that have also worked for Aramco. The oil giant has also spent millions of dollars on sponsored content deals with the in-house creative studios of Western media outlets, including the New York Times, Financial Times and Reuters, in recent years, according to previous reporting by DeSmog and Drilled). “We’re trying to redefine how businesses coexist with nature,” Rayan Fayez, Neom’s deputy CEO, told Richard Attias at a 2023 FII Institute event. “Everything that we’re doing today at Neom has nature and environment at the core.” Yet the city’s construction is funded by oil sales, and the government’s entire operating model — including its investments in Neom and the crown prince’s other “giga-projects,” such as Diriyah, a $63 billion tourism development that will supposedly boast 38 hotels, and Jeddah Central, a waterfront project for which the Saudi government has also faced criticism for forcibly evicting local residents — depends on continuing to sell as much oil as possible, for as long as possible. “The crown prince [is] worried about all this talk about climate change and renewable energy — all of that creates tension in his mind because Saudi Arabia depends on selling oil,” LSE’s Madawi Al-Rasheed told DeSmog. “If oil becomes the ‘bad’ energy, then he’s stuck.” That’s why, even as Saudi policymakers work to reduce the kingdom’s own reliance on fossil fuels — an aim Neom might in fact support if its solar energy, desalination, “green” hydrogen, and other renewable energy projects come to fruition — the kingdom continues to work diligently to obstruct efforts that could reduce global demand for oil. In a 2008 paper, Cambridge University scholar Joanna Depledge summed up the Saudi government’s approach to international climate negotiations as “striving for no.” Thanks to its negotiators’ savvy tactics, including sowing disagreements among different countries, challenging established science about climate change, promoting false solutions to the crisis, and leveraging procedural rules and objections to stall discussions, “Saudi Arabia has been extremely successful in diverting the agenda and debates of the climate change government away from those issues it opposes, and towards those it supports,” Depledge argued. More than 15 years later, Depledge told DeSmog that what she wrote in that 2008 paper “nearly all still applies.” The Saudi government “has a thirty-year record of obstruction and delay, protecting its national oil and gas sector, and seeking to ensure UN climate talks achieve as little as possible, as slowly as possible,” Depledge and two co-authors wrote in 2023. “From Saudi Arabia’s perspective, ambitious global climate action is … more of a threat than climate change itself.” Last year the nonprofit Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) revealed the existence of a Saudi government effort, known as the Oil Demand Sustainability Program, which “aims to boost oil consumption across Asia and Africa, with the ultimate goal of protecting Saudi oil revenues from efforts to phase out fossil fuels,” CCR’s Lawrence Carter and Tom Costello wrote. At last year’s UN climate summit, meanwhile, Saudi negotiators “flatly opposed any language in a deal that would even mention fossil fuels,” the New York Times reported. (Saudi Arabia is reportedly one of a group of oil-dependent countries already working to make sure the upcoming UN summit in Azerbaijan does not call for a global phaseout of fossil fuels, according to the Financial Times.) While Saudi Arabia is far from the only country committed to obstructing and delaying climate action, its efforts have proven particularly successful and, as Depledge and her co-authors noted, provided cover for the United States other nations that benefit from continued fossil fuel production but would rather not be seen as spoilers. Then there’s the environmental impact of Neom itself. Despite the rhetoric and imagery pushed by the city and its Western consultants, experts and observers are skeptical that many of Neom’s projects can match their green hype. The Line, for instance, “will require a truly colossal quantity of materials, with emissions likely much higher than those produced in building a typical city,” predicted Philip Oldfield, a professor of architecture at the University of New South Wales in an opinion piece in the New York Times. In May, the Wall Street Journal reported that Neom was building multiple gas power plants “to power the region until greener energy is sourced.” “Trojena is a ski resort with fake snow. ‘Preserve the environment’ when you need to create new snow? It’s just not credible,” ALQST’s Lina Alhathloul told DeSmog. “The Line actually cuts the environment and removes all [of] the nature and all of the animals. It removes it completely.” Trojena and The Line are “the two most famous projects in Neom,” Alhathloul said, and “the two main projects are clearly not green.” V. ‘A Model for Sustainable Living’: Cashing in on the Idea of Neom While Western companies have been eager partners in portraying Trojena, The Line, and other Neom endeavors as green, many have proven equally adept at transforming their work for Neom into contracts with other parts of the Saudi government. In 2020, the independent agency Ruder Finn agreed to a $1.7 million deal to promote Neom’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, including by creating videos that “tell the story of CSR and its impact on the beneficiaries and the local community.” In the contract, Ruder Finn described itself as “a women-owned business with a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion.” Members of the LGBTQ community routinely face repression by the Saudi government. Lina Alhathloul’s sister, Loujain, remains one of numerous women’s rights activists in detention. “Saudi Arabia’s own record on women’s rights is abysmal,” Amnesty International’s Sherine Tadros told the Guardian. (Ruder Finn declined to comment.) Portions of Ruder Finns 2020 contract with Neom. A few years after wrapping up its work for Neom, Ruder Finn notified the DOJ that the firm had signed a contract with the country’s defense ministry to provide “strategic counsel, media relations, media monitoring, and content strategy and creation.” Kathy Bloomgarden, Ruder Finn’s CEO, personally registered with the DOJ to work on both contracts. Edelman, another independent firm that also began working for Neom in 2020, followed a similar path. According to DOJ filings, the company’s first contract with Neom, signed in November 2020, was expected to generate $75,000 a month for three months — a small sum for a firm that would bring in $840 million in revenue that year. Since then, however, Edelman has signed at least a dozen additional contracts and contract extensions with Neom and the Saudi government. Together these projects appear likely to generate more than $10.8 million for the firm, according to DeSmog’s analysis. As with Ruder Finn, Edelman’s work for Neom appears to have opened the door to work for other Saudi government agencies — and involved the firm’s most senior executive. In July 2022, Richard Edelman, Edelman’s CEO, hosted an invitation-only breakfast for Joseph Bradley, the head of Tonomus, one of Neom’s flagship projects. A few months later Richard Edelman registered with the DOJ as a foreign agent representing the Saudi culture ministry. The following year Richard Edelman hosted another “roundtable breakfast,” this time as part of the firm’s work promoting a “sustainable tourism” initiative for the Saudi tourism ministry. A July 8, 2022 invitation to a breakfast hosted by Richard Edelman for the CEO of Tonomous, one of Neoms flagship projects. Edelman included the email in a FARA filing to the Justice Department. In response to a request for comment, Edelman referred DeSmog to its human rights policy and its public report on “citizenship.” In May 2023, Neom Green Hydrogen Company — a joint venture between Neom, Air Products, and ACWA Power, which itself is partly owned by the Saudi PIF — announced an $8.4 billion investment valuation for a “green” hydrogen plant located in Oxagon, a floating industrial development “powered by renewable energy.” (Edelman, Teneo, and Landor have also promoted Oxagon.) Hill & Knowlton, a U.S.-based firm, appears to have won industry awards for its work for Neom Green Hydrogen Company, including a campaign titled “Pioneering a green hydrogen future,” which won an industry award for “Best Campaign Demonstrating Environmental Initiatives.” Hill & Knowlton is listed as a media contact in an Air Products filing with the U.S. government. Earlier this year Hill & Knowlton merged with BCW to form Burson, which itself is part of London-headquarted WPP, one of the world’s largest communications conglomerates. According to federal filings, ASDA’A BCW, a subsidiary of BCW, signed its first contract with the Saudi government in January 2017, before linking up with Neom in the spring of 2020 for $390,000 worth of work. Burson is not the only WPP subsidiary to work for Neom. Landor (formerly Landor & Fitch) “worked through 24-hour shifts” to create Neom’s “brand idea and narrative,” according to a case study written by the company. Landor has been supporting Neom “since 2017,” one executive said last year, and has “many more Neom projects in the pipeline.” Landor Global posted to X on Nov. 18, 2021 about Oxagon, Neoms floating industrial development powered by renewable energy. Edelman, Teneo, and Hill & Knowlton are among the other firms that have been paid to promote Oxagon. VI. ‘You Want to Maintain That Image’: Perception Is Reality The web of Western agencies’ involvement with the Saudi government can appear endless, likely with stronger and more numerous connections than will ever become public. Even so, one firm stands out for its success cashing in on the idea of Neom. According to federal filings with the DOJ, the strategy consulting firm Teneo began its work for Neom in May 2019, barely eight months after Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. In an agreement worth more than $2 million, Teneo agreed to provide the city with messaging, communications, crisis response, and executive coaching. Both the contract and Teneo’s DOJ filings noted that Douglas Band, a former close aide to former U.S. president Bill Clinton and then president and co-founder of Teneo, would be personally involved in the work. (Band left the company in 2020.) Teneo’s early efforts were evidently to the Saudi government’s liking. Teneo agreed to another contract with Neom with an “effective date” of November 1, 2019 — shortly after many media outlets and human rights groups had marked the one-year anniversary of Khashoggi’s assassination at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and only weeks after Turkey’s government revealed transcripts of the journalist’s struggle with the Saudi hit squad sent to intercept him. (The assassins flew to and from Istanbul on planes owned by the PIF.) “You’ll suffocate me” were Khashoggi’s final words before his death. Excerpts from Teneos first contract with Neom. Teneo signed the contract in May 2019, barely eight months after Saudi government agents murdered Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul in October 2018. In its federal filings about the $900,000 agreement, Teneo said it would “manage the Neom Communications Department” and “provide leadership of the department as well as staff resources to ensure the foreign principal’s corporate messages and positioning are effectively communicated.” The company’s responsibilities included preparing “a Crisis Preparedness capability for Neom,” according to the contract. Teneo signed two additional contracts with Neom in 2020, bringing in an additional $1.2 million. In August 2021, Teneo’s work for the Saudi government expanded beyond Neom when the firm agreed to work for the PIF. The same month Teneo signed another $3.3 million contract with Neom. Since 2022, Teneo has signed at least nine additional contracts and contract extensions with Neom, the PIF, and another entity created in part by the PIF (and 80 percent owned by it) that, in Teneo’s words, exists “to offer guidance and resourcing to support businesses and industry in the MENA [Middle East and North Africa] region as they play their part in the global transition to net zero.” All together, Teneo’s work for the kingdom appears to have been worth more than $30 million so far. “We are also establishing a model for sustainable living around the world,” said Al-Nasr, the Neom CEO, in a press release distributed by Teneo. *** From Teneo to McCann to Google to Edelman, the web of prestigious and influential Western companies doing business with Neom and the Saudi government is vast and deeply interconnected — and impossible to map in full. This opacity stems from a powerful combination of aggressive nondisclosure agreements, strident corporate obfuscation, and an overwhelming torrent of marketing and PR imagery that blurs the boundary between what is real, and what exists only in digital simulations and science fiction-style YouTube videos. For both the Saudi government and its Western contractors, the distinction between the real and the imaginary appears irrelevant: The image of Neom as a sustainable city of the future is ultimately what matters. What is inescapably real, however, is the amount of money involved, and the growing demand among autocratic oil-producers for help revamping their reputations and selling a green image to domestic audiences and throughout Western capitals. This lucrative ecosystem extends well beyond the borders of Neom: In April, Teneo won a $4.2 million contract with the authoritarian government of Azerbaijan to handle communications for next month’s COP29 UN climate conference. “The whole point of this kind of dictatorship is [to] make believe that everything is so rosy and great,” said LSE’s Madawi Al-Rasheed. “And if you’re targeting partners such as the West — companies, global businesses, banks — then you don’t want them to hear about the bad side of the country. You want to maintain that image.” Additional reporting by TJ Jordan The post ‘Money in Exchange for Silence’: Behind Neom’s Green Image, Western Firms Cash in on Saudi Commitment to Oil appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Industrial Fishing Undermines World’s Greatest Carbon Sink, Experts Warn

 

at 10/24/24 2:27am

Fish is often sold as the perfect climate-friendly dinner: highly nutritious and lower carbon than other forms of protein. But new research is increasingly bringing some of these eco marketing claims into question. In part, because industrial fishing – scientists and campaigners say – is weakening the ocean’s ability to act as a carbon sink.  Over the last 60 years, the ocean, forests and other natural carbon sinks have absorbed over half of all man-made emissions, slowing down global warming. Yet, as temperatures rise, scientists warn such processes could be on the brink of collapse. A new study suggests that industrial fishing is also threatening the sea’s capacity to absorb carbon, by disrupting a process known as the ‘biological carbon pump’, which sees carbon sequestered as dead marine animals drop to the bottom of the ocean.  Estimates suggest humans catch between one and two trillion fish every year. This is adding stress to habitats already endangered by warming oceans, which are estimated to help feed over three billion people, and to be home to more than 700,000 different species.  Although the exact level of carbon sequestration enabled by marine life is unknown, a 2023 study estimated it could be helping capture as much as 2.6 billion metric tons of carbon a year – equivalent to about 11 billion acres of U.S. forest. In the UK, new research by the Blue Carbon Mapping Project, an initiative from research group Scottish Association for Marine Science, estimates that 244 million tonnes of carbon are stored in the seabed. Releasing that much carbon would be equivalent to consuming over two billion barrels of oil. “We need to take a more detailed look at which type of fish [we are catching and eating], its origin [and] the fishing method before we say a wild fish is low carbon, says Sevrine Sailley, an ecosystem modeller at the UK’s Plymouth Marine Laboratory.  Bottom Trawling’s Carbon Footprint Carbon sequestration and storage in the ocean relies on dead marine animals, or the faeces from living ones, falling to and remaining at the bottom of the deep layer of the ocean or on the seafloor.Fish hold carbon in their bodies, taken in from eating other fish or smaller marine animals, which dine on microscopic organisms called phytoplankton that have sucked CO2 from the water. But, when human activity removes fish from the water, that carbon is no longer sequestered. Instead, it is released as fish are eaten, through emissions from human waste, or as they decay on land. While the large volume of fish being removed is undermining the oceanic carbon sink, experts say it is only one part of the larger picture. Another key factor is how seafood is fished from the sea. The carbon footprint of fishing has soared in recent decades with the rise of bottom trawling, a catch method that drags nets along the seafloor, and is used for species including cod, haddock, hoki, hake, halibut and sole. Bottom trawls use huge metal frames to keep the nets open, which can weigh as much as 5,000 kilos, and can rip up the seabed.  In January, a team of scientists estimated that bottom trawling released about 370 million metric tons of CO2 a year, roughly the same amount produced by 88 million petrol-powered cars over the same period. Limits of Labelling In late 2014, the EU introduced labelling for fish that shows catch-methods used, meaning that consumers can theoretically avoid products caught using bottom trawls. But a 2021 study found the accuracy of such declarations was patchy. In the UK (part of the EU at the time), only 63 percent of products displayed all mandatory information, according to the analysis.  Mike Walker, an ocean campaigner and conservation consultant, says that regardless of accuracy, governments should not put the onus on consumers. “It is preposterous to think that consumers in a shop or restaurant can make that decision [about the least climate harmful fish to eat or buy]. The information required is vast and complex,” says Walker, who co-authored a briefing on fishes’ role as carbon engineers for environmental campaign group Our Fish. “Too many governments have abdicated their responsibility to the consumer in the name of choice. And that is horseshit,” he says. “In an ideal world you wouldn’t have to choose, you would have confidence in the system and in the regulations.” Farmed Fish is Not the Answer In recent years, the farmed fish industry has marketed itself as an alternative solution. But there is a major problem with this proposal: farmed fish are fed on wild fish also caught from the sea.  Fishmeal and fish oil are made from ground up small oily fish, and fed to farmed carnivorous fish such as salmon, trout, sea bream, and sea bass, as well as pigs, chickens, sheep and cattle.  By one estimate, about 23 percent of the global fish catch is turned into fishmeal and over 70 percent of farmed fish now rely on that feed, up from 60 percent in 2000. While the fish in fishmeal and fish oil are not usually caught using bottom trawlers, removing them from the ocean still disrupts the carbon sink. The process is also very inefficient: several kilos of wild fish are needed to produce one kilo of feed.  The fish farming industry says it is taking action to address its footprint. Javier Ojeda, general secretary of the Federation of European Aquaculture Producers, told DeSmog that producers are working to reduce the amount of wild fish required.  “Today, between 30 percent and 40 percent of marine ingredients included in farmed fish feed originate from by-products of the processing of other fish (wild or farmed). This means a significantly smaller proportion of wild fish must be fished to produce fish feeds specifically”, he said in an email.  But campaigners say that this doesn’t go far enough, particularly with demand for fish among consumers rising.  For Walker, avoiding farmed fish fed on fishmeal and fish oil is one of the simplest routes to helping restore oceanic health. He suggests directly eating the anchovies, sardines, mackerel and herring that are used in fishmeal. “Yes, they can get overfished, but they can recover quicker, and they are full of [highly nutritious] fatty acids”, he says. The other option may be to eat more farmed shellfish. Unfed aquaculture, which includes the farming of species like oysters, clams and mussels that take food directly from the water, is increasingly being considered as a more sustainable option for both fishers and consumers.   Government Action While scientists and campaigners agree that governments must act to protect oceanic health and carbon storage capacity, there is much debate about the best route.  Enric Sala, marine ecologist and National Geographic’s explorer in residence, proposes increasing the number of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) – conservation zones that restrict human activities in the oceans – especially those that ban extractive activities like fishing and bottom trawling. More than 5,000 MPAs have so far been introduced worldwide. As well as restoring ocean ecosystems, MPAs have seen larger fish populations, and therefore more stored carbon, and boosted catches for fishers on the reserve’s margins.   But Mike Cohen, who leads the UK’s National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, says MPAs are not always effective. “MPAs are a poor tool for fisheries management. Fish, after all, move. We are seeing species’ ranges changing all the time, at least in part as a result of warming seas. An MPA that protects a stock in one area is likely to be in the wrong place in a couple of years’ time,” he says. Other researchers and campaigners suggest that governments should also focus on redirecting subsidies toward more sustainable fishing, and methods that use less fuel.  Total global subsidies aimed at boosting fishing capacity, which critics say encourage overfishing, were valued at $22 billion in 2018. Despite calls by Pacific Island states to cut these subsidies, World Trade Organisation delegates failed to agree on limiting them in March.   “It would not cost a lot of money to pay fishers to fish less, or differently, so that ecosystems could deliver more in terms of climate mitigation,” says campaigner Mike Walker.  In practice, though, such measures may be difficult to agree, Walker adds: “What is fished, by who and how, is basically a political decision.”  Ocean Ignorance Ultimately, advocates say we must also tackle another underlying problem: a general ignorance about the ocean and how it works as a climate sink. “We are land animals, we tend to view the world through our terrestrial lens,” says Farah Obaidullah, founder of the advocacy group The Ocean and Us and editor of a book by the same title. “We don’t learn much about the ocean, or the importance of the ocean in planetary systems.”   Obaidullah thinks people are likely to overestimate the ocean’s ability to restore itself. ”For higher income countries, the fish we eat is often caught by gigantic trawlers” that remove more animals than the ocean can replenish. “We don’t talk about the trillions of animals we are taking out of the sea. We tend to think of the wild as a place that will just produce more”, she says. The post Industrial Fishing Undermines World’s Greatest Carbon Sink, Experts Warn appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Alberta’s ‘Scrap the Cap’ Attack Part of an ‘Endless Propaganda War,’ Say Critics

 

at 10/23/24 5:48pm

The government of Alberta and Canadian newspaper chain Postmedia are being accused of publishing disinformation on the front pages of major Canadian newspapers.  But critics are also pointing out the ad campaign distracts from the bigger issue of whether proposed emissions bans are sufficient given the severity of the climate crisis.  Full front page advertorials ran on the covers of Canadian newspapers in several major cities, including that of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, recently acquired by the Postmedia chain. Paid for by the government of Alberta as part of their “scrap the cap” campaign, the headline reads “Ottawa’s Energy Production Cap Will Make Groceries More Expensive.”  Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); As reported by the CBC, the Alberta government’s media blitz targets the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. It also mirrors an $8 million ad campaign against federal government clean electricity rules.  Though the Alberta government insinuates that it is opposing the federal government’s emissions cap on the grounds that it will exacerbate the affordability crisis, DeSmog debunked this argument in a recent article, noting that the same government has saddled every Alberta household with an estimated $70,000 in oil industry liabilities. This is just one of several falsehoods the government of Alberta is currently promoting through its campaign, critics say. “The proposed emissions cap aims to cut oil and gas pollution, not production, by 35-38 percent by 2030,” said Stephen Legault, Senior Manager, Alberta Energy Transition, and Aly Hyder Ali, Oil and Gas Program Manager, both of Environmental Defence. Legault and Ali jointly answered DeSmog’s questions by email.  Legault and Ali said that the current proposal includes compliance flexibilities that would help oil and gas companies comply with the cap, such as cutting fugitive methane emissions and electrifying operations, all of which would cut emissions without affecting production. They note that some critics of the proposal think it’s too business friendly, but also that its emissions reduction target is achievable based on what the oil and gas industry has claimed it could accomplish in the past.  Industry Talking Points Legault and Ali characterized the scrap the cap campaign as misinformation and fear mongering. “Premier Danielle Smith is using fossil fuel industry talking points while ignoring the fact that climate change is a serious risk to her own province, to Canadians and our economy,” they said.  “If an oil company ran that ad, we’d be filing a formal Competition Bureau challenge in a heartbeat over the blatant falsehoods,” said Keith Stewart, Senior Energy Strategist with Greenpeace Canada in an interview with DeSmog.  Stewart noted that even though governments aren’t covered by current truth-in-advertising legislation, voters should nonetheless care whether their tax dollars are paying for misinformation.  “The weird thing is that the Alberta government and oil sands companies all claim they will get to net zero emissions by 2050,” said Stewart, “but once the federal government wants to put it into binding regulations, the Alberta government spends $7 million to buy misleading ads claiming that it is impossible to do.” Whether the federal proposal is even good policy is a discussion that isn’t happening, a problem itself exacerbated by the rhetoric and sensationalism of the “scrap the cap” ad campaign. According to Environmental Defence’s Legault and Ali, the federal government needs to do much more to protect Canadians from the impacts of climate change, and the government’s proposed emissions cap falls far short of what’s needed. “It reflects the bare minimum based on industry claims,” said Legault and Ali. “For it to be effective, the target must align with Canada’s 40-45 percent reduction goal from 2005 levels by 2030. Loopholes, like offsets and decarbonization funds, need to be removed to ensure the cap leads to real, direct emissions cuts from the oil and gas sector.” Legault and Ali also note that the proposed cap has faced numerous delays, and that many of those are coming from the government of Alberta. Legault and Ali want the federal government to release the draft regulations as soon as possible so that the final regulation can be in place by early next year. If an oil company ran that ad, we’d be filing a formal Competition Bureau challenge, said Greenpeaces Keith Stewart. Credit: Danielle Smith / YouTube Andrew Leach, an energy and environmental economist and a professor at the University of Alberta, argues the “scrap the cap” campaign is confusing, in that it inadvertently undermines Alberta’s apparent faith in the oil and gas sector. “The biggest risk of the ad campaign is that you are turning around and telling Canadians that the oil and gas industry can’t do what it spent three or four years telling Canadians they can do, which is to reduce the production emissions from oil and gas assets.” “I think what most Canadians are going to hear is that, all those ads they saw on Hockey Night in Canada last year — saying the oil sands were investing in billions to reduce emissions — apparently that wasn’t what we thought it was, and that’s bad for the government as much as the industry,” said Leach in an interview with DeSmog. Environmental Defence also noted that the oil and gas industry has made, and continues to make, promises about capping their own emissions, but aren’t following through. “The truth is that oil and gas emissions continue to increase while other parts of the economy are reducing their pollution,” said Legault and Ali. “If the oil and gas sector reduced its emissions voluntarily, as they insist they can, then we would not need an emissions cap to ensure oil and gas companies start cleaning up their mess.”  ‘Endless Propaganda War’ Leach argues that the government of Alberta has made considerable environmental claims and set difficult goals for itself — such as carbon neutrality by 2050 — but is also opposed to just about every proposal that might get it there. “Alberta says ‘we’re committed to this,’ but they don’t like clean electricity standards, or oil and gas emissions standards, and they don’t like consumer carbon pricing, and they’re lukewarm on industrial carbon pricing, and they don’t like electric vehicle mandates, or solar power or wind energy…  so, okay, tell me more?” said Leach. Because natural resource exploitation is considered a provincial area of responsibility in Canada, and because Canadian conservatism is largely predicated on fighting for ‘provincial rights’ against what they consider federal government overreach, the government of Danielle Smith has consistently invoked provincial jurisdiction any time the federal government has proposed any effort to combat global warming. According to Leach, Smith is advancing a false constitutional argument. “Federal policy can validly affect resource development, that’s not really in dispute. Smith is saying that if it affects production, or if a production response is the only thing that industry can do, then it’s a bridge too far for the federal government,” said Leach. “And that’s not supported by any real interpretation of our constitution.” While he believes Canada hasn’t fully considered the economic implications of fully phasing out the oil and gas industry, Leach argues this is very different from Smith’s assertions an emissions cap will result in higher grocery bills. Naheed Nenshi, leader of the opposition Alberta New Democratic Party, also took issue with the “scrap the cap” campaign, arguing it was typical of the Smith administration. “They’re spending a whole bunch of taxpayer money in places like Halifax to try and influence the upcoming federal election instead of actually solving the problem,” Nenshi said on social media. Greenpeace’s Stewart disagrees with this statement, however: “This ad campaign isnt really about targeting public opinion in other provinces, it is about using $7 million of public money to shore up Danielle Smith’s ‘stand up to Ottawa’ credentials ahead of the United Conservative Party leadership review.” Nenshi also argued that Alberta already has an emissions cap program, one instituted by former NDP premier Rachel Notley and kept by both the Smith government and her conservative predecessor, Jason Kenney. Nenshi further stated that the province had “achieved record production with the emissions cap in place,” and that, because the Smith government has taken an adversarial approach to the federal government’s proposal, Alberta will “have an emissions cap that may well restrict our ability to increase production going forward.”  This doesn’t hold up, according to Stewart. “Alberta’s so-called cap is pure fiction,” he said in an interview.  “The regulations that would make it real have never been developed, so there is no way that it could ever be enforced. It’s a useful fiction, however, in the endless propaganda war being fought by the Alberta government on behalf of oil CEOs and that’s probably all it was ever intended to be.”    By opposing any meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, Alberta’s United Conservative Party is doing the dirty work of their federal counterparts, according to Environmental Defence’s Legault and Ali. “The irony is that this will, in the long run, come back to harm Alberta, and Albertans. While other jurisdictions around the world are making massive investments in renewable energy, transmission and battery storage, Alberta has crippled what will almost certainly be the energy industry of the future,” said Legault and Ali.  “It’s Albertans, and Canadians who will suffer as a result.”  In 2023 and 2024, the Smith government instituted a province-wide moratorium on new solar and wind projects, which was then followed by new regulations that in effect continue the prohibition on most new solar and wind projects. Though necessary, an emissions cap is only a tentative first step towards tackling bigger challenges. “Oil and gas extraction and refining represents almost a third of all greenhouse gas emissions in Canada and its share is growing,” said Greenpeace’s Stewart.  “We need a hard cap to finally force these companies to invest in clean-up rather than handing all of their massive profits back to wealthy shareholders and executives.”  The post Alberta’s Scrap the Cap Attack Part of an Endless Propaganda War, Say Critics appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Trump Megadonor Tim Dunn Has a Plan More Extreme Than Project 2025

 

at 10/23/24 11:24am

For months top Democrats have fixated on Project 2025, the radical blueprint of policy and personnel recommendations for a Donald Trump administration published by The Heritage Foundation and its allies, with Kamala Harris’ campaign calling it “a sweeping takeover of the federal government.”  But one of Trump’s most prominent donors, the Texas fracking billionaire and pastor Tim Dunn, has for years been backing what critics refer to as a conservative Christian Nationalist plan for America. Some experts in right-wing politics think it has the potential to be more extreme than Project 2025.   Dunn is among the top 10 individual donors to the Trump campaign, having contributed $5 million through his fracking company CrownQuest Operating to a Super PAC called Make America Great Again. He is also director of a political nonprofit known as the Convention of States, which is leading an effort to rewrite the U.S. Constitution in ways that it says would “limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government.” The Bible, according to Dunn, “should profoundly affect” politics.   The group has the backing of conservative media superstars including Fox News anchor Sean Hannity and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro; religious right leaders such as Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and Wallbuilders founder David Barton; political operatives like Vivek Ramaswamy and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk; Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Republican Congressmember Rand Paul; and the Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts, one of the lead architects of Project 2025.  Among the Convention of States’ priorities is to “resist top down planning by our federal government” when it comes to limiting the fossil fuels at the heart of the climate emergency. It describes global heating as a “hoax,” erroneously stating on its website that “the claim that 97% of scientists agree that climate change is man-made is patently false.”  Dismissal of the climate emergency is also central to Project 2025, which calls for a Republican administration to aggressively advance climate obstruction along with a cavalcade of other conservative policies, including a national ban on medication abortion. Project 2025’s proponents would do so by taking a “dictatorial view of the presidential powers,” explained Peter Montgomery, research director at the progressive nonprofit organization People for the American Way. They’re advising Trump to replace thousands of career government employees with political appointees and concentrate decision-making power in the White House.   But Dunn’s plan for a theocratic petrostate goes one step further. “The Convention of States wants to put that vision into the Constitution,” Montgomery told DeSmog. As unlikely as that scenario might seem, he argues that this project goes far beyond mere political rhetoric or posturing.  Dunn has a long track record of successfully backing far-right policies and state representatives in his home state of Texas. He and his allies are now reportedly looking to take that strategy national. “They’re spending a lot of money organizing in states and they’ve got a long-term plan,” Montgomery claimed. “They are deadly serious.”   DeSmog sent a list of questions to the Convention of States and to Dunn via his nonprofit Citizens for Self-Governance but didn’t receive a response. ‘Politics and religion’ Dunn is currently one of the richest people in Texas, having amassed a net worth of $2.2 billion through his family fracking company CrownQuest, which pumps 140,000 barrels of oil per day from the Permian basin in West Texas.  New houses for sale next to an active oilfield in Midland, Texas. May 26, 2020. Credit: Justin Hamel for DeSmog In addition to running one of the country’s biggest privately-owned oil companies, Dunn is a pastor in Midland, the Texas oil town where he lives along with five of his six grown children on a 20-acre compound. He believes that “politics and religion are inseparable,” telling a Convention of States gathering in 2022 that “you can’t have one without the other.”  Dunn and his wife have reportedly given $29 million since 2000 to conservative candidates and PACs in Texas, making him one of the state’s top political donors. He works closely with Farris Wilks, a fellow Texas fracking billionaire who is a co-owner of The Daily Wire, the right-wing media outlet whose stars include Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. Dunn and Wilks recently put $6.8 million into a new PAC called Texans United for a Conservative Majority, whose logo depicts Austin’s Capitol building with a Christian cross on top.      Though Dunn’s political base is in Texas, he’s involved with groups that have a national focus. Tax forms show that for over two decades he’s been on the board of a conservative think tank called the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which has received millions of dollars from charities linked to the Koch brothers and as recently as 2015 was disputing whether humans cause climate change.  And in 2015, the Convention of States filed its first tax form with Dunn listed as a board member. A key goal is to make the U.S. a more explicitly Christian nation. “When we started the Convention of States — and I was there at the beginning — I knew we had to have a spiritual revival, a Great Awakening and a political restoration for our country to come back to its roots,” Dunn said while addressing a summit for the group. The Convention of States pushes a conservative economic agenda, advocating against the thousands of regulations created by an “out-of-control Washington.” The group wants to remove “federal interference” from the oil and gas industry, claiming that fracking “can only be a good thing for our living conditions and geopolitical considerations” and arguing that any attempt to ban fossil fuels “is both impossible to achieve and dangerous to attempt.”     This fusion of religion and economic libertarianism “is supported by people on the corporate right, and people on the Christian right,” Montgomery said. It aims to impose that agenda on Americans by altering the country’s foundational documents. “They are very committed to rewriting the U.S. Constitution,” he said.  Allies in the Trump Campaign The process by which Dunn and his allies hope to do that is called an Article V convention. Their goal is to convince 34 U.S. state legislatures to pass resolutions supporting a constitutional convention. That is the threshold required for Congress to take up the matter. If 38 states then approve the proposed amendment, it becomes part of the Constitution.  Numerous groups since the 1960s have mounted Article V campaigns on issues including abortion bans and federal fiscal restrictions, yet none have been successful. The Convention of States claims to be working “across every legislative district in the nation,” saying that 19 states “have successfully passed the Convention of States Resolution.” The group gained a powerful potential supporter this summer when Trump named as his running mate Ohio Senator JD Vance, a major recipient of oil and gas donations who previously endorsed the project. “Super excited we have a vice presidential candidate that is an official supporter of the Convention of States,” the group’s president Mark Meckler said in a video in July.  Dunn himself is attempting to make inroads with powerful Republicans. He’s given $250,000 to High Plains PAC, which is supporting the re-election of Senator John Borrasso in Wyoming, currently the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.  Dunn’s poured $2 million into the Jefferson Rising Fund, which is supporting the Senate bid of Trump ally Kari Lake in Arizona and advocating against Democratic Senate contenders in states such as Wisconsin, Montana, and Nevada.   The Texas fracking billionaire has become a central behind-the-scenes figure in a constellation of Trump-aligned nonprofits. Dunn is on the board of directors of the America First Policy Institute. That group is co-sponsoring the Courage Tour led by Christian right influencer and Trump ally Lance Wallnau, which is holding a series of rallies in swing states. The Courage Tour recently partnered for an event with vice presidential candidate Vance.   Dunn is reportedly a significant funder of the conservative nonprofit Center for Renewing America, as well as the Conservative Partnership Institute. All this could help give Dunn policy leverage should Trump win the presidential election. “He’s definitely seeking a national impact,” Montgomery said.  A second Trump administration could be useful to Dunn’s business interests. He signed a deal late last year to sell a major part of his fracking company CrownQuest to Occidental Petroleum for $12.4 billion, a transaction in which he’s set to personally collect almost $2.2 billion. Less than a month later, Dunn donated $5 million to Trump. Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub complained last spring during a Houston fundraiser with Trump that federal regulators were delaying the sale. According to sources quoted in the Washington Post, Trump voiced his dismay, saying, “Can you just wait a few months?” The post Trump Megadonor Tim Dunn Has a Plan More Extreme Than Project 2025 appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Tory MPs Join Fuel Tax Campaign Led by Reform UK Climate Science Denier

 

at 10/23/24 9:32am

Conservative MPs have backed a campaign against raising fuel tax led by a Reform UK politician and lobbyist who has publicly claimed that “man is not responsible for global warming”.  Howard Cox, director of the lobby group FairFuel UK, yesterday led a delegation to 10 Downing Street to petition against a mooted 7p rise in fuel duty in the government’s upcoming budget, which will be announced on 30 October. He was joined by a group of Conservative MPs including GB News host Esther McVey, Saqib Bhatti, Greg Smith, Bradley Thomas, James Wild, and Shivani Raja, according to a photo posted on X by journalist Christopher Hope.  The petition stated that “increasing fuel duty is economic and political suicide and will not save the planet”. Transport produced 26 percent of the UK’s total emissions in 2021 and was the country’s largest emitting sector. Cox has stood for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in two separate elections this year, running as the party’s London mayoral candidate, and its parliamentary candidate for Dover and Deal in July’s general election.  Reform UK campaigns to entirely scrap the UK’s net zero emissions targets, and advocates for new fossil fuel drilling. The party is gaining in the polls, and Farage has said that he wants to replace the Conservatives as the leading right-wing movement in British politics. FairFuelUK is an influential group with allies in Parliament and the media, leading joint campaigns with The Sun newspaper. Cox has claimed to have successfully used his political contacts to secure a fuel duty freeze for the past 14 years.  However, Cox has increasingly cast doubt on established climate science. Last November, Cox said in a post on X: “It is arrogant to think that we, as human beings, can make any difference to this planet.” In August 2022, in response to a TalkTV segment in which Reform UK‘s Richard Tice criticised the views of climate scientist Dr Gerald Kutney, Cox tweeted: “I am now even more convinced man is not responsible for global warming”. Climate scientists working at the world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have said that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”. All five of Reform UK’s parliamentary MPs have signed a letter sent to the Chancellor Rachel Reeves endorsing FairFuel’s campaign calling on the government to keep fuel duty frozen. “The 14 year campaign to freeze fuel duty, and subsequent decisions of consecutive chancellors to do so, has cost the taxpayer in excess of £130 billion,” said Ralph Palmer, UK electric vehicles lead at the advocacy group Transport and Environment. “While sold as a policy to support low income drivers, it’s estimated that only 4.6 percent of the cut actually went into the pockets of those on the lowest incomes. Instead, these policies have overwhelmingly benefitted the richest in society. The policy is poor value for money and is little more than a political gimmick. It’s a no-brainer for the chancellor to break the cycle.” FairFuel’s Tory Backers FairFuel UK is supported by Craig Mackinlay, the former Conservative MP who continues to lead the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, which rallies parliamentary support against climate action and net zero.  Mackinlay, who was given a peerage after standing down in July’s general election having contracted sepsis last year, formerly chaired the Fair Fuel for UK Motorists and UK Hauliers All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG). The APPG has not yet been re-registered following the election. Yesterday’s fuel duty stunt was not the first time that Tory politicians have cosied up to Reform candidate Cox. In January, then Conservative Net Zero Secretary Claire Coutinho met Cox and praised his work.  Cox has campaigned against traffic and anti-pollution schemes including Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) and ultra low emission zones (ULEZ).  As DeSmog reported, Cox attended an anti-ULEZ rally ahead of May’s London mayoral election organised by a group which had promoted conspiracy theories about “climate lockdowns”. FairFuel has also lobbied against government plans to phase out petrol and diesel cars, publishing a report in 2021 attacking electric vehicles.  Cox declined to respond to DeSmog’s request for comment. The post Tory MPs Join Fuel Tax Campaign Led by Reform UK Climate Science Denier appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— ‘Terrifying’: Leak Shows Industry Plot to Worsen Methane Emissions — If Trump Wins

 

at 10/23/24 4:00am

This article by Common Dreams is published here as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now. A key oil and gas industry group has devised a plan to dismantle Biden-era climate regulations, including on methane emissions, according to an investigation published Friday in The Washington Post. The American Exploration and Production Council, a trade group of 30 oil and gas producers, aims to reverse a series of regulations the Biden administration has made, including the institution of a methane fee, the Post reported, based on AXPC documents that were leaked to Fieldnotes, a climate research group. AXPC represents Big Oil companies including ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, whose executives Republican nominee Donald Trump has aggressively sought out for contributions in his bid to return to the White House, even making a quid pro quo offer—deregulation in return for $1 billion in campaign cash—during a gathering at Mar-a-Lago in April. Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); David Doniger, senior adviser to the NRDC Action Fund, which is affiliated with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the Post that Trump had promised to grant their wishes and the leaked documents, which Doniger reviewed at the papers request, revealed their wish list. Paasha Mahdavi, director of the Energy Governance and Political Economy Lab at University of California at Santa Barbara, noted the comprehensiveness of AXPCs plans, which he also reviewed. They want to take climate out of the policy process entirely, Mahdavi told the Post. They want government to stop regulating climate issues and stop thinking about climate risks. Mahdavi said the AXPC documents showed that member companies were acting out of step with their own public climate pledges. They talk a lot about climate ambitions while doing something different inside their companies, he said. If you are aligned with the Paris agreement, you cannot be part of a trade association trying to roll back these emissions regulations. Those two things are inconsistent. Elizabeth Kolbert, an environmental writer at The New Yorker, said the plans were not surprising but were still terrifying. The oil and gas industrys plan for a Trump presidency involves pouring more methane into the atmosphere. Unsurprisingly, but still terrifying. https://t.co/RsVjiMefZH— Elizabeth Kolbert (@ElizKolbert) October 18, 2024 Aspects of the AXPC plans had already been released publicly, including its goals to increase the production and export of liquefied natural gas (LNG). The leaked documents included a confidential survey of member companies showing that nine out of the 19 companies that responded had increased methane flaring between 2021 and 2023. Natural gas flaring is a longstanding but highly polluting industry disposal method. The survey also showed that the total amount of flaring across the companies increased by 20% from 2022 to 2023. Methane is a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide, though not as long lasting in its effects. Methane emissions are responsible for about 20-30% of climate warming since the 1700s, scientists estimate—second only to carbon dioxide. Fossil fuels are a major source of those methane emissions, along with modern agricultural practices and other causes. In March, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized its methane rule, which is projected to reduce emissions of the gas by up to 80% over 14 years. A group of Republican-led states and fossil fuel interests have challenged the rule in federal court. The case thats ongoing, though the plaintiffs bid for an emergency injunction on the rule from the U.S. Supreme Court failed, so the regulation remains in effect. The documents also show a number of other orders and regulations in the industrys crosshairs. One is a sweeping executive order issued in the first week of the Biden administration to establish a whole-of-government approach to tackling the climate crisis; it includes goals to limit drilling on federal land and decarbonize the grid. AXPC also seeks to undo an executive order that requires companies to disclose climate-related financial risks. End the Pause on LNG Exports? Other items in the AXPC roadmap include lifting the Biden administrations pause on LNG exports and undoing a rule requiring the climate to be taken into account in major infrastructure projects. The group also wants to see an executive order that promotes fossil fuel production. AXPC spokesperson Mark Bednar, who previously worked for then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, told the Post that our board documents make clear that our priorities are the same regardless of who is in the White House. Yet the plan, which runs in contradiction to Democratic Party aims, will only be actionable if Trump returns to power. Trump has phoned oil and gas executives regularly in recent months to hear their wishes and raise campaign cash, the Post reported. As a group, AXPC hasnt contributed to the Trump campaign, but leaders of its member companies are Trump donors and fundraisers. The International Energy Agency (IEA), which released a major report this week showing that the worlds nations were not on track to achieve crucial climate goals, has documented the dangerous rise in global methane emissions—making the agency a target of the fossil fuel industry. At a fundraiser this summer, fossil fuel executives told Trump he should push for Fatih Birol, the IEAs executive director, to be replaced, according to the Post, citing an anonymous attendee. ExxonMobil distanced itself from the leaked documents, telling the Post that it doesnt agree with all AXPC positions and that it has sharply reduced its methane emissions and supports the methane fee. ConocoPhillips didnt reply to a request for comment by the Post but has said in filings that it supports the AXPCs position on methane. The post Terrifying: Leak Shows Industry Plot to Worsen Methane Emissions — If Trump Wins appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Big Ag Is Using  ‘Regenerative Agriculture’ to Mask Business-as-Usual

 

at 10/22/24 11:01pm

During September’s Climate Week in New York City, the worlds major food companies lined up to share their pro-nature credentials, claiming that they are embracing “regenerative agriculture” practices that will reduce their massive carbon footprint.  However, a new report finds that multinational food and ag companies – such as Cargill, Bayer and Unilever – which are using the term, have barely changed how they do business. A total of 30 major agriculture companies were analysed in the report, which was released in September by the New Climate Institute. It found that while around 80 percent of the firms were heavily referencing the phrase “regenerative agriculture” in their climate and sustainability strategies, only a third had targets, and many lacked specifics on how plans would be implemented, or applied them to just small subsets of their total operations.  The report’s findings also echo earlier analyses that companies’ vague definitions of ‘regenerative’ – which can encompass a wide range of nature-friendly farming techniques such as no-till and organic farming – are undermining accountability. Several farming schemes running under the banner are not making clear what practices they include, or what benefits they will provide for sustainability efforts. And company claims of lowered emissions are not always backed up. As a result, the plans of companies analysed in the study fall short of tying the firms to transformative action, with the report’s co-authors concluding the firm’s plans lack “the ambition necessary to significantly reduce pollution, environmental degradation, emissions or even increase soil carbon sequestration”. Agriculture is responsible for between a quarter and a third of global carbon emissions, as well as being a leading driver of the past half-century’s sharp declines in wild habitats and wildlife populations.  Experts say that failing to reform the sector’s polluting practices – such as by cutting the use of  pesticides and polluting synthetic fertilisers – will harm global efforts to curb climate change and reverse biodiversity loss.   The new report echoes a growing body of evidence that – on the climate front – food and ag companies using vague definitions of regenerative agriculture may be misleading consumers and policymakers, especially when the term is not defined by regulators. “Regenerative agriculture, as it is currently used by large agrifood companies, may distract from necessary emission reduction measures”, said Eve Fraser, who co-authored the New Climate Institute. “For example, focusing on regenerative agricultures potential to increase soil carbon sequestration, diverts attention from the need to reduce emissions, rapidly and effectively.” “Its really a huge scam,” concluded Molly Anderson, a member of the International Panel of Experts on Food (IPES Food), who co-authored an earlier report on regenerative agriculture in 2022. “Its something thats being used by corporations to justify their greenhouse gas emissions.” Hazy Definitions Researchers at the New Climate Institute evaluated how Big Ag is using the “regenerative agriculture” label by filtering for the term in the climate plans of 30 of the world’s largest industrial food and agriculture producers, such as Nestlé, the world’s biggest food company, agrochemicals companies such as Bayer, commodities companies like Archer Daniels Midland, and dairy companies like Danone and Nestlé.  Agriculture is the leading driver of the potent greenhouse gas methane, which is responsible for a third of human-caused warming to date. The sector is also a heavy user of fossil fuels, including to produce synthetic fertilisers, which are a major source of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas.The sheer scale of the operations of the companies also means they are major emitters in their own right. Nestlé has emissions three times the size of its home country Switzerland, for example, due to methane from its dairy supply chain.Meat and dairy companies in particular were found by the researchers to be using the term “regenerative agriculture” in misleading ways. Drinks companies such as Coca Cola and Diageo, as well as confectionary company Mondelez, were highlighted as using especially hazy definitions. Mondelez defines regenerative agriculture as an approach to farming which aims to produce “high-quality crops” while also “restoring the natural rhythm of our surrounding ecosystem” – a definition which makes no reference to specific practices that would reduce emissions or boost biodiversity.  Lauren Baker, the deputy director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, believes we are seeing “rampant greenwashing” from corporations making false claims about regenerative agriculture. The answer to this, she says, lies in coming up with universally accepted definitions, which has happened in the case of “agroecology” and “sustainable agriculture” – both of which have been endorsed by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.“Food systems approaches that aim to repair, regenerate, and transform our systems toward resilience must address the systemic issues of equity and power,” she said, making reference to the 13 principles to guide food systems transformation drawn up by the UN in a multi-year consultation process. They include a commitment to reducing toxic agrochemicals, paying workers a living wage and encouraging local production and healthy diets. Dairy giant Danone, which is often seen as a sustainability leader in the sector, is identified in the study as having the most ambitious framework for action. But even this fails to include standard low-impact agriculture practices such as reduction of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers within its wider supply chain. A spokesperson from Danone said regenerative agriculture was an important part of a “broader strategy, which includes a mix of initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the agricultural supply chain and implement practices that restore nature”. They added that the transition for farmers away from pesticides and synthetic fertilizers could be “challenging” and “takes trial iterations over several years”. Molly Anderson said that without a fixed definition, companies will continue to use the term “regenerative agriculture” to enhance their reputations, while making no major changes to their operations. Lack of Concrete Targets In recent years agriculture and food companies have been criticised for saying they are implementing regenerative agriculture but failing to say how they’re doing it, or to set concrete targets that make it possible to gauge progress. This latest report finds that even companies that have set targets are not delivering on them, and are applying them to only a small fraction of their operations. Biscuit manufacturer Mondelez has advertised its targets for shifting to regenerative agriculture, but only for a small section of its European business, and has no “publicly available” frameworks that explain what will be needed to achieve them. Similarly, commodities multinational Cargill says it will “advance” the use of regenerative methods across 10 million acres by 2030, but does not provide the details of how it will do that.Again, the strategy is partial. Cargill’s target covers only its North America holdings, while the company operates in 70 countries worldwide. Cargill told DeSmog it was transparent in communicating its progress and actions on regenerative agriculture, and directed me to its latest ESG report. It said in an email: “ Sustainable agriculture starts at the farm, and every farm is unique. That is why we partner with farmers to support practices that will work best for their operation and climate. Cargill provides financial incentives to farmers for achieving positive environmental outcomes when they adopt regenerative agriculture practices including cover crops, no till, rotational grazing and nutrient management.” These schemes are a “drop in the ocean” for the big food and ag multinationals, according to Simon Kraemer, the policy steward for the European Alliances for Regenerative Agriculture, a farmer-led network. Kraemer believes such pledges may act as a “fig leaf” to cover for continuing to pollute and other unsustainable practices.Max Boucher, a research and engagement manager for the investor network FAIRR, told me that when used effectively, “regenerative agriculture has the potential to support the shift to a more sustainable future”.But for ag and food companies in an evolving regulatory landscape, those that “do not establish clear targets and substantiate their claims could face significant financial and reputational risks.” Shaky Science Tyson Foods, a meat company that has promoted its involvement in regenerative farming, now faces “greenwashing” lawsuits alleging that there is nothing to back up the company’s claims that it will zero out its carbon emissions by 2050 or provide climate-friendly beef. The report’s authors also found that of the 30 companies studied, just over half are limiting regenerative agriculture to improving nature-based resources that remove carbon from the atmosphere, such as through the soil, with no plans to cut their own pollution. Eve Fraser, a co-author of the report, told me that this focus on offsetting emissions rather than reducing them could be a way to keep pollution levels high.  For example, meat and dairy companies are using “regenerative grazing” to “continue unsustainably high production numbers”. Scientists say these natural carbon sponges, termed “carbon sinks”, can play only a limited role in helping to meet carbon reduction targets — and that as temperatures continue to rise, even carbon sinks themselves are collapsing. Soil-based carbon removals — which are heavily promoted by major food and agriculture companies – are particularly difficult to measure, as well as being impermanent and finite,Meat and dairy companies argue that they can offset their emissions – which are primarily caused by the methane in cow burps and farts – by grazing cattle outdoors, and encouraging healthy soils in pastures. However, research has found that this is simply not feasible with the current scale of livestock farming. Sophie Scherger of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) told me that “agribusiness has a history of using carbon removals as a fig leaf to hide that they are not reducing emissions”. She says that cutting emissions would require reducing the size of livestock herds as well as the use of fossil-fuel-based fertilisers, something that companies significantly invested in these practices are hesitant to do “We cannot offset our way out of the climate crisis,” said Scherger. Front and Centre At Climate Week in New York last month, Bayer, Danone, and fertliser company Yara were among the multinationals that organised events and “fireside chats” about regenerative agriculture. RegenHouse, an industry-sponsored event space that hosted many of regenerative agriculture discussions that week, is due to host similar discussions at two upcoming summits: October’s UN Biodiversity Conference, called COP 16, in Cali, Colombia, and the annual UN climate treaty conference, known as COP 29, being held in Baku, Azerbaijan in November.  Another high profile, international initiative is slated for 2025. “Regen10” aims to  come up with recommendations for an internationally accepted definition of regenerative agriculture, which  is measurable and can be applied across farms.  Simon Kraemer policy steward for the farmer-led network, the European Alliances for Regenerative Agriculture agreed that corporations were ‘coopting’ the term but urged not to “throw the baby out with the bathwater.”  In Europe there was a strong social movement behind the term, which was successful in converting farmers over from more conventional practices, Kraemer said, and which shouldn’t be disregarded. However, many are concerned that the regenerative agriculture label will always be wide open to corporate misuse.“We as a global community need to be clear on definitions to avoid the rampant greenwashing we are seeing as corporate actors make false claims about regenerative agriculture,” says Baker. “You cannot claim to be regenerative if you are using toxic agrochemicals, if you arent paying a living wage to your workers or if your product is highly processed and unhealthy.” The post Big Ag Is Using  ‘Regenerative Agriculture’ to Mask Business-as-Usual appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Robert Jenrick Endorsed by Notorious Climate Science Deniers

 

at 10/22/24 7:45am

Robert Jenrick’s pledge to repeal the UK’s landmark climate change law has won him the backing of some of the country’s most notorious climate science deniers.  The Conservative Party leadership candidate told The Telegraph on Saturday that he would repeal the Climate Change Act, first introduced in 2008, to remove what he called its “Soviet-style” carbon budgets.  The legally binding carbon budgets require the government to draw up plans to limit carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over five year periods, in order to meet its 2050 net zero target.  The Telegraph interview was shared approvingly by the Bruges Group, a conservative anti-EU pressure group that has published leaflets claiming “there is no greenhouse effect” and “the dogma of global warming” is a socialist plot. The world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought”. Last week, Jenrick was also endorsed by Tory peer Lord David Frost, a former Brexit minister who is a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s leading climate science denial group.  Frost – who has claimed “rising temperatures are likely to be beneficial” – praised Jenrick for saying he would “change the net-zero legislative framework”.  The GWPF’s campaign arm Net Zero Watch (NZW) also praised Jenrick’s attack on climate targets, with its director Andrew Montford – a former GWPF deputy director – welcoming his supposed “return to energy rationality”. NZW campaigns for new fossil fuel exploration, including opening new coal power plants, and calls for wind and solar power to be “wound down completely”.  This comes after Bloomberg revealed that Jenrick’s rival for the Tory leadership, Kemi Badenoch, is running her leadership campaign from the home of Neil Record, a Tory donor and chair of NZW. Record gave £10,000 towards Badenoch’s campaign in July.  “Robert Jenrick’s pledge to repeal the UK’s net zero target if he wins the next general election as leader of the Conservative Party is probably an indicator that he is not a serious candidate for prime minister”, said Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.  “Opinion polls show that the overwhelming majority of the public want a quick end to the UK’s contribution to climate change. Jenrick’s apparent disregard for this shows that he is not focused on promoting the health and prosperity of the electorate but instead is seeking a fight with Reform UK over who represents the right-wing fringe of British politics. “It will mean that the Conservative Party becomes largely irrelevant to mainstream politics in the UK.” Bruges Group In his Telegraph interview over the weekend, Jenrick attacked the carbon budgets required by the Climate Change Act.  “It is ludicrous to set out Soviet-style five-year plans at a sectoral level which specify where you plan to reduce carbon emissions,” he said. “The state does not have sufficient understanding of the economy to do that well.” Jenrick named the Climate Change Act – along with the Equality Act and Human Rights Act – among the policies introduced by the 1997-2010 Labour government that he wants to scrap. He claimed that Prime Minister Keir Starmer is planning a “second Blairite revolution” by handing power to non-departmental government bodies nicknamed “quangos”.  Jenrick’s interview was shared by the Bruges Group, which posted on X: “Jenrick offers exactly what the country needs: A concrete legislative plan to undo the damage done by Labour and restore pre-Blair norms.” Jenrick shared their post in turn, writing: Thank you for your support, @BrugesGroup https://t.co/jAMKeAZmQf— Robert Jenrick (@RobertJenrick) October 20, 2024 As DeSmog reported at the time, the Bruges Group held a fringe meeting at the 2022 Conservative Party conference featuring Jeremy Nieboer, a corporate solicitor, who promoted his book CO2 – Nature’s Gift.  The book argues that the “dogma of ‘global warming’ was conceived as a means of socialist reversal of the global economic order”.  He goes on to say that the “dangerous warming dogma” is a “colossal falsehood” that is “without any basis in physics and chemistry”. Climate scientists working at the IPCC have said that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”. The Bruges Group continues to attack climate action. In July of this year, the organisation said that Labour’s proposed ban on new North Sea oil and gas exploration would “undermine our energy security and prosperity”.  “We live in an increasingly dangerous world and cannot afford to sacrifice either for the sake of green collectivist ideology,” the group added.  In June, a month before the UK general election, the Bruges Group praised Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist party Reform UK for its pledge to “scrap net zero”, and its anti-immigration policies. Jenrick vs Climate Jenrick, who previously supported the UK’s net zero targets, has become a critic of climate action over recent months.  In February, he claimed in a Telegraph article that voters are sick of the “dishonesty” from politicians about “what net zero entails”. He said the UK’s net zero target was “dangerous fantasy green politics unmoored from reality”.  During his 2024 Conservative conference speech in early October, Jenrick said that, under his leadership, the “Conservative Party will stand for cutting emissions, but we will never do it on the backs of working people and by further de-industrializing our great country.” Jenrick also advocated for “cheaper energy”, suggesting this can be achieved through more oil and gas extraction.  This mirrored a speech he gave to the Legatum Institute think tank in May, during which he called for the construction of new “gas power stations”.  Contrary to Jenrick’s claims, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the UK’s cost of living crisis has been exacerbated by its dependence on fossil fuels, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). UK households were the worst hit in western Europe, due to our reliance on gas to heat homes and produce electricity. “The UK energy crisis is a fossil gas crisis,” Sarah Brown at the energy think tank Ember has said. The OBR has estimated that the government spent close to £70 billion on energy support measures in 2022 and 2023. Jenrick has also vowed to appoint GB News presenter and former Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who lost his seat in July’s election, as chairman of the Conservative Party. Rees-Mogg has a long record of opposing climate action. He has blamed high energy prices on “climate alarmism” and questioned the ability of scientists to project rising temperatures and their effects.  The post Robert Jenrick Endorsed by Notorious Climate Science Deniers appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Why Alberta Should Scrap Its Misleading $7 Million Ad Blitz

 

at 10/18/24 2:31pm

The Alberta government just launched a $7 million ad campaign against the proposed federal emissions cap. Newspapers from Edmonton to Halifax featured a front page wrap warning Canadians across the country that capping emissions from the oil sands could take hard-earned money directly from the pocketbooks of taxpayers.  The stark black-and-white Scrap the Cap website warns in doomsday font, “a production cap will make groceries, gas and all of life’s necessities even more expensive A production cap will cause thousands of job losses and will mean billions less in taxes that could have been used to build roads, schools and hospitals.” Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); But the federal government is not proposing a production cap – they are proposing an emissions cap. Until the Pathways Alliance abruptly scrubbed much of their website in July 2024, the largest oil sands companies were assuring Canadians that their $16.5 billion carbon capture and storage plan – largely paid for by the Canadian taxpayer – would reduce emissions enough to meet the new rules.  That is unless CCS is too expensive and unreliable to work, as was detailed in a recent report by Deloitte commissioned by the Alberta government. The authors found that implementing the multi-billion-dollar carbon injection scheme would make most oil sands operations uneconomic, stating plainly, We do not foresee any oil sands CCS investments being implemented.  ‘It’s a Deception’ DeSmog applauds any effort to defend Canadian pocketbooks, especially in a sector that has plowed billions in record breaking profits into shareholder buybacks, stock dividends and executive compensation – all while refusing to pay more than $250 million in outstanding municipal taxes to rural Albertan towns.  The oil patch is also the seemingly ungrateful beneficiary of the new $35 billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion paid for by the Canadian taxpayer. The tolls on this are so low that even if Ottawa managed to find a private sector buyer for this boondoggle, the public would still be out-of-pocket over $18 billion. This could be remedied through a modest export levy on western crude, but what federal government would dare side with taxpayers rather than the oil patch? And on the important subject of lessening the burden on Canadian families, perhaps Alberta should start by eliminating towering unsecured liabilities from abandoned well sites and pipelines, estimated by the Auditor General to top $60 billion. The Government of Alberta has collected only $295 million as a security, or less than 0.5 percent.  Put another way, the Alberta government has allowed each Alberta household to be on the hook for over $36,000 in unfunded wellsite and pipeline liabilities racked up by an exceedingly profitable industrial sector. If you also include $57 billion in unfunded bitumen mine liabilities, the tab for every Alberta home currently exceeds $70,000 per Albertan home.  These unfunded liabilities grow larger each year because Alberta – unlike almost every U.S. state – has no mandatory timelines for wellsite cleanup. Meanwhile the expanding problem of tailings ponds worsens annually as there is no credible plan to safely dispose of more than 1.4 trillion litres of toxic slurry now impounded behind leaky earthen dams. Oil sands mining companies also have no requirement to pony up additional financial security until fifteen years before projected closure.  “The whole point of a security regime is to have money set aside when the economics are bad,” Martin Olszynski, a law professor at University of Calgary told DeSmog. He feels that allowing companies to delay meaningful deposits into Alberta’s Mine Financial Security Program (MFSP) until they are in financial distress “makes no sense whatsoever. its nonfunctional…Its essentially like not having a security regime.” For these reasons Olszynski characterized the MFSP as, “essentially a fraud. Its a deception. Its smoke and mirrors.” Scrap the Crap, Please How could an organization that calls itself the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) have allowed this to happen? Since its inception in 2013, the AER has been 100 percent funded – not by the public – but by the industry it purports to oversee.  This blurry line between companies and regulators is reflected in the latest ad campaign by the Alberta government, which follows a familiar playbook: blame Ottawa, frame all climate-related policy as a pocketbook issue, and collect personal data from an online petition.  As for government-funded fear mongering of up to 150,000 job losses, that dubious figure is larger than the entire labour force currently employed by the Alberta upstream energy sector.  Rather than blaming an Ottawa bogey man for killing oil patch jobs decades from now, consider instead how oil companies managed to eliminate 45,000 permanent oil patch jobs in the last ten years while production ballooned by over 40 percent. That trend is projected to continue in the future with 50,000 additional jobs lost to automation by 2040 while bitumen production ramps up by 35 percent in a business-as-usual scenario.  If proxies for the oil patch like the current Alberta government are so worried about legitimate concerns regarding the cost-of-living burden on everyday Canadians they should start by ensuring that every Albertan household is not needlessly on the hook for oil industry liabilities that could otherwise pay for a new 2025 pickup truck and leave $10,000 to pay down the mortgage. Scrap the Cap? How about “scrap the crap.” The post Why Alberta Should Scrap Its Misleading $7 Million Ad Blitz appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Toronto and Montreal Move Ahead with Fossil Fuel Ad Restrictions on Transit

 

at 10/17/24 5:34pm

The city of Toronto has passed a motion aiming to restrict fossil fuel advertising on municipal property, one of several recent efforts to curtail fossil fuel advertising in major Canadian cities. The motion passed on Thursday, October 10, giving Toronto city councillors one year to come up with a draft of the proposed legislation.  The effort comes as transit agencies in Canada’s two largest cities have either implemented or are considering similar restrictions on using public transit to advertise for Big Oil or related industries. Montreal’s transit agency, the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), has indicated that they intend to ban misleading fossil fuel advertising. Toronto’s proposal would potentially remain open to ads that align with the city’s net zero goals and don’t run afoul of new federal anti-greenwashing regulations. In September, DeSmog reported that Toronto City Councillor Dianne Saxe had introduced a motion proposing to restrict false and misleading advertising from oil and gas lobby groups on public transit. The motion did not advocate for a full ban on all fossil fuel ads. Subscribe to our newsletter Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts Name -- Email Address What content do you want to subscribe to? (check all that apply) All International UK Sign Up (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery); “Toronto’s decision to limit fossil fuel advertising is a landmark win for public health and climate action,” said Dr. Melissa Lem in a statement. Lem is a family physician and President of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE).  “As physicians, we’ve long recognized that fossil fuel pollution, like tobacco smoke, poses severe health risks to our communities — especially to children and other vulnerable populations,” said Lem. Misleading Ads in Motion The new limits come on the heels of federal anti-greenwashing regulations aiming to stem the tide of misinformation produced by Canada’s fossil fuel sector and their lobbyists. They also follow a series of high-profile advertising campaigns launched by the oil and gas industry. Pathways Alliance, a consortia of Canadian tar sands producers, has been the most visible, with a comprehensive media blitz involving traditional print and broadcast advertising, advertorials, sponsorship, and the use of public transit infrastructure — including buses and streetcars — that suggest they are taking an active role in emissions reductions.  In fact, the Pathways Alliance is principally interested in developing a $16.5 billion carbon capture and sequestration project, as well as a 400-kilometer carbon dioxide pipeline to serve about 20 different tar sands production facilities. Critics of the project, and carbon capture more broadly, argue that carbon capture overpromises and consistently under-delivers on its alleged environmental advantages. DeSmog previously reported that Pathways paid Google to redirect web searches on environmental and climate change topics to its website, and further paid Google to redirect web searches specifically on the subject of greenwashing. When new anti-greenwashing regulations came into effect in Canada earlier this year, Pathways removed all content from their website. Toronto councillor Saxe specifically mentioned both Pathways Alliance and Canada Proud as two lobby groups the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) should cease advertising. In reaction to Pathways’ “let’s clear the air” campaign, three Canadian environmental groups complained to the Competition Bureau in the spring of 2023, arguing that the campaign was misleading the public. The Competition Bureau, an independent Canadian law enforcement agency tasked with protecting consumers and promoting competition, agreed to launch a still-ongoing investigation. Canada Action ads appearing on Ottawa transit shelters in February 2024. Credit: Helen Hsu (left) Andrew Dumbrille (right) In August 2023, DeSmog reported that Montreal’s bike share program, Bixi, had decided to pull ads for the Pathways Alliance. Pathways had also been advertising on Montreal bus shelters at the time, as well as using buses in Vancouver and streetcars in Toronto as mobile billboards. They featured slogans such as “our net zero plan is in motion.” In late 2023 and early 2024, ad campaigns by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), and Canada Proud (an allegedly grassroots pro-oil lobby group), were spotted on public buildings throughout the Canadian capital of Ottawa. Ads by these groups have promoted claims Canadian oil and gas resources are either in high demand or will reduce global emissions. This high-profile campaign, in addition to the campaign by Pathways Alliance, led various environmental groups in Ottawa to propose similar bans on fossil fuel advertising as much as inspiring the federal anti-greenwashing regulations. Ad Standards Canada later determined that some of those Ottawa ads by Canada Action, particularly those that argued Canadian LNG exports would reduce emissions globally, were misleading and amounted to greenwashing. ‘Powerful Precedent’ Pressure to crack down on fossil fuel advocacy advertising and greenwashing has been ramping up steadily over the past year in Canada. In February, DeSmog reported that long-serving Member of Parliament Charlie Angus proposed a private member’s bill that would ban misleading fossil fuel advertising. Angus’ proposal was in response to the aforementioned ad campaigns by Pathways and Canada Action. His proposal was further modeled on anti-tobacco advertising legislation passed in Canada in the 1990s. That proposal wasn’t passed, but resulted in fossil fuel advocates spreading misinformation about it. Angus’ office was subsequently inundated with death threats.  In June, bill C-59 — another government effort to crack down on greenwashing — became law. Though mischaracterized as a ban on fossil fuel advertising, the new regulations in fact require environmental claims to be backed up with evidence. This prompted tar sands producers and industry lobbyists to scrub content from their websites, including their own environmental goals.  Oil advocates, including the former and current environment ministers of the Canadian province of Alberta, continue spreading misinformation that the anti-greenwashing laws are part of a broad conspiracy to silence the fossil fuel sector. “This bold move signals the end of unchecked fossil fuel advertising and positions Toronto at the forefront of a global shift,” CAPE’s Dr. Lem said of the Montreal and Toronto developments.  “Toronto is clearing the air of both pollution and misleading propaganda, setting a powerful precedent for cities nationwide and globally, moving us toward a healthier, more sustainable future for all people in Canada.” The post Toronto and Montreal Move Ahead with Fossil Fuel Ad Restrictions on Transit appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Oil Companies Insist Carbon Capture Is Safe – So Why Are Albertans Saddled with the Risks?

 

at 10/17/24 11:59am

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been hyped by industry groups like the Pathways Alliance as a credible solution to help decarbonize the Alberta oil industry, despite several studies questioning both the effectiveness and the economics of storing carbon dioxide underground.  But there may be a simpler way to assess whether this is a real effort or just PR smoke and mirrors. Are oil companies willing to play with their own money on CSS? Are they transparent with documentation and process? And are they willing to assume their own risks?  The answer to all these questions seems a resounding “no.” Freedom of information documents unearthed by The Narwhal reveal that Pathways Alliance demanded the federal government pony up 50 percent of the operating costs of their proposed CCS project at Cold Lake Alberta, estimated to cost over $16 billion.  This same trove of lobbying documents also shows that Pathways insisted on assurances that the project would not be subject to a federal environmental assessment. At the provincial level, it is being broken into 126 separate parts to avoid triggering an Alberta environmental assessment.  Pathways spent millions hyping their vague plan on social media, but has yet to provide local communities, First Nations, or provincial regulators with specific technical documents. The industry group also suddenly scrubbed their website after being spooked by pending regulatory requirements in Bill C-59 that requires truthfulness in their environmental claims to avoid “greenwashing.”  And what about risk? Who would assume the long-term liabilities associated with injecting up to 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year into an underground area three times the size of Prince Edward Island?  Under a system unique to Alberta and described as having some of “the most generous transfer provisions” of any CCS regulatory scheme, the provincial government would assume virtually all long-term legal risks. Unlike oil production liabilities that remain legally attached to the companies that created them, CCS operators like those in the Pathways Alliance would have their regulatory and tort liabilities transferred to the Alberta government in perpetuity after the Minister of Energy issues a closure certificate. That such a weighty technical determination would be made by a politician rather than an arm’s length expert regulator raises obvious red flags regarding saddling the public with even more unfunded oil patch problems. Alberta has a troubling history of political meddling in fossil fuel oversight, most recently when Energy Minister Brian Jean directed the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) to reconsider a twice-rejected coal mining proposal at Grassy Mountain.  The risks associated with CCS after closure might be comparatively low after CO2 pipeline transport has ceased and the pressure dissipates across the geological reservoir. However, if the stored CO2 for whatever reason eventually escapes to the surface after a closure certificate is issued, it is the province on the hook for any third-party damages. Massive Liability Costs What about the financial liabilities for carbon credits previously claimed if there is reservoir leakage? “Climate liability would be where a company has claimed credits as a result of a sequestration activity,” Nigel Bankes, Professor Emeritus of Law at University of Calgary told Desmog. “Those liabilities … include liability for the reversal of credited activities. The dollar figures associated with that could be massive given projections for increased carbon prices.” How massive? The business case for CCS projects involves billions in carbon offsets sold to third parties. The Pathways proposal projects storing 10 Mt annually with carbon pricing reaching $170 per tonne by 2030, meaning that by 2050 over $34 billion in carbon credits could eventually be claimed.  Industry has apparently long wanted to wash their hands of those potential CCS risks as well, as reflected in a 2013 report that recommended the Mines and Minerals Act be changed to “transfer liability for CO2 credits to the Crown when a closure certificate is issued.”  That proposed change was not then adopted but it looks like oil companies may finally get their wish. The government of Alberta just issued a memo indicating they plan to adopt a new system where the Crown would hold the bag on potential carbon leakage risks in exchange for retaining 0.5 percent of carbon credits. If companies are so certain that stored carbon will stay underground, why would they want such a change?  Bankes also warns that lack of transparency from industry and regulators around CCS development,  including the Pathways project, may ultimately undermine efforts to get it approved, citing the example of a failed CCS project in the Netherlands. “The Netherlands is a jurisdiction thats used to oil and gas exploration … and the project went down in flames because of public opposition. In that case [Shell Oil]  hadn’t handled the public review of the project in a transparent way, so they abandoned it.”  Describing the public transparency around the Pathways CCS proposal as a “black hole,” Bankes feels that could likewise poison public support for the project. “You think it will be just in their best interests to be as upfront as possible about this. I dont understand this secrecy at all.”  The post Oil Companies Insist Carbon Capture Is Safe – So Why Are Albertans Saddled with the Risks? appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Jordan Peterson’s Online Class Compares Climate Activists to Mass Shooters

 

at 10/15/24 11:38am

The killers who committed horrific mass shootings in Norway, New Zealand and Texas are examples of “extreme environmentalists” who want to reduce the Earth’s population to conserve resources, according to a class taught at Peterson Academy, the new online school from conservative influencer Jordan Peterson.  These mass shooters are “people who don’t rely on persuasion, or government action, but instead take matters into their own hands and start to kill the members of the human race at least in part for the sake of the planet’s environment,” claims instructor Marian Tupy in a lecture about the history of environmentalism.  Tupy’s lecture — which is entitled “The enemies of progress from the romantics to the extreme environmentalists” — is premised on the argument that limiting the planet’s population to lessen ecological impacts and reduce greenhouse gas emissions is a central concern of the mainstream environmental movement.  That couldn’t be further from the truth, according to Rachel Cleetus, policy director for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental non-profit founded in the 1970s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her group has published a report pushing back on the idea that too many humans are the reason for climate change and ecosystem collapse.  “The focus on overpopulation is a complete misdirection,” Cleetus told DeSmog, arguing that it’s part of an effort to deflect attention from the actual challenges facing our planet, which include a dangerous global reliance on climate-altering oil, gas and coal.   “The majority of people in the climate movement completely understand and have identified fossil fuels as the core problem, and a transition away from fossil fuels as the core solution to addressing climate change,” Cleetus said.  Neither Tupy nor Jordan Peterson responded to questions about the lecture.  Rife with Climate Crisis Deniers Peterson Academy, which officially launched in September, is an unaccredited online school that charges people $499 to access lectures on topics including philosophy, nutrition and world history. There are no grades, but students can choose to take short quizzes that are marked by an artificial intelligence program.  The school was reportedly started with $3 million in seed funding from Peterson and his daughter Mikhaila. It belongs to a trend of rightwing influencers and funders using the language and aesthetics of higher education to market anti-progressive ideas, which also includes Peterson’s ally Dennis Prager, who started the conservative media outlet PragerU.   Though Peterson Academy’s tagline is “education, devoid of ideology,” Peterson himself is strongly conservative and opposed to climate action — as are many of the instructors, who pre-tape the lectures shown to students. When DeSmog analyzed a list of announced instructors earlier this year it found more than a dozen had previously made statements denying the existence of a climate emergency or dismissing solutions to the crisis.  That includes Tupy, who is currently a senior fellow at The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank founded in the late 1970s by the late oil and gas billionaire Charles Koch which has a long record of disputing the science of climate change. Tupy teaches a Peterson Academy course along with Gale Pooley, who is also associated with Cato, on “the economics of human flourishing.” Tupy states in his lecture that there is a “rising strand of anti-humanism in the environmentalist movement, that in its mildest form advocates in favor of anti-natalism, meaning having fewer children, and in its most destructive form, flirts with genocide.”  He then provides alleged examples: Anders Behring Breivik who killed 77 people in Norway; Patrick Crusius who killed 23 people in El Paso, Texas; Brenton Tarrant who killed 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand. All three wrote hate-filled manifestos containing racist theories blaming environmental declines on immigrants and minorities.  Tupy in his talk cited Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, who killed three people with bombs across the United States; he also released a long manifesto with ecological themes.  These documents are broadly understood by experts as examples of “eco-fascism,” a racist far-right ideology that blames environmental decline and global warming on overpopulation and immigration. Eco-fascism has been forcefully rejected by groups such as Greenpeace, which argues that “the best way to address the climate crisis is through pressuring the companies who are the root cause, and through sustainable, renewable, just and equitable distribution — not by reducing the number of people on Earth.” Tupy also categorizes the mass shooters as eco-fascists, but he doesn’t make a strong distinction between their ideology and mainstream environmentalism, instead asking rhetorically: “What are we to make of this constant gradual and increasingly militant anti-human, anti-civilizational drive within the environmental movement?”  ‘Completely Off-Base’ Students of Tupy’s class are getting a deeply inaccurate portrayal of the people and communities working to preserve the ecosystems and stable climate upon which all human life depends, said Cleetus from the Union of Concerned Scientists. “This is conflating eco-fascism and violence with concern about addressing the climate crisis,” she said. “It’s completely off-base.” There is a history of conservative climate denial organizations likening environmental activists to murderers. When The Heartland Institute ran a billboard in Chicago in 2012 saying that believers in global warming were similar to the Unabomber, about two dozen corporate donors including the U.S. insurance giant State Farm pulled their funding from the group.   A senior fellow with The American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that as recently as 2014 was publicly questioning whether human-caused climate change is real, marked Kaczynski’s death last year by comparing him to “extreme environmentalists.”   Cleetus argues this type of “misdirection” is not an accident. “There are entrenched political and economic interests that want to maintain the status quo,” she said. “They simply do not want to make the shifts needed to move towards a low-carbon economy.” The post Jordan Peterson’s Online Class Compares Climate Activists to Mass Shooters appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Europe’s Blue Hydrogen Plans Risk Generating Annual Emissions on par With Denmark

 

at 10/12/24 10:01pm

This story is the fourth part of a DeSmog series on carbon capture and was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe and published in partnership with Le Monde. Billed by the fossil fuel industry as a climate solution, dozens of planned blue hydrogen projects in Europe could consume more natural gas each year than France, and produce emissions on a par with Denmark, a DeSmog analysis has found. The findings raise new questions over blue hydrogen’s climate impact as EU officials deliberate over technical standards that could allow the technology to count as “low-carbon” — and thus qualify for billions of euros in subsidies.  The term blue hydrogen is used to describe hydrogen made from natural gas, where carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is deployed to trap much of the large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) generated during the production process, then bury it underground.  Hydrogen emits no CO2 at the point of use. If produced cleanly, the molecule is theoretically capable of decarbonising various sectors, including chemicals and petrochemicals, steel, cement, power, road transport and potentially aviation. Although Europe has yet to produce any blue hydrogen at scale, Shell, BP, Equinor, TotalEnergies, Eni, and ExxonMobil are among dozens of oil and gas companies promoting the technology as a way of meeting climate goals.  However, industry has yet to provide the kind of comprehensive data needed to estimate how far any possible climate benefits from switching to blue hydrogen produced by the planned projects may offset the residual CO2 emissions and methane leaks associated with making it.  To begin to fill this gap, DeSmog teamed up with Christophe Coutanceau, a professor at the Institute of Chemistry of Poitiers: Materials and Natural Resources, and co-lead of a hydrogen working group at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, known by its French acronym CNRS. [Details of the methodology used can be found at the end of this story]. By reviewing extensive industry reports and technical data on 46 proposed blue hydrogen projects in the EU, UK and Norway listed by the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), DeSmog found that 27 involve building new hydrogen production facilities. Another 15 envisage retrofitting existing hydrogen plants with carbon capture, while the status of four remained undetermined. More than a third of the total volume of hydrogen gas produced by these 46 projects would be used for oil refining — the main use of hydrogen today, according to a DeSmog tally of available data. In collaboration with Coutanceau, DeSmog estimated that these 27 new blue hydrogen facilities could consume 48 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas each year —  about a tenth of the total consumption in the EU, UK and Norway in 2022 (499 bcm), and more than the annual amount of gas burned in France (38 bcm).  DeSmog’s analysis estimated the total annual emissions associated with the 46 planned blue hydrogen projects at 38 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) — about as much as Denmark or Switzerland emitted in 2022 (42 million tonnes of CO2). Our calculations factored in methane leaks in the natural gas supply chain and the partial efficiency of carbon capture units. Credit: Sabrina Bedford. A further 33 million tonnes of CO2 could be released while the plants are being built in the one-off process used to manufacture the amine-based solvent used in the most common types of capture units, the analysis found. We should be very cautious with blue hydrogen. We should not buy into a false sense of complacency that it is a low-carbon fuel, said Lorenzo Sani, power analyst at financial think tank Carbon Tracker, who reviewed DeSmog’s methodology and findings. A badly managed development of blue hydrogen will increase carbon emissions while creating new gas demand that risks extending energy security concerns. The concerns were echoed by Paul Martin, a chemical engineer and decarbonisation consultant at Spitfire Research, who also reviewed the findings. This analysis confirms the fact that so-called blue hydrogen is rather blackish blue, Martin said. Even technological innovations in the field of hydrogen production from fossil gas dont change this. Coutanceau, the CNRS hydrogen expert, underscored the huge scale of the task fossil fuel companies face in realising plans to sequester the captured CO2 in disused oilfields in the North Sea. In addition to the tens of million tonnes of CO2 equivalent that blue hydrogen projects would release every year, what are we going to do with the captured CO2? Coutanceau said. Theres talk of underground storage in saline cavities, but to my knowledge this infrastructure doesnt yet exist on an industrial scale. In April, workers began boring a hole under the seawall at the Port of Rotterdam, marking the start of construction of the Porthos carbon capture and storage project — which aims to start sequestering CO2 captured at two planned blue hydrogen projects in a disused offshore gas field from 2026.  Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies plan to store millions of tonnes of CO2 under the North Sea in their  Northern Lights joint venture, which opened a storage facility near Bergen last month. Equinor says the project will initially store 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year — with that capacity already committed to ammonia, cement and bioenergy plants.  Lack of Data Hydrogen Europe, an industry association grouping hundreds of companies — ranging from Shell and BP, to utilities and engineering firms — dismissed concerns over the potential emissions footprint of the planned blue hydrogen projects, saying substituting blue hydrogen for fossil fuels would have a net climate benefit. You want me to admit that we have a lot of CO2 emissions because of blue [hydrogen]. Thats not true,” Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, Hydrogen Europe’s CEO, told DeSmog in an interview. You have to look at the big picture: With blue hydrogen, there will be fewer CO2 emissions than if you used natural gas as your [source of fuel]. You criticize the fact that were reducing emissions. I dont understand the logic.  According to the Hydrogen Council, a global trade association, producing one kilogram of blue hydrogen using natural gas and a high level of capture (90 to 98 percent) would emit a maximum of 3.9 kilograms of CO2 — 70 percent less than a conventional hydrogen plant.  However, its difficult to independently estimate the decarbonisation potential of the planned blue hydrogen projects without access to data showing how the gas will be used, and thus how far it might reduce demand for fossil fuels. For now, we dont have enough data,” Coutanceau said. “To arrive at a precise calculation of avoided emissions, wed need to know whether the hydrogen would be used as a feedstock in a manufacturing process, to produce heat, or used in fuel cells to produce electricity. Its not the same [decarbonisation] gain. Hydrogen Europe declined to respond to DeSmog’s request for an estimate for the quantity of CO2 emissions that could be saved by the 46 proposed blue hydrogen projects. The Global CCS Institute, an oil and gas industry body, did not respond to a request for comment.  Regarded as one of the most authoritative models for decarbonising the energy system, the IEA’s Net Zero by 2050 Roadmap sees an increase in global blue hydrogen production capacity to 18 million tonnes (Mt) by 2030 from the negligible amounts produced today. But the 46 planned blue hydrogen projects in Europe alone would produce 10 million tonnes of blue hydrogen — or more than half the global total needed in the IEA scenario, DeSmog found.  Only a handful of the proposed projects have received a final investment decision, meaning there is no guarantee they will all be built. Nevertheless, climate advocates say the discrepancy between the scale of the proposed build-out, and the Net Zero 2050 roadmap, raises questions over whether industry is intent on using blue hydrogen to preserve demand for natural gas, even as Europe transitions away from fossil fuels.   ‘Make-or-Break Moment’ Fossil fuel companies, utilities and industrial gas producers are vying for a share of a cumulative total of $100 billion in state support for hydrogen projects that had been announced by EU member states and other European countries by 2023, according to data from BloombergNEF.     Some climate groups are urging governments to back “green” hydrogen — the term used for hydrogen produced in an emissions-free but energy-intensive process powered by wind and solar. In contrast to blue hydrogen’s reliance on natural gas as a feedstock, green hydrogen is made using large quantities of water.  The EU has set up Hydrogen Bank to help scale up the technology, with the Renewable Energy Directive stipulating that 42 percent of hydrogen used in industry will have to be produced solely from renewable energy sources by 2030, and 60 percent by 2035.  But environmental groups are concerned that industry lobbyists may convince the European Commission to shift those obligations from green hydrogen to a more loosely defined “low-carbon” hydrogen — which would include blue hydrogen projects. That could crowd out investment in green hydrogen, which is much costlier to produce.   If selection is based solely on price, since blue hydrogen will be cheaper than green hydrogen, blue hydrogen projects will [win out] and will make green hydrogen disappear, Geert De Cock, electricity and energy manager at Transport & Environment, a Brussels-based research and advocacy group, told DeSmog. In my opinion, this is a frontal attack on green hydrogen. In April, Transport & Environment and other environmental groups, joined by wind and solar companies, wrote an open letter urging the European Commission to adopt a “robust definition” for low-carbon hydrogen, with stringent conditions attached to blue hydrogen production. The Renewable Hydrogen Coalition, environmental tank Bellona, and the Environmental Defense Fund were among signatories urging Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson and Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič to ensure the new rules reflected the entirety of greenhouse gas emissions associated with a particular blue hydrogen project; set a minimum rate of carbon capture; and set maximum rates for methane leakage.  The letters signatories also call for a guarantee that any blue hydrogen to qualify as low-carbon, “will only be produced from existing (not additional) gas production capacity”. “If the rules are sufficiently strict, the new [blue hydrogen] projects will not happen,” De Cock said. “It is really make-or-break for the industry.”  Betting on Blue Today, almost all industrial hydrogen is of the “grey” variety, where the CO2 emitted during the process of making it from natural gas is vented into the atmosphere, accounting for about two percent of global CO2 emissions, according to the IEA. About half of this hydrogen is used in oil refining, where the gas is used to strip sulphur from refined products, and make diesel and other oils. Some climate advocates suspect that the fossil fuel industry is backing blue hydrogen in part because the resulting demand for natural gas will serve to prolong the useful life of existing gas deposits, drilling rigs, pipelines and other infrastructure. That could reduce the risk that the EU’s goal to slash carbon emissions by 55 percent by 2030 will saddle oil and gas companies with billions of euros of stranded assets. In the Netherlands, site of 12 of the 46 proposed blue hydrogen projects, U.S. industrial gases company Air Products and French rival Air Liquide have announced plans to retrofit their existing grey hydrogen plants in the Port of Rotterdam with carbon capture equipment to produce blue hydrogen. Hydrogen plays a critical role in the energy transition and in mitigating the effects of climate change, Air Products says on its website.  The captured CO2 will be handled by Porthos, a joint venture between state-owned firms Energie Beheer Nederland, Gasunie, and the Port of Rotterdam Authority. The project aims to store 2.5 million tonnes of CO2 captured annually from various industries in depleted gas fields under the North Sea for 15 years, starting in 2026. Elsewhere in the Netherlands, in the maritime province of Zeeland, Air Liquide is building a new plant to supply blue hydrogen to Zeeland Refinery, a joint venture between TotalEnergies and Russia’s Lukoil. Air Liquide is also participating in the Kairos@C project in the Belgian port of Antwerp, which aims to capture more than 14 million tonnes of CO2 over its first 10 years of operations, including from two blue hydrogen plants.  “The Group has a complete portfolio of technological solutions and services to support the decarbonisation of its customers around the world, Air Liquide said in its 2022 strategic plan.  American-German gas manufacturer Linde, which is headquartered in the UK, also sees blue hydrogen as a growth opportunity. Blue hydrogen is the next step, the company says on its web page. Gray and blue hydrogen are important stepping stones on the path to green hydrogen as they will allow for the necessary frameworks and infrastructures to be developed while green hydrogen production reaches the necessary scale.  Oil Companies Spy Opportunities The track record of the fewer than 10 existing commercial blue hydrogen plants in operation has been uneven. For example, Shells Quest project in Canada, capable of producing 900 tonnes of hydrogen a day, captured five million tonnes of CO2 from 2015-2021 — but released more than 7.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gases during the same period, according to a report based on official data collated by Global Witness.  Nevertheless, oil companies are talking up the benefits of blue hydrogen, with TotalEnergies, Eni, Shell and BP all characterising the gas as a clean fuel that can be used to bridge the gap before green hydrogen becomes more economical. In January last year, Norway’s state-owned oil company Equinor signed a memorandum of understanding with the German energy provider RWE to jointly develop blue hydrogen projects in Norway for export via pipeline to Germany. Equinor announced last month that it had scrapped the plans, citing excessive costs and insufficient demand. In the UK, site of 14 of the 46 blue hydrogen projects on the drawing board, BP is developing a large-scale blue hydrogen plant, called H2 Teesside. The project aims to produce 160,000 tonnes of blue hydrogen a year, with the developers pledging to capture two million tonnes of associated CO2 emissions and bury them under the North Sea. The project is already well advanced, said Sani, the power analyst at Carbon Tracker, and author of a June report on blue hydrogen in the UK. Although the final investment decision has not yet been taken, several agreements have already been concluded, and the construction of a new [liquefied natural gas] terminal to supply the plant with fossil gas has been proposed. Meanwhile, U.S. major ExxonMobil, which has various carbon capture interests in the Netherlands, Belgium and UK, describes blue hydrogen as one of the few proven technologies that could deliver significant reductions in CO2 emissions in high-emitting, hard-to-decarbonise sectors. Battle of Perceptions Industry groups are keen to kick-start the planned blue hydrogen projects by portraying them as equivalent to their green hydrogen rivals — downplaying the differences in the emissions footprint of the technologies, and focusing on economics. “Its about decarbonisation, its not about colour,” said Chatzimarkakis, the Hydrogen Europe CEO, reiterating a position commonly advanced by industry. If we start to criticize technologies that help to decarbonise, to the energy transition, were making a big mistake. We need to be ‘technology diverse’. We need to have every technology that allows for CO2 abatement to play its role.  Under existing EU rules, the maximum threshold of greenhouse gas emission for hydrogen to be considered “low-carbon” is equivalent to that of green hydrogen: 3.38 kilograms of CO2e per kilogram of hydrogen. But whether or not a particular blue hydrogen facility meets that definition depends on the methodology used to calculate its emissions. In May, the EU adopted a raft of new rules on gas and hydrogen under its Green Deal climate framework —  and tasked officials with developing a methodology for determining which hydrogen projects count as low-carbon within a year. The European Commission published a draft of the new rules on September 27, and opened a month-long public consultation. The draft proposed that blue hydrogen projects should be subjected to a “full life-cycle analysis — meaning that emissions estimates would include factors such as methane leakages during the production and transport of the natural gas, and stringent rules for assessing carbon capture rates.  But the devil is in the details, campaigners say.  In a response to the draft, Transport & Environment questioned the rigour of proposed measures to factor in methane leakages, while Bellona noted a lack of measures to deter the build-out of new natural gas infrastructure. Many more questions remain unanswered. The draft suggests that all emissions associated with the process of capturing CO2, then transporting the gas and injecting into undersea storage sites, will be taken into account when measuring the carbon footprint of a blue hydrogen project. But the rules are silent on the question of whether the emissions associated with the production of the amine-based solvent needed to operate the most common carbon capture technology should also be factored in.  It has also yet to be determined how to account for likely leaks of hydrogen — which is considered an indirect greenhouse gas because it causes chemical reactions that affect concentrations of methane, ozone, and stratospheric water vapor, as well as aerosols. Other questions include: How will the natural gas supply chain be certified? And how to ensure such certifications are accurate? Would it make more sense to calculate the warming impact of the methane over a period of 20 years (84 times greater than CO2), as advocated by environmental groups, or 100 years  (28 times greater), as desired by industry?  European policymakers need to set strong guarantees for blue hydrogen projects, as they risk derailing net zero strategies if they are developed without addressing supply chain emissions, said Carbon Tracker’s Sani. Without stringent regulatory frameworks, blue hydrogen could inadvertently become a setback in our fight against climate change. Variations in the methane leakage rates in different gas-producing regions further complicate efforts to calculate blue hydrogen’s carbon footprint.  Norways gas industry is said to limit its leakage rates to below 1.0 percent — less than the estimated global average of 1.4 to 2.0 percent. However, with Norways gas production committed to existing customers, it seems likely that future blue hydrogen projects will turn to suppliers such as the United States, where shale oil and gas reserves are being massively exploited, and estimates for the proportion of methane molecules escaping into the air can be 3.5 percent, or higher. In some parts of the U.S., such as the Permian Basin in New Mexico, leakage rates above 9.0 percent have been recorded — meaning that even within a given country, where the gas comes from can have a big impact on the level of climate harm. Chatzimarkakis, of Hydrogen Europe, said the origin of the natural gas was outside the scope of his groups remit. I dont know where the gas will come from, he said. We are not a gas lobby. Thats not our business. Aline Nipperts new book Hydrogen Mania: An Investigation into the Totem of Green Growth is published in French by Le passager clandestin. Additional reporting by Michael Buchsbaum and Sharon Kelly Methodology and Assumptions We began by examining the 51 proposed blue hydrogen projects in the EU, UK and Norway featured in a database maintained by the International Energy Agency (data current as of October 2023). We excluded four projects in the UK that have been canceled (H2 Leeds City Gate project; Cavendish Phases 1 and 2; and a project at the Fawley refinery) and one in Norway (Aukra CCS). To simplify the calculations, we assumed that all the projects used natural gas, commonly used to make hydrogen in Europe. (Hydrogen can also be produced from oil and coal).  Project by project, we trawled specialised websites, press releases, and technical reports to ascertain whether the developers were planning to retrofit an existing grey hydrogen plant to produce blue hydrogen — or build a new blue hydrogen plant from scratch. We found developers were planning: 15 retrofits 27 new projects 4 undetermined  Estimating Natural Gas Consumption We used the developers projections for how much blue hydrogen a given plant would produce each year to estimate how much natural gas it would consume.   We used a standard assumption that it takes 3.6 kilograms of methane (the main ingredient of natural gas) to produce 1.0 kilogram of hydrogen.  We then increased the result by 22 percent to reflect scientific estimates for the additional natural gas that would be required to power the carbon capture process. The total amount of natural gas required by the 46 plants (new plants and retrofits) was estimated at 67 billion cubic metres (bcm). We concluded that the planned 27 new blue hydrogen facilities would consume a total of 48 billion bcm of natural gas each year as a feedstock — about a tenth of the total consumption in the EU, UK and Norway in 2022 (499 bcm), and more than the amount of gas burned in France (38 bcm). Estimating CO2 Emissions To estimate the amount of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) associated with the 46 planned blue hydrogen projects, we took various factors into account: The amount of CO2 that would be emitted directly each year during the process of producing blue hydrogen, which is a factor of the average efficiency of the capture equipment (either 60 percent or 90 percent depending on the type of production process): 18 million tonnes. The amount of CO2e escaping into the atmosphere each year as a result of methane leaks during the process of extracting, storing and transporting the natural gas. (Between 20 and 48 million tonnes of CO2e for leakage rates of 1.5 percent and 3.5 percent respectively). The amount of CO2 generated by the one-off production of the amine-based solvent used in most carbon capture units: (33 million tonnes). Since the solvent can be reused, the emissions associated with solvent production will only occur when the plants are being built. In all, we estimated that building all 46 blue hydrogen projects would lead to the minimum release of 38 million tonnes of CO2e every year — on a par with Denmark’s annual emissions of 42 million tonnes. Here is a more detailed breakdown of each stage of our calculations: Carbon Capture Efficiency Under existing blue hydrogen technology, about 40 to 60 percent of the CO2 molecules present in a given volume of flue gas are captured, according to the IEA. We therefore estimated a 60-percent capture rate for the 15 retrofit projects. For the 27 new-build projects, we assumed 90 percent efficiency, in line with industry projections for next generation capture technologies.  Multiplying the total amount of CO2 released during the production process by the percentage capture rate (90 percent for new plants; 60 percent for retrofits) leads to 18 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. Amine-based Solvent The most common carbon capture technologies rely on an ammonia-derived solvent to absorb CO2 molecules in the flue gases. We calculated the one-off emissions associated with the necessary ammonia production at 33 million tonnes of CO2, using the following assumptions: Producing 1.0 tonnes of ammonia generates 2.4 tonnes of CO2 . 250 kilograms of ammonia are required to produce 1.0 tonne of solvent 1.4 tonnes of solvent are needed to capture 1.0 tonne of CO2  Note: We excluded the nine blue hydrogen projects involving Air Liquide, whose Crypocap carbon capture technology does not rely on an amine-based solvent.  Industry says it is working to decarbonise ammonia production by using blue hydrogen as a feedstock. However, only four of the 46 proposed blue hydrogen projects are designed to produce ammonia. Methane Leakage To convert the likely quantity of methane leakage associated with the projects into CO2e, we multiplied the quantity of methane by a factor known as Global Warming Potential (GWP). Methane exerts a greater warming effect in the short term, before it gradually breaks down. That means its GWP is higher over a 20-year horizon (84 times greater than that of CO2) than a 100-year horizon (28 times greater). Estimates for the amount of methane that leaks during the extraction, transport and storage of the natural gas used to make blue hydrogen vary widely, depending on the origin of the gas. Conservatively, assuming a leakage rate of 1.5 percent (and a GWP of 28 over a 100-year horizon), the emissions due to methane leaks associated with the natural gas used to feed the 46 projects equal 20 million tonnes of CO2e per year.  Less conservatively, assuming a 3.5 percent leakage rate (and a GWP of 28), this figure more than doubles to 48 million tonnes of CO2e per year.  Under various assumptions, the methane leakage associated with the 46 blue hydrogen projects could range from 20 million tonnes of CO2e (leakage rate of 1.5 percent and GWP of 28) to 117 million tonnes of CO2e (leakage rate of 3.5 percent and GWP of 84). Expert Review DeSmog’s analysis was carried out earlier this year in collaboration with Christophe Coutanceau, a professor at the Institute of Chemistry of Poitiers: Materials and Natural Resources, and co-lead of a hydrogen working group at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, known by its French acronym CNRS.  Power analyst Lorenzo Sani, who has carried out similar work on blue hydrogen projects in the UK for Carbon Tracker, and Paul Martin, chemical engineer and decarbonisation consultant at Spitfire Research, reviewed our methodology and findings.  The post Europe’s Blue Hydrogen Plans Risk Generating Annual Emissions on par With Denmark appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Reform’s First 100 Days of Climate Science Denial in Parliament

 

at 10/12/24 6:26am

Today marks 100 days since Nigel Farage’s Reform UK won five seats in the 4 July general election.  Reform MPs have used their new platform in Parliament to attack climate action and cast doubt on climate science – in speeches in the House of Commons, at the party’s annual conference, and in public appearances alongside notorious climate denial groups and activists.  This has included attacking net zero emissions reduction targets as a “cult”, claiming the UK government “wants to cover all our farmland” with solar panels, and spuriously suggesting that climate change is caused by sunspots and underwater volcanoes.  Reform MPs have a record of climate science denial. The party campaigns to “scrap net zero” and vocally advocates for new oil, gas, and coal extraction.  DeSmog revealed in June that Reform received £2.3 million from fossil fuel interests, polluters, and climate deniers from the 2019 general election to the start of the 2024 campaign – 92 percent of its funding during this period. “It’s sadly no surprise that an organisation bankrolled by oil and gas investors would keep pushing climate denial and misinformation, even as extreme weather events wreak havoc across the world”, said Richard Wilson, director of the campaign group Stop Funding Heat.  “While evidence mounts of the threats we face from climate change, fossil fuelled billionaires are using every trick in the book to deny the truth and delay the transition to clean energy.” Selwin Hart, the assistant secretary general of the UN, has warned that policies to reduce emissions are being hindered by a “prevailing narrative… pushed by the fossil fuel industry and their enablers – that climate action is too difficult; it’s too expensive.” This comes as the U.S. is hit with some of the worst hurricanes in the country’s history, which experts state have been exacerbated by climate change. Reform in Parliament  Reform MPs have used their platform in the House of Commons to attack green policies.  Deputy leader Richard Tice made his first speech to Parliament on 23 July and said that: “Another reason why my constituents are really quite grumpy is that the stupid net zero policies will result in hundreds of massive, ugly pylons blighting the environment and countryside of my constituency, as well as solar farms planned on incredibly productive agricultural farmland. It is absolute idiocy.” In a debate on renewable energy on 3 September, Reform MP Lee Anderson, who defected from the Conservatives earlier this year, told Energy and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband that voters are not interested in net zero. “This secretary of state is living in a completely different world from my constituents, because they are not asking for this on the doorstep at all,” he said. Polling by More in Common and E3G during the general election period found that a majority of people in every UK constituency are worried about climate change. Some 61 percent of 2024 Conservative voters said they are worried about climate change, matched by 76 percent of Labour voters, and 65 percent of the country overall.  Anderson then compared spending on green policies to Labour’s plans to stop winter fuel payments for people above a certain income. “By the way, he is quite happy to spend £11.6 billion on climate aid abroad and £8.5 billion on GB Energy, yet rob our pensioners of £300 at the same time.” Polling by More in Common in July found that 70 percent of people support GB Energy, Labour’s green investment vehicle. Meanwhile, a YouGov poll in August found a majority of respondents wanted the UK to get more energy from renewable sources and less from oil, gas, and coal. Clear majorities of the British public favour the UK getting more of its energy from renewable sources, with most wanting less from fossil fuels% saying they want more energy fromTidal: 74%Solar: 74%Offshore wind: 69%Hydro-electric: 65%Geothermal: 61%Onshore wind: 59%… pic.twitter.com/ooOLsqqmXT— YouGov (@YouGov) August 12, 2024 Anderson went on to ask when pensioners in his constituency of Ashfield would “receive significant discounts on their fuel bills, and of how much?”.  Miliband replied that Labour’s plans would “absolutely” deliver lower bills for Anderson’s constituents, adding: “Does he believe that a continuing reliance on fossil fuels, and this country saying no to renewables, which I think is their position, will give us energy security? The truth is it will not.” As the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) has noted, renewable energy is significantly cheaper than energy from fossil fuels.  A spike in the cost of living across the West following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was particularly acute among countries – such as the UK – that relied on gas to heat homes and produce electricity, according to the International Monetary Fund.  “The UK energy crisis is a fossil gas crisis,” Sarah Brown at the energy think tank Ember told The Guardian. Reform Conference At Reform’s annual conference in Birmingham on 20 September, its MPs again trained their rhetorical guns on climate action.  Tice dedicated much of his speech to what he called “the new cult of net zero” – one of three so-called “cults” he attacked, including immigration and the National Health Service.  Tice falsely claimed that Ed Miliband “wants to cover all our farmland [] with solar panels”, calling the energy secretary “the most dangerous man in Britain to our economy”.  The chief advisor to the National Farmers Union (NFU) has said solar farms “do not in any way present a risk to the UK’s food security”, while NFU president Tom Bradshaw has attacked such claims as “sensationalist”. Tice also blamed workers being sacked at Tata’s Port Talbot steelworks on climate policies, saying that “thousands of jobs [are being] sacrificed on the altar of net zero”.  In fact, this decision was made in January, when the Conservatives were in government, and the new Labour administration has negotiated redundancy payments and re-training for staff at the steelworks. Tata’s decisions have been criticised by policy experts at the London School of Economics as the wrong way to switch to greener steel.  Tice also used his speech to argue for new fossil fuel extraction, complaining that Labour had dropped the government’s support for the opening of a coal mine in Cumbria. He also claimed that Reform was rising in the polls in Scotland “because the oil and gas industry is terrified about the destruction of those jobs there”.  Tice claimed that other oil producing countries, particularly Gulf states, are “laughing at our naive stupidity as they steal our jobs and our money”.  He added: “We’ve got all this energy treasure under our feet, oil, gas, shale gas, hundreds of billions of pounds worth, owned by all of us, and yet, no I mean honestly, it’s utter madness.” The International Energy Agency (IEA) has said that new fossil fuel projects are incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5C, the goal established by the 2015 Paris Agreement. Meanwhile, clean energy was China’s top driver of economic growth in 2023, with the country’s $890 billion investment being almost as large as global investments in fossil fuel supply during the year.  Lee Anderson also attacked climate policy in his conference speech. “What about net zero?” he said, to boos from the audience of Reform members: “What a load of rubbish that is.” Anderson went on to attack “these lunatics that keep banging on about net zero”, claiming that they have forced the government to subsidise biomass company Drax, which burns wood pellets for energy at its power plant in Selby, Yorkshire. In reality, his complaint about Drax actually puts Anderson in the unusual position of being on the same side as the green campaigners he regularly condemns. Drax subsidies have long been criticised by environmental groups over the company’s carbon emissions and its record of deforestation.  However, green groups also oppose new fossil fuel extraction, which emits far more CO2 than biomass, while Anderson and Reform fervently support new oil, gas, and coal production.  Anderson concluded, “The first thing we should do when we win the next general election folks is to scrap net zero”, he said, receiving cheers and applause from Reform members.  “The Reform UK MPs have demonstrated that they are a serious threat to the legitimacy of Parliament by using their elected positions to carry out a deliberate campaign of misinformation about climate change”, said Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.  “They are clearly not acting in the best interests of the constituents who voted for them and who are all facing increased risk of damage to their lives and livelihoods from the growing impacts of climate change.” Heartland and Jordan Peterson Party leader Nigel Farage has also used his position as an MP to spread climate denial abroad.  Last month, Farage gave a speech to a fundraiser for the Heartland Institute,  a U.S. group that has been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change. During his speech in Chicago, he urged the U.S. to re-elect Donald Trump as president and “drill baby drill” for more fossil fuels, attacking what he called “net zero fanaticism”. Farage, who has made several trips to the U.S. since his election to Parliament, also urged Heartland to set up offshoots in Britain and Europe.  Heartland is known “for its persistent questioning of climate science”, according to Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, and has received tens of thousands in donations from foundations linked to the owners of Koch Industries – a fossil fuel behemoth and a leading sponsor of climate science denial. In July, Farage was interviewed by Jordan Peterson, a Canadian conservative author who has become a leading promoter of climate denial on his YouTube channel, which has 8.3 million subscribers. In the interview, Peterson attacked “idiot climate apocalypse-mongering that’s used by power-mad tyrants to cow the public”, and claimed that CO2 emissions were a “net benefit” to the planet.  Farage replied that the UK’s climate policies “have transferred vast amounts of wealth from the poorest to the richest”.  On climate change, he said: “I do find it extraordinary that people call carbon dioxide a pollutant, because as I understand it, plants don’t grow without carbon dioxide.” Farage went on: “Surely historically when it comes to the planet heating up and cooling down, sunspot activity is a factor and yet that doesn’t get talked about. And then of course we’ve got volcanoes, and particularly underwater volcanoes in the Pacific ocean”.  He then repeated the debunked claim that “only 3 percent of carbon dioxide emissions are produced by man”. In fact, human activity has raised the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50 percent in less than 200 years, according to NASA.  Farage added: “So without delving deeply into the science, I do have some pretty big questions [about climate change] that I’m not afraid to ask.” Authors working for the world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have said that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”. The IPCC has also stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought” – all of which “will put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.” As reported by DeSmog, Farage’s coastal Clacton constituency is at risk of flooding and sea level rises as a result of climate change. A majority (68 percent) of voters in the constituency are concerned about the effects of rising temperatures – higher than the national average.  Peterson fronts the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), a conservative pressure group which has dismissed the dangers of climate change. The group is bankrolled by British hedge fund millionaire Paul Marshall and UAE-based investment firm Legatum Group.  Legatum and Marshall co-own GB News, a broadcaster which frequently airs climate science denial, and which employs Farage, Tice, and Anderson as presenters. Marshall recently bought The Spectator magazine for £100 million.  Richard Wilson added that it was “disturbing” that broadcast regulator Ofcom “has proven so reluctant to hold GB News to account for amplifying such dangerously misleading claims”.   “Britain urgently needs a broadcasting regulator with the courage to enforce its rules – even if this does evoke the ire of the oligarchs who subsidise Reform and GB News”, he added.  DeSmog has mapped Reform’s support network of anti-green media outlets, political donors, think tanks, and fossil fuel interests.  Reform previously told DeSmog that: “Climate change is real, Reform UK believes we must adapt, rather than foolishly think you can stop it.  “We are proud to be the only party to understand that economic growth depends on cheap domestic energy and we are proud that we are the only party that are climate science realists, realising you can not stop the power of the sun, volcanoes or sea level oscillation.” The post Reform’s First 100 Days of Climate Science Denial in Parliament appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

As of 10/29/24 6:13pm. Last new 10/28/24 8:14pm.