Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Canada May Soon Give a $15.3B ‘Carbon Bomb’ Subsidy to Big Oil, Experts Say

 

at 12/5/23 2:20pm

As world leaders meet in Dubai for the COP28 climate negotiations, federal and provincial governments in Canada are preparing to give an estimated $15.3 billion in new subsidies to oil and gas companies, and other heavy emitters, for expanding the production of fossil fuels, according to climate experts.  Those subsidies are taking the form of massive new tax credits for carbon capture and storage (CCS), which is a technology that companies use to grow their extraction of oil and gas while burying a fraction of their greenhouse gas emissions underground.  “I completely agree that Canada’s tax credit for carbon capture and storage is a subsidy to the oil and gas industry,” Jason MacLean, an adjunct professor who studies climate policy at the University of Saskatchewan, told DeSmog in an email.  The federal Canadian government is close to announcing details on a tax credit that will go to top oil and gas companies like Suncor, Cenovus, and Imperial Oil, along with other major industrial polluters. Policymakers previously estimated the value of these investment tax credits to be $10 billion. The government of Alberta, home to the tar sands, has meanwhile announced taxpayer funding in the range of $3.5 billion to $5.3 billion for CCS projects. The Pathways Alliance, an industry lobbying and marketing group representing 95 percent of tar sands production, says these tax credits are essential for oil and gas producers to lower their emissions in line with achieving “net-zero emissions” by 2050. Reaching “net-zero”  entails stabilizing global temperature rise at 1.5 degrees Celsius, a level beyond which scientists warn the impacts to humankind could be catastrophic.  Yet, in submissions to the federal government, the Pathways Alliance explained that lowering a portion of oil sands emissions via carbon capture will create opportunities for the industry to expand globally — even as other countries move away from fossil fuels. “We believe Canada should seek to increase its market share for responsibly produced, lower emissions energy, even if global market demand, as a whole, begins to decline,” the group said in one submission.  “We need to keep in mind that this is about reducing emissions and not reducing production,” the organization said last year in a separate submission, as revealed by DeSmog.  Representatives of the Pathways Alliance are among the 35 people with ties to the fossil fuel sector who are part of Canada’s official delegation to COP28 this year. At the climate talks, they are pushing for policies supporting global deployment of carbon capture, which will allow companies to keep producing oil as countries get stricter about regulating emissions.    “It is really important for the energy industry in Canada because it extends the life of Canada’s largest industrial sector and maintains our competitiveness over the long term,” Scott Crockatt of the Business Council of Alberta told the Calgary Herald last month. However, tax credits supporting carbon capture risk accelerating already dangerous levels of global temperature rise, MacLean argues. Even if the technology can fully capture emissions from the production of oil and gas in Canada — which is an expensive and uncertain proposition — the vast majority of climate impacts occur when fossil fuels are burned in places like car and truck engines and house furnaces.  “No possible innovation or improvement to [carbon capture technology] can change the fact that it applies only to the direct and upstream greenhouse gas emissions arising from the production of oil and gas, not the downstream emissions resulting from the combustion of oil and gas, which represent approximately 85 percent of the total emissions,” McLean told DeSmog.   Allowing oil and gas to expand while relying on carbon capture could result in the release of 86 billion additional tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide between 2020 and 2050, according to a new analysis from the organization Climate Analytics. This “86 billion tonne carbon bomb” could derail efforts to keep global warming from exceeding dangerous thresholds, the group argues.  The Canadian government earlier this year unveiled detailed plans to remove “inefficient” oil and gas subsidies, with Environment and Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault saying at the time that “the simple reality is that it’s no longer free to pollute in Canada.”  But climate campaigners say that promise risks being completely undermined by the new carbon capture tax credits.  The post Canada May Soon Give a $15.3B ‘Carbon Bomb’ Subsidy to Big Oil, Experts Say appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Reuters, New York Times Top List of Fossil Fuel Industry’s Media Enablers

 

at 12/5/23 3:01am

Darren Woods, the CEO of Exxon, celebrates the potential of carbon capture to dramatically reduce global emissions. According to Saudi Aramcos podcast, the fossil fuel industry is innovating new climate solutions, and BP’s podcast proclaims more of the same.  These messages sound like theyve been pulled from the public-relations departments of the worlds largest oil companies, but they were produced and promoted by the in-house ad agencies of Bloomberg, Reuters, and The New York Times, respectively, and in the process benefited from the credibility those media brands have built with readers over the decades as trustworthy sources of news. According to a new report by DeSmog and Drilled based on an analysis of hundreds of advertorials and events, as well as data from Media Radar, a service publishers use to track ad campaigns, many of the worlds most trusted English-language news outlets regularly lend their reputations to the fossil fuel industrys messaging on climate-related topics. These range from the promise of proposed solutions such as carbon capture and renewable biogas, to the role the industry claims to be playing in the energy transition, despite its persistently low investments in anything other than increased fossil fuel production.  All of the companies reviewed — Bloomberg, The Economist, The Financial Times, The New York Times, Politico, Reuters, and The Washington Post — top lists of most-trusted news outlets in both the U.S. and Europe. Each has an internal brand studio that creates advertising content for fossil fuel majors that range from podcasts to newsletters, videos, and advertorials, and some allow fossil fuel companies to sponsor their events. Reuters goes a step further, with marketing staff creating custom industry conferences explicitly designed to remove the pain points holding back faster production of oil and gas.  This trend was on stark display as United Nations climate talks got underway in the United Arab Emirates on November 30, with oil and gas companies sponsoring a wealth of advertorials, newsletters and events with media partners, all designed to portray the industry responsible for the bulk of planet-warming emissions as the gatekeeper to climate solutions. Mainstream media outlets defend the practice of creating news-adjacent content for advertisers — referred to as native advertising or sponsored content. However, climate advocates argue that when it comes to a complex and politicized issue like the climate crisis, the media should re-think this practice. Max Boykoff, who contributed research and analysis on the medias role in climate action to the most recent report on reducing carbon pollution from the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says the media plays a fundamental role in shaping the publics and policymakers understanding of climate issues. Everyday people arent picking up the IPCC report or peer-reviewed research to understand climate change, said Boykoff, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he directs the Media and Climate Change Observatory. People are reading about it in the news, that’s what shapes their understanding. So the media are really just such influential shapers of public discussion on this subject. Tarnishes the Reputation Spokespeople for Bloomberg, the Financial Times, The New York Times, Reuters and The Washington Post (Politico did not respond to a request for comment) maintained that advertorial content is created by staff that are separated from the newsroom, and emphasized that their journalists are independent from their ad sales efforts. But the independence of these outlets reporters is not in question. At issue is whether or not readers understand the difference between journalism and advertising — and according to a growing body of peer-reviewed research, they do not. A 2016 Georgetown University study found that advertorials — also known as native advertising — are mistaken for real content by about two thirds of people. A 2018 Boston University study found that only one in 10 people recognized native advertising as advertising, rather than reporting. A 2016 study conducted by Stanford University researchers found that 80 percent of students mistook native ads for reported stories. Thats particularly important in the context of climate, where the sponsored content paid for by oil companies often directly contradicts the reporting.  Michelle Amazeen, the mass communications researcher who led the Boston University study, also found that those who did recognize sponsored content for what it was thought less of the outlet they were reading. It tarnishes the reputation of that news outlet, Amazeen said. So its baffling to me why newsrooms are continuing to pursue this. In theory, these complaints could possibly be addressed with better labeling and smarter design, said Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University. But if youre saying that even when they are properly labeled and carefully set off from the real journalism, these advertorials weaken trust and miscommunicate about climate change, that is a problem that cannot be solved within the industry consensus around sponsored content. It’s implicitly calling for a new consensus.  Our analysis focused on the three years spanning from October 2020 to October 2023, a period when calls for the media, public relations and advertising companies to cut their commercial ties with fossil fuel clients have increased amid growing awareness of the role industry messaging has played in slowing climate action.  In September 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the UN General Assembly: We need to hold fossil fuel companies and their enablers to account [including] the massive public relations machine raking in billions to shield the fossil fuel industry from scrutiny. Align your Climate Narrative for COP28 This years annual UN climate negotiations, known as the 28th Conference of the Parties or COP28, are being held in Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s top oil-producing countries. Presided over by Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the head of Abu Dhabis state oil company, Adnoc, it is the most industry-influenced COP yet.  Fossil-fuel companies, including Adnoc, are increasingly promoting carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, and carbon offsets as viable climate solutions, despite the enormous challenges in scaling them to a point where they might have any positive effect on the climate. As COP28 president, Al Jaber has backed these technologies in the lead-up to the summit.  Climate reporters at all of the news outlets we analyzed have diligently covered the challenges these approaches face. However, the research shows that when their reporting is placed alongside corporate-sponsored content touting the benefits of these technologies, it leaves readers confused. A podcast that Reuters in-house studio Reuters Plus produced for Aramco this year focused heavily on these technologies, for example. In 2022, The Energy Trilemma, a podcast The New York Times T Brand Studio created for BP, touted how high-emitting industries are decarbonizing — mostly through technology, not by reducing the development or use of fossil fuels. Bloomberg Media Studios, meanwhile, created a video for ExxonMobil last year touting both carbon capture and hydrogen, particularly a project Exxon is involved with in Houston that aims to capture 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2040. In the video, Exxon CEO Darren Woods says the company is ready to deploy CCS to reduce the worlds emissions, but leaves out that the company also plans to increase annual carbon-dioxide emissions by as much as the output of the entire nation of Greece, news that Bloomberg’s climate reporters broke.  Meanwhile, Reuters Events has offered to help corporations hone their climate narrative at COP28, via opportunities to secure exclusive interviews; a place at high-level roundtables; coverage on the Reuters website; exclusive dinner invites, and a Reuters presence in corporate pavilions at the Dubai expo center hosting the negotiations. (Disclosure: Matthew Green has worked as climate reporter at Reuters). The considerations around what is the role of carbon-based industry in partnering with media organizations is not too dissimilar to the debates and discussions around what kind of role the carbon-based industry interests have in the climate talks themselves, the IPCCs Boykoff said. Gross, Undermining and Dangerous Reuters and other outlets whose in-house ad agencies are striking commercial deals with fossil fuel companies are trusted not only by the public, but by politicians and other key decision-makers. According to communications agency BCWs annual survey of media brands in Europe, Politico, Reuters, the Financial Times and the Economist top the list of most influential media for EU decision-makers. All four are also some of the fossil fuel industry’s favorite partners for advertising and events.  And these partnerships havent just been happening in the leadup to COP28. Over the past three years, FT Commercial, the in-house ad studio of the Financial Times, has created dedicated web pages for fossil majors, including Equinor and Aramco, along with native content and videos, all of it focused on promoting oil and gas as a key component of the energy transition. An “FT Live” event focused on the energy transition featured speakers from BP, Chevron, Eni, and Essar.  The Economists in-house studio created a content hub around electrified transport for BP, which was also a platinum sponsor of its 2020 Sustainability Week event, while Petronas and Chevron sponsored the magazine’s Future of Energy Week event in 2022.  Politico runs a high volume of sponsored content for the fossil fuel industry. Over the past three years, the publication has run native ads more than 50 times for the American Petroleum Institute, the most powerful fossil fuel lobby in the U.S. Politico has also repeatedly run newsletters sponsored by BP and Chevron – the latter of which also sponsors its annual Women Rule summit – and run 37 email campaigns for ExxonMobil. Shell has sponsored every one of Politico’s “Energy Vision” summits since 2017.  According to data from Media Radar, The New York Times took in more than $20 million in advertising revenue from fossil fuel companies from October 2020 to October 2023, twice what any other outlet earned from the industry. That number is due largely to the paper’s relationship with Saudi Aramco, which spent $13 million on ad space during this time period via a combination of print, mobile, and video ads as well as sponsored newsletters. That revenue does not include fees for creative services that were paid to the Times internal T Brand Studio. New York Times spokesperson Alexis Mortenson said that T Brand Studio does create custom content in print, video, and digital (including podcasts) for fossil fuel advertisers, ​​and we allow dark social posts if we’re creating this content. Dark social posts are unpublished social posts promoted as ads to a specific audience, and do not appear on a brands timeline.  Regarding limits on these campaigns, Mortenson said, We no longer allow organic social posts. Additionally, we allow fossil fuel advertisers to sponsor some newsletters. However, fossil fuel advertisers cannot sponsor any climate-related newsletter, such as Climate Forward and [climate journalist] David Wallace-Wells newsletter. Graph showing ad spend by fossil fuel companies in various media during the past three years. From Readers For Sale: The Medias Role in Climate Delay, a Drilled-DeSmog report. Climate reporters at these outlets, who requested anonymity to avoid professional repercussions, alternately described their employers’ partnerships with oil and gas companies as gross, undermining, and dangerous.  Not only does it undermine climate journalism, but it actually signals to readers that climate change is not a serious issue, one climate reporter said. Another journalist at a major media organization said the outlet had undermined its credibility by striking commercial deals with oil and gas companies that have long histories of hiring public relations agencies to cast doubt on climate science. Where is our integrity? How can we expect people to take our climate coverage seriously after everything these oil companies have done to hide the truth? Harvard climate disinformation expert Naomi Oreskes agreed. Its really outrageous that outlets like the New York Times or Bloomberg or Reuters would lend their imprimatur to content that is misleading at best and in some cases outright false, she said.  Vast Sums of Money The fossil fuel industrys practice of buying friendly content dates back to 1970, when Herb Schmertz, Mobil Oil’s vice president of public affairs, worked with The New York Times to create the advertorial. Mobil ran these pieces, which Schmertz described as political pamphlets, in the Times every week for decades. The rest of the industry quickly followed suit and the practice has continued ever since. A peer-reviewed 2017 study in the journal Environmental Research Letters of Mobil and then ExxonMobils New York Times advertorials found that 81 percent of those that mentioned climate change emphasized doubt in the science. The past decade has seen these advertising programs super-charged by the advent of internal brand studios at most major media outlets: teams that are dedicated to creating content for advertisers, and market their ability to tailor that content to the outlet’s readership. These offerings come at a higher cost than traditional ad rates, making them increasingly important to newsrooms facing revenue meltdowns driven by the loss of classified and display advertising. And fossil fuel companies have been happy to pay. They wouldnt be spending vast sums of money on these campaigns if they didnt have a payoff and its well documented that for decades the fossil fuel industry has leveraged and weaponized and innovated the media technology of the day to its advantage, said University of Miami professor Geoffrey Supran, who co-authored the 2017 advertorial study with Naomi Oreskes. Its sometimes treated as an historical phenomenon, but in reality were living today with the digital descendants of the editorial campaigns pioneered by the fossil fuel industry — the old strategy is very much alive and well. Taking a page from Schmertz’s book, The Washington Post Creative Group — the papers internal brand studio — describes on its website how it goes about influencing the influencers. In 2022 alone, the group placed ExxonMobil sponsorships in more than 100 editions of Washington Post newsletters. Throughout 2020 and 2021, the Washington Post also ran a series of editorials for the American Petroleum Institute. These included a multimedia piece that highlighted fossil gas as a fundamental complement to renewable energy, and underscored talking points about the supposed unreliability of renewable energy sources — something that the paper’s reporters have often debunked. During these same years, The Washington Post published Pulitzer prize-winning climate reporting and expanded its climate coverage. Reuters Tops the List Of all the outlets we reviewed, only one company, Reuters, offers fossil-fuel advertisers every possible avenue to reach its audience, including custom events. Its a notable shift for an outlet that has always counted freedom from bias as a core value — a pillar of the Trust Principles Reuters adopted to protect its independence during World War Two.  In 2019 Reuters News, a subsidiary of Canadian media conglomerate Thomson Reuters, acquired an events business. Since then, the distinction between the companys newsroom and its commercial ventures has become increasingly blurred, with Reuters journalists routinely taking part as moderators and interviewers for Reuters Events, and proposing guest speakers. Table showing which media provide what services for oil majors, from the Drilled-DeSmog report Readers for Sale. For its Hydrogen 2023 event, Reuters Events produced a companion whitepaper on the top 100 hydrogen innovators, designed to look very much like a product of the newsroom. This whitepaper was used to market the event in various other outlets, and topping the list of innovators were the key event sponsors, Chevron and Shell. Reuters also partnered with Chevron, the Diamond sponsor of both its flagship Reuters Impact climate event in London in September 2023, and an upcoming Global Energy Transition Summit in New York in 2024. Reuters Events also stages fossil fuel industry trade shows explicitly aimed at maximizing production of oil and and gas, and creates digital events and webinars for vendors in the fossil-fuel supply chain looking to connect with oil and gas companies. In a media kit for content opportunities in the upstream industry, Reuters Events offers to produce webinars, white papers and live event interviews for those hoping to get in front of its unrivalled audience reach of decision makers in the oil & gas industry.  In June 2023, Reuters Events convened hundreds of oil, gas and tech executives in Houston for Reuters Events Data Driven Oil & Gas USA 2023, a conference held under the banner Scaling Digital to Maximize Profit. Time is money, which is why our agenda gets straight to key pain points holding back drilling and production maximization, the conference website said.  Six months earlier, in December 2022, Reuters Events had run an event sponsored by the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, an industry lobby grouping many of the worlds largest oil companies, to discuss the major part fossil-fuel companies play in ensuring a sustainable energy transition, and tweeted industry talking points from the Reuters Events twitter account. For the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, the only real KPI is how much greenhouse gas is being removed from the oil and gas industrys output every year.#ReutersIMPACTWatch the full session, brought to you by @OGCInews: https://t.co/QlXUlaAXFm pic.twitter.com/I159E923NF— Reuters Events (@reutersevents) October 28, 2022 A Tweet sent by Reuters Events in October, 2022. Reuters creative studio Reuters Plus has produced content for multiple oil majors including Shell, Saudi Aramco, and BP that ranges from native print, audio and video content to white papers. A Reuters spokesperson said its Reuters Plus studio allowed companies to connect with audiences attending Reuters Events via clearly labelled sponsored content.  Reuters Events serves multiple professional audiences involved in the most important discussions of our day; facilitating these discussions is an important part of the Reuters Events business, the spokesperson said. Chevron was the Diamond sponsor of the Reuters Impact climate event in September. Business-to-business publishers always had an events revenue stream, but consumer-facing news publications didn’t really get into the events business until digital advertising became commodified, said media analyst Ken Doctor.  Events — which now represent 20 to 30 percent of revenue for some publications — are appealing for advertisers, too. Its a thought leader exercise, Doctor said. There are only a few top media brands out there and if you are associated with any of them, there is a lot of tangential brand building benefit to that. The additional revenue may come at a reputational cost for news outlets, though. According to Oreskes, events run by media organizations that explicitly endorse the fossil fuel industrys agenda pose even greater conflicts of interest than advertorials running alongside climate news coverage. It really crosses the line because now theyre actually manufacturing content, she said. They’re manufacturing content that at best is completely one-sided and at worst is disinformation, and pushing that to their readers. After seeing the scope of Reuters involvement with the fossil fuel industry, we wondered how a media organization thats curating industry events aimed at accelerating oil and gas development could qualify for membership in Covering Climate Now, a nonprofit organization that offers newsrooms the opportunity to demonstrate leadership among their peers — and to show readers, listeners and viewers that theyre committed to telling the climate story with the rigor, focus, and urgency it deserves. (Disclosure: Amy Westervelt is on the steering committee for Covering Climate Now, of which both DeSmog and Drilled are members). In a written statement, Mark Hertsgaard, the executive director of Covering Climate Now, said that Covering Climate Now has had no communication with Reuters about any activities backing faster development of fossil fuels. Hertsgaard added that Covering Climate Now has always taken a big-tent approach to our partnership with news organizations. This story raises serious questions about news media responsibility in climate reporting, and Covering Climate Now plans to think more deeply about these questions and how we might adjust our policies going forward. PR Campaigns Even as their content marketing about the journey to net zero continues to get bigger and better, oil majors investments in fossil fuel development have only increased. A peer-reviewed study comparing oil majors advertising claims and actions, published in the journal Plos One in 2022, found that while the companies are talking more than ever about energy transition and decarbonization, they are not actually investing in either. The studys authors wrote that the companies are pledging a transition to clean energy and setting targets more than they are making concrete actions.  This disconnect between advertising and action is something the media should be covering more, according to Brown University environmental sociologist Robert Brulle. Good, critical reporting would have to challenge the statements of these fossil fuel companies, he said. Reporters at Reuters, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Financial Times, Politico, and Bloomberg do exactly that. Then some of their employers undermine that critical reporting by selling the space right next to those stories for industry-sponsored takes. I feel like its really important not to beat around the bush and to just recognize these activities for what they are, which is literally Big Oil and mainstream media collaborating in PR campaigns for the industry, Supran said. Its nothing short of that.  To read the Drilled-DeSmog report Readers For Sale: The Medias Role in Climate Delay click here. The post Reuters, New York Times Top List of Fossil Fuel Industry’s Media Enablers appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Telegraph Sale ‘Middleman’ Nadhim Zahawi is a Guest of UAE at COP28

 

at 12/4/23 6:54am

DUBAI — Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi is attending the COP28 climate summit as a guest of the United Arab Emirates, DeSmog can reveal – prompting questions about his role as the intermediary in the host country’s prospective takeover of a major British newspaper. An investment fund backed by the UAE has reached an agreement to buy The Telegraph and its sister publication the Spectator and erase the £1.16 billion debt of the Barclay brothers, their current owners.  A list of COP28 participants released by the UN shows that Zahawi is the only Conservative parliamentarian to have been given access to the conference by the UAE. The records show former UK prime minister Boris Johnson was also granted a pass by the Gulf state. Zahawi, whose badge allows him access to the summit’s official ‘Blue Zone’, was spotted at Thursday night’s royal reception in Dubai, featuring Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, and King Charles. Only UN-accredited individuals – world leaders, country representatives, media and NGOs – are permitted in the area. The access raises further questions about the closeness between Zahawi and the UAE, a fossil fuel state, how his role may facilitate the sale of the newspaper, and whether he will be involved in the running of the paper if the purchase is completed. The UAE-backed fund is a joint venture between U.S.-based RedBird Capital and International Media Investments (IMI) of Abu Dhabi. As revealed by DeSmog, RedBird Capital has extensive fossil fuel investments, holding a stake in at least six fossil fuel firms. This includes Aethon United, listed by Enverus Intelligence Research as one of the most prolific private oil and gas producers in the U.S. in 2023.  News reports suggest that the deal is being backed by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who serves as the deputy prime minister of the UAE, the head of its state-owned investment company, and the owner of Manchester City football club. Zahawi has admitted that he introduced IMI to the Barclay brothers, and it has been suggested that the former chancellor of the exchequer could be installed as the chairman of the Telegraph Media Group if the deal goes through.  The UAE is a major producer of oil and gas and has the world’s largest oil expansion plans. The state-owned energy company, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), intends to increase its oil production by more than any other fossil fuel firm in the world, according to data from the Global Oil and Gas Exit List (Gogel). Adnoc said that Gogel’s data and assumptions were “incorrect and misleading” but has not provided its own figures. Zahawi himself also has a long history of working for oil and gas companies. The MP for Stratford-on-Avon has earned £1.3 million from a Kurdish oil company while serving as an MP, and has advised fossil fuel companies operating in Nigeria and Canada. This year’s COP28 summit is being held from 30 November to 12 December in Dubai, welcoming a record 90,000 delegates from member states, pressure groups, and the media.  Transparency Concerns The UK government has in recent days referred the Telegraph deal to regulators, faced with concerns over potential foreign interference in the newspaper.  There have also been concerns about the fact that Zahawi has not declared his role in the deal with the relevant political authorities.  Parliamentary rules require former ministers to seek the advice of the advisory committee on business appointments (ACOBA), a Whitehall watchdog, before taking on paid or unpaid roles. In this case, Zahawi claims that he does not need to do so. “I have no role with Jeff Zucker [the head of IMI], the Telegraph or the Barclays. If that changes, I will seek ­advice on any role I could have and then Acoba will publish in the usual way, should I accept a role,” Zahawi has said.  Tom Brake, director of UnlockDemocracy, said it was “the safest and most transparent step” for Zahawi to refer the matter to ACOBA, which “can then decide the rights or wrongs of the case”. “The ACOBA rules are very clear on one matter,” he told DeSmog, “and that is any lobbying of the UK government over the future of the Telegraph would be inappropriate.”   If the Telegraph deal is blocked by regulators, other interested parties may take advantage. Paul Marshall, the co-owner of GB News, is also reportedly interested in buying the titles. DeSmog revealed in October that Marshall’s hedge fund has $2 billion in fossil fuel investments. COP28 & Delegates The summit has so far seen agreements reached on the tripling of renewable energy capacity, the phasing out of coal plants, and the launch of a ‘loss and damage’ fund to compensate countries in the Global South for the impacts of climate change. However, an agreement on the future of fossil fuels, and whether countries will either agree to “phase down” or “phase out” oil and gas, has yet to be reached.  Prime Minister Rishi Sunak used his speech at the summit on Friday to tout his recent watering down of climate action. Sunak said that he wanted to implement climate policies in a way that “benefits the British people”, adding that “we have scrapped plans on heat pumps and energy efficiency that would have cost people thousands of pounds”. Despite this, he also said that “the mounting science and evidence of climate related disasters prove we are not moving fast enough”.” A Financial Times analysis of the participants invited to the summit by the UAE shows how the host has handed out passes to oil executives, bankers, consultants and lobbyists. The UAE has invited more than 9,000 people to the Blue Zone. The COP28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, said on Sunday that there is “no science” indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels is required to limit global heating to 1.5C an internationally binding target that was agreed at COP21 in Paris in 2015. He added that fossil fuels should not be phased out “unless you want to take the world back into caves”. The International Energy Agency has stated that new oil and gas projects are incompatible with the 1.5C target.  A DeSmog analysis found that eight in 10 opinion pieces from The Telegraph on environmental issues downplay the climate crisis. Our analysis, for the six months ending 16 October, found that of the 171 articles covering environmental issues, 85 percent were identified as “anti-green” – attacking climate policy, downplaying climate science and ridiculing environmental groups. 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 13.5 million in September this year. A poll conducted in August found that Conservative MPs consider The Telegraph their second most trusted newspaper. DeSmog has approached Zahawi for comment. The post Telegraph Sale ‘Middleman’ Nadhim Zahawi is a Guest of UAE at COP28 appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Mapped: Big Ag’s Routes to Influence at COP28

 

at 12/1/23 11:42am

As this year’s climate summit gets underway in Dubai, powerful food and farming companies are well positioned to ensure their interests are protected. They will use their connections to network, lobby – and even raise investment. These agri-giants will be rubbing shoulders with over 80,000 participants – the highest attendance of any climate conference – which these days comes with increased media fanfare and activity, including protests, side events, drinks and dinners happening in and around the main event. Oil and gas has dominated discussions at past COPs, which have focused on the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the energy and transport sectors to tackle dangerous levels of global warming. This year will be different. The COP28 host United Arab Emirates is using its presidency to firmly press the need for food transformation. On Friday it released the Emirates Food And Farming Declaration, which will require countries that sign on to consider food and land use in their climate-reduction targets. The UN’s FAO is also set to release the first draft of its roadmap to achieving a 1.5 C-aligned global food system. This will be the first time a respected global institution has mapped out a pathway that can help measure the progress of agriculture’s emission-reduction plans. And that’s why we can expect food and farming companies – responsible for over a third of greenhouse gas emissions – to be busy in Dubai as they try to set the tone of conversations  and keep binding targets off the table. In our interactive Routes to Influence Map below, DeSmog has plotted the extent of the opportunities open to the world’s most powerful and polluting food and farming companies and lobby groups to influence debates at COP28. The clickable diagram maps the major firms who will be attending this year, how they are implicated in the climate crisis and pinpoints the spaces they will be moving in. These many routes to influence – from sponsoring pavilions to promoting unproven solutions in COP28 initiatives – put agribusiness in prime position to stymie regulatory action. Recent obstruction by agribusiness along these lines includes: securing weak voluntary commitments to delay action and water down targets, running pro-meat PR campaigns and promoting unproven, greenwashing solutions. Who decisionmakers decide to listen to will determine whether the UAE summit will deliver on results that safeguard climate and nature. Will COP28 result in the science-aligned transformation of food systems that civil society is calling for in Dubai that will tackle dietary changes and destructive farming? Or, will it lock in an “innovation”-focused, industry-led plan to produce more food, with a slightly lower footprint? As this DeSmog analysis shows, it’s clear where the power lies. This interactive maps show the major agri-giants in attendance this year and how they are set to navigate the climate summit. Map design: Clare Carlile. Routes to Influence 1: Joining a Country Delegation As food’s environmental impact has come into sharper focus in recent years, agriculture’s biggest companies have also started turning out in ever greater numbers at COP summits. This year, industry attendees include major polluters such as the world’s largest meat company JBS, along with dairy giants like Nestlé and Danone. Major pesticide and fertiliser producers such as Bayer and Nutrien, who attended last year, will be back. Corporations cannot attend in their own right, but they can join the delegations of trade associations, business confederations or countries. The latter gets you a pink badge and coveted access to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) diplomatic process. Big companies which have previously accessed COP in this way include JBS, which came in with the Brazilian delegation for COP27 in Egypt. Meat lobby group, the Canadian Cattle Association, attended with Canada in 2022. This year, meat industry planning documents seen by DeSmog show the trade group Meat & Livestock Australia hopes to attend as part of its country delegation.  “A pink badge is like a country badge, which allows you into the negotiations, so you can track whats going on,” explains Corporate Europe Observatory researcher Pascoe Sabido, who has extensively tracked the influence of the fossil fuel industry at the annual COP climate summits. This insider ticket makes companies party to which countries are pushing for strong climate targets and who is saying things that go against their interests. “You can then of course go and talk to them,” says Pascoe. “You can also talk to your own negotiators and say ‘look what so and so is doing, it’s against our interest’ and get them to move.” He explains that companies can have real world impact in this way. They can, for example, use that information to get ministers to threaten to withdraw a trade deal unless another country agrees to adjust its climate stance. The fossil fuel industry has often been invited to country delegations, whose numbers have increased nearly sevenfold since the first COP 1995. In 2021, Canada invited tar sands company Suncor to COP26 in Glasgow, and BP’s former chief executive Bernard Looney attended unexpectedly as a guest in Mauritania’s COP27 delegation last year. Route to Influence 2: Observers to the Talks Companies, trade groups and NGOs that are unable to join a country delegation can travel as part of a trade group that is registered with the UNFCCC. These attendees come to COPs as “observers” to the talks, with the hope of influencing discussions from the outside. Registered observer groups include global lobby groups – such as the pesticide industry’s main trade association CropLife, the International Fertilizer Association and the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef – as well as civil society NGOs. These groups can’t access the negotiations. But they can still make an impact at COPs by speaking to decision-makers as they come in and out of high-level talks.  European oil giant Shell has publicly credited its trade body, the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) with shaping the final text of the Paris Agreement at COP21 in its favour. The IETA (which features in DeSmog’s Routes to Influence map) also represents multiple agricultural firms. Major firms linked to industrial agriculture that attended COP last year via this route include Bayer, the world’s largest pesticide firm, and Cargill, a global grain trader and meat company.  “I guess the goal of these trade associations is really to follow everything,” says Sabido. “They track all the negotiations, make sure that members’ interests are being represented. They also produce position papers, and they try to create alternative narratives – in a big way.” Route to Influence 3: Pavilions Pavilions are spaces within the conference hall where companies and groups set up booths, host displays and hold events to promote their key asks for policymakers and the public. They offer a significant PR opportunity, and the chance to hobnob with decision makers. While the negotiating process at COPs follows a relatively similar pattern each year, with talks that span a fortnight, the spectacle and activity around them has grown significantly. These pop-up stations – 225 of them this year – have a captive audience of policymakers, diplomats and the world’s media – many of them milling around with time to kill between talks. For a company or trade group, there are three ways to use the pavilion space to their advantage. The first is to collaborate with a country hosting a pavilion. For example, oil major BP found a space to speak at COP26 by taking part in a side event hosted by Russia’s official pavilion. The meat sector plans to replicate this tactic at COP28 by targeting the pavilions of major meat producing countries such as Australia and the US. The second way is to apply to host a pavilion, which can cost upwards of a million dollars. The International Emissions Trading Association – a lobby association comprised of some of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers and greenhouse gas emitters – will host a “business hub” in Dubai, which gives a platform to speakers from its member companies. They include pesticide firm Bayer, fertiliser company Nutrien and meat packer Cargill. A third, slightly cheaper option is to sponsor pavilions that are hosted by other COP observer groups. For up to $200,000 you can promote your brand, curate content and create opportunities to shape events and media output.   Pesticide trade association CropLife International, meat trade association the North American Meat Institute and dairy trade group the U.S. Dairy Export Council are among those sponsoring  the industry-friendly Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA)’s pavilion. Sabido says the pavilions, where CEOs, lobbyists and government officials all gather, offer a “really good opportunity to lobby”. It can also be “important for coming up with common positions, being seen as being on the same side and providing legitimacy,” he says. Route to Influence 4: COP Initiatives  A wide array of “initiatives” are launched and promoted at COPs, often at the various country pavilions. These voluntary initiatives can move faster than negotiations, and aim to build support and raise new finance for climate-related issues. Ben Lilliston from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy expects them to be a key arena for action on food at this year’s COP. “On food, I dont think anything significant is going to come out of the negotiations themselves this year,” he says. As the Routes to Influence map shows, these initiatives will be a key focus for agricultural interests at COP28. Sabido warns that these groups will often frame debates in selective ways  and contain significant blindspots. One example is AIM for Climate, or Aim4C (listed under “COP28 Initiatives” on the map) which has claimed the agriculture spotlight at the last two summits. The technology-focused “sustainable farming” partnership, which is led by the UAE and U.S., claims to have raised $13 billion for climate-friendly investments to date. The partnership has been criticised for prioritising business interests over climate action, and for  sidelining smallholder voices. Analysis by DeSmog last year found that of roughly 300 partners, just seven percent were based in Africa. Not a single group representing Indigenous communities was listed among Aim4C’s “knowledge partners”. Aim4C is expected to highlight over 50 “innovation sprints” this year – mostly led by major agribusinesses. Campaigners have previously criticised the sprints for promoting industry friendly techno-fixes that are unproven at scale, such as the Greener Cattle Initiative, which aims to reduce methane emissions from cattle by changing their diet. As COP28 host UAE is also looking to leave its mark. As part of its presidency, it is rolling out new initiatives such as the Regenerative Landscapes project (see “COP initiatives” on the Routes to Influence map). The project will work to increase the uptake of “regenerative practices”, a concept that has been described as too vague and an easy target for greenwash. Partners of the Regenerative Landscapes initiative include fertiliser giants Yara and OCP. Civil society groups have raised concerns that these influential companies are crowding out research that advocates for more transformational changes to the food system, like reducing damaging fossil-fuel based inputs in favour of natural fertilisers and other holistic, climate-friendly farming techniques. A presentation made by the UAE presidency shows that several major agribusiness companies are also mooted for the initiative’s steering committee, such as processing firms Pepsico and Unilever and grain traders like Archer Midland Daniels and Louis Dreyfus Company. Corporations can also bring initiatives of their own. Major dairy producers will be promoting Pathways to Dairy Net Zero (P2DNZ) at COP28 (see Routes to Influence for more on P2DNZ). While industry says the venture aims to address dairy emissions, critics say it is actually geared at expanding new dairy markets in the Global South, which will ultimately lead to an increase in emissions and pollution. Doing Business Companies can use COPs to shape negotiations, lobby decision-makers and boost their brands. But there is another important, often overlooked function of COPs: the huge commercial opportunity they represent. When COPs are described as trade shows, this is not just a turn of phrase. Last year at COP27, fossil fuel companies signed five new gas deals with governments the week prior, and nine during the summit itself. Sultan al-Jaber this week denied using this summit to pursue oil and gas deals. Lilliston from campaign group IATP believes that some of the companies attending COP28, such as meat giant JBS, will be hoping to attract more funding from governments and investors. “I think some of them are positioning themselves in the marketplace as having climate solutions and being sustainable, and theyre raising money from investors around that,” he says. As well as existing government subsidies, climate fears are making new pots of money available to the agribusiness industry, including from the United States’ Inflation Reduction Act – which offers $19.5 billion over five years for “climate smart” agriculture. This term, which has no widely agreed definition, encompasses contested practices such as the ongoing use of pesticides, which has led to concerns that the term “climate smart”could be used to “greenwash” polluting forms of agriculture. Initiatives such as Aim4C and Pathways to Dairy Net Zero will make announcements at COP28. They plan to unlock new sources of funding – both private and public – for business-led voluntary initiatives. Critics say that these industry-shaped initiatives fall far short of the deep cuts to warming gases that are urgently needed, and studiously avoid any reference to the radical reductions in meat and dairy consumption in the rich world, which are called for by climate science. Mohamed Adow from Powershift Africa, spoke out against what he called “dangerous distractions” at a recent webinar. Speaking from his native Kenya, which has just been hit by intense floods after the worst drought in living memory, he gave a simple recipe for a positive COP: “We need massive, rapid and sustained reductions, not false solutions.” The post Mapped: Big Ag’s Routes to Influence at COP28 appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Corporate Promotion of Carbon Capture and Storage Contradicts Science, Study Finds

 

at 11/30/23 10:01pm

The vast majority of corporate advocacy promoting carbon capture and storage is misaligned with climate science, new research shows.  According to an analysis released today by InfluenceMap, over 80 percent of corporate policy engagement on CCS between 2021 and 2023 does not meet the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s science-based policy guidance, which includes recommended methods for limiting warming to 1.5°Celsius or well-below 2°C – the targets established by the Paris Agreement. The study shows that IPCC recognizes a role exists for carbon capture technologies. However, the UN’s climate science body has stated that global fossil fuel production and use must decline substantially, and that CCS is not a feasible justification to deepen reliance on these dirty fuels that are driving climate breakdown.  Yet, the oil and gas sectors that dominate corporate promotion of CCS see these technologies as a lifeline to continue and expand their extractive business model, and as a distraction from mounting calls for a fossil fuel phaseout, the InfluenceMap report notes. The analysis comes at the same time global delegates and other stakeholders gather in Dubai for the 28th annual Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP28, where a battle over the future of fossil fuels and the use of CCS is expected to figure into the negotiations.  “Oil and gas companies have been doing everything they can to avoid concrete action to phase out fossil fuels – including by pushing for carbon capture and storage,” Sofia Basheer, senior analyst at InfluenceMap and an author of the new InfluenceMap study, said in a press release. “If governments can’t agree on a science-based plan to get to net zero, and fossil fuels remain a significant part of the equation, the oil and gas industries will have won a major victory.” The report examined 750 instances of corporate policy engagement pertaining to CCS from the LobbyMap database from 2021 to 2023, and compared them with science-based policy positions. In the energy sector, this is defined as “one that recognizes the need for significant reduction in fossil fuel use with only a limited and/or targeted role for fossil fuel with CCS in the 2050 energy mix,” while for heavy industry (such as cement manufacturing) it “recognizes the potential importance of CC(U)S alongside the adoption of new production processes and other measures to eliminate GHG emissions,” the report explains.  Most of the corporate advocacy analyzed, around 80 percent, did not align with these positions. Roughly half of this 80 percent was found to be “indiscriminate promotion” of CCS that fails to clarify the technology’s’ limitations or narrow uses where it might be applicable, and fails to recognize the need to reduce overall fossil fuel use. The other 40 percent is even more misaligned, as it is characterized as advocacy intended to explicitly block the transition away from fossil fuels. An example of the latter is Houston-based oil firm Occidental Petroleum’s promotion of CCS and direct air capture (DAC) as tools to further its oil production and give the industry a “license to continue to operate for 60, 70, 80 years,” according to an Energy Mix article. Internal communications from oil majors like BP and Shell indicate that the oil and gas industry supports CCS because it could extend the fossil fuel era and allow for greater use of oil and gas “across the energy transition and beyond,” as DeSmog previously reported.  This position conflicts with expert guidance from the IPCC and the IEA. In its 2022 Working Group III report on climate mitigation, the IPCC states that global fossil fuel use “must decline substantially by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5°C,” and cautions that only a fraction of available fossil fuel reserves can be used consistent with mitigation goals, even when paired with CCS. The IEA warns in a new report titled The Oil and Gas Industry in Net Zero Transitions that the industry faces “a moment of truth” regarding its role in the energy transition and that CCS is “not a way to retain the status quo.”  Need to Let Go of CCS Illusions “The 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,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a statement.  The InfluenceMap report further identifies three common claims in corporate CCS advocacy that conflict with science and available evidence. These include claims that CCS allows for continued oil and gas expansion, that the technologies are beneficial for jobs and communities, and that CCS is central to meeting global climate goals. Such narratives have the effect of “misdirecting policy attention away from fossil fuel phase-out, and enabling policy and investment decisions based on ‘business-as-usual’ assumptions for the oil and gas sector,” the report argues.  Steven Feit, senior attorney and legal and research manager in the Fossil Economy program at the Center for International Environmental Law, told DeSmog that CCS proponents often misrepresent the IPCC’s position on CCS. “The IPCC has made it clear that the pathways with the greatest chance of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius are those that have no or marginal use of CCS,” he said. The idea that CCS is central to IPCC recommendations is misleading, he added  Many governments, however, appear to be buying into the claims touted by the fossil fuel sector and other CCS advocates. InfluenceMap’s analysis also finds that CCS policy positions and communications from most of the 21 governments assessed, which include the G20 nations plus the COP28 host country, the United Arab Emirates, are also misaligned with science and are similar to the CCS positions of fossil fuel companies.  COP28 president Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the UAE climate envoy who also heads the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, has suggested that climate action should focus on curtailing fossil fuel emissions, not fossil fuels themselves, a position that ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods recently backed.  The idea that CCS can fix fossil fuels to allow for them to be used without the harmful emissions, Feit said, is “dangerous and misguided” and “simply not true.”  “We have seen over and over again, carbon capture and storage has overpromised and under-delivered, failing to meet targets of all kinds and demonstrating its inability to meaningfully address or reduce emissions from fossil fuel combustion or other sources of emissions,” he said.  Basheer of InfluenceMap suggested that fossil fuel companies’ promotion of CCS is a new form of climate denial and disinformation.  “In the past, fossil fuel companies have attempted to undermine public trust in the science of what causes climate change,” she said in a press release, “but now the focus has shifted to spreading confusion about the science of climate change solutions.”  The post Corporate Promotion of Carbon Capture and Storage Contradicts Science, Study Finds appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— At COP28, the Road to Climate Action Is Paved with Big Oil Loophole Language

 

at 11/30/23 4:00am

The European Union has clearly laid out its position: Climate neutrality, the Council of the EU  stated last month, will require “a global phase-out of unabated fossil fuels and a peak in their consumption in this decade.” Then, in its second letter to parties, the president of COP28, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, underscored the need to “work towards a future energy system that is free of unabated fossil fuels by mid-century.”  From having the CEO of an oil company preside over global climate negotiations, to getting a consulting firm to push the interests of its Big Oil and gas clients, it doesn’t look like a great start for the conference, set to begin on November 30th in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. And with another recent analysis showing that fossil fuel lobbyists attended UN climate negotiations at least 7,200 times in the last 20 years, experts and campaigners are worried fossil fuel influence will, once again, obstruct climate action.  But more stands between COP28 and concrete steps forward for our climate. Beneath the conflict of interests and the lobbying, lies a minefield of strategic language, misleading messaging and false narratives, and using the word “unabated” is only just the start.  “Unabated” Fossil Fuels Is a Double-edged Sword The phrase “unabated fossil fuels” is contained in a series of COP28 communications and speeches. President and fossil fuel CEO Al Jaber’s closing remarks at a September summit state, “as we build an energy system free of all unabated fossil fuels, including coal, we must rapidly and comprehensively decarbonize the energies we use today.” The “unabated” qualifier has no internationally accepted definition, Romain Ioualalen, global policy campaign manager at Oil Change International, explained. In fact, the only official reference to define “unabated” fossil fuels is buried in the fine print of a footnote in this year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) synthesis report, he added.  “The ultimate objective is to legitimize the large-scale reliance and deployment of abatement technologies like CCS as an alternative to a full and complete phase out of fossil fuels.” Romain Ioualalen, global policy campaign manager, Oil Change International “The absence of a commonly agreed definition means that every country has a different understanding of what that means,” Ioualalen told DeSmog. “We’re going into a COP where this is going to be a big topic, and we don’t really have a definition for it.” Generally speaking, “abatement” technologies are solutions that reduce, or abate, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from industrial processes, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS). CCS technologies capture CO2 from industrial emissions before they enter the atmosphere, and the captured CO2 is then stored underground in geologic formations.  But fossil fuel leaders are weaponizing the lack of a globally agreed upon definition of “abate”  and using it as a distraction, Ioualalen stressed.  “This is very much in line with what the oil and gas industry in particular wants, which is to invest in these technologies [like CCS] to provide reassurance that they don’t need to decrease oil and gas [production] or align their oil and gas reduction with the carbon budgets,” he said.  “The ultimate objective is to legitimize the large-scale reliance and deployment of abatement technologies like CCS as an alternative to a full and complete phase out of fossil fuels,” Ioualalen added.  Because the fossil fuel industry is interested in any kind of solution that helps increase production and maintain business as usual, the use of language like “unabated” is instrumental to this objective.   According to Ioualalen, the fossil fuel industry sees CCS and other abatement technologies as “lifeline” or “silver bullet” solutions that will help it lock in its oil and gas business for decades to come.  “It’s really about legitimizing reliance on these technologies to prolong the lifetime of their carbon assets,” he said.  When fossil fuel companies promote CCS technologies, activists say its being used as a greenwashing tool. Credit: Matt Hrkac, CC BY 2.0 Experts, activists, and campaigners warn about greenwashing effects when companies touting CCS, which is considered by many a “false solution” of the oil and gas industry. Although the technology has potential applications within so-called hard-to-abate sectors such as cement or steel, according to Ioualalen, CSS projects are often used to increase fossil fuel production.  “They inject oil and gas oil reservoirs [with CCS] to increase the pressure to get more oil out of the ground. So it is being described as a climate solution when, in fact, it’s incentivizing and increasing the production of fossil fuels,” Ioualalen explained.  Beyond this, the use of phrases such as “unabated” or “abatement” isn’t only a language or communication issue. It’s used as grounds for companies to escape fulfilling the climate policies coming out of COP28, and has real-life, tangible consequences.  “Tangibly, it means that you will be able to continue building new fossil fuel infrastructure, whether on the production side, on the transformation side, or the consumption side, as long as it has CCS, basically,” Ioualalen argued. It means the only thing that needs to disappear from the industry’s point of view is any fossil fuel infrastructure that does not have CCS or abatement technologies, he added. “The implication is that it’s okay for countries and for the fossil fuel industry to continue ramping up oil and gas production as long as they have that [abatement] technology in place. It’s as simple as that.” The “Operational” Emissions Smoke Screen COP28 is also setting the stage for a new oil and gas industry initiative, called the Global Decarbonization Alliance. It sets out to achieve “net zero” emissions by 2050 with a catch: They don’t really mean all of their emissions.   “Oil and gas companies are committing to net-zero. But the only commitment they’re making is to eliminate methane [emissions] and stop flaring,” said Ioualalen. This “commitment” goes hand in hand with the phrase “operational emissions,” which is also referenced in communications by the COP28 presidency.  During a speech in Vienna in July, Al Jaber said that the oil and gas industry should “up its game, urgently decarbonize its operations, and take collective action to eliminate operational emissions.” When fossil fuel companies commit to “operational emissions” they’re agreeing to only get rid of what are called Scope 1 and 2 emissions, which respectively include direct emissions from sources controlled or owned by the company, and indirect emissions from, for example, electricity. This leaves out Scope 3 emissions, which relate to the value chain of the company, including upstream and downstream emissions, and which, in the case of the oil and gas sector, is where most of the emissions are. Upstream emissions come from the production of a business’s products or services, while downstream emissions come from a product’s use and disposal.   In October, COP28 President Al Jaber said that eliminating methane leaks and flaring is the fastest way to make the biggest impact on short-term operational emissions. Credit: Julie Dermansky “So-called operational emissions are about 15 to 20 percent of the emissions that a typical oil and gas industry is responsible for,” according to Ioualalen, citing an International Energy Agency report. The vast majority of emissions are actually through burning the product they produce, he added.  By committing to only reducing emissions from operations, fossil fuel companies create the impression that they’re only responsible for this 15 to 20 percent of total emissions, Ioualalen noted. “So that Scope 3 emissions, the largest  percent left, is not their responsibility, it’s the consumer’s responsibility.”  In other words, oil and gas companies want us to think they’re taking action when, what they’re really doing is diverting responsibility.  “These companies are trying through lobbying and a variety of tactics to ensure that there’s continued demand for their products, and at least in rhetorical terms, [which] allows them to show and to say that they’re not responsible for the level of demand,” Ioualalen told DeSmog. “The second thing it allows them to do is to appear to be leading on climate [action] when in fact they’re not, they’re continuing to expand oil and gas production. It’s a smoke screen.”  In another communication from a speech in Abu Dhabi at the beginning of October, called “COP28 President-Designate Rallies Oil and Gas Industry to Decarbonize,” Al Jaber said that “eliminating methane leaks and flaring is the fastest way to make the biggest impact on operational emissions in the short term.” “Methane leakage is really important, but really the way you stop methane leakage is by stopping drilling for oil and gas,” said Pascoe Sabido, researcher and campaigner for the Brussels-based organization Corporate Europe Observatory. “It’s not by increasing your oil and gas production and then just trying to stop the leaks.”  The misleading wording isn’t new to this year’s UN climate meeting. In fact, it’s been present in fossil fuel communications for a while. Last year, ExxonMobil announced its “ambition” to achieve net-zero emissions for its “operated assets.” The year before, Shell’s promise to do the same for emissions relating to its “operations” was deemed “tokenism” because it left out 90 percent of the company’s emissions.  According to Sabido, the tactic began years ago. “This is going back to maybe 2010 or 2011 when the fossil fuel industry really tried to not address its Scope 3 emissions,” he said. “They’re now calling them operational emissions. But these are the same lines that have been trotted out for over a decade, saying for example ‘we’re just going to address gas flaring,’” Sabido argued. “It’s complete rubbish.”   Basically, every time the word “operational” or “operations” is referenced in the context of emissions there’s an asterisk to take into account.  “I think it’s a textbook example of how commitments on operations are being used to cast a very positive light on the industry, and it sort of plays into that narrative of [the industry’s] self-promotion as being part of the solution,” said Ioualalen.  A Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card Being “part of the solution” is one of the latest fossil fuel industry tactics to stay in the game and delay climate action as much as possible, and COP28 messaging is ripe with references to this narrative.  Scholars have called this tactic “fossil fuel solutionism.” It’s when “fossil fuels are reframed as part of the solution, rather than the problem. Just to extend their life a little while longer,”  Giulio Mattioli, co-author of a paper on “Discourses of Climate Delay,” and researcher at the Dortmund University of Technology, in Germany, said in a tweet.  During the speech in Vienna where Al Jaber said the industry should eliminate its “operational emissions,” the COP28 president also told the audience that while the industry has long been viewed as “the problem,” the sector should “take this opportunity to step up, flip the script, and show the world once again how this industry is an important part of the solutions we need.” Al Jaber, center, claims the oil and gas industry is central to the solution of climate action, despite the fact that fossil fuels are a major threat to climate health. Credit: ABLF (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) At the event in Abu Dhabi in October, Al Jaber also said that time is here for the oil and gas industry’s “opportunity” to “show the world” that it is “central to the solution,” “Sometimes fossil fuels are presented as necessary, it’s the idea that we cannot get rid of them too quickly, and we should still invest in them to prepare for the time when we will actually be able to transition,” Mattioli told DeSmog. “But under this disguise, then what happens is that investment in fossil fuels is promoted even when it’s not sensible.”  Our climate targets today are so urgent, we shouldn’t still be investing in fossil fuel infrastructure at all, he added. We should not be extracting more fossil fuels or expanding the industry and creating new infrastructure, he said. Fossil fuel solutionism and the idea of the industry’s “leading role” in the transition often goes together with the promotion of “cleaner” fossil fuels or phrases such as “low carbon solutions.” Communications experts consider these phrases a form of greenwashing, and say they aid in creating the perception that oil and gas companies are “part of the solution,” when in fact they are often lobbying against regulatory intervention and climate action.   Solutionism also ties into the tactic of omitting fossil fuels as key drivers of the climate crisis. For example, in October, Health Policy Watch reported that a draft of the “health and climate ministerial declaration” to be released at COP28, does not include references to the health risks of fossil fuel production. Instead it focuses on adaptation, another narrative pushed by the oil and gas sector and climate deniers to divert attention from its responsibilities.  The goal needs to be ending oil and gas and what fossil fuel climate obstruction is doing is shifting the goalposts, Sabido said. “So, for example, we talk about technology and how we manage it, rather than managing the decline [of fossil fuels]. It’s also a shifting of responsibility, get-out-of-jail-free card, and it undermines everything positive that’s happened.”   The post At COP28, the Road to Climate Action Is Paved with Big Oil Loophole Language appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— This Hopeless COP Is the Most Hopeful in Years

 

at 11/30/23 3:58am

Faith in UN climate conferences is at a new low. If we wanted a final straw, the appalling and yet somehow unsurprising revelation that the United Arab Emirates had planned to use its position as host of the latest annual gathering, known as COP28, as a platform for making new oil deals should suffice.  It might seem that there could be no more depressing state of affairs. But we believe the opposite: This is the most positive climate moment in years. Our institutions have already decisively failed us, and the sooner we realise it the better.  As it sinks in that the crucial 1.5C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement will certainly be missed, an incredible opportunity for progress emerges. The COP insiders who feel responsible for maintaining an artificial sense of suspense can relax and tell the truth: There will be no breakthrough agreement because delegates have never had the power to deliver one and never will, until most citizens in their home countries demand it. That might just be the spark we need to ignite democratic action at the scale needed. COP has become one of those dramas so formulaic that each episode feels like a re-run. Viewers tune in because of the same dramatic tension, which is never released. Like a sitcom character’s hopeless search for love, this hope is resuscitated at the beginning of every episode — each November — before being dashed once again. We express exasperation every time COP reminds us that it is not the climate action process the world needs. Then we wait for the next episode.  Together the viewers (citizens) and actors (insiders) are allowing this predictable drama to run on into extra seasons nobody needs to see. Together we can end it by embracing the task of building democratic mandates for real systems change. Only this will allow the international agreements that systems change requires: incentives, taxes and regulation that encourage all businesses to be green. Break Ranks Make no mistake, the false drama of COP could run on for years more if we let it.  We saw first-hand at COP26 in Glasgow where officials (“the actors”) in the Blue Zone reserved for negotiators still professed total belief that COP is climate action’s main event. The truly courageous thing for COP delegates to do is to break ranks and admit that the greatest power they actually have is to admit their own powerlessness to fix the climate.   The felt need to be positive at all costs is precisely what requires all of us to believe that the meagre powers given to COP can produce miracles. Not wanting to disappoint their audiences hopes, delegates have felt compelled to pretend they can accomplish the impossible with a positive mental attitude. The delegates at 2015 in Paris, COPs most exciting episode, were able to agree to limit the rise in average global temperatures to well below 2C compared to pre-industrial times, while striving to limit them 1.5C. Nothing was agreed however, about what penalties would arise if pledges were not met (except that there would be no penalties). Many informed observers understood that this rendered Paris pledges ineffective, but thanks to the emphasis on maintaining a public veneer of optimism, calls for such realism were muted.  In order to produce real results, delegates would ultimately need the power to sign their nation up to agreements that create a level playing field for international business with real penalties for breaking the rules. This is what serious international treaties, such as those covering “free trade”, and successful environmental treaties such as the Montreal accords (which sorted the Ozone problem) do. Credit: Adam Victor. A Climate Majority Like diplomats, business leaders have come to feel that it is their job to pretend that business can bring about a zero carbon future with just a positive mental attitude. This situation sustains its own variety of false dramatic tension: The audience waits to see what clever innovation entrepreneurs and inventors will create, rather than thinking about how they can exercise their own agency. But if all business needed to be green was a goal, hard work, and positivity, then the Paris treaty would have enabled sufficient climate action. Without innovative regulation, no country will ever find a way to meet its Paris commitments. By failing to express the limits of their power, COP delegates, the business community, and all of us create an artificial suspense that makes COP somewhat compelling and even supplies audiences with a villain to hate: elites who allegedly have the power to fix dangerous climate change but just won’t use it. This suspense will be released when we realise that nobody has such power — and this hopeless COP is the time for such a shift. All of us must use our power as a democratic majority to put the focus of climate action where it really belongs: on driving governments to make the laws that will allow business to be done sustainably. Once governments are forced by the majority to take climate that seriously, and not before, transformation will become possible. Liam Kavanagh and Rupert Read are Co-Directors of the Climate Majority Project. The Climate Majority Project supports the silent majority of climate-concerned citizens to respond in meaningful, relevant ways to the climate and ecological emergency. The post This Hopeless COP Is the Most Hopeful in Years appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— This Hopeless COP is the Most Hopeful in Years

 

at 11/30/23 3:58am

Faith in UN climate conferences is at a new low. If we wanted a final straw, the appalling and yet somehow unsurprising revelation that the United Arab Emirates had planned to use its position as host of the latest annual gathering, known as COP28, as a platform for making new oil deals should suffice.  It might seem that there could be no more depressing state of affairs. But we believe the opposite: This is the most positive climate moment in years. Our institutions have already decisively failed us, and the sooner we realise it the better.  As it sinks in that the crucial 1.5C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement will certainly be missed, an incredible opportunity for progress emerges. The COP insiders who feel responsible for maintaining an artificial sense of suspense can relax and tell the truth: There will be no breakthrough agreement because delegates have never had the power to deliver one and never will, until most citizens in their home countries demand it. That might just be the spark we need to ignite democratic action at the scale needed. COP has become one of those dramas so formulaic that each episode feels like a re-run. Viewers tune in because of the same dramatic tension, which is never released. Like a sitcom character’s hopeless search for love, this hope is resuscitated at the beginning of every episode — each November — before being dashed once again. We express exasperation every time COP reminds us that it is not the climate action process the world needs. Then we wait for the next episode.  Together the viewers (citizens) and actors (insiders) are allowing this predictable drama to run on into extra seasons nobody needs to see. Together we can end it by embracing the task of building democratic mandates for real systems change. Only this will allow the international agreements that systems change requires: incentives, taxes and regulation that encourage all businesses to be green. Break Ranks Make no mistake, the false drama of COP could run on for years more if we let it.  We saw first-hand at COP26 in Glasgow where officials (“the actors”) in the Blue Zone reserved for negotiators still professed total belief that COP is climate action’s main event. The truly courageous thing for COP delegates to do is to break ranks and admit that the greatest power they actually have is to admit their own powerlessness to fix the climate.   The felt need to be positive at all costs is precisely what requires all of us to believe that the meagre powers given to COP can produce miracles. Not wanting to disappoint their audiences hopes, delegates have felt compelled to pretend they can accomplish the impossible with a positive mental attitude. The delegates at 2015 in Paris, COPs most exciting episode, were able to agree to limit the rise in average global temperatures to well below 2C compared to pre-industrial times, while striving to limit them 1.5C. Nothing was agreed however, about what penalties would arise if pledges were not met (except that there would be no penalties). Many informed observers understood that this rendered Paris pledges ineffective, but thanks to the emphasis on maintaining a public veneer of optimism, calls for such realism were muted.  In order to produce real results, delegates would ultimately need the power to sign their nation up to agreements that create a level playing field for international business with real penalties for breaking the rules. This is what serious international treaties, such as those covering “free trade”, and successful environmental treaties such as the Montreal accords (which sorted the Ozone problem) do. Credit: Adam Victor. A Climate Majority Like diplomats, business leaders have come to feel that it is their job to pretend that business can bring about a zero carbon future with just a positive mental attitude. This situation sustains its own variety of false dramatic tension: The audience waits to see what clever innovation entrepreneurs and inventors will create, rather than thinking about how they can exercise their own agency. But if all business needed to be green was a goal, hard work, and positivity, then the Paris treaty would have enabled sufficient climate action. Without innovative regulation, no country will ever find a way to meet its Paris commitments. By failing to express the limits of their power, COP delegates, the business community, and all of us create an artificial suspense that makes COP somewhat compelling and even supplies audiences with a villain to hate: elites who allegedly have the power to fix dangerous climate change but just won’t use it. This suspense will be released when we realise that nobody has such power — and this hopeless COP is the time for such a shift. All of us must use our power as a democratic majority to put the focus of climate action where it really belongs: on driving governments to make the laws that will allow business to be done sustainably. Once governments are forced by the majority to take climate that seriously, and not before, transformation will become possible. Liam Kavanagh and Rupert Read are Co-Directors of the Climate Majority Project. The Climate Majority Project supports the silent majority of climate-concerned citizens to respond in meaningful, relevant ways to the climate and ecological emergency. The post This Hopeless COP is the Most Hopeful in Years appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— ‘We Need to Address the Issues of Burnout, Anxiety, and Sustaining the Movement’

 

at 11/29/23 11:00pm

Since starting a solitary strike against climate inaction in Kampala in January, 2019, aged 22, Ugandas Vanessa Nakate has emerged as one of the worlds most celebrated youth climate justice activists. Now a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, she will be attending the COP28 U.N. climate talks, which open in the United Arab Emirates today, to demand world leaders act with the ambition the crisis demands. In January 2020, a media company cropped Nakate out of a photo featuring her friend Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, and three other young white women climate advocates, attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Nakates response that the news outlet “didn’t just erase a photo, you erased a continent” focused global attention on the obstacles preventing climate advocates from marginalised communities participating in international gatherings. Vanessa is the founder of Youth for Future Africa, the Rise Up Movement, and author of A Bigger Picture, a manifesto on inclusive climate action, and featured on the cover of TIME in 2021. In an interview with the online Climate Consciousness Summit 2023, running in parallel to COP28, Nakate spoke with Kosha Joubert, chief executive of the Pocket Project, a nonprofit organisation dedicating to healing collective and inter-generational trauma, and a co-host of the summit. They discussed Nakates journey as a climate activist; the need for greater institutional support for climate advocates from the Global South; the meaning of a just transition; the power of forgiveness; and the importance of building systems to sustain young activists over the long-term, and help them to avoid burnout. The following is a partial transcript of their conversation, lightly edited for clarity. The whole interview can be watched by visiting the Climate Consciousness Summit 2023. Kosha Joubert So African nations are responsible for only three percent of global emissions, but are hugely affected by the devastating effects of climate change. Firstly, I would like to hear from you how you see that from an African perspective. And then on top of that, the experience of having been cropped out of a picture. Who is heard in climate negotiations?  Vanessa Nakate Like youve said, the countries on the African continent, theyre responsible for less than four percent of global emissions. And weve also seen that many times the communities that are affected the most are the communities that are not fully listened to, that are not fully represented.  We face challenges to be able to get the resources that the activists need. So its been very hard for those that are on the frontlines of the climate crisis, to be in the rooms where decisions about climate justice are being made. I’ve also seen the challenge personally, having had that experience of being removed from the picture. So I think there is a lot of work that really needs to be done to ensure that those on the frontlines of the climate crisis are on the frontlines of the discussions, on the frontlines of decision-making, on the front pages of the worlds newspapers. JOUBERT Youve started coming through some of these barriers. Your voice is being heard and you are gaining influence. How has that been for you? NAKATE When I started to do activism and organizing in my country, and reaching out to schools, most of the time I would share the work that I was doing on social media. And my very first invitation to a climate conference was the Youth Climate Summit in New York in 2019. When I asked why I had been invited, I was told that they had monitored the work that I was doing for about six months, or even more. I think the more I started to attend these climate conferences, and the more opportunities I got to do media, they really helped to amplify my story, and to reach a much bigger audience. I can say that this has not been a journey of just one person, it has been a journey of different people coming together and supporting the work that Im doing. Above all, I am a Christian, and God has been a very strong pillar in the work that I do. I have grown up as a very naturally shy and reserved person who couldnt even give a presentation in front of a classroom. But when I think about the stages that Ive stood on in my journey of activism, the thousands of people that Ive spoken to, it couldnt have been by my own strength, it had to be by the strength and the wisdom of God, who was believing in me in the same way that people were believing in me. JOUBERT And I wonder, how has it been with your family and your siblings, and your friends at school? NAKATE When I speak about family, mostly, when I did my very first climate strike, I was joined by some of my siblings, and some of my cousins, who didnt really understand what a climate strike was, but they believed that what I was doing was important. And it took me a while to do my very first climate strike, but to have my siblings and my cousins join me for that strike made it a bit easier. Of course, we were still very nervous, all of us, to do that strike. But the spirit of togetherness that we had, and the support that we had towards each other, made us do that strike. And that is what really sparked the work that weve been doing.  My parents also didnt really understand climate strikes, but they never really stopped me from going to the streets and holding placards, even when a number of friends and relatives reached out to them, to tell them that what I was doing was kind of embarrassing. So in a way my parents were also silently supporting me. And even when I started activism, I met a number of people from different parts of the world who also became friends and family, as we continue to organize. JOUBERT Thats such a strong and important point, Vanessa, that youre making in this last sentence — that as we start to really care and bring our voice into the world, sooner or later, we become part of global circles of friendship. And I feel that it’s those global circles of connection and friendship that are such an important contribution to positive change.  And I know that you feel strongly about the fact that racial justice, and also gender empowerment, need to be key elements of a positive climate movement.  NAKATE When we look at how racial justice, for example, plays in the issue of climate, we realize that many of the communities that are on the frontlines of the climate crisis are communities of Black people, people of color, they are the ones suffering some of the most brutal impacts of the climate crisis. And I had the opportunity to visit some of the communities of Black people in the United States, I got to learn how some of these communities are exposed to air pollution, theyre exposed to water pollution.  And when we look at the Global South, it is on the frontlines of a crisis that it did not cause. Many people are losing their livelihoods, losing their sources of income, and children are being impacted, families are being pushed into poverty traps that are being passed on from generation to generation. So there are a number of ways that we can talk about racial justice, and how it really interconnects with climate issues, and also gender equality as well, women are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis. Its been said that women always make the best decisions for the people and also for the planet. And I think one of the ways we can ensure that is to educate more girls and empower more women to get into these leadership spaces. JOUBERT Your passion really comes through, thank you for sharing that so powerfully. And you are pushing for a “just transition.” So can you explain more what you mean? NAKATE I think a just transition is about moving from this extractive system that has caused the climate crisis and moving to a system that is not extractive, because its very possible to invest in renewables and still be in a system that is only taking away from communities in the Global South. Who will suffer as a result of this rush for these minerals? So for me, I guess a just transition should be more than solar panels, it should be more than tree-planting, it should have people at the heart of every decision, and every action that we take. Vanessa Nakate. Credit: Joan Namaggwa.  JOUBERT The money streams that could come as a result of loss and damage agreements, how are they then shared in countries like Uganda? I wonder what your vision and your dream would be to heal those pains of the past, of colonialism, and to turn around the way that these streams are taking place at the moment? NAKATE We know that there was a loss and damage fund [agreed] at COP27. But we need to see that, and the money has to reach communities that really need it.  Theres a report last year that said that 0.76 percent of climate philanthropy funding goes to youth climate movements. And if 0.76 percent of funding goes to youth movements, imagine what is going to youth movements in the Global South. So I think its really important to address the issue of financing, and that it should reach communities that really need it.  And then, on the issue of how communities heal from past trauma, Ill speak from my own personal experiences. One of the ways that we heal from trauma is forgiveness. It may sound hard for some people, but I think for me, that has always worked in my life. Because before we make everything better on the outside, I think we need to first heal from the inside.  When I was cropped out of the picture, I was very frustrated, I was very devastated. And in that moment, I just felt like I couldnt belong in the movement. But what really helped me move on from that, into a place whereby even when Im asked about it, I dont feel the pain that I felt before, it was to forgive the people who did that. And I think that is really one of the first steps for us to receive the healing that we need, that we forgive those who hurt us.  And I think the world really needs to move to that place of unity, that place of togetherness, to really understand that at the end of it all, when I bleed, my blood will be red, and your blood will be red as well, if that happens to you. We as human beings, we really need to understand that what really makes us sacred is that we are all the same, we are all rooted from the same thing.  JOUBERT Yeah, so you know, youve been an amazing voice of the younger generation coming out. And Fridays for Future has done amazing work worldwide, to really bring attention to the power that young people have, at this time to speak clearly, to speak from the heart, to speak from high values, and cut through a lot of the business-as-usual that is hidden in the climate agenda. Why do you feel the voice of youth is so important at this time?  NAKATE Thank you so much for those kind words. I also believe that, with every generation, it comes with an extra mile, like youve said. Because I believe that we move from glory to glory, I believe that the world evolves every day, and so do ideas and dreams, they keep evolving for the better.  Many times people talk about how young people are going to save this planet, young people are inspiring for all of us. But I always want to tell people that its not just the youth that are living on this planet. Its all of us. I think every voice is critical. All platforms or resources are critical, regardless of how young you are, or how old you are because the planet doesnt stop being your home, when you turn 30. Or when you turn 40. Or when you turn 50. The planet will always be a home to all of us. JOUBERT I also know that climate anxiety and climate depression, climate grief is really spreading in the world at the moment, especially amongst young people. And maybe especially amongst young people in the West. How would you advise other young people who are struggling with their hope for the future, to find strength? NAKATE Yes, I know that climate anxiety is really a critical issue within climate spaces. Maybe most of the data that is available around climate anxiety only really focuses on young people in the West. But even so many young people in southern countries are also experiencing climate anxiety. And the fact is, many young people are worried, theyre worried about the future that theyre walking into, theyre worried about the present.  Climate activism can be exhausting, it can be tiring, and many times you feel like you cannot stop. I have experienced that as well, where you feel like you need to keep speaking, you need to keep showing up. And like I say, youth movements get so little, when it comes to philanthropy. So there is burnout as a result of anxiety, but also, as a result of limited resources, of having to do so much work, without knowing if its even going to impact people at all.  So we really need to have a lot of conversations on this, and also capacity-building resources for youth movements to be able to do the work. We need to address the issues of burnout, anxiety, and sustaining the movement so that we can ensure that the vision that we have, doesnt end when we turn 30. But then it continues, and we build a system that even supports younger activists who come after us, I think that will really help us a lot.  To watch the interview, please visit the Climate Consciousness Summit 2023. The post We Need to Address the Issues of Burnout, Anxiety, and Sustaining the Movement appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Fossil Fuel Friendly Daily Mail Firm Handed £500k Government Contract to Run UK COP28 Events

 

at 11/29/23 9:47am

The UK’s events at this year’s COP28 summit will be hosted by a Daily Mail events firm that specialises in organising exhibitions for the oil and gas industry, DeSmog can reveal.  Government records show that dmg events, which is owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), will be paid £545,000 for “commissioning and delivering pavilion and office space for the UK’s COP28 delegation taking place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE)”. The contract was awarded without being advertised, according to the government records. The reason for this is not stated explicitly, but the notice says that it may have been “because for example only one supplier is capable of delivering the requirement, or due to extreme urgency brought about by unforeseen events”. The government told DeSmog that dmg events was providing “logistical support” for all countries represented at COP28, suggesting that officials were not allowed to open the contract to competition.  Over 70,000 delegates are descending on the UAE this week for the 12 day COP28 summit, running from 30 November to 12 December, with world leaders attempting to forge an agreement on how to restrict global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – a rapidly diminishing window. Only UN-accredited individuals – world leaders, country representatives, media and NGOs – are able to access the ‘Blue Zone’, where the UK will host its pavilion. These spaces provide governments with a pop-up station for the fortnight to promote their energy vision to delegates and host talks and other networking events.  The UK pavilion will feature 62 events on subjects including green finance, offshore wind, and phasing out coal power.  Dmg events, which is headquartered in Dubai, organises an array of events for the oil and gas industry. The firm’s energy events brochure lists 40 flagship conferences that it is organising for the energy sector between October 2023 and November 2024.  In its annual accounts, the DMGT lists the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC) as the company’s biggest event. Hosted by Adnoc, the UAE’s state-owned oil and gas firm, ADIPEC is reportedly the world’s largest energy exhibition. It appears that dmg events has worked on ADIPEC since at least 2012.  Adnoc intends to increase its oil production by more than any other fossil fuel firm in the world, according to data from the Global Oil and Gas Exit List (Gogel). Adnoc said that Gogel’s data and assumptions were “incorrect and misleading” but has not provided its own figures. Dmg events boasts of having a “global database of 2 million global energy contacts”, and runs a series of energy “clubs” for oil and gas executives. “The invitation-only energy clubs are specifically intended to offer exclusivity and privacy for the industry’s most senior executives and influential individuals,” the firm’s energy brochure says. Dmg events hosts energy clubs for Adnoc and for Saudi Arabia. Like the UAE, which is the world’s 11th largest oil and gas producer, Saudi Arabia is a major oil and gas producing nation.  “The choice of contractor for this work is baffling,” said Tom Brake, director of the campaign group Unlock Democracy. “Why choose a company which works so closely with the oil industry to work at COP? But what is equally astonishing is the grounds on which the contract was awarded without being advertised.” Brake said that he would be asking the National Audit Office, the UK’s independent state spending watchdog, if the government followed the correct procedures.  A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said: “dmg events are providing logistical support for all countries represented at COP28 and they have no role in the design of the UK pavilion events programme. The cost of the contract is covered entirely by private sector sponsorship.” The firm has also been awarded a £59,000 contract for “commissioning and delivering office space for the negotiating groups supported by the UK-funded Climate Ambition Support Alliance (CASA) programme at COP28”. This contract was also awarded without competition. The dmg events energy events brochure says that “We are committed to creating a sustainable future for our planet and our communities”. It also states that many of its events are focused on the transition to renewable energy. The DMGT, dmg events, and the Daily Mail were approached for comment.  The Daily Mail Dmg events is a wholly owned subsidiary of the DMGT, which also owns the right-wing newspaper the Daily Mail.  The DMGT annual accounts for the year ending September 2022 state that the firm generated £100 million in revenue on events and exhibitions in 2022 – an increase from £34 million the year before. Gastech is listed as one of the firm’s biggest events – an annual trade show that claims to be the world’s largest “energy exhibition and conference for natural gas, LNG, hydrogen, climate technologies, and low-carbon solutions.” The 2023 event, hosted in Singapore, featured an exclusive “fireside chat” with former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is currently a Daily Mail columnist.  Dmg events boasts of the success of the Daily Mail in its energy events brochure. It states that “with origins as one of the UK’s most successful newspaper companies, we now have a large and engaged audience in the UK and globally. As the digital world changed the face of media we extended the Daily Mail brand online, where it is one of the world’s most popular newspaper websites.” The Daily Mail has been a prominent critic of climate policies in recent months.  Nearly a third (30 percent) of the Daily Mail’s online editorial comment pieces, expressing the newspaper’s views, published this year contained climate scepticism, DeSmog found. All 37 comment pieces written on environmental topics were anti-green – they undermined net zero targets, mocked environmental protests, or underplayed the impacts of climate change. The paper attacked the “true cost of reaching net zero”, without addressing the cost of delaying action on climate change. The reaction of campaigners and experts to the UK government’s approval of North Sea oil and gas licences was dubbed “a predictable outpouring of hysteria from the green lobby”. Another editorial article celebrated Rishi Sunak’s delay on the ban of new petrol and diesel cars as a “stunning victory” for the paper and its associated campaign. There is no evidence of a link between the Daily Mail’s editorial stance towards green issues and the commercial interests of dmg events.  This year’s COP summit has already been marred by controversy. The COP presidency is held by Sultan Al Jaber, head of Adnoc, and leaked documents this week revealed that the UAE planned to use the summit to strike oil and gas deals. Al Jaber has denies these claims. Al Jaber has previously stated that fossil fuels should “continue to play a role in the foreseeable future” – a statement labelled as “very dangerous” by former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres. Al Jaber plans to stand down as the head of Adnoc once COP28 begins.  The UK was also this week accused of trying to reset the country’s climate credentials ahead of COP28, after announcing a hunt for a new national park in England. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak rolled back a number of net zero targets in September, and in July approved hundreds of new oil and gas licences, a move campaigners said would send a “wrecking ball” through the UK’s climate commitments. Additional research by Joey Grostern The post Fossil Fuel Friendly Daily Mail Firm Handed £500k Government Contract to Run UK COP28 Events appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Big Meat Unveils Battle Plans for COP28

 

at 11/29/23 4:00am

Major meat companies and industry lobby groups are planning a large presence at COP28 in a few days time, equipped with a communications plan to get a pro-meat message heard by policymakers throughout the summit, DeSmog can reveal. Documents seen by DeSmog and the Guardian show that the meat industry is poised to “tell its story and tell it well” in the lead up and during the Dubai conference, which comes on the heels of the world’s hottest ever year. The files relate how the world’s largest meat company, JBS, is planning to come out in “full force” at the summit, along with other big industry hitters such as the Global Dairy Platform and the North American Meat Institute. The documents, which were produced by the industry-funded Global Meat Alliance (GMA), emphasise the meat lobby’s desire to promote “our scientific evidence” at the summit, which will run from November 30 through to December 12. Farming will be front and centre at this year’s COP. Leaders have released a four-point “food and agriculture” agenda that calls for governments and industry to work together to find new solutions to climate change–driven food insecurity. Members of the Alliance are encouraged to stick to key comms messages, including the idea that meat is beneficial to the environment and will help to “feed the world”. The revelations come at a time that meat and dairy companies are coming under increasing pressure to clean up their act. Combined, the emissions of the world’s three largest meat companies are estimated to be significantly larger than those of oil giants Shell and BP, while the dairy industry’s 3.4 percent contribution to global human-induced emissions is a higher share than aviation. The GMA documents also reveal that the industry will be helped to stay on message in Dubai by the PR firm Red Flag, which has previously lobbied EU regulators on behalf of the US meat industry group as well as for a leading tobacco firm. Trade groups also give some indication of how they hope to shape conversations. One says it will “push” the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to host “positive livestock content” at COP28. This follows recent revelations that pressure from industry led to censorship of FAO reports on the role of cattle in driving greenhouse gas emissions.  Animal agriculture is the largest emitter of methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide when measured over a 20 year period. Scientists say that unless swift action is taken, methane from agriculture alone will take us beyond a 1.5C rise in temperature that risks tipping the world into irreversible climate breakdown.  “These companies are stepping up their game because the exposure they are facing is stepping up,” says Jennifer Jacquet, Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of Miami. “It used to be that they were caught on the back foot, but now they’re completely prepared.” The GMA declined to offer a formal comment, however a spokesperson told DeSmog in an email that the group works to “simplify and distil public information” around international events which are “often dominated by an anti-meat narrative”.  PR Push The meat industry is planning a concerted PR push at the summit, which it describes as a  “notoriously challenging environment”.  It offers a comprehensive guide to all areas of the UNFCCC climate conference, highlighting where industry can hope to get its message across, including on thematic days, food and ag-based events and at pavilions where countries and observer groups showcase their climate credentials and hold events. In one document, the industry acknowledges that the global meat sector has a “job to do” in making sure governments are positioned to push for what it describes as “balanced, science-based outcomes” rather than what it characterises as “ideologically driven solutions”. To help the industry navigate the complexities of COP28, the controversial PR firm Red Flag will also be at the summit. In 2018, the Irish company came under fire for “astro-turfing” after it was revealed to be employed by pesticide firms to run a pro-glyphosate campaign, which it had represented as a grassroots-led effort by farmers. Red Flag chief executive Karl Brophy was quoted at the time as saying: “We are grateful to several clients for supporting the project,” adding, “we’re proud to have played a small part in providing the information” to help defeat the proposed ban of the herbicide. In signs of a PR war being fought online as well as in person, an earlier draft of the GMA documents stated that several groups – including the UK levy-funded group the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) – were planning to work with social media influencers to amplify their messaging around the summit. A spokesperson for the AHDB informed DeSmog it did not plan to use social media influencers during the summit, and that any documents stating this were incorrect.  “Throughout the year, including during COP28, AHDB will offer its expertise to promote a balanced and sensible debate about the future of our food system,” they said. The spokesperson added that food production must increase by 70 percent to keep pace with population growth, and complained that the common narrative on livestock was dictated by “simplistic negative conclusions of livestock’s role within rising global temperatures, nature decline and decreasing human health”. Past marketing drives run by the AHDB include the £3.5-million “We Eat Balanced Campaign”, which aims to “provide clear facts to help those reducing meat and dairy consumption to reconsider”. The GMA files also namecheck influential pro-meat individuals such as author and podcaster Diana Rodgers, who has been referenced by the Global Meat Alliance in a previous campaign, which targeted the UN Food System Summit.  Rodgers defends meat-eating as sustainable and has spoken against measures to curb its consumption in rich countries. (She was listed as an attendee at COP28 in an earlier version of the documents, but has since been removed). “Any credible action to reduce emissions in the food sector will inevitably lead to a reduction in the total volume of meat and dairy products produced,” says Nusa Urbancic, chief executive of campaign group the Changing Markets Foundation. “The industry is terrified of that and has been deploying multiple tactics to delay the inevitable.” Turning Out in ‘Full Force’  The meat sector’s largest emitters – whose past efforts to obstruct climate action have been documented by DeSmog – plan to be on the ground in large numbers at COP28, the files show. JBS, the world’s most polluting meat company, will be out in “full force” in Dubai , according to the files. At COP27 in Egypt, DeSmog revealed that the firm gained access via Brazil’s country delegation.“It is hard to understand why decision-makers would allow companies like JBS to have a seat at the table at climate negotiations,” Urbancic said. “They are simply not credible partners in these crucial talks, especially now when the time for action is rapidly running out.”  The Brazilian meat giant has come under growing pressure for failing to tackle the outsized climate and environmental impacts of its business. It stands accused of misleading investors over a green bonds scheme and was recently ordered to retract net zero claims by the US ad regulator. The sector’s second largest emitter – Tyson Foods – is also planning to be at the summit in Dubai. Companies at the summit will be accompanied by lobby groups that represent them, some of which have a history of obstructive action. They include the North American Meat Institute (NAMI), a powerful group representing large meat producers in the US, which in 2022 was still questioning on its website whether climate change was caused by humans. While the leaked documents are aimed at the meat sector, they also show that high-emitting dairy companies are planning on sending a “large delegation” to COP28.Earlier this year a backlash from several countries with interests in meat led to the watering down of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC’s) recommendations on dietary changes needed to bring down greenhouse gas emissions. Urbancic says producers are aping the tactics of the oil industry: to delay climate action with weak voluntary commitments, all the while pushing industry-funded science.  Plans to Work Closely With Governments The documents show that the industry will be collaborating with major producer countries and friendly governments to amplify their message at COP28. Companies and trade groups are told one of the ways to “to have the most influence” is to “equip delegates with your key messages and solutions”, a list of which is provided in the pack. The files also detail collaborations planned for the event itself. The North American Meat Institute will host a side event at the US COP pavilion on December 11, the summit’s Agriculture Day, for example. For its part, the Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA), a levy-funded group, plans to hold events at its country pavilion, and says it is also looking to engage with other countries at COP28. It also states that it will hold regular meetings with the Australian government before the summit.  Australia and the US are the second and third largest beef exporters globally, and their governments have a strong economic interest in supporting the growth of these industries, which enjoy close political ties. In the US, the current secretary of State for Agriculture – Tom Vilsack – is the former head of the powerful dairy industry group: the US Dairy Export Council (USDEC).  A spokesperson for the Australian government’s Department for Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water told DeSmog: “The Australian Government is providing the agricultural sector, including the meat industry, support for innovation, infrastructure, biosecurity and building resilience, which OECD [a club of rich nations] characterises as positive areas to invest.” Some academics believe government support to be a significant factor in determining the continued power of the animal agriculture industry over alternatives. A study published earlier this year found that meat and dairy farmers in the EU received 1,200 times more public funding than new alternative protein sources, while in the US, they received 800 times more support. Jennifer Jacquet says addressing the cosy relationship between governments and industry was crucial to bringing diets into line with climate goals. “Typically, the talk is about demand side interventions, like you can get schools or, or individuals to give up meat,” she says. “But I’m a little worried that some of this [meat] production is so baked into subsidies and policy, that even with decreased demand, this apparatus will just keep flowing. “We need the animal agriculture equivalent of ‘keep it in the ground’ for fossil fuels,” she adds. “Its really about production at the end of the day.” Sponsorship of Pavilions In the documents, trade groups also reveal their plans to influence the pavilions run by observer groups. They do this via sponsorship, which can cost between $10,000 and $200,000 and is championed as a way to host sessions, receptions and invite guests. The US Dairy Export Council are confirmed sponsors of a COP28 pavilion hosted by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), an intergovernmental body with close ties to industry. Other sponsors include NAMI, pesticide firms Croplife and Bayer, along with the industry-sponsored Protein Pact initiative. USDEC anticipates that sponsorship will “help to ensure side event opportunities and make strategic sense for guaranteeing a presence at the event”. The Council also shares plans to promote the target-free initiative known as Pathways to Dairy Net Zero, whose members are some of the largest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. A section on NAMI’s plans in the documents also confirms its support for the IICA, which last year hosted an online panel featuring UC Davis professor Frank Mitloehner, a high profile defender of the meat industry, which also funds his research. NAMI relates that Mitloehner will be coming in person to COP28 where he is signed up to speak on two panels, so far. It encourages other meat sector groups to “plug” Frank into other events at the summit, describing him as a “top expert in animal ag GHG emissions”. Mitloehner has helped popularise a controversial way of counting methane emissions known as GWP*, which effectively penalises new sources of methane from the Global South but lets pre-existing high-volume emitters from the Global North off the hook. He has used GWP* to claim that the US meat and dairy sector can become “climate-neutral” by the late 2040s by reducing emissions only two percent a year. Professor Mitloehner told DeSmog: “GWP* is a metric that measures methane’s impact on warming. In conjunction with others, it can be used in a way that drives further reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.” He added: “Reducing emissions from livestock requires involving farmers, ranchers, and companies and organizations across animal agriculture. Like many of the more than 70,000 delegates expected to attend COP28, I’ve been invited to share my expertise through the events planned in pavilions hosted by governments and international organizations.”  In its comment to DeSmog, the AHDB spokesperson also used GWP* to claim that “methane from UK livestock since 1990 has not caused global warming”. ‘Positive Livestock Content’ The documents also include a messaging summary with key talking points, which present meat as “sustainable nutrition” and suggest that meat production can be beneficial to the environment. In a four-page set of arguments, the Global Meat Alliance claims that producers can “play a key role in environmentally sustainable food systems” and that the sector is “continuously driving towards carbon-friendly farming”. Several of these arguments reference the idea that grazing livestock can help maintain healthy soils which can store carbon. This is often described as ‘regenerative agriculture’, a term that featured among six greenwashing terms for the agriculture sector reported by DeSmog in September. It’s a term favoured by many food companies, despite the fact that scientists have said that soils are not a reliable way to store carbon in the long term, and that removals can be easily undone.  In its messaging, industry also heavily references the role of meat in relieving hunger and in the Global South, claiming that it “plays a key role in reducing food insecurity and malnutrition”. However the UN-linked Committee on World Food Security has repeatedly pointed out that hunger and malnutrition is not caused by a lack of food, pointing instead to problems with access, distribution and power. Meat eating globally is very unequally spread, Europeans eat more than twice the global average, and North Americans’ and Australians’ consumption levels are even higher. One study released in the academic journal Nature in 2018, found that Western countries would have to reduce their meat intake by 90 percent to limit climate change to acceptable levels. The full set of documents – which add up to 23 pages – make only passing, discursive reference to cutting methane, which is mentioned twice in the context of carbon-storage and “feeding the world”, and to encourage participation in events where methane is on the agenda. This is despite the fact that emissions from beef production globally are roughly equal to those of the entire nation of India, with science pointing to a shift in diets as the one surefire way to cut emissions. The Food4Climate pavilion, which aims to promote plant-based food, is labelled by the meat group as “extreme”. The GMA also shows displeasure at the COP28 presidency’s choice of a vegan menu, which is one of just two passing references to changing diets. At no point does the industry acknowledge the serious and public health and environmental harms of livestock, which are also the leading cause of biodiversity loss worldwide. Meat lobby groups will share a different message at pavilions at COP28. NAMI says it will push the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to host “positive livestock content”. Elsewhere in the documents, industry stresses the importance of sharing “our scientific evidence” at the summit. As well as plans to present meat as “positive for the environment”, it will promote the Dublin Declaration, a document signed by over 1,000 scientists, which has been criticised as meat “propaganda” by climate experts. The meat industry has long been engaged in efforts to present its industry as green, from selling the idea of climate-friendly cows to ‘greener cattle’ initiatives, which will also be promoted at COP28 through the US-led AIM for Climate initiative.  Missing Perspectives While the Global Meat Alliance promotes itself as supporting an “aligned global meat sector” the group’s membership is skewed heavily toward producers in the Global North. Fourteen of the group’s 16 partners come from either Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland or North America. Its remaining two partners are global lobby groups representing large companies and multiple countries. Of the 21 companies and trade groups who appear to have coordinated with the GMA on their attendance for COP28, more than half are the countries listed above. One (JBS) is from Brazil, and the rest are transnational.   This follows a wider trend in multi-stakeholder climate initiatives, where smallholder groups are sidelined. A November report found that small-scale farmers, who produce a third of the world’s food, receive just 0.3% of climate finance. In a statement, a spokesperson for the Global Meat Alliance described itself as an “international networking group with an aim to support a better connected, aligned global meat sector by providing industry with accumulated insights, best practice, and collaboration opportunities.” The major dairy industry initiative – Pathways to Dairy Net Zero – has also publicised itself as a global effort welcome to companies from across the dairy supply chain, but a DeSmog analysis shows that Global North groups dominate the group. In 2022, DeSmog’s analysis of the major sustainable farming initiative AIM for Climate (or Aim4C) found that more than two thirds of some 300 partners were located in the United States or Europe. Just seven percent are based in Africa. Livestock experts with a focus on the Global South have repeatedly stressed the importance of including a range of perspectives in discussions of livestock pollution. Ian Scoones, a researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Development argues that often industrial, intensive producers “lump all livestock in together” – forgetting over 200 million herders, shepherds and small-scale producers who live mostly in Africa and Asia. Scoones explains that this can lead to unhelpful discussions. It’s notable that the solutions pursued by some of the GMA members are not always in the interests of Global South producers. Beef + Lamb New Zealand, for example, is pushing the UN to adopt the new methane metric GWP*, which punishes the new and growing sources of methane in the Global South. Scoones says: “My big fear in all of this debate is that the likes of pastoralists who we work with around the world will get stuffed because they don’t have a voice.” All named parties were contacted for comment. The post Big Meat Unveils Battle Plans for COP28 appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Why Saudi Arabia Wins Top Prize in the Bad Sport Awards 2023

 

at 11/28/23 11:01pm

Imagine a World Cup Final, one team brazenly fouls in their own penalty box, but no penalty is given. The referee waves play on. It happens repeatedly and the offending team goes on to win. Interviewed after the match, the most guilty player says, “So what, I fouled, I’d do the same thing again, I don’t care!” and they face no official sanction for saying so. Sound far-fetched? If only.  Saudi Arabia is set to win the role of top sponsor of international football’s governing body, FIFA, after openly admitting that one of the reasons it engages in sponsorship is to ‘sportswash’ its national reputation for economic benefit. It even says it has no qualms in doing so. “If sport washing is going to increase my GDP by way of one percent, then I will continue doing sport washing,” said Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Allowing the nation the honour of being your flagship sponsor is a bit like making Lance Armstrong rider of the year and the face of cycling after the Tour de France drug revelations emerged. Worse still, it has now emerged from new undercover reporting that Saudi Arabia is operating a so-called ‘Oil Sustainability Programme’ (OSP) designed to artificially increase demand for oil across Africa and Asia. For these reasons, and marginally to re-level the playing field, the Saudi kingdom has been awarded this year’s top prize at the Bad Sport Awards 2023, a new, annual scheme organised by the Badvertising campaign in association with the Cool Down Network of sport for climate action, and an expert judging panel. The awards fall just as another controversially chosen oil state, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), plays host to international climate talks, COP 28, at which the UAE was revealed as planning to use the opportunity to make more oil and gas deals. And, next year, the 2024 Olympics will see the Paris games sponsored by other major polluters, such as car maker Toyota, that has sought, for example, to delay the introduction of electric vehicles. If there was an Olympic medal for the most self-defeating species, humanity would be on the podium. Good sport draws public audiences in the billions like nothing else. It should be a celebration of healthy human ability, and encourage participation. Sadly, all around the world sport is attracting ever more major polluters as sponsors — bad sports intent on normalising the threat to the climate they represent.  Credit: Badvertising. Snow Thieves Sport once allowed itself to be used as an advertising hoarding for tobacco companies, in spite of that conflicting with its role as a youth activity and being a pathway to healthy, active living. Now the air pollution from burning fossil fuels alone is estimated to kill more than tobacco smoke. Sport is not only particularly vulnerable to global heating, but pushing its way through the pack to be a world leader in what should be the latest Olympic demonstration event: digging your own climate grave.  In the shadow of Black Friday’s orgy of overconsumption, and foreshadowing annual dreams of a white Christmas, nowhere is this clearer than in winter sports. Earlier this year the world’s biggest cross country ski race, the Vassaloppet, held in Sweden, was sponsored by fossil fuel company Preem and car maker Volvo. Emissions from those two sponsors alone, dubbed the ‘snow thieves’, was enough to melt 210 square kilometres of snow cover, an area over 200 times the space taken by the ski race itself. The last winter Olympics in Beijing relied almost entirely on artificial snow and by the end of this century it’s projected that only one of the 21 cities to have held the winter Olympics will still have a climate capable of doing so again.  For accepting major polluters as sponsors, in a way that British winter Olympic medalist, Lizzy Yarnold, once described as “like winter sport nailing the lid on its own coffin”, the ‘Thin Ice’ Award was handed to the Swedish Ski Association for their ongoing sponsorship deals with car manufacturer Ford, lorry manufacturer Scania, and Swedish airline SAS.  Anna Jonsson, co-director of think tank New Weather Sweden, and a Bad Sport Awards 2023 judge, said: “Having high carbon sponsors in winter sports is deeply ironic, with their pollution melting the very snow and ice that the sport itself relies on. This affects the elite athletes as well as all the kids and anyone else who wants to enjoy the pleasure of skiing or skating.” Also in the running for the award had been the sponsorship deal between Norwegian Oil and Gas giant, Var Energi, and the Norwegian Ski Federation. Astonishingly Saudi Arabia won the bid to host the Asian winter games for 2029, and are thought to want to host the 2030 winter Olympics, a decision on which will be made in mid 2024. Poignant in the context of the revelations of the Saudi programme to ‘hook’ African nations on fossil fuels, criticised by Mohammed Adow, Director of Power Shift Africa, for coming, “At a time when the rest of the world is cleaning up and weaning itself off dirty and polluting fossil fuel”, the ‘Bad Bet’ Award went to TotalEnergies’ sponsorship of the upcoming African Cup of Nation 2023 (AFCON) in Cote d’Ivoire. Frank Huisingh, founder of Fossil Free Football and an Awards judge, said: “Sports fans know that the climate crisis has a huge impact on their favourite sports, including football. They expect their sports to take serious climate action. Selling their platforms to the worlds biggest polluters is exactly the opposite of that.” In other prizes, the ‘Own Goal’ Award went to the Nissan Formula-E team’s sponsorship deal with Shell, the oil company that in the last year performed what was called a ‘climate wrecking u-turn, ‘hitting the brakes’ on renewable energy, and shelving plans to cut oil production and shrink its carbon footprint. The ‘Taking Us For A Ride’ Award was handed to the recent partnership between the British Olympic Association, the British Paralympic Association and British Gas, a company that was recently found to have made misleading green claims about hydrogen boilers, a technology many believe to be a false solution, but convenient for incumbent fossil fuel suppliers.  Sponsorship as a Weapon The exploitation of sport by major polluters is so ubiquitous now that it pushed 2012 Olympic GB gold medalist, Etienne Stott, also a Bad Sport Awards judge, to say, “We are definitely well into an era of greenwash and sportwash. Many high-carbon organisations, who are fully aware that their business models are incompatible with a safe future for human civilisation, have gone into overdrive, trying their hardest to buy favour with the public by associating with some of the most loved and cherished sports.” Sport is often referred to as a battlefield, or a substitute for actual conflict. One thing is clear: It has become the ground on which major polluters are fighting hard, wielding sponsorship as a weapon to make polluting products and lifestyles appear acceptable. At the end of yet another year which is set to break global heating records, television adverts abound of octogenarians happily ordering toboggans from online retailers, while visions of snowmen and skating are co-opted to keep people shopping. Meanwhile the chance of meeting the 1.5C international climate target looks like it has the life chances of a snowflake in June. Seeing polluters given naming rights on stadiums, global sports competitions and on the kit of some of our best athletes, feels like the wrong kind of reward for bad behaviour. Much better to hand out some ‘Bad Sport Awards’, so that at least people can see them for what they are. Andrew Simms is co-director of the New Weather Institute, co-founder of the Badvertising campaign,the  Rapid Transition Alliance and assistant director of Scientists for Global Responsibility. Follow on X @AndrewSimms_uk or Mastodon. @andrewsimms@indieweb.social. The post Why Saudi Arabia Wins Top Prize in the Bad Sport Awards 2023 appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Venture Fund Set to ‘Take Control’ of Telegraph Has Fossil Fuel Investments

 

at 11/24/23 5:24am

The investment fund that has reportedly reached an agreement to buy the Telegraph Media Group has stakes in several oil and gas companies, DeSmog can report.  U.S.-based RedBird Capital has entered into a joint venture to take control of The Telegraph alongside International Media Investments (IMI) of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).  The two groups have reportedly agreed to provide loans to The Telegraph’s existing owners, the Barclay family, to allow them to pay off their £1.16 billion debt to Lloyds Banking Group. The family lost control of The Telegraph and the Spectator magazine, which is also part of the media group, earlier this year due to this outstanding debt.  News reports suggest that the deal is being backed by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who serves as the deputy prime minister of the UAE, the head of its state-owned investment company, and the owner of Manchester City football club. Conservative MPs have voiced concerns over the potential purchase and the danger of foreign influence, asking the UK government to use national security laws to investigate the agreement. Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer has echoed these concerns, warning that the deal could undermine “free expression of opinion” and prevent the “accurate presentation of the news”. The UAE is a petrostate that has the worlds largest oil expansion plans. The state-owned energy company, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), intends to increase its oil production by more than any other fossil fuel firm in the world, according to data from the Global Oil and Gas Exit List (Gogel). Adnoc said that Gogel’s data and assumptions were “incorrect and misleading” but has not provided its own figures. RedBird-IMI has said that, under its proposal, The Telegraph and Spectator will be managed by RedBird Capital “alone” and IMI would be a “passive investor”. RedBird Capital trades in a number of core investment sectors, including energy. The firm’s website states that it holds investments in at least six fossil fuel firms: Aethon United, CapturePoint, FireBird Energy, Four Corners Petroleum, Lambda Energy Resources, and Tally Energy Services. All of these companies are based in the U.S., with a majority operating in Texas. Aethon United was listed by Enverus Intelligence Research as one of the most prolific private oil and gas producers in the U.S. in 2023. It was reported in 2022 that the firm was considering a public listing that would value it at more than $10 billion. CapturePoint specialises in carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), a favoured technology of the fossil fuel industry that it claims will help to limit global warming. The RedBird website claims that CapturePoint is “building out a carbon capture network on the Gulf Coast and in the Midwest”. There is limited evidence of the efficacy of CCUS at scale. DeSmog recently analysed 12 large-scale CCUS projects around the world and found countless missed carbon capture targets, as well as cost overruns, with taxpayers picking up the tab via billions of dollars in subsidies. Meanwhile, captured carbon is often merely used to extract more oil.  “If this deal goes through, it will pollute our press and the UKs fight against climate breakdown,” Alexander Kirk, fossil fuels campaigner at Global Witness, told DeSmog. RedBird Capital also holds an investment in Majority Strategies, a political strategy firm that claims to have worked for every official Republican presidential nominee since 2000. Majority Strategies received more than $27 million during the 2022 election cycle, including $9.2 million from the Republican Senate Leadership Fund.  Responding to media speculation about The Telegraph’s future ownership, the paper’s editor Chris Evans sent an internal memo earlier this week. Seen by Politico Playbook, the memo read: “You’ve been asking me how we can be confident that editorial independence would be protected. At the moment I know no more than you will have read.” Polly Truscott, a foreign policy adviser at Amnesty International UK, told The Times that: “Any Emirati state ownership of the Telegraph may have serious implications for press freedom in the UK and should be carefully scrutinised by the government. In the UAE, anyone who dares to speak out against the Emirati authorities is likely to be at serious risk.” The UAE ranks 145 out of 180 in the 2023 Press Freedom Index produced by Reporters Without Borders. Other sources claim that the bidding process for The Telegraph and the Spectator is still ongoing and that no deal has been finalised. Paul Marshall, the co-owner of GB News, is also reportedly interested in buying the titles. DeSmog revealed in October that Marshall’s hedge fund has $2 billion in fossil fuel investments.  RedBird Capital and the Telegraph Media Group did not respond to our request for comment.  Climate Attacks A new DeSmog analysis has found that eight in 10 opinion pieces from The Telegraph on environmental issues downplay the climate crisis.  Our analysis, for the six months ending 16 October, found that of the 171 articles covering environmental issues, 85 percent were identified as “anti-green” – attacking climate policy, downplaying climate science and ridiculing environmental groups. Of the 1,930 opinion pieces published by the paper during this period, nearly one in five (17.6 percent) featured an attack on climate science, policy or environmental groups. Ten writers linked to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s leading climate science denial group, wrote a total of 144 opinion pieces for The Telegraph during the period.  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 13.5 million in September this year.  World leaders next week gather in Dubai, UAE, to negotiate how to reduce emissions and limit global warming. The COP28 summit is being led by Sultan Al Jaber, the chief executive of Adnoc, which is the world’s 11th largest oil and gas producer. Al Jaber has claimed that fossil fuels should “continue to play a role in the foreseeable future” – a statement labelled as “very dangerous” by former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres. The UAE has also attempted to emphasise the importance of CCUS in capturing emissions. However, according to an analysis by Global Witness, based on Adnoc’s carbon capture plans, it would take 343 years for the firm to capture all the CO2 emissions it will produce in just the next six years. This week, the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition also revealed that at least 7,200 fossil fuel lobbyists have attended UN-led climate over the last 20 years. Total trade between the UK and UAE exceeded £25 billion in the year ending Q2 2023, an increase of 47.3 percent compared to the year before. The Gulf state has also pledged to invest £10 billion in “priority” UK industries.  In the year following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the UK imported £2.5 billion in fossil fuels from the UAE. The average monthly value of fossil fuel imports from the UAE increased from £84.4 million in the year to February 2022, to £195 million the year after.  In total, UK fossil fuel imports from authoritarian petrostates surged to £19.3 billion in the year following the invasion – an increase of more than 60 percent.  The post Venture Fund Set to ‘Take Control’ of Telegraph Has Fossil Fuel Investments appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Revealed: Scale of The Telegraph’s Climate Change ‘Propaganda’

 

at 11/23/23 1:14am

Telegraph columnists routinely questioned climate science and criticised green reforms as a major backlash against net zero policies raged in the UK, DeSmog can reveal. A new analysis by this website reviewed over 2,000 Telegraph opinion pieces and editorials published online over the six months ending 16 October. Of the 171 opinion pieces that dealt with environmental issues, 85 percent were identified as “anti-green” – attacking climate policy, questioning climate science and ridiculing environmental groups. It comes as an Abu Dhabi-backed investment fund RedBird IMI this week claimed it would be taking control of The Telegraph and Spectator, after months of speculation over the position of its previous owners, the Barclay family.  The Telegraph’s print circulation at the end of 2019, when it last released the data, was over 300,000. The paper had an online audience of 13.5 million in September this year.  This spate of anti-green stories from The Telegraph appeared in what is set to be the hottest year since records began in the late 1880s. A new Lancet report, published last week, found that heat-related deaths are on track to rise 370 percent by mid-century. Throughout the six months, opinion writers attacked environmental activists, criticising their actions as a “narrow-minded crusade”. Vegan diets were characterised as “eco-extremism”, while U.S. President Joe Biden’s fear of climate-induced temperature rises was cast as “apocalyptic green fantasies”. Heat pumps were regularly criticised, dubbed “China’s secret weapon in its drive to subvert the West” and “impractical and ineffective”. Research shows the clean heating devices are essential to decarbonising the UK’s gas-reliant homes and are more than twice as efficient as oil and gas boilers in cold temperatures.  Other writers regularly undermined the effectiveness of renewable energy. “Wind power is not cheap or secure. Nor is it clean”, Conservative peer Matt Ridley wrote in one column, despite evidence that renewable energy in the UK is significantly cheaper than gas. Ridley wrote last year that global heating was “mostly beneficial”. Ridley is an advisor to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s main climate denial group, which is based on Westminster’s Tufton Street. Ridley was one of 10 Telegraph opinion writers with links to the GWPF or its campaign arm, Net Zero Watch. Overall, nearly one in five (17.6 percent) of the 1,930 opinion pieces reviewed by DeSmog featured an attack on climate science, policy or environmental groups. Nearly one in 10 of The Telegraph’s ‘View’ pieces – editorials expressing the views of the newspaper –  addressed the environment in some way. All of these were anti-green.  The Telegraph Media Group did not respond to DeSmog’s request for comment.  Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said the editors of The Telegraph had “lost their minds when it comes to climate change”.  “Both newspapers [The Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph] are campaigning against climate policies,” Ward told DeSmog. “They are bombarding their poor readers with laughable propaganda, particularly in their comment columns.” This comment piece was written on 21 July, the day after the Uxbridge and West Ruislip by-election. Credit: Telegraph.co.uk Policy Pile-on  Conservative MPs consider The Telegraph their second most trusted newspaper, according to a Press Gazette poll conducted in August. But the views expressed by Telegraph columnists appear at odds with those of the majority of Conservative voters. A 2022 poll conducted by the Onward think tank for ConservativeHome found that Tory voters strongly support net zero, and that “rowing back on environmental commitments risks alienating voters in key marginal seats that will be targets for other parties”.  Despite the overall support for net zero among the Conservatives, a by-election in Boris Johnson’s former seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip on 20 July was widely framed as a quasi-referendum for an expanded ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) in Greater London. Conservative candidate Steve Tuckwell won on a single-issue campaign opposing the clean air zone, beating his Labour rival by 495 votes. The campaign resulted in a flurry of negative Telegraph opinion pieces on the subject – many falsely conflating the result with a condemnation of the UK’s net zero targets. The Telegraph published 30 opinion pieces about ULEZ, 26 of which criticised the scheme – naming it a “scam”, “disastrous”, “pointless eco-posturing”, “a dagger in the heart of London’s economy”. One claimed that London Mayor Sadiq Khan was “destroying London”. On 22 July, Conservative London mayoral candidate Susan Hall penned an opinion in which she pledged to scrap ULEZ “on day one” if elected. Days later, The Telegraph published an editorial ‘View’, calling on ministers to “put ULEZ into reverse”.  Only four opinion pieces published by The Telegraph over this time expressed any positive sentiment about the clean air scheme, including one written by Khan. A report by Greater London Authority, produced a month after the scheme was officially introduced, showed the expansion was working, with 95 percent of vehicles across inner and outer London now compliant with clean air standards. Debates around ULEZ and net zero raged throughout the summer. In August, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ruled out a net zero referendum, and committed to keeping the UK’s legally-binding 2050 net zero targets. On 20 September, however, he alarmed civil servants, experts and green groups by announcing a dramatic rollback of net zero policies. These included delaying the ban on sales of new petrol and diesel vehicles and gas boilers from 2030 to 2035, and dropping proposed household energy efficiency standards. At the time, Greenpeace chief scientist Doug Parr described the rollback as a “monumental failure of international leadership, vision, economic forethought”. In the aftermath, Telegraph opinion writers produced 19 net zero-critical opinion pieces. Headlines included: “Britain has finally joined the net sensibles”, “Theresa May’s legacy [of net zero] is driving Britain into the ground”, and “On net zero, Britain can’t afford to be the moral model to the world”.  A poll conducted in September, shortly after the announcement, found that over half of those who voted for the Conservative Party in 2019 still backed net zero targets. Dr James Painter, Research Associate at the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford, said The Telegraph was “trying to influence the net zero policy agenda” through its opinion pieces. “Research shows that The Telegraph, historically, has been probably the right-wing broadsheet that has given voice, particularly in its opinion, editorials, to different forms of climate scepticism,” he told DeSmog. “The publication has a very significant influence over the Conservative Party: MPs, Conservative Party activists and probably Tory voters as well.” Research published by Painter in 2015 showed that The Telegraph has been among the UK newspapers that are most likely to platform uncontested climate-sceptical voices, typically written by in-house columnists.  Credit: Brigitte Wear Prolific  Spectator journalist Ross Clark produced the highest number of anti-green columns for The Telegraph. He wrote 27 pieces attacking climate legislation or science over the six months, calling ULEZ a “war on motorists”, the net zero target “arbitrary”, and heat pumps “a plague on all our houses”.  Clark is a long-term critic of net zero policies, and earlier this year published a book on the subject: ‘Not Zero: How an Irrational Target Will Impoverish You, Help China (and Wont Even Save the Planet)’.  A number of the most prolific Telegraph columnists also held direct links to climate denial groups, the research found. Eleven opinion writers were board members or academic advisors at the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). They wrote a total of 144 opinion pieces for The Telegraph during the period examined.  GWPF and its campaign arm Net Zero Watch are based in Westminster’s Tufton Street, home to a small but influential network of libertarian, pro-Brexit think tanks and lobby groups with links to climate science denial. Last year, a GWPF report described 2022 — the hottest year on record in the UK — as “warm, but unalarming”. Its author said that the UK climate “remains absolutely benign”. The GWPF has also expressed the view that carbon dioxide has been mis-characterised as pollution, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet”. Allison Pearson, a columnist at The Telegraph and a board member of GWPF, penned 57 articles for the publication over the six months.  All 10 of her columns written on environmental topics expressed anti-green views – including one that said “net zero zealotry” would inflict “freezing dark and cold” upon British people. Pearson also called for the 2008 Climate Change Act — which enshrined climate targets in UK law for the first time — to be repealed, and for Brits to be “freed from its crazy, punitive legal targets”. Charles Moore, the former editor of The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator, wrote 41 articles over the six month time period, including 14 which exhibited anti-green views, and none that could be considered pro-green. On 25 July, Moore argued that climate change reporting amounted to “panic stories” which are “harder to put out than the real fires themselves”, despite the continued overwhelming consensus on the threats posed by climate change and the need to decarbonise.  Current and former GWPF members published by The Telegraph included Conservative peers David Frost, Matt Ridley and Peter Lilley, Allison Pearson, Charles Moore, and former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. The Telegraph also published three opinion pieces by Neil Record, the chair of the GWPF’s campaigning arm, Net Zero Watch, although the pieces did not mention environmental issues. Net Zero Watch produces regular reports contradicting the scientific consensus on climate change.  Nowhere in the articles or the columnists’ profiles are their affiliation to the climate denial group mentioned. The Telegraph has “a long tradition of giving a voice to non-experts”, James Painter, of the Reuters Institute, said. “But they should be transparent,” he added, “because the reader needs to make a judgement as to where these concerns are coming from, and whether theres any invested interests.” In 2021, the paper ran a front-page spread showing a poll of public support for a referendum on the UK’s net zero goal. DeSmog revealed it was paid for by a climate denial group, CAR26, which is fronted by a leading member of Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party. Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute, said the Telegraph titles had become “parodies of their former selves”.“Some of the opinion articles these newspapers have published are, frankly, ridiculously inaccurate and misleading, and usually written by cranks from the Global Warming Policy Foundation who have no expertise on climate change or climate policy,” he said. “These articles are undermining democracy by conning their readers about the science, economics and politics of climate change.” Ross Clark produced the highest number of anti-green columns for The Telegraph in the time surveyed. Credit: Telegraph.co.uk Telegraph Stance Senior editorial staff at The Telegraph regularly penned anti-climate opinion pieces, DeSmog’s research showed. Allister Heath, The Sunday Telegraph editor, wrote 23 articles overall during the timeframe, while almost 70 percent of these pieces were anti-climate. They featured the claims that “Blair and Brown still rule Britain” because of the Conservatives’ net zero stance, and that “the lunacy of climate change fanatics is driving humanity to extinction”. Camilla Tominey, The Telegraph’s associate editor, penned 41 columns during that time – including 11 attacking climate issues. Tominey holds shares in GB News — a right-wing broadcaster with a record of downplaying climate change — according to a Financial Times investigation. Previous DeSmog analysis found that one in three GB News presenters had cast doubt over climate science or policy live on air in 2022. Every one of the 31 ‘Telegraph View’ pieces published on environmental issues attacked climate policies or climate science, for example urging Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to reconsider “the ruinous approach to net zero”.  This editorial stance is reflected in other areas of The Telegraph’s coverage, despite its stated commitment to “advancing sustainable initiatives across the business and in its editorial coverage”. Its new electric vehicle (EV) channel, launched this year, houses a mix of features, reviews and opinion articles.  Despite its ambitions to promote EVs, The Telegraph ran a number of anti-EV opinion pieces this year, among them: “Nobody wants an electric car” and “You’d have to pay me to buy an electric car”.  In another piece, titled “The great electric car experiment has taken a dangerous turn”, the author claims that electric cars are liable to combust or malfunction, casting doubt over their feasibility and safety, despite evidence that cars with internal combustion engines are five to six times more likely to combust.  In August, the publication introduced a ‘Net Zero’ section under its ‘money’ page. Multiple opinion pieces explicitly attacked efforts to reach net zero, including “Why heat pumps will never work in Britain” and “Four reasons why solar panels won’t work on your home”.  Jennie King, Head of Climate Research and Policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank, said influential publications have a responsibility to provide accurate information on climate change. “Newspapers and other ‘legacy media’ have a unique place in public discourse,” King told DeSmog. “Outlets like The Telegraph boast a historic brand and an important audience that cross many segments of British society, who may view them as singular sources of information and analysis on key issues.” All of the individuals referenced in this article were contacted for comment. Note on methodology DeSmog reviewed every Telegraph opinion piece published online between 16 April and 15 October 2023 – 1,930 in total. Articles were then searched for the presence of the following keywords: “oil,” “gas,” “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 770 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 articles; 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 same methodology was also applied to articles from The ‘Telegraph View’ section of the website – the initial sample gathered consisted of 333 articles, which was narrowed down to 63 after conducting a keyword search. The post Revealed: Scale of The Telegraphs Climate Change ‘Propaganda’ appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Badvertising: How Promoting Pollution Prevents Climate Action

 

at 11/22/23 11:01pm

On Monday, three apparently unconnected things happened. First, news broke that London Mayor Sadiq Khan had refused planning consent for the MSG Sphere in Stratford. This 100-metre illuminated globe would have towered over nearby buildings like a baleful, modern-day Eye of Sauron, with 190,000 square feet of LED surface continually beaming corporate marketing messages across the city. Brands advertising on the Sphere would have been visible from space, but more proximally, from the windows of the hundreds of residents homes caught in its oppressive glow, lying just a few feet away on three sides of the site. MSG had generously proposed to distribute blackout blinds to local serfs, but in the end their application was rejected on the grounds of the inescapable light pollution that would pour over people and wildlife. Even when switched off, visualisations of the structure depict the pitch black Sphere as a brooding, malevolent presence, resembling nothing more than a titanic bubo breaking out on the East London cityscape. The similarity is fitting. Buboes on your skin are a disturbing outward symptom that you have contracted a potentially deadly plague and should seek immediate treatment. Likewise, the MSG Sphere, had it gone ahead, would have signalled the city’s supplication to a malaise that may prove to be just as deadly: untrammelled, debt-fuelled, consumer capitalism. The second interesting thing that happened on Monday was that Oxfam published a new report finding that the richest one percent of the global population are now responsible for carbon emissions equivalent to those of the poorest two thirds, and are burning through the planet’s remaining carbon budget at a frightening rate. But the report is also clear that it’s not just the super rich elite; the developed world’s middle classes are squarely in the top 10 percent by global income, a group that is collectively responsible for half of humanity’s climate impact. In the UK, the top 10 percent by income have carbon footprints 15 times those of the poorest 10 percent, with transport — mostly cars and flights — and consumer products such as electronics and furniture the biggest differentiators. As Oxfam notes, “their emissions are driven by relentless advertising and an economic system geared towards continued overconsumption.” The report warns, as so many have done before it, that without a rapid and equitable reduction in carbon emissions, the world is facing climate breakdown which puts “the future of life on earth at risk”. An advert produced by Badvertising. Polluting our Minds Averting this oncoming planetary collapse requires that aggregate consumption, in particular of intrinsically high carbon goods and services such as flights and SUVs, must fall. But each and every day, the richest one in ten of the world’s population are targeted with thousands of messages by corporations urging us to consume more of these things. This is Badvertising, which is also the name of the third interesting thing that happened on Monday — the publication of our new book Badvertising: Polluting our Minds and Fuelling Climate Chaos by Pluto Press. In it, we make the case that the advertising industry is playing a pivotal, but so far largely unacknowledged, role in driving climate collapse, by preventing us, collectively, from thinking clearly about the nature of the problem and its remedies. Advertising is designed to get inside our heads and manipulate our behaviour in ways that may or may not be in our best interests. When it comes to the set of high carbon behaviours, like frequent flying or buying and driving SUVs, that are rare globally but have become commonplace amongst the richest 10 percent, advertising is positively pathogenic. Seen in the context of impending climate breakdown, high carbon advertising acts on people much like the cordyceps ‘zombie’ fungus does on the tropical ants it infects — taking control of their minds and steering them to a convenient spot for spore-spreading mushrooms to erupt from their brains. Change is hard, and bringing about population level behaviour change at the scale and pace that the climate crisis demands is going to be extremely difficult indeed. If we want to avoid coercive measures as far as possible, we need to think creatively, and quickly, about how demand for the products and services for which there is no viable low-carbon alternative can be brought down fairly amongst the global middle classes. Thankfully there is one very obvious, low-regrets starting point: stop making the problem worse by actively stimulating demand for these goods. There are powerful parallels with our societal response to the news, suppressed for decades by the tobacco barons but eventually made public, that smoking causes cancer and death. Recognising that large parts of the population had become dependent on tobacco products, and an immediate ban would therefore be socially impossible, the government sought instead to prevent new victims becoming ‘infected’, by ending the advertising and promotion of these damaging products. This approach leaves consumer choice open, and the products available for sale, but removes one of the key sources of pressure to consume them. Behaviour Change British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s notorious recent ‘Seven Bins’ speech, in which he invented a range of climate policies and then pretended to have ‘scrapped’ them, was in fact a thinly veiled attack on the guidance of his government’s own statutory advisors, the Climate Change Committee, who have warned for years that all the evidence points to a need for the government to somehow act to reduce demand for things like red meat and flights, if it wants to meet its net zero targets. Indeed, when the Conservative government published their Net Zero Strategy in 2021, they also released a paper from the ‘nudge unit’, aka the Behavioural Insights Team, which set out the principles for successful behaviour change initiatives needed to achieve the strategy. But within hours, the paper had been withdrawn and an official statement repudiating its existence hastily issued: “We have no plans whatsoever to dictate consumer behaviour in this way. For that reason, our Net Zero Strategy published yesterday contained no such plans.” The irony is that the British population is already subject to an unrelenting headwind of messaging from corporations that is expressly intended to ‘dictate consumer behaviour’, but for profit, rather than to achieve critical public policy goals. It seems a grotesque and reckless philosophy to insist that only commercial interests have a legitimate role in shaping our behaviour, given what is at stake. Left unaddressed, this warping of our collective consciousness by fossil industry propaganda will make it impossible to achieve the civilisation level transformation required for life as we know it to survive the 21st century. Ending the promotion of own destruction will, we argue, signal the moment when the UK, and hopefully the wider over-consuming world, has finally begun to come to terms with what the climate crisis means for our society, and way of life, as a species on this planet. As the fog lifts, we may realise at last not only how much danger we are all in, but that together, we have the capacity for collective action to get ourselves out of it. Readers of DeSmog can get a 25 percent discount on Badvertising: Polluting our Minds and Fuelling Climate Chaos by Andrew Simms & Leo Murray from Pluto Press using the code: BADVERTISING25 Leo Murray co-founded climate action charity Possible, where he is currently director of innovation,and pioneering solar rail enterprise Riding Sunbeams. Follow on X @crisortunity. Andrew Simms is co-director of the New Weather Institute, co-founder of the Badvertising campaign, the  Rapid Transition Alliance and assistant director of Scientists for Global Responsibility. Follow on X @AndrewSimms_uk or Mastodon. @andrewsimms@indieweb.social. The post Badvertising: How Promoting Pollution Prevents Climate Action appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Five Key Narratives to Watch For at COP28

 

at 11/22/23 12:55pm

The annual United Nations climate negotiations are just a week away. Known as COP28 — since it’s the 28th year of the “conference of the parties” to the United Nations climate agreement — it will be hosted by the United Arab Emirates in Dubai from November 30 through December 12.  COP28 will be especially significant, as it will feature the first-ever “global stocktake,” of how much progress — or lack thereof — countries and other stakeholders have made toward meeting the goal established in 2015’s Paris Agreement of limiting warming to “well below” 2º degrees Celsius.  Negotiators at COP28 will also aim to make progress on key climate issues including loss and damage finance, a just energy transition, and closing the emissions gap. As the climate crisis accelerates, so, too, do efforts by the fossil fuel industry to derail steep reductions in carbon pollution by mid-century, in part by promoting false solutions. Below, we’ve rounded up recent coverage to help you make sense of the key denial and greenwashing narratives that will be front and center during the event. A Big Presence from Big Oil After all, this is the first annual climate conference with a Big Oil exec at the top: COP28 President Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber.  Al Jaber, the person leading these global climate negotiations, is the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). He has openly called for fossil fuel companies’ “help to drive the solutions,” and advocated overcoming “the hurdles to scale up and commercialize hydrogen and carbon capture technologies” — two so-far unproven climate solutions being heavily promoted by the fossil fuel industry. A big presence from Big Oil would be in line with trends at the past two summits: 636 fossil fuel lobbyists registered to attend last year’s conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, while 503 registered for 2021’s gathering in Glasgow. Dive deeper with our Climate Disinformation Database profile of Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, our coverage of his appointment as COP28 president, and our reporting last year on fossil fuel lobbyists at COP27. An Industry Push for CCS The fossil fuel industry will paint carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a climate solution during this year’s conference. Critics argue it is anything but.  Of the 32 commercial CCS facilities operating worldwide, 22 use most, or all, of their captured carbon dioxide (CO2) to pump more oil out of depleted wells. Burning that oil creates far more CO2 than what is captured.  DeSmog recently analyzed 12 large-scale CCS projects around the world and found countless missed carbon capture targets, as well as cost overruns, with taxpayers picking up the tab via billions of dollars in subsidies. Despite these failures, Big Oil publicly champions CCS and pushes projects over communities objections. Privately, the industry shares critics’ concerns. With the Biden administration channeling billions of dollars into investments and tax credits for CCS, the United States is likely to be a key CCS supporter at the conference. Dive deeper with our explainer on how CCS is used for “enhanced oil recovery,” our investigation into CCS’s biggest fails, hear what Big Oil is saying about CCS in private. Greenwashing by Big Agriculture This year’s climate conference is coming on the heels of the world’s hottest year, with devastating floods around the world affecting the global food supply, and more than 330 million people worldwide facing famine. So COP28 leaders have released a four-point “food and agriculture” agenda for the summit that calls for governments and industry to collaborate on finding new solutions to climate change–driven food insecurity.  However, some of the biggest companies in agribusiness, are using greenwashing to shift the debate away from meaningful action. DeSmog has debunked six concepts that the world’s largest food and farming companies will be co-opting in hopes of swaying debates and discussions in  Dubai — including “regenerative agriculture,” “nature-based solutions,” and “climate neutrality.” Stay tuned for DeSmog’s coverage from Dubai — our team will be keeping a close eye on Big Ag. Dive deeper with our coverage of how food systems are linked to fossil fuel consumption, investigations into the meat and dairy groups downplaying their industries’ climate impacts, and the ties between Big Ag and right-wing politicians in the EU. PR Spin That Promotes Denial and Delay Ever wonder how a top oil-producing nation like the United Arab Emirates earned hosting duties for this year’s climate summit, or why the chief of UAE’s state oil company ADNOC, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, has ascended to one of the top roles in global climate negotiations? Reporting by DeSmog revealed that from 2007 to 2009, Edelman, the largest public relations firm in the world, ran a campaign to bolster the UAE and Al Jaber’s green images.  Advertising and PR agencies like Edelman have long burnished the public’s perceptions of fossil fuel interests, and are still creating advertising campaigns for big polluters that distract from and delay climate action — such as sponsored-content for a pesticides giant or leading climate communications while catering to Big Oil. Still, within the ad industry, pressure is mounting to stop working with fossil fuel clients. Some companies and organizations are even dropping ad and PR firms for taking on new fossil fuel industry accounts.  Follow DeSmog’s coverage as we highlight the PR spin at COP28. Dive deeper with our Climate Disinformation Database profiles of PR and ad firms Edelman, Ogilvy, and FleishmanHillard, our investigation into Edelman’s campaign to burnish Al Jaber and the UAE’s green creds, and our coverage of the backlash to Havas winning Shell’s business. Anticipate Disinformation  Disinformation strategies and narratives will be on display throughout the summit — much as we reported during COP27, where fossil fuel-linked groups spent around $4 million on social media ads that spread false climate claims.  The disinformation may flow thicker and faster than ever during COP28. As DeSmog has reported, over the past five years climate greenwashing has “gone through the roof,” as major polluters turn to greenwashing to avoid accountability for the climate crisis. In part, this may be a response to the increasing number of climate lawsuits and legal complaints against misleading climate claims. Attorneys general across the U.S. have charged fossil fuel companies with defrauding consumers by lying about the impacts of burning coal, oil, and gas — while activists and campaigners in Europe seek to hold Big Oil accountable under regulations against misleading advertising. To understand disinformation tactics and where they come from, dig into DeSmog’s reporting about past greenwashing campaigns. We recently shone a light on the way the gas industry borrowed Big Tobacco’s tactics to promote doubt over the health effects of gas stoves. Or read our investigation into how corporate polluters and their political allies have been using the same rhetoric of delay for the past six decades when faced with the prospect of regulation. Dive deeper with our column on why greenwashing works and how to fight it, our Q&A with Climate Investigations Center researcher Rebecca John, and our investigation into Shell’s knowledge of climate change. The post Five Key Narratives to Watch For at COP28 appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Report: Oil and Gas Production Set to Escalate Under Landmark U.S. Climate Law 

 

at 11/22/23 8:23am

A new report warns that oil and gas production in the United States is expected to rise under Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), even as the legislation helps to moderately lower fossil fuel demand through billions of dollars in clean energy investments. The report, “Biden’s Fossil Fuel Fail: How U.S. Oil and Gas Supply Rises under the Inflation Reduction Act, Exacerbating Environmental Injustice,” details how, despite the IRA’s significant spending on renewable energy, electric vehicles, and batteries, the policy will not be enough for the U.S. to meet its 2030 climate target of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50 to 52 percent  below 2005 levels.    Oil Change International’s (OCI) report analyzes data from the Rhodium Group – which projects U.S. emissions and fossil fuel supply and demand trends under existing policies. It finds that, rather than managing a phase-out of fossil fuels, the IRA is set to lead to a major expansion of oil and gas extraction and skyrocketing exports, which ultimately threatens frontline and environmental justice communities.   “It’s clear that President Biden’s promises made to frontline communities are nothing but a smokescreen,” Roishetta Sibley Ozane, founder of the Vessel Project of Louisiana and a mother of six who resides in southwest Louisiana, said in a press release accompanying the report. “The Inflation Reduction Act leaves a massive escape hatch for the fossil fuel industry to continue its destructive practices, and my family battles the real consequences from fossil fuel production every day.”   According to the new analysis, based on previously unpublished data from Rhodium Group’s Climate Deck model, production of oil and gas is set to increase by 13 percent and seven percent, respectively, through 2035. And while domestic demand is expected to drop slightly during this time – by 10 percent for oil and 16 percent for gas – oil and gas exports are projected to surge. The data indicates oil exports will rise by 23 percent and gas exports will nearly double by 2035. Most concerning, gas consumption by energy-hungry liquified natural gas (LNG) export plants is expected to grow by 140 percent.   “The projected growth in U.S. oil and gas exports substantially undermines domestic emissions reductions,” the report argues. Massive LNG Export Expansion Threatens Climate  Under the Inflation Reduction Act, the fossil fuel industry gets a big boost through elevated carbon capture tax credits as well as new federal oil and gas leasing mandates and guaranteed approval of the Mountain Valley fracked gas pipeline.  As Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in September, “Because of the Inflation Reduction Act, we are producing fossil fuels at record levels.” The legislation even chains solar and wind development on public lands to fossil fuels by requiring the federal government to offer oil and gas leases before holding auctions for renewables. Much of the new supply from this increased oil and gas production is going into exports.   Rapid expansion of U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) export capacity, concentrated along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast, is especially detrimental to achieving the U.S.’s climate goals. The U.S. currently has eight existing LNG export terminals in operation, with at least seven more under construction, and even more planned. If all of the planned LNG export projects get approved, the total greenhouse gas emissions impact from overall LNG export capacity would amount to 3.9 gigatons annually. That’s larger than the emissions from the entire European Union, and roughly equivalent to emissions from more than 1,000 coal plants or 850 million gasoline-powered vehicles – according to a new study. “If the LNG buildout goes ahead as the industry plans, it will wipe out every bit of progress America has made on reducing emissions since 2005,” prominent climate author and activist Bill McKibben writes in the forward to that study, which was written by climate analyst Jeremy Symons of Symons Public Affairs. “If the LNG buildout goes ahead as the industry plans,” McKibben adds, “the U.S. will be the greatest climate hypocrite of all time.” A new pre-print paper by scientist and Cornell University Professor Robert Howarth further warns that “total greenhouse gas emissions from LNG are larger than those from coal.” Howarth’s analysis examines lifecycle GHG emissions from U.S. LNG production and export, taking into account the shipping of the fuel. In addition to the climate impact, the LNG export terminal buildout exacerbates environmental injustice in the communities on the frontlines of this industrial expansion. “It is unfair that my children cannot breathe clean air and drink clean water because of the fossil fuel industries that we currently have in and around my community,” Ozane said during a recent media briefing sponsored by a coalition called Gas Exports Today.  “Yet, the U.S. government wants to put more than 10 more liquified natural gas (LNG) facilities in our community. But we know there is nothing natural about these facilities.” Climate activists protest President Bidens climate policies at the March to End Fossil Fuels in New York City in September. Credit: Dana Drugmand. Biden’s Climate Legacy on the Line In remarks delivered to the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September, U.S. President Joe Biden told assembled delegates that his administration has, from day one, treated the climate crisis “as an existential threat … not only for us but for all of humanity.”  The President continued to tout one of his greatest legislative achievements – the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) enacted in August 2022: “Last year I signed into law in the United States the largest investment ever anywhere in the history of the world to combat the climate crisis and help move the global economy toward a clean energy future.”  However, the Inflation Reduction Act does nothing to curb the expansion of LNG export capacity and of fossil fuel production broadly, and, as the OCI report notes, it actually requires new fossil fuel leasing and incentivizes fossil fuel-enabling projects like carbon capture and storage (CCS) and fossil hydrogen coupled with carbon capture. These “false climate solutions” as climate activists call them, are little more than greenwashing schemes designed to “distract and delay,” Collin Rees, U.S. program manager at Oil Change International and co-author of the new report, said during the recent Gas Exports Today media briefing. “We are seeing a massive expansion of this greenwashing rhetoric,” he said. “We’re very worried that rhetoric will continue to expand in the context of the [upcoming] COP28 climate talks.” The new OCI report also notes that under the IRA, the U.S. could potentially see emissions reductions of 51 percent by 2035 in the best-case scenario, which is still five years too late. By 2030 emissions may fall 34 percent (below 2005 levels), missing the 50 to 52 percent target by 16 to 18 percentage points. The finding of a sizable gap between current U.S. climate policy and stated emission reduction commitments is consistent with other analyses, such as a new study from the Union of Concerned Scientists on how the U.S. can meet its climate goals. Reaching emission reduction targets, as well as protecting public health and frontline communities, requires sharp declines in fossil fuel production and use, experts say. The U.S., however, is moving in the opposite direction, with the largest oil and gas expansion plans out of any country in the world. A report from OCI in September found the U.S. alone is poised to account for over one-third of planned global oil and gas expansion through 2050. “At COP28 the spotlight will be on our collective effort to end the fossil fuel era,” Rees said in a press release accompanying OCI’s new report. “Will the United States deliver, or will Biden’s climate legacy be one of disastrous oil and gas expansion and failure to adequately tackle the climate crisis?” The post Report: Oil and Gas Production Set to Escalate Under Landmark U.S. Climate Law  appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— UK Advertising Watchdog Bans Toyota SUV Ads on Environmental Grounds

 

at 11/22/23 7:33am

The UK advertising watchdog has banned two adverts for Toyota SUVs, ruling that images of cars racing over plains and through rivers condoned a style of off-road driving that “disregarded” the impact on nature.  Climate advocates calling for tighter rules on advertising of heavily polluting products welcomed the Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) move — the first time it had banned SUV ads for promoting driving that harms the environment. The adverts “had not been prepared with a sense of responsibility to society,” the regulator found in a ruling published on Wednesday, made in response to a complaint by campaign groups. The banned ads included a Facebook video showing SUVs roving across the landscape in unison, before joining a tarmacked road, with a voiceover saying: “One of nature’s true spectacles.” The other banned ad was a poster, used at bus stops, stating “BORN TO ROAM” next to an image of two SUVs driving on a rocky incline in a savannah style landscape. Around 50 identical SUVs appeared in a large pack on a hilly background. An ad for Toyota SUVs banned by the UKs Advertising Standards Authority. Credit: Adfree Cities. The regulator said the images of cars driving across wild plains, and through rivers, with dust and scree “visibly disturbed” condoned the use of vehicles in a manner that “disregarded their impact on nature and the environment.” The series of ads were made by the ad agency The&Partnership, advertising industry trade publication The Drum reported. The agency also works with British Gas, according to Clean Creatives’ annual “F-List” report documenting contracts between advertising and public relations agencies and fossil fuel companies. The&Partnership is owned by WPP, one of the largest media groups in the industry. According to Clean Creatives, WPP has held 55 fossil fuel contracts since the start of 2022, including with oil and gas producers such as Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and Saudi Aramco. WPP has pledged to reach net zero emissions by 2030, but campaigners have questioned how this can be truly achieved whilst their agencies continue to encourage high-carbon activities — such as buying SUVs— through advertising. These kinds of climate impacts from advertising have been defined by campaign group Purpose Disruptors as advertised emissions. “If the ad industry continues as normal, then the more ads we see or hear, the more we’re influenced to buy,” Purpose Disruptors co-founder Jonathan Wise wrote in an article for trade publication Campaign in July. “Each product made generates carbon emissions, from the production and extraction of the materials it’s made with, to how it’s transported, to the energy use it requires in its lifetime. If we celebrate the growth that advertising drives, we have to take responsibility for the emissions associated with that growth.” Autobesity The ASA made the ruling in response to a complaint lodged by Adfree Cities, a coalition of groups seeking to remove advertising from public spaces, and Badvertising, a campaign set up by the New Weather Institute to introduce a tobacco-style ban on high carbon ads to stop the advertising industry fuelling the climate emergency. Toyotas attitude to social and environmental responsibility skidded off the road years ago, after its early introduction of a hybrid vehicle, said Andrew Simms, co-founder of Badvertising.  Since then not only has it lobbied to block the road to climate action and slow the greening of vehicles, it has been part of the profit-driven push to ‘autobesity — using big ad campaigns to get drivers to switch to bigger, more polluting and dangerous SUVs,” Simms said. In a defence of the ads submitted to the ASA, Toyota had argued that it took environmental concerns seriously, and that the creation of the video sequence — shot on private land in Slovenia — had not harmed any ecologically sensitive habitat or wildlife. “Toyota believed no reasonable viewer would have understood the ad as encouraging UK consumers to drive irresponsibly in the UK countryside and cause environmental harm,” the company said in its statement to the ASA. The post UK Advertising Watchdog Bans Toyota SUV Ads on Environmental Grounds appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Nigel Farage’s Reform Party Took £135,000 from Climate Science Deniers and Fossil Fuel Interests

 

at 11/17/23 7:40am

Nigel Farage’s Reform party received £135,000 this year from donors linked to climate science denial and fossil fuels, DeSmog can reveal. Reform UK, formerly the Brexit Party, is a vocal critic of climate action, and last year called for a referendum on the UK’s net zero policies.  The party has pledged to accelerate oil and gas drilling, start fracking for shale gas, end subsidies for renewables, and scrap the windfall tax on oil and gas companies. Reform UK’s leader Richard Tice and its honorary president Farage – who is currently a contestant on the new series of reality TV show ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here’ – are both presenters on GB News, where they regularly attack climate policies. Earlier this year, Tice claimed “there is no climate crisis”.  The anti-climate stance of Tice and Farage is reflected in the interests of the party’s donors. Latest official records show that all donations made to Reform UK so far this year are from individuals with ties to climate science denial or fossil fuel interests. This marks a significant change from 2022, when the party’s only donation was £20,000 from Tice’s company ‘Britain Means Business’, but 2023 is still well below its peak of £2 million as the Brexit Party in the election year of 2019.  Donors registered this year include: a firm owned by Terence Mordaunt, a director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s leading climate science denial group; political donor Jeremy Hosking, who has millions invested in fossil fuels; and a property investment firm whose chairman has defended those who question whether “global warming is happening”.  The revelations come after DeSmog reported that hedge fund founder Paul Marshall, co-owner of GB News – which has both Farage and Tice on its payroll – has £1.8 billion invested in fossil fuels.   Richard Wilson, director of the Stop Funding Heat campaign, said the latest donations showed opponents of climate action using conservative media platforms to push their agenda.  “Next time you hear GB News lashing out at net zero or denouncing ‘climate alarmism’, it’s worth remembering how many links they have to the fossil fuel industry”, he said. “Now it emerges that two of their leading presenters run an organisation bankrolled by fossil fuel shareholders and climate science deniers.” Reform UK has no representatives in Parliament but its supporters have grown this year, when it picked up more votes than Labour in the Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth by-elections on October 19.  When contacted about the donations, Richard Tice accused DeSmog of “childish slurs”, and referred to a poll commissioned by GB News, which found 11 percent of the UK’s voters support the party. National polls put that support at eight percent. “As you can see we are now rising in the polls,” he said in an emailed comment. “As more people hear about us, so more people want to vote for us to save Britain, amongst other things by scrapping the catastrophic, job-destroying net zero.”  GB News was approached for comment. Terence Mordaunt and GWPF Reform UK styles itself as an independent anti-elitist party. However, its donors include a wealthy businessman on the board of an opaquely funded climate science denial group.  According to the Electoral Commission register, in June, Reform UK received £100,000 from First Corporate Consultants Ltd. The company is owned by Terence Mordaunt, a major Conservative Party donor. Mordunat is a director at the Global Warming Policy Foundation and served as its chair from April 2017 to November 2019. The GWPF was set up by the late Nigel Lawson, a former chancellor of the exchequer, in 2009, and has consistently spread climate science denial. A report by the group out in June described 2022, the UK’s hottest year on record, as “a warm year, but unalarming”. Mordaunt’s other company, Bristol Port Company, claims to handle 27 percent of all UK aviation fuel imports and the import and export of 550,000 motor vehicles every year.  ​​Transport is the single biggest contributor to carbon dioxide emissions in the UK, making up 26 percent of all CO2 pollution in 2021. Reform UK has made transport a pillar of its political campaigning, claiming there is a “war on drivers” being waged via anti-pollution and low-traffic schemes. The party’s candidate for London Mayor, Howard Cox, is an anti-fuel duty lobbyist, who is funded by the haulage industry. He is running on a pledge to ditch the capital’s ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) and low-traffic schemes. Mordaunt sits on the GWPF board alongside high-profile directors, including former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, who earlier this month said climate change has “nothing to do with mankind’s emissions”, and Conservative peer David Frost, who in July said global warming was “likely to be beneficial”. Mordaunt has also donated to the Conservative party. He funded the campaigns of 2022 Conservative leadership hopefuls Suella Braverman – who vowed to “suspend” the UK’s 2050 net zero target – and Penny Mordaunt, with £10,000 given to each candidate. It is not known whether Penny, who is leader of the House of Commons, is related to Terence Mordaunt.  The Tory party received £3.5 million from polluters, fossil fuel interests and climate deniers in 2022, DeSmog revealed earlier this year. In 2016, Mordaunt’s Bristol Port Company donated £100,000 to the official Brexit campaign, Vote Leave.  Mordaunt did not respond when contacted for comment.  Panther Securities The electoral register shows a further £20,000 from Panther Securities PLC, a property investment company. Its chairman, former UKIP donor Andrew Perloff, has blamed rising inflation on climate policies, and defended those who question whether “global warming is happening”.   In an interim report for the company published in June, in a column titled “chairman’s ramblings”, Perloff wrote: “Whilst they [scientists], of course, could be correct that global warming is happening, I feel it is worrying that those with different opinions are often prevented from presenting them for consideration.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s body on climate science, has said it is “unequivocal” that human influence has caused “unprecedented” global warming.  Perloff also claimed that inflation was higher in the UK than in the US because of the UK’s failure to use more fossil fuels.  He wrote: “Our country’s inflation is about double that of the US. Why? I believe it is simple. They are keen on fracking and also maximise their oil and gas production to protect their own interests, whereas our government is hell bent on gesture politics ‘to save the world’.”  The idea fracking would save households money is a common trope among proponents of shale gas and has been repeatedly debunked.  His column attacked what he described as a “war on motorists”, and called for the UK government to abandon its climate policies, including “removing the heavy legislation and taxation on production of greenhouse gases”.  Perloff also donated £25,000 to Reform UK in his own name ahead of the 2019 general election, according to the register.  Perloff is a long-standing opponent of high taxes. In 2014, when a donor to Farage’s former party UKIP, he accused the Conservative government of a “continual financial attack on property ownership and the property industry”, and warned of a “creeping Marxism completely at odds with a forward looking successful free market economy”.  Perloff and Panther Securities did not respond when contacted for comment.  Jeremy Hosking  The register also records another £15,000 from Jeremy Hosking, a financier and Conservative Party donor who in 2021 had millions invested in fossil fuels.  According to a story last year by openDemocracy, Hosking’s investment firm Hosking Partners had more than $134 million (around £108 million) in the energy sector at the close of 2021, two thirds of which were in the oil industry, along with millions in coal and gas.  Hosking declined to comment on funding Reform UK, but told DeSmog: “I do not have millions in fossil fuels; it is the clients of Hosking Partners who are the beneficiaries of these investments.” Hosking gave Reform UK £500,000 in 2020, and over £2 million ahead of the 2019 general election when it was called the Brexit Party. To date Hosking has donated £2,578,000 to Reform UK. Hosking also ownsThe Critic magazine, a conservative monthly which regularly publishes criticism of net zero policies. The post Nigel Farage’s Reform Party Took £135,000 from Climate Science Deniers and Fossil Fuel Interests appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

— Why the Belief That Carbon Capture Technologies Can Work at Gigaton-Scale Is a Gigantic Gamble

 

at 11/17/23 4:00am

With the start of the 28th annual United Nations climate summit, COP28, just two weeks away, a battle is brewing over the role of fossil fuels as nations try to stem the tide of climate change.  A “high ambition” coalition of nations such as France, Tuvalu, Ethiopia, and Ireland backed by climate scientists, climate and civil society organizations, and the UN Secretary General, are calling for commitments to phase out coal, oil, and gas. On the other hand, many oil and gas producing countries, supported by the politically potent fossil fuel lobby, are urging an approach that allows continued fossil fuel extraction – and even expansion – under the assumption that emissions mitigation technologies can largely eliminate the climate pollution of business-as-usual, emissions-intensive activities. Now, a new report shows that fossil fuel production by 2030 is set to exceed the level that would be compatible with limiting warming to 1.5°C by more than 110 percent. A second just-released report reveals that to mitigate that growth, the use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies would have to reach gigaton scale in less than 10 years, which might not be possible.  “That idea that we can build more fossil fuels but it’s ok because we can mitigate the emissions, or we’ll be able to pull carbon out of the air or out of the smokestacks, I think is incredibly dangerous,” Collin Rees, U.S. program manager at Oil Change International, said during a November 14 media briefing sponsored by a coalition called Gas Exports Today, which was convened by the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and held in advance of COP28.  In remarks delivered at the UN Climate Ambition Summit in September, COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber said that a “phase down,” not a “phase out,” of fossil fuels is what’s needed to combat climate change. He also referenced building “an energy system free of all unabated fossil fuels.” The term “unabated” has become a major reference in the climate diplomacy conversation in recent years, starting with COP26 in Glasgow where governments agreed to accelerate efforts “towards the phasedown of unabated coal power.” This language serves as a qualifier to suggest that fossil fuels can be rendered ‘clean’ through carbon capture and storage and engineered carbon dioxide removal, collectively termed “carbon management.” While these technologies may seem promising in theory, in practice they face substantial constraints and challenges. The two new reports further underscore these limitations.   COP28 President Al Jaber speaks at the UN Climate Ambition Summit in September. Credit: Dana Drugmand. Governments around the world are planning to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than is consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C, which is the more stringent objective of the Paris Agreement, according to the new Production Gap Report (PGR) 2023, produced by the UN Environment Program and the Stockholm Environment Institute, along with several other climate think tanks.  “There is overwhelming scientific evidence that we need to phase out all fossil fuels as rapidly as possible,” Ploy Achakulwisut, research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute and co-author of the Production Gap Report, said during the report’s virtual launch event on November 8. The report takes into account the significant risks and uncertainties around CCS and CDR, warning that the potential failure of these technologies to reach a climate-relevant scale necessitates an even more urgent phaseout of all fossil fuels. Given the feasibility concerns around scaling up carbon management technologies, the report urges governments to strive to phase out coal by 2040 and slash oil and gas production and use by three-quarters (from 2020 levels) by 2050 at a minimum. Achakulwisut noted that even though the majority of modeled climate mitigation scenarios from the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report assume that large amounts of CCS and CDR facilities can be deployed successfully, there is little evidence to back this assumption. In fact, annual capacity from operating CCS projects resulting in dedicated storage currently amounts to less than 0.1 percent of global annual CO2 emissions, Achakulwisut said. When it comes to reducing overall global carbon emissions, she noted, CCS is not making a dent. This is likely to be the case in 2030 too, with CCS deployment at that point expected to still not move the needle on lowering emissions. “Even if all CCS facilities planned and under development worldwide become operational,” the Production Gap report explains, “only around 0.25 [gigatons] of CO2 would be captured in 2030, less than 1% of 2022 global CO2 emissions.” The report refers to an International Energy Agency dataset which projects, as of March 2023, less than 350 million metric tons of CO2 capture capacity from all of the global CCS projects planned, under construction, and operational in 2030.  The International Energy Agency’s updated Net Zero roadmap report released in September references a slightly higher figure, saying that around 400 million metric tons of CO2 could be captured by 2030 if all planned CCS projects get built, which, the agency said, is still only 40 percent of the 1 gigaton-per-year capture capacity needed by 2030 in its net zero emissions scenario.   “There’s a huge range of evidence which is very clear that CCS and CDR will not be able to scale fast enough to make a meaningful contribution to cutting emissions this decade,” Neil Grant, climate and energy analyst at Climate Analytics, said during the report’s launch event. “And that means in this decade, the solution has to be reducing fossil fuel production and use.” Carbon dioxide removal technologies, he added, “are very nascent.” Most existing direct air capture (DAC) operations are small-scale pilot projects. The world’s first commercial-scale DAC plant, called Orca and based in Iceland, has a capacity to capture up to 4,000 tons of CO2 per year – equivalent to the annual emissions of about 800 cars worldwide, or approximately three seconds worth of global CO2 emissions.  Is DAC Feasible? Yet, significant government subsidies and investment are flowing into direct air capture, and plans to develop at least 130 DAC facilities are now underway. But according to a new briefing paper from the Center for International Environmental Law, even if all the planned DAC projects in the world get built and operate at full capacity, they would be capable of removing just 4.7 million metric tons of CO2 in 2030, equivalent to a mere 0.01 percent of current global energy sector emissions. Even assuming that DAC could eventually reach a massive scale, the enormous quantities of chemicals and energy inputs required to operate the machinery raises further feasibility and sustainability questions. Essentially, the math just doesn’t add up in terms of the projected scale up of the carbon management sector in what experts say is the critical decade to curb planet-warming emissions by at least 50 percent. Experts say CCS and CDR would have to reach gigaton scale in less than 10 years, and there is no assurance that it will get there in time. A new report from the Global CCS Institute, a pro-CCS think tank and advocacy group, actually affirms this. Although there has been momentum in policies, financing, and proposed projects in the carbon management sector, there is still a big, glaring question as to whether scaling up to the gigaton level by 2030 is even feasible, according to the Institute’s Global Status of CCS 2023 report released last week. “The math also indicates that this past years impressive step-up still has us near the bottom of the staircase, so to speak, and that CCS must reach gigatonne per annum (Gtpa) scale in order to reach our emission goals,” Global CCS Institute CEO Jarad Daniels said in a media release accompanying the report. Only a few dozen CCS facilities are currently operational at the global level, 14 of which are in the U.S., with a total capacity to capture and store 49 million metric tons of CO2, the report states. However, the total capacity is not the same as the amount actually captured and sequestered, as CCS facilities often do not operate at their maximum potential. When considering the additional energy required to power CCS operations, and given that the vast majority of existing projects use the captured CO2 to extract more oil and gas – a process called enhanced oil recovery – the net result is generally more, not less, greenhouse gas emissions. As far as CCS projects that are proposed or “in the pipeline” as the report calls it, that number is 392 as of July this year. But as Daniels noted in the Institute’s report launch event on November 9, most of the facilities in development would be aiming to begin operating starting in 2030, at the earliest. There are many hurdles, such as permitting and securing financing, that projects have to overcome before they start capturing any carbon molecules. The lag time between when projects are announced and when they become operational is typically around seven years or more, the report says, acknowledging that “relatively few [new CCS projects] have yet advanced to operation.” These delays have in the past been due, at least in part, to local opposition and unsuccessful community engagement, which have resulted in some project cancellations, according to the report. “Lack of community support, coupled with permitting challenges, has become a barrier for some early development stage CCS projects in the U.S.,” the report states. Local opposition to CCS projects have delayed their construction. Credit: Matt Hrkac/Flickr (CC BY NC ND 2.0) Community opposition and public pushback to CCS projects, as DeSmog recently reported, appears to be growing across the U.S., and it demonstrates that “meaningful” community engagement rhetoric from CCS proponents does not often match the reality on the ground. One major proposed CCS infrastructure project in the U.S. – a 1,300-mile-long CO2 pipeline traversing five Midwestern states that was planned by a developer called Navigator CO2 Ventures – was canceled last month in the face of overwhelming grassroots opposition along with permitting challenges. “Unmet Expectations”  The barriers and significant questions around the feasibility of CCS technologies to even scale up at any climate-relevant level are on top of an existing track record that, at best, is not very promising and at worst could be viewed as largely a failure. Analyses from DeSmog and from IEEFA, among others, show that most large-scale CCS projects underperform or fail to meet their capture targets. As the new Production Gap Report points out, “the track record for CCS has been very poor to date, with around 80% of pilot projects over the last 30 years ending in failure.” “The U.S. has been publicly subsidizing carbon capture projects since the early 1980s,” Rees of Oil Change International said during the November 14 Gas Exports Today media briefing. “We have over 40 years of evidence that it doesn’t work.” The IEA and IPCC both recognize that carbon capture technologies have underperformed or made slower-than-expected progress. In its updated Net Zero roadmap report for example, the IEA states that “the history of [carbon capture] has largely been one of unmet expectations.” And in its Working Group III report on climate mitigation issued last year as part of the Sixth Assessment cycle, the IPCC cautions that CCS “currently faces technological, economic, institutional, ecological-environmental, and socio-cultural barriers” and notes that global deployment rates are “far below those in modeled pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C or 2°C.” Given this context, it is reasonable to doubt the promises made by carbon capture proponents. The numbers make it clear, as Climate Analytics’ Grant explained during the Production Gap Report launch event, that CCS and CDR technologies “are not going to be the solutions for cutting emissions in this critical decade.” A new Global Witness analysis further substantiates this point. The organization calculated, based on petroleum production data from Rystad, that it would take the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) 340 years to capture the carbon it had produced from the company’s planned ramp up of oil and gas extraction between now and 2030. ADNOC is headed by Al Jaber, the controversial COP28 president, and new data shows the oil major’s planned output would result in the largest overshoot of the 1.5° C goal out of any fossil fuel company in the world. The Global Witness analysis also finds that even if ADNOC reaches the 10 million metric tons per year of CO2 capture by 2030, as it promises, that would result in mitigation of just two percent of the company’s projected 492 million metric tons of carbon emissions in 2030.  “If Al Jaber is serious – if we are serious – we must immediately reject the CCS false solution and tackle the existential oil and gas problem head on,” Global Witness’s Jonathan Noronha Gant said in a statement.       “CCS Is Not the Answer” CCS critics also point to environmental, health, and safety risks that the technologies pose to communities where projects are targeted, which are often communities already overburdened by industrial pollution. Residents from these areas, such as the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast, are voicing their opposition to the buildout of carbon capture in their communities. “CCS is not the answer,” Roishetta Ozane, founder of the Vessel Project and resident of southwest Louisiana, said at the November 14 briefing. “We don’t need any more false solutions. We need real solutions with community voices and community input.” Ozane will be taking this message to COP28 in Dubai, where she will join other advocates on the frontlines of the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries’ expansion in calling for an end to this buildout and a phase out of fossil fuels. Competing with this call, however, is the narrative that emissions – not fossil fuels themselves – are the problem, and that it can be fixed through so-called “abatement” technologies – which provides cover for the continued production of coal, oil, and gas that is so clearly at odds with the rules of physics that govern the climate system. During the Production Gap Report launch event, Grant emphasized that carbon capture technologies “do not replace the need for rapid and permanent reduction of fossil fuels.” “And they therefore really can’t be used as a justification for continued expansion of fossil fuel extraction,” he added, “which is a narrative we’re seeing being pushed around the world, particularly as we come towards COP28.” The post Why the Belief That Carbon Capture Technologies Can Work at Gigaton-Scale Is a Gigantic Gamble appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy, carbon capture, COP28]

— UAE Oil Fields Constantly Flaring Despite 20-Year-Old Commitment To Stop, Analysis Shows

 

at 11/17/23 1:23am

State-owned oil and gas fields across the United Arab Emirates have flared almost constantly despite a long-standing policy to eliminate “routine” flaring in their operations, DeSmog can reveal. New data, produced exclusively for The Guardian and DeSmog, found that a single gas field in the United Arab Emirates run by state oil firm Adnoc flared more gas than all oil and gas fields in Norway last year. The Adnoc LNG field and a number of others in the UAE appear to be constantly emitting and burning polluting methane despite Adnoc’s 20-year-old policy to reduce the environmentally damaging practice to zero in on day to day operations. The revelations come as world leaders prepare to head to Dubai for the UN’s annual climate summit, known as COP, to agree on ways to cut further catastrophic temperature rise. The conference, which starts 30 November, is set to provide a litmus test for the oil and gas industry’s position on flaring, which mostly burns off excess gas released when drilling for oil, but can also take place at LNG plants, where gas is liquified for export.  Global emissions from flaring account for over 350 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually, the equivalent of more than 90 coal plants. Adnoc claims it has cut the volume of natural gas flared by more than 90 percent since the early 2000s when the company started its ‘zero routine flaring’ policy – referring to flaring that happens every day as part of normal oil operations. In October, Al Jaber announced that 20 major oil and gas producers from around the world have pledged to eliminate gas flaring and methane emissions by the end of the decade. But according to the new data by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea), a number of fields in the UAE are flaring virtually every day. Flaring also allows the escape of some unburned methane gas, which is a powerful greenhouse gas.  The analysis assessed flaring in 32 oil and gas fields in the UAE, 20 of which are run by Adnoc. It shows four fields flared on at least 97 percent of the days, with an average of just 14 days unavailable due to cloud cover.  The revelations have alarmed experts ahead of the critical COP28 climate summit, whose hosts have already been hit by accusations of greenwashing. Adnoc is the UAE’s top oil and gas producer and one of the world’s biggest producers of crude oil. “As the host of the upcoming Cop28,” said Hubert Thieriot, a data scientist at Crea who produced the flaring data, “it is critical that UAE further strengthens and respects its commitments if it wants to play a leader’s role in reducing flaring.” A spokesperson for Adnoc told the Guardian, in response to these findings: “The data on ADNOC presented in your article is misleading as satellite images may not distinguish between flaring or having a pilot flame ignited as part of normal operations.” Adnoc did not respond to a request for data on the company’s use of pilot flames. Paul Balcombe, senior lecturer in chemical engineering at Queen Mary University, was sceptical about Adnoc’s claim that the data showed pilot flares, rather than routine flaring. He pointed out that pilot flares rarely emit the quantities of gas seen in Crea’s data.  “If they are pilot flares, they are massive pilot flares and there should be efforts made to reduce them,” said Balcombe. “We do need flaring sometimes for safety reasons,” he said of the practice, which happens when no equipment has been installed to capture the escaping methane or when gas has to be unexpectedly released to avoid industrial accidents. “But the definitions on what constitutes routine flaring are open to interpretation,” added Balcombe. “Reducing flaring is a low hanging fruit in terms of emissions reductions.” Costing a Fortune Companies and major oil producing states have committed to end routine flaring by 2030, under a World Bank scheme, though the UAE is not signed up to this agreement. Adnoc LNG field on Das Island, an island off the coast of Abu Dhabi that is almost entirely repurposed as a giant gas refinery, flared 157 million cubic metres (mcm) of gas in 2022, according to the analysis.  In contrast, data collected by the World Bank shows all Norway’s oil and gas fields flared 135 mcm of gas the same year.  Another Adnoc field, Umm-Dalkh, has flared in more than 90 percent of recorded days between 2018 and 2022, according to Crea’s data.  Separate analysis from last month found that flaring is costing the UAE a fortune. The country flared, vented, and leaked gas worth $800 million in 2022, according to research by Capterio, a company that tracks flaring worldwide, published by Atlantic Council, a U.S. think tank. This appears to be a country-wide problem, the Crea data suggests, with other non-Adnoc UAE fields also appearing to flare constantly. Fateh and Fateh South West fields, both operated by Dubai Petroleum, which is 100 percent owned by the government of Dubai, recorded flaring on between 90 and 100 percent of days between 2018 and 2022, and in more than two-thirds of recorded days so far in 2023.Dubai Petroleum says it is committed to “minimise flaring”. The company did not respond to a request for comment on this story from The Guardian.   Crea’s satellite analysis shows that in 2023, flaring in the UAE is occurring less frequently overall than in 2022, with annual flaring volumes for the whole country suspected to be slightly down. The exception to that is the Adnoc LNG field. Although the number of days where flaring was spotted is down on 2022, the volume flared is on track to be greater. This is most likely because more gas is being flared on days when flaring occurs.  Mark Davis, flaring expert and CEO and founder of Capterio, explained that the definition of ‘routine flaring’ from the World Bank has “considerable wiggle room”, meaning that many fields that flare routinely are classified as zero ‘routine flaring’.   “The data is currently self-reported with no independent validation, and thirdly there is no real enforcement mechanism to incentivise producers to apply,” he said. Note on methodology The Crea data was produced using publicly available data collected by the Visual and Infrared Radiometer Suite of instruments mounted on the Suomi NPP satellite. The instruments detect points of intense heat from flares.  This data was converted into flare gas volumes using a published methodology, which is also used in the World Bank analyses. The results were cross-checked against annual flare volume data produced by the World Bank and were in close agreement. The post UAE Oil Fields Constantly Flaring Despite 20-Year-Old Commitment To Stop, Analysis Shows appeared first on DeSmog.

[Category: Energy]

As of 12/6/23 7:00pm. Last new 12/5/23 2:59pm.