In 1993 I addressed the annual US-Europe coal conference with Harlan Watson, who later headed the USA’s climate negotiation team. This is the man, and the constituency, I saw that day.
Extract from The Carbon War (Penguin 2000) p 127……Watson reached his recommendations. “What should you do, you might ask? Let me make several suggestions. First, and foremost, you must put aside your differences and get properly organised to address the issue. You need to speak with one voice. Second, you must get timely, credible and relevant information to the political decision makers, to the media, and to the public at large. Third, you need to follow closely the activities of both the INC and the IPCC, and, to the extent possible, actively participate as NGOs through trade associations.” Then, finally, to the bottom line. “Do not underestimate what you are up against. In the US, it is the combined forces of the environment community and Vice President Gore and his powerful allies in the Administration. In the past, business interests throughout the world could rely on the United States to maintain sanity in the international environmental arena – this was certainly true during the Climate Change Convention process. Well, my friends, that is not the case today, and it is time to pull up your socks, roll up your sleeves, and get to work.”
Watson finished, relishing the applause.
Constance Holmes (a coal lobbyist) fixed me with her hard stare. It seemed to be my turn. The subsequent scene was best described by the Energy Daily, an industry journal, a week later. “Global warming had an apparent cooling effect at the sixth US-European coal conference last week, as industry representatives emptied out of the conference room before an address on the issue by an internationally known environmental representative. As Greenpeace’s Jeremy Leggett took the stage, attendees left in droves, leaving perhaps 30 coal industry representatives to listen to their opposition.”
After the session was over, they took me off to another room, and a press conference for the benefit of the half-a-dozen journalists covering the conference. Most of them worked for coal industry journals. Constance Holmes again took the chair, and launched straight into the question that she evidently thought would most effectively skewer me. How could the West provide the technologies necessary to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the Third World if revenues were being drained by carbon taxes?
Just watch and see how revenues will be drained if global warming takes off as the IPCC predicts, I said. And anyhow, who said carbon taxes would have a negative economic impact? The carbon-fuel industries, mostly. Many studies suggested exactly the reverse, and the tax could even be made fiscally neutral.
Harlan Watson at that point volunteered to give the trade press his view of what was motivating environmentalists in their advocacy of carbon taxes, and indeed any measures to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. The problem, he said, was that after the collapse of communism, and the exposure of command economies as recipes only for disaster, the old left had been found themselves with nowhere to go. They had elected in large numbers to switch to the environmentalists’ bandwagon.
Fighting hard to keep the flame away from the blue touch paper now, I tried to paint a picture of a representative group of my colleagues for the journalists, and show just how many million miles Watson was away from the truth. Consider the head of Greenpeace’s delegation at the climate talks, I invited them, the senior diplomat who would by now doubtless have been an Ambassador; the concerned lawyers working on a fraction of the salary they could have made in industry; the intelligent young graduates who applied in hundreds for every grinding administrative assistant’s job.
After we finished answering questions, I turned to Watson immediately. I had managed to put the flame out by now. “You were in danger of getting a bit near to your philosophical underpinnings there, Harlan,” I laughed. “Did I understand you correctly? Do you seriously think that we are all old communists?”
His shiny face was twitching as he tried to hold my gaze. “I think there are many who have that agenda,” he said in a constricted voice.
Solarcentury
The company I founded in 1998 to design and supply solar energy solutions for the built environment. Solarcentury
Solar Aid
The charity I founded in 2006, with a 5% contribution of Solarcentury profits, to help deliver solar lighting to Africa. Solar Aid
Archive for the ‘Coal’ Category
The underpinnings of climate scepticism: extract from “The Carbon War”.
February 15, 2012 Climate, Coal“End the Big 6 Energy Fix” public campaign launches.
February 10, 2012 Clean Energy, Coal, Gas, Nuclear, OilCaroline Lucas speaking for 100 public figures: “First, we are calling on the Government to impose a similar levy to the one it has imposed on North Sea oil companies and the big banks. Over time, such a levy could raise billions, revenues that could be ring-fenced and used to ensure that every home is insulated and highly energy-efficient – starting with the homes of the fuel-poor. This would form part of a Green New Deal and would help to create thousands of new skilled jobs. Second, to prevent energy companies from passing the cost of any levy on to customers, we want the Government to give Ofgem the power to cap prices. This could be linked to the wholesale price to make energy prices fairer. Third, we want the Government to launch a public inquiry into the Big Six energy companies.”
Big 6 UK energy companies had 4 million complaints in 2011.
January 12, 2012 Coal, Gas, NuclearBill mistakes and inaccurate readings caused the most anger, a Which report finds. It makes the front page of the Daily Mail.
JL blog: Energy dramas for 2012.
January 2, 2012 Clean Energy, Climate, Coal, Finance, Gas, Nuclear, Oil2011 was a year of growing polarisation for those of us who long for renaissance fuelled by renewables. The Germans announced targets to run their railway system entirely on renewable energy, mostly wind,and solar. Yet BP announced it will quit solar entirely to pile ever further into tar sands, unconventional gas and the rest of the carbon status quo. The IEA pronounced that the cost of energy will rise “viciously” on a global basis without clean energy. Yet the British “Big Six” opted for so much gas that the installation rate of British renewables fell steeply: this despite conventional UK energy prices soaring so steeply that fully 1 in 4 of UK households fell into fuel poverty in 2011, up from 1 in 5 in 2010.
There were so many of these stark contrasts in the theatre of energy last year.
It seems that the closer renewables advocates get to their dream, the harder the defenders of the status quo push back the other way, notwithstanding the increasingly clear economic, environmental and social downsides. They surely are teeing up some dramas for 2012.
Not to mention interesting research material for neuroscientists interested in how dysfunctional human cultures work. Its not as though Big Energy, and their cosy nexus with conventional capital, just do these things and be done with it. They lobby for their short-term perceived interests – hard, and mostly below the radar – entraining many in officialdom and politics to their ruinous causes.
To the extent that solar energy in cloudy Britain might be a tiny-corner microcosm of a much bigger picture of the potential for renewable-powered renaissance, there is a particularly interesting drama unfolding as we enter 2012. In case you missed it, the British High Court ruled on 21st December that the UK government has acted illegally in proposing a retrospective reduction in the solar feed-in tariff. The arguments for and against were summarised that night on the BBC, here (headline and 7 mins 20 secs in for the detail). The government can appeal by January 4th, risking further humiliation in its efforts to cut back a solar market just a tiny fraction the size of Germany’s. Or it can switch tack, resurrect an industry that was creating thousands of jobs – at net economic benefit to the UK economy – in a time of dire need for such, while realigning with some its core strategic themes, not least a Big Society countering austerity-related unemployment with a domestic green industrial revolution. This will be a choice to watch as the dramas in the triple crunch of financial crisis, climate crisis, and energy crisis roll on in 2012.
Rebuilding the UK’s energy system by 2050: costs about the same for clean or conventional energy, DECC says.
December 28, 2011 Clean Energy, Coal, Gas, NuclearEvery person in Britain will need to pay about £5,000 a year between now and 2050 on rebuilding and using the nation’s entire energy system, new DECC figures suggest. The cost of developing clean and sustainable electricity, heating and transport will be very similar to replacing today’s conventional power stations. The forecasts come from a unique open-source analysis package, called the 2050 pathways calculator, created by Professor David MacKay, DECC chief scientific adviser. Guardian: “However, the cost of the “do nothing” option does not include the damage to the economy expected as a result of climate change, and the calculator notes that, according to the landmark Stern review: “This is the equivalent of up to £6,500 per person per year on average, on top of the cost of the energy system”.”
Violent protests against coal fired power plants in China.
December 22, 2011 CoalReuters reports that an incident in Haimen is not the first recently. Health threats seem to be driving the concerns.
EDF and other Big Energy firms have loaned 50 employees to government.
December 5, 2011 Clean Energy, Coal, Gas, OilThe Guardian reveals that at least 50 employees of companies including the Big 6 have been placed within government to work on energy issues in the past four years: free of charge and working within the departments for secondments of up to two years. “There have also been 195 meetings between ministers from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) and the energy industry between the 2010 general election and March 2011, according to a Guardian analysis of declared meetings with Decc.” Caroline Lucas: “Companies such as the big six energy firms do not lend their staff to government for nothing – they expect a certain degree of influence, insider knowledge and preferential treatment in return. … None of the staff on secondment in Decc work for renewable energy companies. … Secondments also work in reverse, with civil servants going to work in the energy industry, such as a two-year secondment to Shell and another to Horizon Nuclear Power, a joint venture of E.ON and RWE npower that aims to build nuclear power stations in the UK.”
Top 20 banks lending to coal listed by NGOs.
November 30, 2011 Climate, Coal, FinanceThree American banks –JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America – top the list of coal financiers, having between them provided at least €42bn to the coal sector since 2005. Barclays took fifth place, having lent more than €11.5bn to big coal companies in the same period.
Largest UK CCS plant opens in Yorkshire.
November 30, 2011 Climate, CoalThe plant at Ferrybridge, an SSE coal station, will capture only some of the fumes: 5 MW worth from 2,000.
Big energy is trying to maim renewables: Jeremy Leggett debates Charles Hendry.
November 5, 2011 Clean Energy, Coal, Commentaries, Gas, Nuclear, OilAt a meeting organised by Forest Row Transition Town. The energy minister’s closing remark very telling: “If they (the Big 6) were to walk away from the UK as they could do it would be a complete disaster.”
DECC announces £1bn support for 1,000 jobs at two Big 6 power plants.
October 31, 2011 Clean Energy, Coal, GasOn the day it announces cuts to tariffs that will cut thousands of jobs. Sky News has the bill at nearly £1bn for the power-plants.
“Why has Ofgem taken so long to act against big energy companies?”
October 14, 2011 Coal, GasSo asks Terry Macalister in the Guardian. Only now is the energy regulator proposing radical reform of a market that politicians have allowed the ‘Big Six’ companies to dominate.
Big 6 profits margins soar.
October 14, 2011 Coal, GasTo an average £125 per customer per year, from £15 in June, says Ofgem. They will fall back to about £90 next year. The average dual-fuel bill is now £1,345 a year following recent price rises.
SSE breaks rank to offer 100% of its electricity on the wholesale market.
October 11, 2011 Coal, GasAny household supplier will be able to buy it on the day-ahead wholesale market. This is the biggest change for almost a decade in the UK’s electricity market. Ed Miliband has pledged to force the the Big 6 to auction all of their electricity on the open market. It will buy all the electricity required for its customers from the same source.
Scottish Power shelves flagship UK CCS project.
October 6, 2011 Climate, CoalThe £1bn price tag wasn’t enough to make the Longannet project in Scotland project economically tenable, the Guardian reports. Yet more public funding would be needed.
CCS falling by wayside, IEA tells energy ministers.
September 22, 2011 Climate, CoalThe financial crisis and weakening political will means global momentum has been lost on CCS, the IEA says at a CCS review meeting in Beijing. The IEA estimates the 2C goal requires 1,500 large-scale CCS projects around the world by 2035 (20% of the roadmap to 2C). Only 74 have been announced. China should have 270 by 2035. It has six at the planning stage. Xie Zhenhua, vice-chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, says CCS is a “last resort” for China.
Four Welsh coal miners die in a mine disaster.
September 16, 2011 CoalPolice examine what bosses knew about safety conditions in the colliery, in terms of water-filled nearby abandoned mineshafts.
EDF CEO acknowledges public mistrust in big energy companies.
September 15, 2011 Clean Energy, Coal, Gas, NuclearIn joining all the other five in announcing electricity and prices rises, de Rivaz acknowledges the public’s abiding mistrust of the Big Six. He says that a formal investigation by the Competition Commission may be the only way to fix the problem. “If a Competition Commission inquiry is decided with the objective to build trust, then it is a step that should be taken. As a fair company, we have nothing to hide,”
Glencore: first CSR report reveals dozens of fatalities.
September 7, 2011 CoalThe mining and commodities company suffered 56 deaths in its 2008-10 operations and been subject to six-figure fines for environmental breaches, its first ever corporate responsibility report reveals.
Mongolia set for triple-listing $3bn coal IPO.
August 31, 2011 Coal, FinanceThe Mongolian government is heading for an unusual listing of its vast Tavan Tolgoi coal deposit on three exchanges: London, Hong Kong and Ulan Bator. If it incorporates the company Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi in London, it will go straight into the FTSE 100. Goldman Sachs heads the cast of investment banks doing the deal.
Investors ask BoE to probe risk that fossil-fuel reserves pose “sub-prime” risk.
January 19, 2012 Climate, Coal, Commentaries, Finance, Gas, OilFossil fuel reserves listed in the City of London are “sub-prime” assets posing a systemic risk to economic stability. So warns a high-profile coalition of investors, politicians and scientists , writing an open letter to Sir Mervyn King asking him to launch an investigation. Signatories include Aviva Investors, Climate Change Capital, Conservative politician Zac Goldsmith and Solarcentury chairman Jeremy Leggett. Abatement policies could mean billions of pounds of fossil fuel reserves will rapidly lose value and cause a “major problem” for institutional investors and pension funds. Guardian: “CarbonTracker’s latest report reveals that coal reserves held by 16 London-listed companies will release 45bn tonnes of CO2 when burned, equivalent to 86 years of annual UK emissions, which are the tenth highest in the world. Most of the coal is in other countries such as Australia and South Africa.”
Tags: Banks, UK