Wednesday, November 10, 2021

BLUE H2

Federal government putting $1.35 million into Alberta hydrogen projects

Author of the article:Lisa Johnson
Publishing date:Nov 09, 2021 •

Daniel Vandal, minister responsible for Prairies Economic Development Canada and minister responsible for the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, announces funding of $1.35 million through PrairiesCan to help modernize C-FER technologies to test their products and processes to demonstrate the value of Canadian-made technologies for the global hydrogen industry on Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021 in Edmonton. PHOTO BY GREG SOUTHAM /Postmedia

Ottawa is putting $1.35 million into helping Alberta companies engineer and test hydrogen fuel infrastructure, equipment and technologies.

Dan Vandal, federal minister in charge of Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan), said Tuesday the funding will help Alberta companies get ahead in the rapidly growing hydrogen economy.

“We are investing in projects that provide entrepreneurs and provide businesses with the knowledge that they need, and the resources they need, to develop industry leading-edge hydrogen products and technologies,” Vandal said at his first announcement since being appointed minister two weeks ago.

C-FER Technologies, a non-profit subsidiary of government agency Alberta Innovates, provides experimental testing and specialized engineering consulting services out of Edmonton. It will use the federal funding to upgrade one of its facilities to help test new products and procedures for hydrogen transportation and storage.

Alberta Innovates is also chipping in $300,000. Combined with contributions from private companies, a total of $2.8 million is going towards the initiative.

Vandal estimated that 50 small and medium-sized energy companies will benefit from the program.

Kirk Hamilton, C-FER’s senior engineering adviser, said a key challenge is for the industry to develop the necessary infrastructure to move hydrogen once it’s generated.

“It is important to understand the compatibility of legacy and new equipment with hydrogen and hydrogen-natural gas blends,” he said.

The funding will also provide a boost for upcoming projects that include evaluating existing natural gas pipeline systems for transporting hydrogen, developing new technologies for underground hydrogen storage, and demonstrating new infrastructure for exporting to foreign markets.

Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi, a former Liberal cabinet minister, said in the PrairiesCan news release the city supports local tech companies like C-FER.

“(They) will accelerate the transition to a new energy economy that will create jobs, attract workers and talent to Edmonton, all while growing our economy,” he said.

Vandal said he met with Sohi earlier Tuesday morning, was meeting with local industry leaders in the afternoon, and his office had been in contact with the provincial government.

“My goal and objective, certainly in the future, is to work with the elected officials of the legislature of Alberta and I’m very much looking forward to that,” said Vandal.

While there were no provincial ministers at the announcement, Jobs, Economy and Innovation Minister Doug Schweitzer said in the news release diversifying the energy sector is important to the province’s economic recovery plan.

“Alberta is already a world leader in hydrogen production, and through investments like this, we will retain that leadership as we accelerate innovative technology solutions that will help grow our clean hydrogen production to meet national and international demand,” said Schweitzer, who attended the announcement of a new business accelerator in Calgary Tuesday morning.

Alberta’s natural gas and electricity associate minister Dale Nally has been prominent at previous provincial hydrogen industry-related announcements, including with the release of a hydrogen road map last Friday.

Nally’s office did not directly respond to Postmedia’s question about why he did not attend.

Taylor Hides, Nally’s press secretary, said in a statement Tuesday they are happy to see the federal government investing in Alberta’s economy and to have Alberta Innovates represent the province.

Laura Kilcrease, CEO of Alberta Innovates, said in a release that the support from PrairiesCan will enable entrepreneurs and businesses to accelerate the development of hydrogen technology.

Alberta’s map sets the province’s sights on exporting blue hydrogen — which is produced from natural gas through carbon capture and storage technology — globally by 2030. The federal hydrogen strategy, first released last December , similarly embraces blue hydrogen as the favourite for large-scale, low-cost production.

lijohnson@postmedia.com

Calgary committee endorses climate emergency declaration

By Adam MacVicar & Adam Toy Global News
Posted November 9, 2021

The City of Calgary is one step closer to declaring a climate emergency after a unanimous vote by a city committee on Tuesday. As Adam MacVicar reports, council hopes the symbolic gesture will open up more investment opportunities.

An effort to declare a climate emergency in Calgary cleared its first hurdle Tuesday.

Meeting for the first time this term, the city’s executive committee voted unanimously to have the notice of motion debated at council as a whole, including a final vote.

The notice of motion from Ward 5 Coun. Raj Dhaliwal calls for the City of Calgary to declare a climate emergency and adjust the city’s emissions reduction targets to net-zero by 2050. The current goal within the City of Calgary is to reduce 80 per cent of 2005 emissions in the same timeframe.

READ MORE: Climate emergency declaration could have Calgary aiming for net zero by 2050

According to experts, that is the base target around the globe to limit warming of the climate to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Mayor Jyoti Gondek helped the novice councillor write the notice of motion and a number of other councillors, including Ward 9’s Gian-Carlo Carra and Ward 12’s Evan Spencer, were among those named co-signatories to the declaration.

Dhaliwal, who worked in the energy sector prior to running for public office, said climate change was an issue he heard about during the campaign following the hailstorm in the city’s northeast, with many of his constituents still waiting for repairs following the billion-dollar hailstorm in 2020. Dhaliwal said he heard “one simple question” while campaigning.

“Why isn’t city doing more on climate change? Why are we kicking the can down the street?” Dhaliwal told the committee. “My kids or their kids, they don’t want to see this again in their lifetime.”

“They were telling me they want to see robust plans that will protect not only us but future generations and make the city more resilient in a way.”

According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, Calgary and Alberta have been subject to at least six of the top 10 most-costly years on record from severe weather. The 2020 hailstorm resulted in more than $! billion in insured damages.

READ MORE: Majority support Trudeau’s climate policy pitches made at COP26, poll suggests

The climate emergency declaration aims to make climate change “a strategic priority” and calls on administration to develop strategic business plans and budgets across each city department to invest in and implement emissions-reduction and climate risk-reduction projects.

Proponents said the declaration would unlock opportunities for investment dollars to come into the city.

READ MORE: Calgary election: The future of the city with a changed climate

“There are numerous business advantages. There are investment opportunities that we are missing out on,” Ward 14 Coun. Peter Demong said. “The entrepreneurial spirit here in Calgary will take this and run with it. So I’m looking forward to it.”

Demong added investment drawn to Calgary as a result of the declaration could help lift the city from a pandemic-induced recession.

“What it does is it helps position the City of Calgary in terms of the language of the globe,” head of Alberta Eco Trust Climate Fund Mike Mellross told Global News.

“The rest of the globe is very interested in low-carbon solutions and transitioning the economy to low-carbon pathways.

“A climate emergency helps to signal that to various entities that might want to invest in Calgary and that actually can help attract talent.”
Skepticism shows

Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot hoped to move some of the language in the motion to make net zero a goal rather than an active process. Dick Ebersohn, the city manager leading climate change and environment policy planning, said the language in the motion is standard across worldwide cities who have also declared climate emergencies.

Chabot challenged the idea of human-induced climate change, citing “different presentations” he’s listened to.

“There’s been some that would suggest that the rise in the earth’s temperature actually preceded the rise in the CO2 levels,” Chabot said.

READ MORE: Alberta economy to return to pre-pandemic levels by 2022; Calgary mayor sets stage for city’s recovery

Gondek quickly noted that Chabot should hold his debate until the Nov. 15 city council meeting, as Tuesday’s committee meeting was more a matter of technical review of the proposed motion.

Amendments to the notice of motion also call for the implementation of a carbon budget as well as advocacy for funding to reduce climate risk to public infrastructure including upstream flood and drought mitigation on the Bow River.

It also calls for the City of Calgary to work with civic partners and subsidiaries to get aligned with the net-zero-by-2050 target.

2:19 Alberta’s economy looks to transition to renewable energy – Nov 1, 2021

“When we start looking at our relationship with how we move around the city — whether it be transit, active mobility, accessibility lanes and so on — that’s one huge way of us changing our culture of convenience and our lifestyle to creating a future-friendly, climate-resilient city,” Ward 8 Coun. Courtney Walcott said.

“How we build, our land use, the strategies that we employ at a city level to create those changes are going to be some of the most impactful shifts that the city will have a hand in.”

According to Ebersohn, work is underway to provide Calgarians an incentive to retrofit their homes with more sustainable materials and energy sources like solar panels.

Ebersohn also told Global News a strategy is underway to transition the city’s fleet of vehicles to help towards emissions-reduction targets.

“Commercial and residential sectors are key sectors for us to intervene in,” Ebersohn said. “It’s the buildings and the transportation sector that are the key contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, and that’s what we need to focus on.”

Reports into these initiatives and strategies are expected next year which will include more details as well as a better idea of costs for the city and taxpayers.
New time, new council

The federal government and the cities of Edmonton, Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal have all declared climate emergencies, most in 2019, leaving Calgary as a laggard.

Whether the past city councillors would have been as favourable of such a declaration was speculation Carra would not engage in on Tuesday.

But asked whether it was the current time the city is living in or the new members of council that led to the endorsement for the declaration of a climate emergency, the Ward 9 representative said “yes.”

1:45 Climate change action top of mind for Calgarians: poll – Sep 8, 2021

“I suspect the climate emergency motion would not have passed in the last council, and I think that declaring a climate emergency is a declaration that we’re doing things differently and we are responding to the will of the electorate in terms of addressing the challenges facing our city right now,” Carra said.

Demong — one of four returning members of council — was also unsure of whether city council would have passed such a declaration before 2021.

“If it did, it would have been tight, but I try not to guess what council’s going to do or should, would have or should have done.”

The motion to declare a climate emergency in Calgary goes to the next meeting of city council on Nov. 15.

Braid: Climate emergency declaration boosts Calgary's economic recovery

At this crucial stage, Calgary must not seem lukewarm about the climate action investors want

Author of the article: Don Braid • Calgary Herald
Publishing date:Nov 09, 2021

Mayor Jyoti Gondek speaks at an orientation outlining the 2022 Adjustments to the One Calgary Service Plans and Budgets report at Calgary Municipal Building on Monday, November 8, 2021. PHOTO BY AZIN GHAFFARI/POSTMEDIA
Article content

Mayor Jyoti Gondek’s declaration of climate emergency won’t face much trouble from her new council. It’s likely to pass by 12-3 or better when the vote comes Nov. 15.

About time, too. More than 500 Canadian cities, towns, hamlets and the federal Parliament have already passed this resolution. Edmonton did so in 2019.

By failing to sign on, Calgary risks looking like a climate change denier. That would harm the city’s reputation — and economy.

Premier Jason Kenney, exercising his knee-jerk reflex to almost anything coming out of Calgary council, scolded Gondek when she announced her intention.

“In a city that has been suffering from near double-digit unemployment, that has gone through five years of deep economic adversity, I find that a peculiar priority,” Kenney said.

“I would have thought that the mayor of Calgary’s top priority would be getting Calgarians back to work,” he said. “That’s certainly my top priority.”

But this climate declaration is very much about jobs. It’s a signal to the country and the world that the city is open to investment in technology and innovation, as well as the oil and gas industry’s transition to net-zero emissions.

That 2019 declaration sure didn’t hurt Edmonton. Although times are far from easy there, the capital has done much better than Calgary.

Why did glacial cycles intensify a million years ago? Researchers find clues on the bed of the Atlantic Ocean

by Earth Institute at Columbia University

Something big happened to the planet about a million years ago. There was a major shift in the response of Earth's climate system to variations in our orbit around the Sun. The shift is called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. Before the MPT, cycles between glacial (colder) and interglacial (warmer) periods happened every 41,000 years. After the MPT, glacial periods became more intense—intense enough to form ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere that lasted 100,000 years. This gave Earth the regular ice-age cycles that have persisted into human time.

Scientists have long puzzled over what triggered this. A likely reason would be a phenomenon called Milankovitch cycles—cyclic changes in Earth's orbit and orientation toward the Sun that affect the amount of energy that Earth absorbs. This, scientists agree, has been the main natural driver of alternating warm and cold periods for millions of years. However, research has shown that the Milankovitch cycles did not undergo any kind of big change a million years ago, so something else likely was at work.

Coinciding with the MPT, a large system of ocean currents that helps move heat around the globe experienced a severe weakening. That system, which sends heat north through the Atlantic Ocean, is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Was this slowdown related to the shift in glacial periods? If so, how and why? These have been open questions. A new paper published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences proposes an answer.

The researchers analyzed cores of deep-sea sediments taken in the south and north Atlantic, where ancient deep waters passed by and left chemical clues. "What we found is the North Atlantic, right before this crash, was acting very differently than the rest of the basin," said lead author Maayan Yehudai, who did the work as a Ph.D. student at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Prior to that oceanic circulation crash, ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere began to stick to their bedrock more effectively. This caused glaciers to grow thicker than they had before. This in turn led to a greater global cooling than before, and disrupted the Atlantic heat conveyor belt. This led to both stronger ice ages and the ice-age cycle shift, says Yehudai.

The research supports a long-debated hypothesis that the gradual removal of accumulated slippery continental soils during previous ice ages allowed ice sheets to cling more tightly to the older, harder crystalline bedrock underneath, and grew thicker and more stable. The findings indicate that this growth and stabilization just before the weakening of the AMOC shaped the global climate.

"Our research addresses one of the biggest questions about the largest climate change we had since the onset of the ice ages," said Yehudai. "It was one of the most substantial climate transitions and we don't fully understand it. Our discovery pins the origin of this change to the Northern Hemisphere and the ice sheets that evolved there as driving this shift towards the climate patterns we observe today. This is a very important step toward understanding what caused it and where it came from. It highlights the importance of the North Atlantic region and ocean circulation for present and future climate change."

The research was led also by Yehudai's advisor, Lamont geochemist Steven Goldstein, along with Lamont graduate student Joohee Kim. Other collaborators included Karla Knudson, Louise Bolge and Alberto Malinverno of Lamont-Doherty; Leo Pena and Maria Jaume-Segui of the University of Barcelona; and Torsten Bickert of the University of Bremen. Yehudai is now at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.A 50,000-year history of current flow yields new climate clues

More information: Evidence for a Northern Hemispheric trigger of the 100,000-y glacial cyclicity, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2020260118.

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Provided by Earth Institute at Columbia University

Biden ‘antagonism’ to U.S. oil industry is strange: Daniel Yergin

"The rest of the world is saying this is really strange"

Author of the article:
Bloomberg News
David Wethe and Alix Steel
Publishing date:Nov 09, 2021 •
A drill rig in Loving County, Texas.
PHOTO BY ANGUS MORDANT/REUTERS FILES

While President Joe Biden has been “jaw-boning” OPEC nations to pump more crude, the rest of the world finds it odd that the leader of the top oil producer isn’t paying more attention to domestic shale, said oil historian Daniel Yergin.

“There’s a basic antagonism and lack of interest — indifference — to the industry, although it has 10.5 million people work in it,” Yergin, vice chairman of IHS Markit Ltd., said in a Bloomberg Television interview on Monday. “The rest of the world is saying this is really strange.”

As Biden considers tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to stem a surge in gasoline prices, Yergin said there isn’t much the White House can do. Talk of releasing crude from the reserve always comes up anytime gasoline prices are high, he said.

“President Biden has been in Washington a long time and knows that high gasoline prices are not good for incumbents,” Yergin said. “They’re obviously worried about 2022 and people do vote their wallets.”

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Pressure Mounts On Biden To Tap U.S. Oil Reserves

By Tom Kool - Nov 09, 2021, 2:00 PM CST

With OPEC+ refusing to pump more oil and Saudi Arabia increasing its official selling prices, pressure is increasing on President Biden to consider tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserves

Chart of the Week

- Netting a third straight month of declines, Chinese crude oil imports dropped to 8.94 million b/d in October, the lowest level since July 2018.

- The regional electricity mandates contributed to a fall in utilization rates to 81%, a five-month low, despite robust demand for transportation fuels.

- Independent refiners were limited in their refining as the Chinese government only issued its last batches of import quotas in early October, luckily China still has some 830 MMbbls of crude inventories, down 80 MMbbls on the year.

Market Movers

- The US conglomerate GE (NYSE:GE) will be split into three public companies focusing on energy, healthcare, and aviation, sending its stock up 7% on the day.

- In a rare move for a Western major, US oil firm ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) announced it took an FID on a $10 billion petchem project in China’s Guangdong province that would specialize in performance polymers.

- Spain’s oil firm CEPSA is considering the sale of its chemicals business valued at $3.5 billion as it seeks to garner funds for its transition towards renewable energy, with Citibank chosen to identify possible bidders.

Tuesday, November 09, 2021

The US’ standoff with OPEC has become the main talking point of this week - not only did Saudi Arabia rebuff Washington’s calls for more output, but it also hiked its December official selling prices way beyond market expectations. Whilst US crude inventories have reportedly risen for the third straight week, the pressure is now on the Biden Administration to consider further SPR releases. Meanwhile, jet cracks have bounced back to prominence on the back of travel restrictions being lifted globally (despite both Europe and Asia seeing case spikes), adding some unseasonal strength to middle distillates.

US House of Representatives Approves $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill. The Biden Administration finally managed to ram through the bipartisan 1 trillion bill that would increase baseline funding on infrastructure by 550 billion and more than 100 billion on clean energy projects.

Gazprom Starts Filling up European Storage. Despite some concerns that Russia’sGazprom (MCX:GAZP) did not book any additional capacity via Ukraine and kept Yamal-Europe deliveries into Germany at zero on Monday, the Russian firm stated today it started to send gas towards its European storage.

Aramco Sees Spare Oil Capacity Shrinking. The Saudi national oil company Saudi Aramco (TADAWUL:2222) said it expects the current 3-4 million b/d global spare production capacity to diminish significantly next year once jet demand returns in full.

Canada’s Oil Sands on Track for All-Time High. Despite the ongoing COP26 hype, Canada’s oil sands producers are on track to reach an all-time high production rate of 3.5 million b/d by December amidst a nationwide move to focus on tight budget discipline and higher dividends.

Qatar Wants More LNG Tankers. In addition to its currently operating fleet of 45 Q-Flex and Q-Max carriers, Qatar has placed another order for six new LNG vessels with South Korean shipyards as it moves to bring its total LNG fleet tally to 100 by the end of 2027.

China’s Coal Production Reaches Multi-Year Peak. Chinese authorities reported that daily average national coal output reached 11.93 million tons over the first week of November, setting the scene for further price declines as Beijing is doing its utmost to alleviate the risks of a prolonged energy crunch. Related: Oil Rally Reverses On Signs Of Cooling Demand

Venezuela Uses Sanctions Calm to Increase Output. Out of the public eye for several months, Venezuela’s national oil company PDVSA raised overall production to more than 600,000 b/d last month as it received Iranian condensate to dilute the extra-heavy crude from the Orinoco Belt.

Saudi Arabia Wants to Pay Back Debts with Windfall Profits. According to media reports, Saudi Arabia is looking to amend the terms of a 16 billion loan due in 2023 and reduce the size of the credit facility, as Riyadh seeks to improve its credit ratings on the back of high oil prices.

Alliance Refinery Set to Become Export Terminal. Unable to sell the 255,000 b/d Alliance Refinery which suffered the most damage from Hurricane Ida, US major Phillips 66 decided to convert the refinery into an oil export terminal, to be finalized by 2022.

UK Funds Rolls Royce to Develop Nuclear. The UK government provided a $550 million backing to Rolls Royce (LON:RR) to develop the country’s first small modular nuclear reactor as London seeks non-intermittent energy sources to complement its vast wind capacity.

Italy’s ENI Quits South Africa Block. The Italian oil major ENI (NYSE:E) withdrew from an offshore block in South Africa, a few months after its six-well drilling programs elicited a strong response from local environmentalists as the drilling would be near sites considered ecologically fragile.

Morocco Looks Towards LNG After Algeria Feud. Having been cut off from Algerian pipeline gas exports on the back of a political spat, Morocco is now considering deploying an FSRU unit to start importing LNG as soon as possible.

Gambia Re-Offers Block Relinquished by BP. Less than a year after BP (NYSE:BP)exited Gambia’s offshore block A1 citing its pivot towards low-carbon projects, the African nation’s government is offering the block in a new bidding round.

By Tom Kool for Oilprice.com

U.K. Rejects Alliance Seeking Fixed Date on Fossil Fuel Phaseout

November 9, 2021 EnergyNow Media

Nov 9, 2021

(Bloomberg)The U.K. won’t join an alliance of countries fixing a date to phase out fossil fuel production, in a move that calls into question the COP26 host nation’s climate leadership.The Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance is being spearheaded by the governments of Denmark and Costa Rica and is expected to announce new member countries on Wednesday at the climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland.

Limiting oil and gas production is one of the key priorities for capping global warming at 1.5-degrees Celsius. Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency said no new oil and gas fields should come online if a climate crisis is to be averted.

But the U.K. — which recently had to contend with record-high natural gas prices — says it won’t back the alliance because ending fossil fuel production could cause a cliff edge in energy supply.

“No other significant oil and gas producing nation has gone as far as the U.K. in supporting sector’s gradual transition to a low carbon future,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

“While the U.K.’s reliance on fossil fuels continues to fall, there will continue to be ongoing but diminishing need for oil and gas over the coming years while we ramp up renewable energy capacity.”

The U.K. is seeking to become climate neutral by 2050 and in March announced a plan to decarbonize oil and gas production in the North Sea.

The Sponsors of COP26 Are Behind the Corporate Greenwashing Agenda

COP26 has been sold as a conference where world leaders will finally tackle climate change. But for its corporate sponsors, the conference is an opportunity to greenwash their practices of polluting for profit.

Former US president Barack Obama speaks during day nine of COP26 on November 8, 2021, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Ian Forsyth / Getty Images)

BYROBBIE KIRK
JACOBIN
11.08.2021

This month’s COP26 conference in Glasgow brings together world leaders behind a promise to finally take effective action on climate change. The profiles of those leaders themselves, whose grand statements have been plastered across the TV screens of the world, leave plenty to be desired: Most of the evidence suggests that they are unfit to lead on an issue that the rest of the year they basically ignore.

But beyond the sound bites, a more realistic understanding of the conference can be found by taking a deeper look into the “principal partners” that the conference’s website so proudly presents. If mainstream commentators were surprised by Greta Thunberg’s description of COP26 as a “greenwashing festival” and a “celebration of blah blah blah,” there was plenty of evidence for this trajectory in its list of corporate sponsors.

First up is Unilever, one of the world’s largest polluters, which produces enough plastic to cover eleven football pitches per day. A quick look at some plastic pollution NGOs confirms a considerable overlap between companies involved in initiatives supposedly intended to reduce plastic waste and those who produce the most plastic waste. Last year, Unilever elicited widespread praise for making moves toward sustainable palm oil production, but that shift only came after a long-standing history of relationships with rogue actors destroying rainforests, according to the Rainforest Action Network. (Another similar consumer giant partnered with COP is IKEA, which produces more emissions when shipping its cargo around the world than even Amazon.)

Unilever is followed by Scottish gas giants SSE and Scottish Power. In October last year, SSE was named as Scotland’s second-biggest polluter. One study from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency in 2019 found that SSE produces more than 1.6 million tons of carbon dioxide from their Peterhead power station each year. Another partner, National Grid — the company responsible for running the country’s electricity network — has faced challenges by activists over its decision not to meet the standards set by the 2015 Paris Climate Accords.

Then we come to the tech giant Microsoft. Microsoft is famous for its questionable work practices, including the alleged use of child labor. In environmental terms, a quick Google search confirms that Microsoft is doing everything it can to tackle climate change and you shouldn’t investigate any further. The company makes the bold statement of intent to be carbon-neutral by 2025, and indeed, it looks as though it may be successful — but its collaboration with major extractors throws the usefulness of this label into doubt. In Texas, for example, Microsoft has to help extract more than 50,000 barrels of oil per day from the Permian basin.

The example of Microsoft shows the major limitations that come with individualizing “carbon-neutral” goals. Failing to consider the collective processes through which these companies profit from one another enables them to evade meaningful criticism and change. Another example is Sky, which claims to be headed towards carbon neutrality; Sky’s partnership with Qatar Airways paints a different picture of the media group’s commitment to zero emissions. Similarly, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is in partnerships in a number of carbon-emitting industries despite its claim to be going “carbon-neutral.”

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which also features among the list of partners, was found in 2019 to be one of the highest polluting companies in Scotland. To be fair to GSK, a large proportion of that pollution comes from the greenhouse gas contained in the inhalers it manufactures, which, according to the Financial Times, is 1,500 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

There is an alternative type of inhaler — a “dry powder” inhaler — that is common in Scandinavia, but these are not suitable for everyone, so GSK is looking into other options. It’s hard not to wonder whether the impetus to find those green alternatives is reduced when the polluting version currently sells in the United States for between $250 and $350 per unit — lasting about a month — to asthma suffers who have no other choice.

COP26’s retail backing comes from Sainsbury’s, one of the UK’s largest supermarket stores with over 1,400 locations nationwide. In 2019, Greenpeace named Sainsbury’s as “the worst” supermarket for reducing plastic waste. The appearance of another British-based consumer goods company, Reckitt, on the list of official partners also raised the hackles of climate campaigners, given its reliance on Wilmar International for palm oil resources. Wilmar has been criticized not only for the deforestation commonly associated with palm oil production, but also implicated in alleged human rights abuses, including the use of child labor, according to Amnesty International.

Finally, we come to the transportation giant Jaguar Land Rover. This company has, as recently as 2019, had to recall over 40,000 vehicles for emitting more carbon emissions than officially stated. A 2017 white paper found Land Rover to be the worst performing car manufacturer on the planet in terms of emissions, with new Land and Range Rover models producing several times more nitrogen oxide emissions than the average new car. The now merged company has even faced fines for “lagging behind” their competitors in the race to reduce emissions.

Not every company involved in sponsoring COP26 has such explicitly poor climate credentials as some of those listed above, and nearly all of them have made commitments to become carbon-neutral in a maximum of a couple of decades. But these corporate giants have already done serious environmental damage, and the evidence gives strong indication that their latest commitments are not to be trusted.

Private companies do not exist to serve the needs of the people or the fight against climate change. Their single goal is to profit, and the imperative for profit will reliably outweigh any of their green concerns. For many, sponsoring COP26 serves that goal by acting as an opportunity to greenwash their own responsibility in the crisis we now face.

For climate action to be successful, it must do away with the notion of corporate sponsors. World leaders cannot take hospitality, money, and direction from those they should be fighting in the battle to save the planet. What we need is an economic system that puts people and planet before profit — and that can never be built with the support of corporate interests.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robbie Kirk is a student at Aberdeen University.

Climate NGOs threaten legal action against German car giants

EURACTIV with Reuters
Nov 9, 2021

Greenpeace and Deutsche Umwelthilfe demand that the automakers stop producing combustion engine cars by 2030 - earlier than the 2035 effective ban proposed by the EU in July.

[LanaElcova / Shutterstock.com]

Greenpeace and German environmental NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe will take legal action against Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz, and gas and oil firm Wintershall Dea if they do not step up policies to tackle climate change, they said on Friday 5 November.

“Negotiations at COP26 in Glasgow indicate that the 1.5-degree target is at stake and can only be met with a bold change of course in politics and business. But while people suffer from floods and droughts triggered by the climate crisis, CO2 emissions from transport continue to rise,” said Martin Kaiser, executive director of Greenpeace Germany.

“Car companies like Volkswagen need to take responsibility and act much faster to phase out the highly-polluting internal combustion engine, and decarbonise their activities with no further delay,” he added.

The cases would be modelled on one brought against Royal Dutch Shell in the Netherlands last year. It argued the company’s lack of climate action constituted a failure in its duty of care to citizens, which led to a May court ruling mandating the company to reduce its CO2 output by 45% from 2019 levels by 2030.

Greenpeace and Deutsche Umwelthilfe demand that the automakers stop producing combustion engine cars by 2030 – earlier than the 2035 effective ban proposed by the EU in July – and that Wintershall Dea refrains from exploring any new oil and gas fields from 2026.

These deadlines are necessary to meet the goals of the Paris climate accords and German climate law, the NGOs argue.

They set a deadline of a few weeks for the companies to respond to their demands. Should they fail to do so, the NGOs will file lawsuits in German courts, they said.

Daimler and BMW said they were committed to the goals of the Paris climate accords and were already on the path to climate neutrality.

On 14 July, the EU announced plans to ban the production of new cars and vans that produce carbon emissions by 2035 as part of its ‘Fit for 55’ climate package, a series of laws aimed at reducing emissions across the bloc by 55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.

At present, EU-produced cars are allowed to emit 95g of carbon per kilometre driven. Under the EU proposals, this will be scaled back by 55% by 2030, moving to 0g in 2035.

However, NGOs have pushed for a more ambitious timeline, highlighting member states, including Ireland, Sweden, and the Netherlands, that have set a 2030 deadline for banning the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles.

The European Commission has said it expects “almost 100%” of cars on the roads in 2050 to be emissions-free.

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Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Why did glacial cycles intensify a million years ago? Researchers find clues on the bed of the Atlantic Ocean

Pressure Mounts On Biden To Tap U.S. Oil Reserves

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