We are really pleased that Simon Pirani will be speaking at the Scot.E3 conference on 16th November. Simon is the author of ‘Burning Up: A Global History of Fossil Fuel Consumption’ (Pluto, 2018). Here’s a video of him speaking about the book:
Category: Transitions
Carbon Capture and Storage
Mainstream policies on tackling the climate crisis centre round the possibilities of continuing to use hydrocarbons while reducing emissions through carbon capture and storage (CCS). The Scottish Government seems increasingly interested in this approach. Over the next few weeks we want to promote critical discussion on CCS. As a first step we are pleased to share the video of a webinar that FOE(Scotland) did with Friends of the Earth International on BECCS (bioenergy carbon and capture and storage). Please comment and send ideas for more contributions and other resources that it would be useful to share.
Upcoming events in Fife, Glasgow and Edinburgh
Thursday 12thSeptember: Support Global action on climate crisis – meeting called by Edinburgh Trades Council at the Quaker, Meeting House, 7 Victoria Terrace EH1 2JL
Saturday 14thSeptember 11am: Demonstration organised by Fife Trades Council and the STUC – assemble Kirkcaldy Town House –if you are from Edinburgh and could volunteer to take the Scot.E3 banner – please let us know by emailing triple.e.scot@gmail.com
Friday 20thSeptember:Climate strike – see details at https://scote3.wordpress.com/2019/09/09/climate-strike-20th-september/
Tuesday 24thSeptember: 7pm – 9pm:Stopping North Sea Oil and Gas Extraction – Scot.E3 meeting with speaker from Friends of the Earth Scotland, at the Kinning Park Complex, 43 Cornwall Street, Glasgow G41 1BA
Thursday 16thOctober: 7.30pm:Thinking global, acting local – the politics and practice of just transition – Scot.E3 meeting, part of the Edinburgh World Justice Festival at the Augustine Church, George 4thBridge, Edinburgh EH1 1EL
Saturday 16thNovember, 10am – 5pm:2019 Scot.E3 conference – ‘Thinking globally, acting locally – organising for a just transition’ Saturday October 5th at the St. Ninian’s Hall, Charteris Centre, The Pleasance, Edinburgh. Please share the FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1133891030332559/ and the Eventbrite link https://tinyurl.com/y6bt6p5j
Confronting corporate power
A month ago we reported on the launch of the “Fife Ready For Renewal” campaign to insist that production work for the new Neart na Gaoithe wind farm should take place at the currently unoccupied Bifab yards in Burntisland and Methil. On Friday 5th July the campaign stepped up a notch when 100 pickets assembled in Edinburgh.
Ex-Bifab workers, reps of 5 or 6 unions, School Strikers, ScotE3, Friends of the Earth and others surrounded the EDF Renewables HQ in Morrison Street, Edinburgh. An expert bugler, echoing his fanfares round the tall buildings, attracted a lot of passing attention. No uniformed police. Four School Strikers were lined up behind a very long banner. They were shy so we got them to go to the front. Good speeches. The plan had been to present a letter to EDF, listing questions and demands. But we arrived to find their door locked. So the questions and demands were magicked onto two long scrolls, which were displayed at the front of the protest and photographed. Then it was decided we should march round the side of the building to see if there was a back door open so the original letter could be presented. There was a back door – a big revolving one, behind which four large security guards retreated when they saw us coming – a lot of loud music and chanting by this time on a good PA system. Good large flags, multiplied by reflexion in glass walls. Two people were allowed inside to give the letter to the guards, then one worker managed to push his way backwards through the door with a big flag, which he waved at us through the glass with a big smile, while the guards pinioned him. There was a point when it looked as if the crowd would push through the door, but not this time. The guards nudged the worker back though the door, then decided to lock it. This was the best bit – a guard on his knees inside struggling to lock the door with a ground-bolt, but failing to get any of his big bunch of keys to fit. This gave a great photo opportunity, and was greeted with hilarity by the crowd, who offered technical training for EDF workers.
Thanks to Mike and Eileen for words and images.
Urban change in a time of climate crisis
Housing is a central issue in the transition to a long term sustainable economy. As a group Scot.E3 has produced resources on Fuel Poverty and we are currently working on more resources that look at how passive houses and a mass campaign of home insulation could contribute to a just transition while at the same time as improving the quality off people’s lives. We’re pleased to publish a post by Save Leith Walk activist Ian Hood on the work that the campaign has done to think about the future of hosing in their area.
Early in 2018, it became clear that developers wanted to demolish a long parade of shops in Leith Walk and replace it with a student accommodation. A popular local campaign emerged to challenge this and in January 2019 Edinburgh Council agreed that the building should not be demolished and that the proposed development was unacceptable. Planning Permission was refused.
But the campaign has always been about more than just opposing the wishes of developers. To be successful in the long run we need to promote an alternative vision, one that reflects the needs of the local community and can take it forward.
Over the last year campaign members have spoken to thousands of local workers and residents about what is important to them. We have directly canvassed the opinions of hundreds of local people about their preferences for new development in the Leith Walk area. This was followed up by a local community planning workshop that looked at the needs and wishes of people who lived in the area.
And at the heart of the emerging view was the sense that any new development had to be both sustainable and promote strong environmental values.
We did not create a single business plan or an architectural map for developers. We identified the three different elements that can contribute to the vision. Sketch maps that illustrate each of these were drawn up. The need for more social housing dominated in all of the visions and also important were business space, community support and green space.
Running through the core of the vision is the idea that ecological and environmental issues are not add ons at the end of a planning process but integral to any design.
Community Housing (see image above) faces up to the long term problem of housing provision in Leith and provides a range of solutions to housing need. Building diverse housing that allows people to live and play together strengthens our communities in fundamental ways.
- Opening up to the Leith Walk community by creating new access through the centre of the building.
- A covered walkway could be created at the rear of the building bringing the housing units into connection with the sandstone building.
- Up to Eleven housing blocks in different sizes and shapes could be built in the land behind offering a range of housing opportunities including
- Open Market homes,
- intergenerational housing,
- flexible and adaptable homes,
- co-housing models
- Designed to the Passive Housing standards making environmentally friendly homes.
- Living walls could blend the development into the surrounding space
- There could be a shared guest house and other community space reducing the need for spare rooms and encouraging sharing.
- Affordable student housing owned by the community.
Community Cohesion is about strengthening community links and helping people to focus on the challenges that affect them and develop new skills to tackle them. It can create a new vision of community where people from different racial, class, gender, age and religious backgrounds are partners in their own futures.
- A refreshed building, made Green Energy resilient.
- New opportunities to existing businesses and new small, low cost starter units.
- Blocks of colony style eco homes consisting of 1, 2 and 3 bedroom flats to allow for real flexibility over time.Social housing block providing accessible housing for older people and disabled people.
- A Community Event Centre that could offer classes and social opportunities.
- Opportunities for beehives, public artworks, fruit trees, bench seating. And an open air market.
Community Enterprise addresses the challenge of how to create employment opportunities in Leith that meet the demands of the global market. It recognises that businesses are stronger when cooperation and mutual support are part of a shared value basis. Working together to create jobs, new business and entrepreneurial opportunities can transform our community.
- The building would be refreshed, upgrading it with an accessible green roof and additional business pods.
- The existing shops and business would be revitalised to offer opportunities to existing businesses as well as offering small, low cost starter units.
- Design attention to wellbeing and support for locals. A community bakery could be integral part of the building to allow people to come together, to bake bread together and to share bread together.
- A social enterprise and community space to train and share business skills including incubator units for creative, media, IT and other businesses.
- A block of open market starter, eco homes with space for new businesses
- Additional green space with open meadows planted with wildflowers, recreational natural green space, community orchard, accessible allotments, beehives and vegetable gardens.
Our vision seeks to build on the strength of the existing community and to create new ways of bringing people together. They can enhance the area, preserve its diversity and inclusivity, and contribute towards Leith having a bright future in the 21stcentury.
The Stead’s Place site is too small to contain all of these solutions but we will work with other sites and local stakeholders over the next few months to develop our plans.
Urban development today in the light of a real Climate Crisis needs to work with people’s needs and not be imposed by profit seekers. Single sites cannot be allowed to simply focus on one issue, retail, student accommodation, tourism but must integrate different part of the community’s need into a coherent vision.
We have started that work and welcome the support of others in continuing to develop this vision.
Ian Hood
Save Leith Walk
For More Information and contact us
Email: Info@saveleithwalk.org
STUC Fringe Meeting
The Scottish Trades Union Congress meets at the Caird Hall in Dundee from 15th – 17th April. Scot.E3 is contributing to one of the fringe meetings:
Developing Sustainable and Socially Useful Jobs in Today’s Economy
Wednesday April 17 at 1230pm
Committee Room 2 City Chambers
Pete Roche – research officer – Nuclear Free Local Authorities
Speaker from Scot.E3
Meeting organised by Scottish CND
American Climate Rebels
A post from REEL News
In 2018, Reel News went on a 14 week tour of North America to look at grassroots struggles around climate change, particularly struggles around a “just transition” from fossil fuels to renewable energy, where workers and communities control the process so that they benefit from the transition, and around “just recovery” – recovery from extreme weather events which do not exascerbate current inequalities.
What we found were inspiring and visionary struggles all over the continent, led by working class communities of colour, with people organising just transitions and just recoveries themselves. Now, we’ll be presenting what we found in the form of a weekly online 11 episode series starting on Sunday April 14th – 7pm UK time, 3pm New York City time, Midday California time.
Episode 1 is about Alberta, Canada, where the long oil sands boom has come to an end. Falling oil prices are leading to thousands of job losses – which has started a serious conversation in the labour movement about transitioning away from oil to renewables. The need is becoming more urgent as the big oil sands companies look to maximise profits and slash even more jobs through automation. This film looks at a number of initiatives, the history of oppression of First Nations people to get the resources in the first place, and a rare chance to hear from oil sands workers themselves, including women and First Nations workers.
With the current growing uprising over climate change giving renewed hope, we’re hoping that this will not only inspire you further – but will also help a little in putting the idea of just transition at the forefront of the movement.
First Stage Debate on the new Climate Bill
The Scottish Government’s new Climate Bill has it’s first stage debate at Holyrood on Tuesday 2nd April. As it stands the bill is severely lacking in ambition and fails to measure up to the challenge set by the recent IPCC report. Rather than take large scale action over the next decade the bill sets the target of a 90% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This is simply not good enough. ScotE3 supports the rally outside the Parliament that has been called for 12.30pm on the 2nd.
‘Unlocking the job potential of zero carbon’
‘Unlocking the job potential of zero carbon’ from the Green European Foundation is a valuable addition to the evidence base that a socially just transition to a zero carbon economy is practical and possible. The authors model the impact on jobs, short-term (during the transition) and long term, of moving to zero carbon by 2030. The estimates they provide are conservative – they don’t consider the additional employment that would be created by the additional economic activity – they don’t consider jobs in the supply chain and they don’t include activity for which rigorous data is unavailable.
The new report’s approach is not identical to the work done by the Campaign Against Climate Change published in the Million Climate Jobs Pamphlet. However, their forecasts for the whole of the UK are very similar. They expect 980,000 additional jobs will be required during the transition reducing to 710,000 after zero carbon is reached. New jobs are calculated on a regional basis with a full breakdown available in the report’s appendix. The number of new jobs during the transition is estimates as 60,946 falling to 26,905 in the long-term.
Fuel Poverty, Energy and the fight for Climate Jobs
Stage one of the Scottish Government’s Fuel Poverty Bill was completed on 20th February 2019. In our view the bill is not ambitious enough. We risk missing an important opportunity to reduce carbon emissions, create new climate jobs and strike a blow for social justice. Ending Fuel Poverty could and should be part of the Just Transition to a zero carbon economy that we need. We will publish more on this in the coming weeks – contributions are welcome.
Here are Marlyn Tweedie’s thoughts on the subject.
On Feb 15th, school children, all over Europe, came out on strike in protest at the catastrophic future they face because of climate change.
We need to make big changes re. our energy sources if we are to slow down climate change.
What if we could use sustainable energy sources to reverse climate change damage and provide cheaper fuel? Wouldn’t this be a win- win solution?
Fuel Poverty In Scotland
Over 25% of households live in fuel poverty – defined as spending 10% or more of your income on fuel bills, or, if, after paying for fuel, your income is below the poverty line.
In rural Scotland, the extent of fuel poverty is higher. A 2016 report states that in accessible rural areas, there is 35% fuel poverty and in remote areas, the figure is 45%.
Regarding extreme fuel poverty, the comparable figures are 7% for Scotland, as a region; 12% in accessible rural areas and 28% in remote areas.
Low income, high energy costs and poorly insulated homes result in this appalling situation where families, young people, elderly, disabled and many working people cannot afford adequate warmth.
A situation, which, it is estimated, contributes to 5,500 deaths a year.
What Can Be Done?
Fuel poverty would be best approached as part of a radical change in energy policy.
Scotland has an abundance of renewable energies – in the form of wave, wind and tidal energy.
The costs are cheaper. Current gas and oil costs are between 4p and 12p per kilowatt hour. Renewables are between 2p and 7p.
If, alongside a switch to renewables. A mass insulation campaign was implemented, carbon emissions could be cut by 95%.
The Campaign against Climate Change notes Three quarters of emissions from houses and flats are caused by heating air and water. To reduce this we need to insulate and draught- proof buildings and replace inefficient boilers. This can cut the amount of energy used by about 40% and delivers the double whammy of reducing energy costs and helping mitigate the scourge of fuel poverty.
It is estimated that a campaign to insulate all homes in Scotland would employ 20,000 construction workers for the next 20 years.
Further reading – the ScotE3 briefing on Fuel Poverty
Image by climatejusticecollective CC BY 2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/cj_collective/6992454230
Employment, Energy and Environment 