scote3 – Page 5 – Employment, Energy and Environment

Why the world’s first flight powered entirely by sustainable aviation fuel is a green mirage

This article by Josh Moos and Gareth Dale was first published under a Creative Commons License in The Conversation on 28th November 2023

A Boeing 787 Dreamliner is set to take off from Heathrow on November 28 and head for JFK airport in New York, powered by so-called sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). According to its operator, Virgin Atlantic, the world’s “first 100% SAF flight” will mark “a historic moment in aviation’s roadmap to decarbonisation”.

Dreamliner https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boeing_787-8_Dreamliner,_All_Nippon_Airways_-_ANA_AN2105773.jpg

It is proof of concept, we are led to believe, of the dawn of “guilt-free” flying. Unfortunately, we have been here before, and the results last time were anything but green.

Based on our research into how wealth and power shape the environment, we argue that continued growth of the aviation sector, as with the economy in general, is incompatible with preventing runaway climate change. The technology currently being developed by the aviation industry has zero chance of changing that. And the fuels being used in Virgin’s latest experiment are not significantly more sustainable than those in its previous attempt.

Virgin’s sustainability initiative dates back to the 2000s, when British business magnate Richard Branson was at the helm. In 2008, to some fanfare, a Virgin aircraft flew from London to Amsterdam using a fuel derived in part from palm oil and coconuts. Technically, the mission was a success, but the sustainability claims were laughable.

To have fuelled that short hop with 100% coconut oil would have consumed 3 million coconuts. The entire global crop would supply Heathrow for only a few weeks — and it is one of 18,000 commercial airports worldwide. Following this stunt, Virgin gave up on coconut oil.

Virgin’s latest flight is simply a repeat of 2008. It’s a smoke-and-mirrors exercise to convince governments that SAF will enable aviation to continue its relentless growth on a sustainable basis – and in this, it is succeeding.

Even waste products aren’t sustainable

Virgin’s defence rests on the claim that its new SAF no longer comes exclusively from crops. It is blended with waste products. One of the main suppliers for Virgin’s transatlantic flight is Virent, an organisation based in Wisconsin. Virent makes SAF from conventional sugars such as corn, mixed with wood, agricultural waste and used cooking oil.

As with coconuts, any crop grown for fuel competes with foodstuffs and pushes the agricultural frontier further into forests and peatlands, with large releases of carbon.

But what of the waste products? Surely reusing cooking oils offers a sustainable solution? Unfortunately, in a notoriously unregulated market, it seems not.

Another of Virgin’s suppliers, Neste, collects cooking oils from sources worldwide, including McDonald’s restaurants in the Netherlands and food processing plants in California, Oregon and Washington. The US Department of Agriculture alleges that some trade in SAF feedstocks – including from Indonesia to Neste’s refinery in Singapore – may be “fraudulent”.

Neste has denied the claim. But, even if its used cooking oil is entirely legitimate, there is still an allegation that palm oil from plantations responsible for tropical deforestation is being marketed as used cooking oil.

Virgin Atlantic maintains that the SAF it uses is made entirely from used cooking oil. However, if the aviation industry bets big on used cooking oil, it is feared it will turbocharge tropical logging and the extermination of the orangutan and countless other endangered species.

The real kicker is that even if all used cooking oils were traceable and sustainably sourced, they are not scalable. The US collects around 600,000 tonnes of used cooking oil each year. If every last drop were diverted to SAFs, it would meet at most 1% of America’s current aviation demand.

Capturing the White House

The problems of scalability, the competition of agricultural inputs with foodstuffs, forests and wildlife, and the carbon emissions that result from land use change are just three of the shortcomings that ensure SAFs will not be the magic bullet that the aviation industry would have us believe. Despite this, SAF fever has won over the White House.

The Inflation Reduction Act set targets for SAF production at 3 billion gallons by 2030 and 35 billion by 2050. These targets are fantasies. But, to the extent that they are approached, they will only add to the pressure on food prices and wildlife.

That SAF is being touted so zealously attests to the shortage of alternative technologies. Battery-powered planes are viable but only as short-haul “flying taxis” that compete with ground transport. The other panacea, hydrogen, confronts colossal technological and infrastructural barriers, problems of scalability, competing uses, and environmental concerns.

Tinkering with aircraft technology, such as engine size or wing shape has also faced diminishing returns. Efficiency improvements lag far behind the sector’s growth, which is why aviation emissions are still soaring.

Where do we go from here?

Ahead of the 2008 coconut-fuelled flight, Virgin’s chief executive Steve Ridgway explained its logic. He said the aviation industry needs “to be seen to be doing something”. Fifteen years on and the playbook remains the same.

The Virgin Atlantic SAF flight promises to rescue the airline from the threat of climate change, allowing them and their passengers to “keep calm and carry on”. In buying into this fantasy, governments give themselves an excuse to avoid taking climate breakdown seriously – an emergency that requires radical action if the planet is to remain habitable for humans.

There is the potential to create a good life for all within planetary boundaries. But getting there requires clipping the wings of the aviation industry.

This would begin, for short-haul, with ground-based alternatives. Within the US, many flights could be swiftly replaced by coach travel, and over a quarter of flights between EU destinations could be replaced by high-speed rail. For long-haul, the first step is demand management, which will expedite the use of virtual conferencing, marine transportation and other alternatives.

Developing alternatives would be practical, efficient and create jobs. And now is a good time to begin. Americans have been “falling out of love with flying” in recent years, in part due to large numbers of flight cancellations following bad weather, which is only likely to increase with climate breakdown.

As the weather chaos worsens, the aviation industry will find it harder to shrug off its responsibility through PR stunts and greenwashed gimmickry.

Now new gas at Peterhead

SSE and Equinor plan to build a new gas-fired power station at Peterhead in Aberdeenshire. The existing gas-fired power station in Peterhead is Scotland’s single biggest climate polluter. Building the new plant will increase pollution levels.

The so-called North Sea Transition deal between the UK and Scottish governments and the oil and gas industry is based on squeezing out every profitable drop of oil and gas from the North Sea. The Peterhead plant is part of this strategy. The investment that is planned should be directed into renewables.

The plan is up for approval by the Scottish government. Tell your MSP that rather than more gas we need investment in renewables, in retrofitting, in public transport and in a clean energy smart grid.

Sign the petition by Friends of the Earth Scotland.

North Sea Transition

We were invited to contribute to a panel on North Sea Transition at the conference ‘Working for Climate Justice: trade unions in the front line against climate change’ at Toynbee Hall in East London on 27^th of October.

Since we launched in the autumn of 2017 Scot.E3’s emphasis has been on building capacity for a worker led transition with a focus on workplace and community organising. Arguing for the rapid phase out of North Sea Oil and Gas has formed a central part of our campaigning. The Sea Change report, published in 2019, remains very relevant. It shows how switching from oil and gas to wind and solar would create a big net increase in jobs in Scotland and failing to make this transition would mean that targets to cut carbon emissions would not be met.

It’s very important that the climate movement has embraced the significance of North Sea oil and gas and a just transition for workers in the fossil fuel industries. That wasn’t so much the case in 2017. But two critical and closely linked challenges remain:

How do we build a mass movement with powerful roots in every workplace and working-class community that pushes for the necessary changes?
How do we engage workers in the energy sector, who are very aware that change is needed, but have very little confidence that it will be socially just?

For more than fifty years the big oil and gas companies have used their operations in the UK sector of the North Sea to blaze a trail for what we have come to know as neoliberalism; establishing practices that have been copied and taken up internationally. Outsourcing, multiple layers of subcontracting, anti-union policies and the use of blacklists. At the same time the so-called free ‘market’ has been featherbedded by massive state subsidies which have exceeded taxation revenue.

The onshore construction industry has been on the same journey. In Scotland the Construction Rank and File group has grown a new network through taking the construction industry using direct action tactics, picketing sites, and building combative organisation from the ground up. Just under a year ago two Unite activists, working on the new high voltage transmission lines from the Moray Firth to central Scotland were sacked for their union activity just before Christmas. However, after the Rank and File group picketed the main subcontractor and Scottish and Southern Energy they were reinstated with full back pay. The group has been a consistent supporter of Scot.E3 and have very publicly advocated for the importance of building worker organisation to ensure that the energy transition is a just transition.

Despite many analysts and some industry insiders warning that oil and gas is an increasingly risky investment global levels of investment are high and currently booming while the industry remains determined to squeeze as much oil and gas out as it can out of the North Sea. Among Westminster’s policy turns there has been a consistent adherence to the North Sea transition deal which describes in broad terms how that it is to be achieved. The Scottish Government and the offshore trade unions remain signed up to the ‘transition’ deal. Pursuing this path means that investment in hydrogen and CCS is prioritised at the expense of renewables, condemning UK consumers to a high cost and uncertain future and undermining progress to a genuine energy transition. There’s no evidence that big oil has any particular commitment to the North Sea, and they must know that hydrogen for domestic heating is hugely problematic, but they are very keen to stick with false solutions that are compatible with the existing infrastructure and networks of fossil capital.

The cost-of-living crisis isn’t over. However, to date, the climate and workers movements have failed to nail the intimate connection between fuel and food poverty and the oil and gas industry. Perhaps there’s a lesson here. At a time when we face a drawn-out existential crisis there is a need for new ways of organising that bring unions and communities together in common understanding and common struggle. There are some examples of what this might begin to look like. In Scotland Edinburgh Trade Unions in Communities provides an innovative model, while in France social movement trade unionism is having an impact.

Report from the Global Climate Jobs conference

A report from Pete Cannell

The conference, organised by the Global Climate Jobs network, took place in Amsterdam over three days from the 7^{th of} October. Two of us from Scot.E3 attended. These are my personal notes and reflections on the discussion that took place.

The Global Climate Jobs network brings together campaigning organisations from around the world. What glues them together is the idea that the necessary transition to a zero-carbon economy is both political and practical and requires a huge expansion in jobs that are central to the new economy – in energy production, transport etc. This idea centres campaigning on social justice, a worker led transition and building working class power.

The global reach of the network was underlined by the diversity of the attendance – including groups from Columbia, Mexico, USA, South Africa, Tanzania, England, Scotland, Norway, the Nederlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Italy, Turkey and the Philippines.

The venue for the conference was split between two spaces – a social centre, once a church, squatted more than two decades ago and now legalised and a wonderful building ‘De Burcht’ that was once the headquarters of the Amsterdam diamond workers union. The picture shows something of the beauty of the building but its history is also inspirational. In the 19^th century there were around 10,000 diamond workers. They were divided by gender and religion. However, after a major strike which brought the entire workforce together a single union was created and commissioned the building.

Here are some of my highlights from the plenary sessions.

Leonor, from the Portuguese group Climaximo, talked about how the cost-of-living crisis runs side by side with the intensifying climate crisis. She argued that building a mass movement to stop climate collapse requires an organisational culture of a different kind – flexible, learning and always thinking about the next steps. Bringing the labour and climate movements together is key. All of this needs a high level of ambition and a clear focus on building social power to stop climate change. We need to be ready to take risks and accelerate our learning cycles. We’ll make mistakes but we must not repeat mistakes. We have seen mass movements rise very fast and we have seen dominant ideas change very quickly – we need to envisage this and think of strategies that can make it happen.

Working people are struggling daily to get by – a programme to tackle the climate crisis is a programme to improve lives and livelihoods. We need to dare to win power – these ideas need to explode in society and go mainstream.

Sean Sweeney from Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) noted that trade unions in the north wanted/want to get a seat at the table of the transition. TUED argues that being at the table is not fine. While renewables have expanded so has the use of fossil fuel. Radical restructuring is needed. The problem is a capitalist system that burns fossil fuels for profit. We need a programme/pathway – a plan of action and crucially we need public ownership of energy. It’s evident that all the countries who say they have targets for net zero will not achieve them. The solutions we need are not compatible with a system of growth and accumulation. Public ownership and control is essential.

Jonathan Neale started his contribution by saying that the evidence for climate change is increasing fast. Most people think something must be done. He argued that the climate movement must change – we have to go for concrete solutions. Stop fossil fuels. Make them illegal. Cover the world with renewable energy. Governments need to do this. Every worker in old industries gets a new job with the climate service. Once we win it in one country it’s easier to spread. It requires a mass grass roots campaign that must go everywhere. It’s serious project and not about having a good policy, we have to persuade a mass movement to fight for it. We need to persuade the climate movement. People say we must not divide the movement, but he asserted that there is no other solution on offer. The just transition is the only transition on the table. It requires winning majorities – not diluting politics – persuading people that on this we are right. We need action – direct action. Every time workers are losing their jobs, we need action/occupations etc. to insist that they must have climate jobs. Occupation for demands that we can win. We need our own shock doctrine – organising at the grass roots for the things that people need in heat waves, floods – we have to march and protest in the teeth of disaster – no one left behind. Fund raising events when catastrophes are elsewhere. The time for dishonest promises is past. This is a long struggle – explosive growth sometimes – slow at others. We can’t afford to wait to see that their promises are lies in 2040 – we have to start now on the scale that is necessary. Winning once makes it easier elsewhere. In global south renewable energy is needed to grow to meet their needs. From here to this vision is a huge jump but it must be done.

The theme of public ownership was reinforced by a speaker from Colombia. She started by saying that it is the capitalist system (imperialism) that is to blame and we need to be clear about this. With a progressive government in office Columbia is for the first time looking at the possibility of change. The country is highly indebted. Renewable energy has increased but is almost entirely in the hands of private companies that are propped up and subsidised by public resources. Carbon emissions are principally from land use and deforestation – Columbia is a producer of primary raw materials. Transition requires public ownership and social control. Just transition is a question of rethinking the role of the state and the working class. She argued that large scale utilities are essential – things like roof top solar contribute but can’t be the answer on the scale that’s needed. In Latin America – this is a moment when it is necessary fight for public power.

Some of the contributions reflected significant rethinking in the climate movement. A contributor from XR in the Nederlands talked about how the focus of direct action has changed in recent months. There has been action against a private jet terminal and action at a big steel plant. This shift stems from frustration that labour and climate movements are not working together against common enemy while NGOs talk about capitalism but not about class struggle so much. There has been progress in building a climate justice network in the Nederland’s largest trade union. A contribution from Friends of the Earth (Nederlands) remarked on an ongoing shift from consumerist demands to more concrete demands and demands on big polluting companies. But most of these actions have been from the outside – with the consequence that workers see this as attacks on them. And may have increased their resistance to climate transition agenda. Workers were arguing against CCS and for hydrogen and electricity – but climate movement more impatient – no dialogue – need to engage more directly with the workers and not with the trade union bureaucracy. This point was echoed by another contributor who had been involved in producing the Platform report on the views of offshore workers in the UK sector of the North Sea. Platform worked with the offshore unions to reach the workers who contributed to the report. The findings of the report were powerful but mostly the unions have done nothing with them. She argued that it will often be necessary to bypass union officials to speak directly to workers.

On the second day of the conference, I helped present and facilitate a workshop on the strike wave in Britain put on by the socialist group rs21. We explored the scale of the movement and attempts to align it with the environmental movement. This provoked a lively discussion and people gave examples from 7-8 different countries of experiments in aligning the workers and environmental movement, including pushing for the wider ecosocialist political struggle. As part of the workshop, we hosted a representative from the Italian GKN Collective. GKN is a British owned company in the automotive and aerospace sector. Faced with a decision to close the factory the Italian workers occupied in 2021 and have stayed in occupation ever since. They are now fighting to control it; they’ve retooled the machinery and aim to convert it to renewable transport production led by workers. It’s quite shameful that this occupation has not received more support and solidarity in the UK. Coverage in English is very limited but you can read more here.

I’ve tried to focus on the main themes of the conference but there was much more and much deserving of separate and more detailed reports. The accounts of social movement trade unionism in France were impressive. German delegates spoke about their public transport campaign #wirfahrenzusammen – we’re driving together. Joint activity bringing the youth strike movement together with public transport strikers and public transport users. Safe Landing ran a workshop on workers assemblies. There was intensive discussion of what we mean by just transition and workshops on global debt, the East African Crude Oil pipeline (EACOP), the upcoming European elections, political strikes and how to build on them and how to understand and make an impact on local and global supply chains.

You can find the recordings of all the panels and a selection of workshop sessions here:

https://www.youtube.com/@ReelNews/streams

Calling on Ironside Farrar to cut ties with the Aberdeen ETZ

Yesterday (9th August) campaigners from Climate Camp, This is Rigged and Scot.E3 were outside the office of Environmental Consultants Ironside Farrar in Edinburgh. Ironside Farrar have been commissioned to produce a masterplan as part of the rezoning of St Fitticks Park in Torry into an industrial Energy Transition Zone (ETZ). The protest is part of an ongoing campaign to persuade the workers at Ironside Farrar to direct their skills towards projects that contribute to a socially just transition. Mike Downham spoke at the protest. There will be another protest at the Ironside Farrar office next Wednesday 16th August from 8.30am.

St Fitticks campaigners at the Scottish Parliament earlier this year

SPEECH OUTSIDE IRONSIDE FARRAR OFFICE 9^TH AUGUST 2023

Welcome – and thanks for joining us this morning.I thought I would tell you why we’re here. This is the head office of Environmental Consultants Ironside Farrar – though the door doesn’t say that. We’re here to call on the employees of Ironside Farrar to boycott all further work for ETZ, the company oil tycoon Ian Wood set up to industrialise a large part of St. Fittick’s Park in Torry as an “Energy Transition Zone”. He then commissioned Ironside Farrar to get Planning Permission.

Torry is a suburb of Aberdeen, though it used to be a fishing and boat-building village just across the Dee from Aberdeen City. Then with the discovery of North Sea oil and gas in the 70s most of the village was bulldozed to make space for a Shell oil and gas terminal.

Since then Torry has been dumped time after time with the industrial development that other parts of Aberdeen don’t want – a landfill site, an industrial harbour where the Park used to come down to the beach at Niggs Bay, an incinerator close to the school, and now this threat to the Park which the Torry community cherish as their last green space. The threat to their community is huge. Ian Wood’s money persuaded Aberdeen City Council, who had previously invested much public money in improving the Park, to do a U-turn and re-zone it for industrial development. And Ian Wood’s money persuaded the Scottish Government not to intervene.

Ian Wood says the ETZ will contribute massively to bringing down carbon emissions, but much of the vague talk about what he wants to do is about developing Carbon Capture and Hydrogen technologies both of which are scams. This is in fact an attempt at a land-grab to justify continuing to extract oil and gas from the North Sea and fill the pockets of share-holders and directors in the Oil and Gas Industry.

Torry is about as disadvantaged a community as it gets, with appalling health statistics, appalling air quality and few employment opportunities. Despite this they are rising up and fighting for their lives against this plan to industrialise their Park.

Saving St. Fittick’s Park is exceptionally important, for three reasons:

If it’s industrialised it will represent a huge win for the Oil and Gas Industry and delay phasing out oil and gas extraction from the North Sea
It will destroy the significant biodiversity which has developed in the Park as a result of a lot of hard work and fundraising by the Torry community over the past 20 years.
And it will further sicken and impoverish the people who live in Torry. It’s this last which is arguably the most important of the three. Because if we don’t protect and prioritise the poorer communities up the north east coast of Scotland we’re done for. It’s these communities who can force significant change.

Two big things have happened in the six weeks since we started this campaign, which make Saving St. Fittick’s Park even more important. Climate has broken down across the world at a speed which wasn’t anticipated. Southern Europe and North Africa are on fire, and unprecedented floods in central China have displaced 100,000 people. The second thing is that the Westminster Government has decided to grant at least 100 new drilling licences in the North Sea. That these things can happen at the same time shows just how strong our governments are committed to fossil capital.

I’ll end by quoting a few things from the booklet The Declaration of Torry, a product of The Torry Peoples Assembly in May: on the back of this booklet they commit themselves to six actions:

We will do everything to stop the land grab
We will continue to use our Park and increase its already immeasurable value
We demand the incinerator be decommissioned
We will seek support to set up a Torry Retrofit Project to insulate our homes
We insist on a just and fair energy transition
We will strengthen collaboration within our community and with others in Scotland and beyond

And inside the front cover of the booklet, most powerfully:

THIS IS OUR LAND AND NO ONE ELSE’S

THIS LAND BELONGS TO THOSE WHO CARE FOR IT

Just one thing to leave you with. The people arriving for work this morning are highly trained and have knowledge and skills which will be essential when we’ve made the transition to clean energy. They know about tipping points in global heating, and about the complex relationships which underpin biodiversity. Ever since we started this campaign, we’ve been respectful to these workers, seeing them as part of the solution, not part of the problem.

At the same time they must surely understand the enormity of what Ian Wood is planning in Torry. They have the power between them to Save St. Fittick’s Park, by boycotting further work for ETZ. Even if they aren’t in the team working for ETZ, they can bring Ironside Farrar to a standstill by collectively withdrawing their labour.

Sunak fiddles while Rhodes burns

Pete Cannell and Brian Parkin take a critical look at Sunak’s recent oil and gas announcement.

On Monday Rishi Sunak flew to Aberdeenshire by private jet to announce that at least one hundred new North Sea drilling licenses will be granted in the autumn. A policy described by junior energy minister Alex Bowie as “maxing out our oil and gas reserves”. At the same time Sunak gave the go ahead to the Acorn Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project to be based at St Fergus near Peterhead. Acorn will be one of four CCS projects in the UK – the other three are in England.

St Fergus Gas Terminal © Ken Fitlike CC-BY-SA/2.0

At a time when fires rage across Europe, and North America and floods wreak havoc in China and elsewhere, the new oil and gas licenses have received widespread criticism from climate campaigners, climate scientists, the Scottish Government and even some Tory MPs. Reactions to the CCS announcement are more mixed. SNP politicians have welcomed the announcement. Carbon Capture is prominent in the Scottish Government’s draft energy plans and Sunak argues that CCS will mean that the net zero by 2050 target is still in scope.

In our view both strands of Monday’s announcement represent Sunak paying his dues to the big oil and gas companies. In the rest of this article, we’ll explain why.

For months the Tories have argued that the cost-of-living crisis is the result of a crisis of energy sovereignty caused by the war in Ukraine. In fact, the price of gas had rocketed upwards before the war. There was no shortage of supply, since most of the gas used in the UK is piped from the North Sea. Compared with the rest of Europe the UK is unusually reliant on gas for home heating and cooking. There is a real problem here – the North Sea gas fields are nearing the end of their lifespan. So given there is an overwhelming need to reduce carbon emissions the obvious answer is to start now, planning for the future by electrifying the domestic heating system and insulating homes alongside a planned phase out of the use of gas. The Tories are doing none of this. On paper they still say they want to replace natural gas by hydrogen. But the weight of evidence that this would phenomenally expensive and a hugely inefficient use of electricity to generate the hydrogen means that they are rapidly backtracking.

So is Sunak’s plan to license more oil and gas fields going to keep people warm. Not at all. First the new fields contain more than 85% oil, not gas (see technical note below). That oil would be exported on the world market. Much of the gas is ‘sour’ – it has a high sulphur content – and is unsuitable for home heating. So, we have the worst of all possible worlds – continuing use of fossil fuels at large scale when the climate science says that the use must stop and the likelihood of very high fuel bills and insecurity of supply. Only big oil and their shareholders come well out of this – the rest of us and future generations pay the price.

A close look at Sunak’s plans for Carbon Capture and Storage is equally disturbing. The technology proposed for CCS is untested at scale. Even if the most optimistic targets for carbon sequestration are met, they represent a tiny fraction of the total carbon emissions from the North Sea. At present the only source of carbon dioxide at St Fergus is the gas stabilising plant. In the long-term Carbon Capture may be able to play a role in helping reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – but right now the priority must be to cut emissions rapidly. The £20 billion allocated by Westminster to the 4 CCS projects could be spent on expanding the production of renewable energy, home insulation and developing the electricity grid.

The parallels with the Cumbria Coalmine project are powerful. There we have the Tories supporting the exploitation of a fossil fuel, coal, which is not wanted by the steel industry. With the new licenses and CCS, we have a plan for energy security and net zero which delivers neither. Quite simply both represent political statements by the Tory Government that affirm their unswerving commitment to fossil capital.

Technical note:

The proposed Acorn (St Fergus) (and other) CCS plants are designed to be emissions source dedicated- i.e. they are intended to sequestrate carbon from say, a power station or chemical plant flue stack- not the ‘general’ atmosphere, and as such they are demonstration installations.

Apart from the Peterhead sour gas power station, the other nearby CO2 source is the St Fergus gas terminal which adds about 3-4% carbon to the overall gas/carbon penalty.

Total North Sea reserve gas content is about 27% (73% oil). The new blocks have a much lower gas composition c.12%.

The carbon contents of the different fuels (compared with coal) is:

Coal 97%

Oil 89%

Gas 35% max inc process penalty

Occupation in support of Torry community

Activists occupy tree outside Edinburgh offices in support of Torry community in Aberdeen. Press statement from This is Rigged

For more about Torry and the proposed Energy Transition Zone that will destroy St Fitticks park just scroll down or type “St Fitticks” in the search box.

Ironside Farrar, Environmental Consultants with offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester were commissioned by Energy Transition Zone Ltd (ETZ Ltd) to produce a ‘Masterplan’ for the industrial development of parts of St. Fittick’s Park, Gregness and Doonies Farm in Aberdeen. They were also tasked with obtaining Planning Permission for this development. Ironside Farrar’s plans were presented to the Aberdeen City Council Management Planning Committee yesterday morning (29^th June). The Council say they will adopt the ‘Masterplan’ as Planning Guidance.

On the same day, supporters of This Is Rigged went to the Edinburgh offices of Ironside Farrar and met with Julian Farrar, Managing Director of the company, to discuss the issues and request that Ironside Farrar withdraw from further work for ETZ Ltd, and that employees boycott all further work for ETZ Ltd for the following reasons:

St Fittick’s park is the last remaining green space in Torry, which is one of the country’s most deprived communities, where residents have a life expectancy ten years lower than people living in wealthier parts of Aberdeen. Commenting on the potential loss of the park, local doctors and nurses fighting to improve the health of the Torry community, say that industrialising any part of St. Fittick’s Park will be devastating for the health of that community.

In addition to its positive contribution to human health, St. Fittick’s Park is an oasis for wildlife, including many species of migrating birds, and Gregness and Doonies Farm support this wildlife as green corridors. In a recent article in the Guardian^[1], journalist Tom wall suggested the park’s wetland is “perhaps Aberdeen’s most unlikely beauty spot. Reeds flap and bend in blasts of salt-edged wind. Grey and blue light catch in watery beds, where ducks dip and preen. Birds shelter in a young woodland of oak, dark green pine and silvery birch trees.”

It therefore makes no sense to destroy this important habitat while Scotland is in the midst of a biodiversity crisis. Furthermore, the wetlands and forest created 10 years ago in St. Fittick’s Park are already capturing carbon, and it is increasingly recognised that ecosystems like these even regulate local climate including rainfall.

The main purposes of the proposed Energy Transition Zone will be to develop carbon capture and hydrogen technologies, both of which are considered by leading scientists to be unproven and dangerous excuses for continued oil extraction and habitat destruction.^[2]

In yesterday’s meeting, Julian Farrar was warned that being complicit in destroying the wetlands and woodland, both of which are vitally important green spaces and biodiversity sites that have taken years and a tens of thousands of community man-hours to create, would be seen as an act of immeasurable violence.

Ishbel Shand, member of the Friends of St.Fittick’s Park campaign said,

“The proposed industrial development is simply a land grab by the oil and gas industry to fill the pockets of their shareholders and directors.”

After leaving the meeting with Julian Farrar, This is Rigged activists Mike Downham and Tom Johnson decided to occupy a small tree outside the Ironside Farrar offices, and are there awaiting a response.

Mike Downham, a retired paediatrician and children’s DR said,

“There is a high incidence of asthma in children in Torry due to particulate matter air pollution from the nearby incinerator and the South Harbour industrial development. Further industrial development in this community would have a serious negative impact on the health of children in Torry.”

Following the meeting, Tom Johnson, a painter-decorator and This is rigged supporter who knows St. Fittick’s park well said,

“If Ironside Farrar were to pull out of the project at this stage, it would have a huge positive effect on the wellbeing and health of the Torry community – disempowered folk who have lost so much already. I mean, Imagine losing an entire bay – your access to the sea. And now forests they planted 10 years ago are to be ripped up and concreted over with “green” factories.”

“Julian Farrar explained to me that Ironside Farrar have reduced the amount of harm to be done in the park, but if they now come out against any destruction WHATSOEVER of these spaces, that will be a really bold statement of solidarity, and an action that shows their real concern for the environment, and people. We understand it’s difficult for a company to do something like that in current economic and political contexts, but to me Julian did seem to be uncomfortable with what’s going on with the ETZ.”

Climate Jobs – Not Coal or Dole

Solidarity with stop the Cumbrian Coal Mine Campaigners

Keep the carbon in the soil: Scientists across the globe are clear that if we are to prevent catastrophic global warming then we can’t continue to develop new oil fields and dig new coal mines.
Coal energy has the highest carbon footprint of all energy types.

In December 2022 the Westminster government gave the green light for the development of a new coal mine at Whitehaven on the Cumbrian coast. The decision flies in the face of statements made by the Tories took while the UK hosted COP 26 in Glasgow. But post-COP and during an ongoing cost of living crisis their mantra has become ‘energy security’. This apparently justifies opening a new licensing round for North Sea oil and gas, massive investment in nuclear and a U-turn on coal. As we write this it looks likely that the Tories will use their majority in the House of Commons to strike out a Lords amendment that would ban all new coal mining.

The new mine is intended to supply coal that can be processed into coke for use by the UK steel industry. Tory ministers argue that coke is essential for steel production and that domestic production will cut the carbon emissions resulting from the transportation necessary for imported coal. But the focus of the two major UK steel producers is on decarbonising steel production by using green hydrogen, moreover the Cumbrian coal is unsuitable for steel production:

‘The UK steel industry has been clear that the coal from the West Cumbria mine has limited potential due to its high sulphur levels,” said Chris McDonald, chief executive of the Materials Processing Institute, which serves as the UK’s national centre for steel research.’

So, in reality, the government’s arguments are simply a poor attempt at greenwashing. It’s estimated that if the project goes ahead around 83% of the 2.8 million tonnes of coal extracted each year will be exported. They talk about it being a Net Zero coalfield. It’s the same sleight of hand as they use to argue that the North Sea will become a Net Zero oil and gas producing area. You electrify the industrial processed required for extraction, offset other emissions and don’t count the carbon embedded in the coal (or oil) because that’s the responsibility of the end user! All in all It looks like the government’s coalition to go ahead is an entirely political strategy aimed at pushing back genuine action on climate in favour of the big corporate interests that dominate energy production.

Lord Deben, Tory chair of the UK Climate Change Committee stated in June 2022 that:

‘As far as the coal mine in Cumbria is concerned, let’s be absolutely clear, it is absolutely indefensible. First of all, 80% of what it produces will be exported, so it is not something largely for internal consumption. It is not going to contribute anything to our domestic needs in the terms we’re talking about, the cost of energy and the rest.’

The other argument used by ministers, however, is one that we do need to take seriously. Whitehaven is a one-time coal and iron mining town and currently has high levels of deprivation. Proponents of the mine say that it will guarantee 500 jobs for 50 years. Putting the investment required for the mine into almost any other form of local economic activity would produce more jobs and certainly investing in renewables in the Whitehaven area would provide, more and more long-term sustainable jobs. But while local people have no faith in their being such investment the pull of the mine remains attractive.

Two court cases aimed at stopping the mine are due to be heard near the end of October 2023. In the meantime, a coalition of national and local environmental organisations are organising resistance. On Saturday 22nd July there will be a day of action in Whitehaven with a rally, leafletting and door to door conversations with local people.

We want to coordinate solidarity contingents from Scotland. If you are able to join It would be very helpful if you could answer these three questions.

I am interested in joining the delegation to Whitehaven on 22nd July.
I could provide a car and take passengers.
If it’s an option, I would prefer to stay overnight and return on Sunday 23rd.

Please reply to triple.e.scot@gmail.com (you can use the contact form on this site if you wish) and cc edinburghclimatecoalition@gmail.com

Our response to the Scottish Government energy consultation

This is our response to the Scottish Government’s consultation on a draft energy plan. The deadline for the consultation is 9th May 2023.

Response to the energy consultation from Scot.E3

Scot.E3 campaigns for a worker led just transition that would require at least 100,000 new climate jobs in Scotland. In our view the draft plan contains material that is useful and will be necessary as part of the energy transition that is needed. We particularly welcome the draft plan’s suggestion that the Scottish Government should not support any further exploration or development of oil and gas fields – this is vital and needs to be followed through. But overall, the draft plan aims for too little and too slowly, and it fails to provide a coherent strategy to reduce emissions and reshape the Scottish economy.

The plan is flawed in several fundamental ways:

It relies on the private sector to a achieve its ambitions.
It follows the strategy outlined in Offshore UK’s North Sea Transition deal which aims for net zero emissions achieved through the large-scale implementation of carbon capture and storage.
It accepts the hype around hydrogen uncritically.
Mass scale retrofitting and decarbonising domestic heating and cooking is not given enough priority.
There is no clear plan for expanding public transport systems.
There is no strategy for creating a resilient smart energy grid that would integrate local community energy initiatives with large scale wind, tidal, hydro, and solar.
It accepts the concept of net zero when we the climate science tells us we should be aiming for real zero.
It fails to consider how a national energy company (Scottish Climate Service) could drive forward a strategy for zero emissions and harness the skills and creativity of the energy sector’s current workforce or the many thousands of young people who are required to make a sustainable energy sector a reality.

Notes

Points 1 and 8. Public versus private. As a campaign Scot.E3 believes that the oil and gas industry aim to extract the maximum profit from its existing business and to maintain the power and influence which it established through the 20^th century and into the 21^st. The infrastructure and practices of what Andreas Malm calls Fossil Capital are incompatible with a sustainable renewable economy. We understand that not everyone would agree with this analysis. However, the scale and scope of the economic transition that is required is unprecedented. The nearest comparisons – transitions to war economies in the UK and the US between 1939 and 1945, and the US New Deal in the 1930’s, depended on strategic planning, public control and high degrees of regulation over the private sector. The Scottish government’s objectives for a just transition can only be met by a much higher level of public investment, democratic control, and regulation than the energy plan proposes.

Points 2 and 3. Rejecting the false solutions contained in the North Sea Transition Deal. In brief the North Sea transition deal (written by the oil and gas industry and endorsed by Holyrood, Westminster, and the Offshore trade unions) is a plan to maintain oil and gas production from the North Sea for as long as possible, and certainly beyond 2050. Carbon capture and a hydrogen economy are central to the plan. There is place for carbon capture when we’ve ended fossil fuel emissions and can focus on repairing the damage created by global temperature rise. And there is a place for hydrogen as a fuel in a small number of important but specialised applications. However, the energy plan’s proposals for prioritising carbon capture, and for making Scotland a world leader in hydrogen production, direct the focus of the plan away from the necessary investment into decarbonising energy production and use right now, and make it much more difficult to achieve the energy transition that we need. Carbon capture at large scale is an unproven technology, while producing green hydrogen is highly inefficient and requires very large amounts of green electricity. A recent report, The Future of Home Heating by the Imperial College Energy Futures Lab notes that ‘Hydrogen production would be best used strategically and its deployment prioritised in sectors which are hard to electrify or decarbonise such as heavy industry, shipping, aviation and heavy transport.’

Point 4. Retrofitting. Energy for domestic heating and cooking in Scotland is mainly supplied via the natural gas network and currently accounts for more than 20% of emissions. The level of emissions could be significantly reduced through improving standards of insulation. Action on building regulations for new builds is possible straight away and amendments to guidance and regulations for the insulation of the existing housing stock to include the new breathable insulation materials that are now available (for example the hemp based materials produced in the Scottish Borders) could also be made very rapidly. A mass campaign of retrofitting requires coordinated action and investment that involves the development of skilled direct works teams in every council area and the resourcing of Further Education Colleges to provide good quality training. At the same time the transition from gas to electricity needs to be coordinated with the timescale for the rundown of North Sea gas production. Retrofitting creates new jobs and has the potential to enhance the health and well-being of the Scottish population. Action now, with investment designed to ensure that no one is excluded is a critical part of a just transition and can win hearts and minds to the project of transforming the economy.

Point 5. Public Transport. Simply replacing petrol and diesel vehicles by electric vehicles will not remove all emissions, will increase demand for scarce and environmentally damaging resources and perpetuate inequality. A sustainable energy plan requires large-scale improvements in public transport networks.

Point 6. Developing a smart grid. This is a surprising omission from the draft plan. A smart grid that includes large scale wind, solar, hydro and tidal energy sources combined with a network of community-based energy schemes and storage that includes local district heating schemes is technically feasible and would ensure that the system is resilient in the face of varying climatic conditions and demand.

Point 7. Net Zero. In practice net zero has become part of the set of false solutions used by the fossil fuel industries to delay real action on emissions. It is bound up with arguments for carbon capture and carbon offsetting. The latter has done almost nothing to actually reduce emissions (see for example Dyke, Watson and Knorr – ‘Climate Scientists: Net Zero is a dangerous trap) and often creates social problems in the private takeover of land for monoculture forests or other crops. We would argue that an effective energy plan requires a critical position on net zero and setting the objective as absolute zero emissions. The only way to achieve real zero in the context of the climate emergency is to phase out oil and gas quickly, starting now, and to invest heavily in renewable sources of energy.

Update on St Fitticks

Demonstrating outside the Scottish Parliament in January 2023

Campaigners in Torry are still waiting on the Scottish Government announcement that was expected back in January. Each month it has been put back another 28 days and is now due on 6th May. If the government gives the go ahead to the current plans for the ETZ (Energy Transition Zone) it will be a decisive step down a road that panders to the oil and gas industry and has nothing to with social justice. St Fitticks Park, which the plans would take over for industrial use, is the only green space in a working class area that suffered from decades of pollution as a result of the oil and gas industry. Most recently a new Energy from Waste incinerator, built close to a primary school, has led to a further deterioration in living conditions.

This film from REELNews highlights the issues involved and the resistance of the local community. Please share it widely.

In the film it’s noted that it’s not clear what use the new industrial zone will be put to. However, since the film was made campaigners have found evidence that there will be a large hydrogen storage facility – with 80% blue hydrogen and 20% green – that will be used to convert the cooking and heating supply for 20,000 social housing tenants in Aberdeen. If this goes ahead not only will Torry lose it’s green space many of its residents will be locked in to a very expensive energy future.

St Fitticks deserves to be a national campaign. The issues it raises around social justice, the use of hydrogen and carbon capture are national issues and they expose the weaknesses and contradictions in Scottish Government Energy Policy.

Share this post – support the St Fitticks campaigners.

Read more detail and watch video from the campaign here and here.