Tag: scote3

Save St Fitticks – defeat the oilogarchy

This post is a report of the Scot.E3 public meeting held on 24th October 2022. It includes videos from the meeting and links to resources and further information about the St Fitticks Campaign. Please share widely.

The meeting began with a contribution from Ishbel Shand from the Save St Fitticks Campaign

You can read a written version of Ishbel’s contribution here

Pete Cannell followed up with a short contribution on the North Sea oil and gas industry

The two speakers were followed by a wide ranging discussion which is summarised in the following account:

At the ScotE3 public meeting on 24th October “St.Fittick’s Park – Defeat the Oilogarchy” Ishbel Shand, on behalf of the Save St.Fittick’s Park campaign in Aberdeen, reminded us that nearly a century ago Antonio Gramsci, writing from a fascist prison cell, said “The old world is dying, the new is struggling to be born. We live in a time of monsters.”  You can watch the whole of Ishbel’s speech about the history and current significance of St.Fittick’s Park on the YouTube link above. It’s a compelling story not to be missed.

Pete Cannell spoke next, on behalf of ScotE3. He emphasised in particular the catastrophic nature of the North Sea Transition Deal, agreed in March last year and flouted as the first agreement “between the government of a G7 country and its oil and gas production community”. Almost unbelievably this Deal has been signed up to by the Scottish Government and by the Unions which represent the oil and gas workers. More oil and gas, nuclear, and hydrogen for heating. This is a disaster for the climate – particularly in terms of investment. It’s what underpins the Cost of Living Crisis because energy prices would inevitably remain high – much higher than would be the case with renewable sources of energy. It would also be a disaster for jobs – preserving the status quo for jobs is the worst-case scenario, defying any chance of a just transition. You can watch Pete’s presentation on the second YouTube link.

We had hoped for a speaker from Climate Camp, who sited their annual camp this year in St.Fittick’s Park and illegally occupied the site of the old fishing and boat-building village of Torry, destroyed to make way for oil and gas industrialisation. Unfortunately no-one from Climate Campaign was available for this meeting, but their name was on the lips of many participants as a model of how to respect local communities rather than impose on them.

The bulk of the meeting was given to general discussion. Many good points were made, including:

  • The oil and gas industry has never brought anything positive to the Torry community
  • There is a parallel between the threatened industrialisation of St.Fittick’s with the Bo’ness road in Grangemouth, which physically divides the local community and threatens the health of that community with air pollution from traffic congestion.
  • There is also a parallel with the Buckie community’s fight to save the Slochy Wloods
  • The potential power of communities is huge when they come together to fight – for example the success last year, at enormous personal costs, of the Ujaama indigenous communities in securing land rights in Tanznia.
  • There is a fundamental democratic deficit which in general communities face.
  • There’s not just one unaccountable Goliath faced by the David of the Torry community but four –  One North East, oil tycoon Ian Wood’s company which will control the development of an “Energy Transition Zone”; Aberdeen Harbour; Ironside Farrar, the environmental consultants tasked with drawing up a “master plan”; and Aberdeen City Council and its Local Development Plan.
  • Artists/musicians recently performed 45 minutes of songs and poetry at the new Arts Centre in Banchory
  • Films, short and long, have been made about St. Fittick’s.
  • University students are giving St. Fittick’s magnificent support
  • Those of us who don’t live in Aberdeen need to extend the Local actions of the Torry Community to National actions and solidarity across Scotland, through spreading the word far and wide about the threat to St. Fittick’s.
  • We all need too to take opportunities to spread the St. Fittick’s story internationally.
  • There’s a need for more radical change than just fighting for “renewables” – a term which can conceal negative elements – for example the jackets for off-shore turbines are plastic and the blades are steel.
  • The Cost of Living Crisis is fundamental in that it has the potential to mobilize nearly everyone.
  • The Scotland-wide COP 27 mobilisation is at 12noon on Saturday 12th November in Edinburgh. People from Aberdeen wanting to join this rally were encouraged to accept hospitality from those members of ScotE3 based in Edinburgh.

Yes, this is a time of monsters, but it’s also a time of jewels. St. Fittick’s Park itself is a jewel, as is the current response of the campaign to the threat of industrialising the Park. 

The chair ended the meeting with this quote from Ishbel, which emphasises the often-neglected but fundamental significance of the Nature Crisis in all our current struggles:

We can choose to continue with the old dying world of exploitation of people and nature for short-term financial gain. Or we can choose to repair and nurture our damaged environment and learn to live within the constraints that nature imposes.  

Links for further reading/information:      

Some background information on ETZ – click here

A trailer for a film by Martina Camatta

Some films by Robert Aitken can be accessed via this link

The film about Old Torry is particularly moving.  The Aberdeen Social Centre have a complete collection of issues of the “Aberdeen People’s Press” from the period..  One Old Torry resident, with a compulsory purchase order on her home, laments that the same Council that wouldn’t allow her to put in new windows because of the historic importance of her house are now going to bull-doze it, because Shell want the land.

A link to Mike Downham’s post on St Fitticks on this site

World-scale scandal in Aberdeen

Mike Downham explains why the fight to save St Fitticks Park is so important.

As I write this (on 22nd September) the Scottish Government Reporter has announced her decision to confirm zoning changes in the Aberdeen Local Development Plan which would allow St. Fittick’s Park to be industrialised.

St. Fittick’s Park

The 17-acre St. Fittick’s Park is owned by Aberdeen City Council and currently zoned as Greenbelt and part of the Greenspace Network. For centuries the land had been grazed by farm animals, until the 1960s when it became a rough field, much explored by children and known affectionately by the local community of Torry as “Our Fieldie”. The East Tullos burn which crosses the land had been channelised and over time became polluted with heavy metals and hydrocarbons.

About 20 years ago the Torry community came together to create a nature-based vision for a public park, with access paths and play equipment for children. £250,000 was raised to realise this vision, £168,000 by the community, with Aberdeen Council contributing the remainder. The new park was named St. Fittick’s because it includes a ruined church overlooking the North Sea at Nigg Bay. From here you can look across fields to the edge of Torry, and wonder how different this landscape must have looked when, according to legend, a religious foundation was established here by St Fittick in the mid 600s.

The story runs that St Fittick, an Irish monk, was thrown overboard by superstitious sailors when a storm blew up. He came ashore at Nigg Bay and established a church to give thanks for his salvation. Legend became history in the late 1100s  when a chapel was built on the site of today’s ruins, under the auspices of Arbroath Abbey. This chapel was consecrated in 1242 by the Bishop of St Andrews David de Bernham, and continued to serve the local community until the Reformation.

In 2012 Aberdeen City Council carried out a city-wide greenspace assessment and identified St. Fittick’s Park as a priority for nature-based improvements. The Council commissioned a feasibility study for a project with three objectives: 1) Improve water quality of East Tullos Burn, 2) Improve

biodiversity and 3) Create a public amenity. Combining Aberdeen City Council funds with funds from SEPA, Aberdeen Greenspace, and others, £365,000 was spent to complete the project in 2014. Using a nature-based design, the burn was naturalised with meanders and aquatic and riparian vegetation and reedbeds and wetlands were added to provide habitat and help clean the water of pollution. The project installed 180,000 native wetland and wildflower plants, 20,000 square metres of wildflower seeding, extensive woodland planting on the adjacent upland slopes and 800m of access paths. The community got to work, in one day alone planting 10,000 trees.

The biodiversity and aesthetic beauty of the Park have significantly improved year on year over the last ten years. The Park is now well used and well loved, with school children, families and seasoned or budding naturalists enjoying this rich and diverse landscape. Many species of birds, amphibians, invertebrates and mammals are observed and studied.

This summer an MSc graduate of Aberdeen University carried out an aquatic biodiversity and water quality study of East Tullos Burn and found statistically and biologically significant improvements in the burn as a result of the restoration project, notably an increase in species abundance and richness, an increase in the dynamics and complexity of the food web, and improvements in water quality. Additional studies have found an explosion in biodiversity since the restoration was completed, including 115 plant species, 42 breeding bird species, including eight red listed and eight amber listed, and dozens of migratory species. Invertebrate surveys found over forty species of moth, 11 butterfly species, and a range of other invertebrates. Two invertebrates found on survey were nationally threatened species.

The Torry Community

 St. Fittick’s Park is the last remaining accessible green space for a community of 10,000 people, in an area unfairly burdened by pollution, where few residents have private gardens. Before the advent of the Oil and Gas Industry, Torry was a centre for fishing, fish-processing, boat building and boat repair. Only the fish-processing remains. The old fishing village was destroyed in the 1970s to facilitate oil-related harbour developments.

An open letter from a local GP, signed by 22 doctors from across Aberdeen, points out that Torry is surrounded by two industrial harbours, an industrial estate, a railway line, a sewage works, landfill sites, a regional waste center, an incinerator that is currently being built, and one of the most polluted roads in Scotland. Much of the housing, the doctors say, is poor-quality – small, damp and affected by noise and light pollution. Residents frequently complain of high levels of exposure to antisocial behaviour. The doctors draw a comparison between the Aberdeen area of West End North, where the residents of two streets have exclusive access to 15 acres of mature riverside woodland, and the residents of the Torry community: “There is a 13-year difference in life expectancy between these two areas …The difference in healthy life expectancy is around twenty years. There is an eight-fold increase in the risk for someone in Torry being admitted to hospital with complications of chronic lung disease …Torry has a higher proportion of young people and children living in it … there is a significantly higher proportion of dependent children per household than in the rest of the city, and more often in single parent households. Child poverty is accordingly high. Access to private transport is less common in the area and access to distant green space is thus much more difficult …[Torry] also has the highest level of unemployment in the city. Median household income is more than four times greater in West End North … Rates of dental decay in Torry run at over 80% by the end of primary school. These schools have some of the lowest levels of attendance in the city. Teenage pregnancies are still more than twice the average for the city and around eight times more than for West End North. Prescriptions for antidepressant medication are more than twice those for West End North. Drug-related hospital stays are almost three-times the Scottish average, and drug overdoses are more frequent here than anywhere else in the city. There are also disproportionately high levels of domestic abuse and household fires.”

St Fittick’s Park, Torry, is being eyed for an energy transition zone business park. Photo by Kenny Elrick/DCT Media
The award-winning wetlands in St Fittick’s Park could be at risk if the ETZ goes ahead on the Torry site. Photo by Kath Flannery/DCT Media

The Threat

Now St. Fittick’s Park is under threat of industrial development, which would pave over with concrete a large part of the Park. Unbelievably, Aberdeen City Council has agreed with the Oil and Gas Industry to designate St. Fittick’s Park as an opportunity site for a new Energy Transition Zone (ETZ) in the local authority’s 2020 Proposed Local Development Plan. The Council and Energy Transition Zone Limited, the private partner in the proposed development, assert that industrial use of the park, adjacent to Aberdeen’s new South Harbour, is necessary to advance the North East’s transition to a low carbon economy. The new South Harbour itself is an affront to the biodiversity and well-being of the Torry area. As recently as one year ago, visitors to St. Fittick’s Park could walk along the shore of Nigg Bay and look out across the bay to the North Sea. Now this shore has been reduced to a placid pool blocked from the ocean by a high concrete wall.  

The Enemy

But this proposal is only ‘unbelievable’ if you continue to think, as it was reasonable to think in the past, that our elected representatives, whether in local or national governments, are serving the interests of their electorates. These days it’s the big energy corporations with their huge wealth who run things – through lobbying and bribing our politicians, and through their control of the media so that we get to be told only their version of reality. In relation to the proposed Energy Transition Zone in Aberdeen it’s the oil tycoon Sir Ian Wood who is the mover and shaker. He got control of economic development in the city in 2016 via the City Region Deal. Wood chairs the development company Opportunity North East (ONE) which is pushing the ETZ.  He has enormous influence on both Westminster and Holyrood. The Wood Review of 2014 led to the tax cuts for the Oil and Gas Industry and the principle “MaximizingEconomic Recovery of UK petroleum” in the Infrastructure Bill, 2015. Note the intentionally occult jargon of “Infrastructure Bill” and “Maximum Economic Recovery” – for which read extracting every last drop of oil and gas from the North Sea regardless of costs and climate impact. Inevitably Wood also has a huge influence on a Scottish Government which increasingly tails the Westminster Government in its energy policies.  He is the man behind the plans to industrialise the park. 

A Scam

If you look a little more closely at the purpose of the ETZ , you are told that “The project is based on using clean energy such as offshore wind, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage”, with a quote from Wood who says “We’ve got the opportunity in the north-east of Scotland to help balance the economy with a new industry, and at the same time, play a really significant role in one of the world’s greatest problems right now in global warming.” Wood said recently that it was only in the last two or three years that he realised that climate change was a serious problem.  

This is a classic example of being told only his version of the story because in reality neither hydrogen or carbon capture and storage have any chance whatsoever in reducing global warming in the necessary time-scale, nor can they be described as ‘clean energy’. For simple explanations about hydrogen energy and carbon capture and storagesee Microsoft Word – briefing 13.docx (wordpress.com) and Microsoft Word – Briefing 10.docx (wordpress.com). In reality these technologies are fake tickets to allow the oil and gas companies to continue to pay their executives and their shareholders and to remain in business. 

Collision of Crises

At St. Fittick’s Park we are seeing a head-on three-way collision between the Oil and Gas Industry, the Climate Crisis, and the Cost of Living Crisis. Neither the Climate Crisis nor the Cost of Living crisis can be sustainably resolved until extraction and burning of fossil fuels is stopped globally – see the report of a recent discussion which made this clear at North Sea Oil and Gas and the Cost of Living – Employment, Energy and Environment (scote3.net) . Stopping reliance on fossil fuels will mean different things for different countries, depending on their current energy sources. But for the UK and Scotland it’s primarily about stopping North Sea oil and gas extraction.

Collisions like this are of course not unique to Aberdeen. But what makes this one unusual is that it’s actually a four-way collision involving the Nature Crisis too, plus the visual proximity between a resource vital for Nature and a resource vital for the survival of the North Sea Oil and Gas Industry. This proximity makes obvious a choice which is often blurred by the topographical distances between the conflicting interests. Moreover in the case of St. Fittick’s Park it’s not only Nature which is being put under yet another threat which it can’t afford, but it’s also the well-being of one of the most deprived communities in Scotland. 

The Nature Crisis

The Nature Crisis is often side-lined, especially at times like the present when human beings are facing multiple crises. Exploitation of Nature by man goes back to the Garden of Eden. But for the roughly two hundred years since the crescendo of industrialisation in the West, we’ve become more and more conditioned to the arrogant idea that other species are here only for our benefit. It’s arguable that this arrogance is the most fundamental reason for the mess humanity is in now. Places like St. Fittick’s can help us shift our mind-set towards thinking in terms of every non-human species being important in its own right – not only those species which benefit humanity or those which are threatened by extinction. 

Large numbers of local community-driven initiatives, not necessarily as big or remarkable as the St. Fittick’s initiative, are more likely to make a real difference to biodiversity than top-down directives. The Scottish Government’s top-down Biodiversity Strategy Consultation closed a week ago, the Friends of St. Fittick’s Park having submitted a robust contribution. As well as telling the remarkable story of the Park’s restoration and enhanced biodiversity, the submission points out that the Scottish Government, led by the Scottish National Party for 15 years, has presided over a range of policies which have driven the current Nature emergency the Government is consulting about:

These policies have in common that they are designed to benefit wealthy people and are driven by profit. Some of these policies are entirely the Scottish Government’s responsibility, some are through collusion with the UK Government. Unless these policies are radically reformed any attempts to address the Nature Emergency will fail, sooner rather than later. The policies which have been most crippling for Nature include:

1.         Land ownership

50% of Scotland’s private rural land is owned by 432 individuals, mostly large estate-owners and industrial-scale farmers. As historian James Hunter has said: “Scotland continues to be stuck with the most concentrated, most inequitable, most unreformed and most undemocratic landownership system in the entire developed world”. In addition nearly all public land is controlled by central or local government, not by local communities.

2.         The sacrifice of biodiverse land for development

Weak regulation enables more and more biodiverse land to be paved over for industrial or unaffordable housing development.

3.         Farm subsidies

Huge sums of money continue to be paid to farmers, particularly large livestock farmers, to boost their profitability. Further money is paid to mostly large farmers and estate owners to improve biodiversity, but most of these people are primarily concerned with increasing their wealth, both profits and land values.  Biodiversity is not often their primary motivation.

4.         Bioenergy with carbon capture (BECCS)

The Scottish Government remains wedded to the concept of planting up huge areas of land with monoculture fast-growing trees, even to felling more diverse forests to make way for these new plantations. The plan is to burn the timber from these new forests in power stations and deal with the carbon emitted by “Carbon Capture” – a process yet to be developed and tested at scale. 

5.         North Sea oil and gas extraction

The Scottish Government is also wedded to extracting every last drop of oil and gas from the North Sea. This has a negative impact on marine species; fuels, literally, global heating; and is responsible for the current cost of living crisis.

6.         A one-nation perspective 

The Scottish Government’s current proposals for addressing the nature emergency are an example of its tendency to think in terms of only one nation. Biodiversity has to be considered internationally. We should be thinking in terms of what Scotland can do to contribute to the efforts of other nations.

If the Nature Crisis was brought centre-stage two benefits, beyond enhanced biodiversity, could follow. First, at least some of the many people who care strongly about Nature, given information which would help them to recognise that profit for the wealthy is what drives the Nature, the Climate, the Cost of Living and the Poverty crises in common, they would be more likely to join the fight to stop North Sea oil and gas extraction, which is fundamental to all four crises in the UK and Scotland.

Second, young people and children are in general more and more aware of the devastation to Nature they see around them. These are the people who will sustain the fight for a better world long after our time is up. It was because the young people of the Climate Camp movement feel an urgency to stop this devastation that they based themselves in St. Fittick’s Park this summer. When they arrived they were shown round the Park, having to take care not to tread on abundant tiny frogs.

Children in particular tend to be alert to the Nature around them. The younger the children, the closer they are to the ground to make observations that we may not notice. A few weeks ago, at an Open Day for the Strathblane Wildlife Sanctuary (a much smaller and more recent initiative than St. Fittick’s Park), it was my pleasant job to lead tours of the site. For the first tour of the day ten pre-school children and ten parents turned up at the gate. The tour was led not by me but by the children, who ran ahead to point out lady-birds, slugs and molehills. 

Our fight as adults must include ensuring that every child has the opportunity to explore wild land in their immediate neighbourhood.

If you want to join the fight to save St. Fittick’s Park by becoming a Friend of the Park please email

saint.fittick.torry@gmail.com

Follow the campaign on Facebook

Aviation Workers Demand a Sustainable Future for Air Travel

Safe Landing Press Release

For publication on 23.09.2022: 

Safe Landing demands an Aviation Workers’ Climate Assembly ahead of the International Civil Aviation Assembly (ICAO)’s 41st General Assembly, to include and empower aviation workers to develop an independent vision for the future of air travel.

Date of Release – 23.09.2022

ICAO Headquarters, Montréal, Canada, 21st September 2022, — Safe Landing is a growing global movement of aviation workers campaigning for long-term employment. They do this by challenging business & political leaders to conform with climate science and reject dangerous growth. They advocate for a sustainable and adaptive aviation industry and are proposing that ICAO facilitate anAviation Workers’ Climate Assembly. This would enable aviation workers to navigate a secure future for their careers, in line with current climate science. A Workers’ Assembly would be run independently of corporate and political influence, with a sortition process that would democratically select a group of participants representative of worker demographics across the sector. These workers would be presented with expert information from various climate, technology and policy specialists, before engaging in facilitated deliberation, in order to then produce and vote on output recommendations that can be presented to ICAO and other relevant political & industry organisations.

Safe Landing, founded by Todd Smith and Finlay Asher, has been operating since 2020 and includes aviation workers from across the globe. It now has over 600 active supporters from across the aviation sector. The group demands that business leaders:

be honest about the total environmental impact of flying,

be realistic about the limits of technology to solve this problem,
be transparent about future regulations required to reduce emissions,
and have a robust plan, that accounts for this, and supports workers during any transition

In the absence of these actions, Safe Landing promotes the concept of Aviation Workers’ Assemblies to relevant Trade Unions and organisations operating within the sector: as a tool for aviation workers to design and then demand a sustainable future for the aviation industry, with safe careers within it.

Finlay Asher, 32, co-founder of Safe Landing and aircraft engine designer states “the aviation industry is currently emerging from years of turbulence induced by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, as aircraft return to the skies in ever greater numbers, we run the risk of failing to learn from history, and flying workers straight back into danger. Rather than use this opportunity to pivot aviation and transform air travel: business leaders are doubling-down on business-as-usual growth of fossil fuel reliant aircraft and airports. When the next crisis hits us, it will be workers once again taking the hit. We have to recognise that our current leaders are not on our side, most won’t be around in 2030 to deal with the consequences of the next major industry crash. As aviation workers, we want safe and secure careers spanning decades. It’s time to grab the controls in the flightdeck, and chart our own safe flight path forward.”

Todd Smith, 33, co-founder of Safe Landing and airline pilot, also adds, “with the remaining global carbon budget we have left, we can’t continue to double air traffic every 15 years, as we have done historically. We want to empower aviation workers to understand that we need to change how we fly in the short-term, so that we can safeguard the existence of a healthy aviation sector in the long-term. As pilots, we’re trained to think free from bias and to mitigate risks, in order to preserve life. We must follow our training and ensure that the industry does everything it can to minimise danger to our workforce, our communities and our homes. After all, safety is our Number 1 priority. We need workers to get round the table, then let’s give them the time and the space to do what we do best: come up with solutions. We need all aviation workers on board: on the journey towards a sustainable future for the planet and for our own industry – we are all crew.”

Contact

For more information regarding this press release, please contact Finlay Asher. Press contact for Safe Landing: Finlay Asher
Contact Details: info@safe-landing.org, +44 (0)7984 602404

About Safe Landing

Safe Landing is a group of professionals within the aviation industry: pilots, cabin crew, airline and airport staff, air traffic controllers, aerospace engineers, and factory workers.

Our website: www.safe-landing.org
Why we exist: https://safe-landing.org/why-safe-landing/
Meet our crew: https://safe-landing.org/meet-the-crew/
Group position Q&A: https://safe-landing.org/questionsandanswers/
Aviation Workers’ Assembly explainer: https://safe-landing.org/assembly/
Aviation Workers’ Assembly promo video on Youtube: https://youtu.be/8vjPuwYYEAk ICAO Petition: https://tinyurl.com/aviationassembly

Social media posts:

        

North Sea Oil and Gas and the Cost of Living

Report of a public meeting called by ScotE3 on 12th September

The conversation at this meeting between about 40 people from widely differing backgrounds was both extremely valuable and extremely lively. It’s clear that a lot of people have got their blood up.

The meeting was kicked off by contributions from Neil Rothnie, who has spent much of his life as a North Sea offshore worker, and from Pete Cannell, a founder member of ScotE3. You can watch the video of their talks on YouTube

Three climate activists – Quan Nguyen (Climate Camp), Zareen Islam (Muslim Women’s Association of Edinburgh), and Phoebe Hayman (Just Stop Oil) – were then asked to react to Neil and Pete’s contributions. You can watch the video of their reactions here

Here are some of the points that Neil and Pete made in their introduction

  • The meeting has been called ostensibly about the cost-of-living crisis and North Sea oil and gas, but if we’re not talking about climate change, we’re not really talking about the real world.
  • The oil companies operating on the North Sea have a plan to explore for, and produce, every single barrel of oil and gas that exists there.  It’s called Maximising Economic Recovery. It’s written into law and has been since way before COP26.  And if it’s the oil industry plan for the North Sea, it’s the oil industry plan everywhere.   The deal to expedite Maximum Economic Recovery – called the ‘North Sea Transition Deal’ is signed up to by Scottish and UK governments and unions.
  • Almost all the gas used for heating in the UK comes from the British and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea and comes ashore via pipelines.
  • Only a very small amount of gas used in the UK ever came from Russia – it came by tanker – and was primarily used for plastic and other industrial processes not for heating.
  • The huge hike in gas prices came before the war in Ukraine.  Gas and oil prices have been highly volatile for many decades.  Not long ago the price dipped below zero for a short period.  
  • Liz Truss has confirmed the enormity of the cost-of-living crisis, driven largely by North Sea gas here in the UK, in spectacular fashion by throwing £130 billion at it. Money she’s going to borrow in our name and make us pay back. 
  • The fantasy is she’s going to grow the economy to pay for this.  The madness is she thinks she’s going to do it by being cheerleader for the oil and gas industry on the North Sea and by fracking for shale gas in England. 
  • The reality either way is that is she is going to try and make the people pay.
  • Truss treats the global market price for gas as if it is God given.  The price bears no relation to how much gas costs to produce.  It’s set by speculation (by hedge funds) betting on what the price might be at some point in the future.
  • There’s been no significant increase in the cost of gas production on the North Sea.
  • The finances of the poorest, the most vulnerable, those with special needs, are stretched to the limit by the price hikes that are already in place and would have been wrecked immediately by the October rise had it gone ahead as planned.  The Truss decision to freeze energy bills for the next two years is not some sort of act of charity or generosity, but an admission that to proceed with the planned rises in retail energy prices till they met the wholesale energy price levels that profiteering by the gas producers and electricity generators and the market speculators have engineered, is just not acceptable.  The people after years of austerity and real wages reductions, just could not, and would not, shoulder this burden.  
  • The £130 billion package, even if the plan is that we eventually pay for it somehow in energy bills over the next 10 years, is a kind of a victory.  At the very least it gives us the breathing space to begin to build a response in the communities.  But that is still urgent.
  • Had the October cap rise gone ahead it is likely that catastrophic levels of poverty would have been the result and that local communities would have been faced with a couple of immediate challenges. How the most vulnerable were to keep warm? How they were to stay fed?  These challenges have been at best delayed for many people but are still present for many already on prepayment meters and are likely to be unable to heat homes effectively or afford inflated food prices this winter.  
  • The people of Pakistani heritage living in Govanhill and Pollokshields have watched as their families, friends and erstwhile neighbours in about a third of the districts and 12% of the land surface of Pakistan are devastated by floods which even the Government of Pakistan, recognises are a direct result of global warming driven by fossil fuel burning.  Fossil fuel burning specifically not by most of the victims.
  • While trying to raise aid for the victims in Pakistan, this part of our community is facing their own fossil fuel induced crisis, a cost-of-living crisis that threatens to drive them into cold and hunger and which is driven by profiteering on North Sea gas. 
  • The extraction of megaprofits from the North Sea is driving the current cost of living crisis.  Longer-term Truss’s ‘payback plan’ and the government’s plans for Nuclear, Hydrogen for heat and fracking will ensure a high-cost energy future and continue to trash the environment.
  • A sustainable future requires breaking the power of the big energy companies on the North Sea, and through democratic public control phasing down production, ending the subsidies and shifting all that investment into renewables.
  • When they shout – It’s the war in Ukraine.  We’ve got to shout it’s profiteering on North Sea gas.

You can watch a full video of the introductory talks here

And here is an attempt at summarising the general discussion which followed:

Actions we can take immediately

  • Most people don’t understand what’s happening. We need to get out into the streets with leaflets and speak to people – which is the key strategy of Just Stop Oil.
  • We should speak more about our ideas, and less about ‘theirs’.
  • A good talking point is the recent worst flooding ever in Pakistan. At the same moment when Pakistani families living in Scotland were watching their relatives dying on the news, many of these families, for example on the south side in Glasgow, are facing the impossibility this winter of both keeping warm and having enough to eat. Both these disasters are a direct result of the world continuing to burn fossil fuels as its main source of energy.
  • We need to keep expressing our solidarity with the people of the global south who are enduring the worst effects of global heating.
  • The power of the big North Sea oil and gas companies, through lobbying, bribery and their control of the media, is huge. This is a war we’re fighting, not a battle.
  • Beware these companies as they begin to invest in renewables. If we allow ourselves to be fooled by this they will make sure that renewables are developed in a way which is most profitable for them instead of prioritising public benefit.
  • We need to fight for state ownership of not only distribution of energy but also its production. 
  • The processing plant at Mossmorran must be shut down.
  • One participant suggested that we should get into the Labour and LibDem parties and make the politicians listen to what we have to say.
  • We should organise for COP27 (to be held in November at Sharm El Sheik, Egypt).
  • At the same time as addressing the big political picture, we need to provide support for the many people in our communities who will be in desperate need this winter – for example by setting up ‘Warm Banks’, as communities in North Edinburgh are planning towards.

Workers and Unions

  • The unions need to come together with the workers, demanding with a single voice no more fossil fuel extraction and just transition for the workers.
  • There will be no pay and no jobs on a dead planet
  • We should go to picket lines to express solidarity and not be afraid to speak about the big picture, whatever immediate demands the strikers are making. For example whatever RMT workers immediate demands, they are the people who will be running the electric trains to get people out of their cars.
  • On October 1st we should be on the streets to support the BT group workers and their Communication Workers Union
  • We should particularly express solidarity with the current wave of wild-cat strikes by the North Sea offshore workers, especially in view of their Unions’ criticisms of their strike action. The work conditions of these workers are appalling,

Our rulers

  • Do not care about us
  • Are under the control of the big oil and gas companies
  • Deserve our anger

Hopeful considerations

  • Working together: one participant talked about ‘joining the dots’ – another suggested a good way of doing this is by supporting RMT pickets and making sure that climate and supporting public transport is part of the agenda; critical to make the links between organised workers and communities – the Edinburgh Trade Unions in Communities initiative is a good example.  It was noted that the anti-fracking campaign went well because of solidarity across Scotland and England. So, the theme across these is about connecting, working together for greater impact.
  • There are now the beginnings of widespread collective action
  • The North Sea is at an end-game stage, with reducing quantities of oil and gas to extract, and the prospect of rising costs of extraction.
  • Two years ago, Platform ran a questionnaire for offshore workers which showed many hadn’t even heard about just transition, but that most would gladly move to jobs in renewables if they were given the opportunity.
  • One participant pointed out that when fundamental daily needs like warmth and food are being denied to large numbers of people, history tells us that revolution is likely. Other civilisations have fallen in similar circumstances.

Upcoming meetings

A number of events were mentioned during the discussion go to our Events page for details.

Glasgow’s retrofit programme: rival agendas 

We’re very pleased to publish this post by Les Levidow, Open University, les.levidow@open.ac.uk

With the slogan, ‘Our Climate:Our Homes’, the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) led a multi-stakeholder proposal for a ‘whole house retrofit’ approach for decarbonising heat in homes.  It included civil society groups such as the Poverty Alliance, Living Rent tenants’ organizations and Friends of the Earth.  They jointly demanded substantial funds and new state structures, especially a National Infrastructure Company and municipal energy companies.  This plan would provide numerous unionised, green jobs for high-quality retrofits.  These measures would be necessary to avoid the limitations and failures of the UK government’s retrofit initiative (STUC, 2021).  

This extended a previous proposal, coordinated by Common Weal (2019 et al.). It contributed to a broader plan: a ‘Green New Deal for Scotland’.   As regards the institutional means, ‘genuine public-good private-public partnerships should be developed, but government should also intervene directly where it needs to’ (Common Weal, 2019: 104).   This section draws on an interview with two authors of those reports (Stuart Graham of the Glasgow TUC and Craig Dalzell of Common Weal, 10.03.2022). 

For an adequate retrofit programme, a major obstacle has been Glasgow’s neoliberal policy framework, dating from at least the 1980s. It has structured public expenditure as new markets aiming to incentivise entrepreneurialism and to attract business investment.  This framework had generally diminished decision-making capacity of the public sector (Boyle et al., 2008).  Given that neoliberal framework of the local authority, its retrofitting plan soon conflicted with the labour movement agenda prioritising the public good. 

Glasgow. Arden. Housing estate. Kyleakin Road. 10 January 2016. CC BY-SA 4.0

In 2021 the Scottish government funded  the Glasgow City Region to retrofit homes and substitute renewable energy systems for natural gas. Sufficient for a half-million houses, the funds were meant for jointly addressing fuel poverty, heat efficiency and decarbonisation (Sandlands, 2021).   Glasgow City Region announced an ambitious plan to retrofit the housing stock by 2032 (Glasgow City Region, 2021a).  This was part of the Glasgow Green Deal, which promised many benefits such as ‘ensuring a fairer and more equal economy’ (Glasgow City Council, 2021).  

Glasgow City Council organised a 3-day event raising several challenges of a retrofit programme.  According to the Council, suitable technology was already available to scale up retrofit. But the programme would need ‘collaboration between government, industry and training providers to realise Glasgow’s aspiration of carbon neutrality by 2030’.  An initial pilot was to retrofit the city’s iconic tenement blocks. For the Low Carbon Homes agenda, the Council’s experts mentioned issues such as social justice and fuel poverty (LCH, 2021).  The plans for Glasgow to host CoP26 in November 2021 intensified debate on decarbonisation, strengthening the impetus for the government’s plans and promises. 

Neoliberal obstacles

Their institutional framework posed several obstacles to a worthwhile, credible retrofit programme.  A full retrofit programme may need until at least 2040. Yet the Scottish government made a firm financial commitment only for the 2021-2026 Parliamentary term.  

This short timescale provided a weak incentive for business investment in the necessary skills and local manufacturing capacity, whose gaps were well known (CXC, 2022).  According to a retrofit programme manager, ‘The existing short-term funding streams do not give businesses the long-term confidence of a multi-year pipeline of work that will encourage the acceleration and expansion of business investment in the skills of their staff and manufacturing capability (Glasgow City Region, 2021b: 2).   Under those inadequate arrangements, a retrofit programme would depend on the current long supply chains, especially imported expertise, equipment and materials.  Alternatively, the government could make a commitment to create local manufacturing capability, as a crucial basis to realise the local economic and environmental benefits (Common Weal, 2019a).

Energy performance standards were also weak or doubtful.   Initial negotiations with contractors agreed pilot projects at a high standard of energy efficiency, such as Passivhaus in some cases (Paciaroni, 2021; Wilson, 2021).  By contrast, the overall programme set a minimal standard, Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) level C.  This would mean upgrading approximately a half-million units that were at a lower standard.  

However, this basis would not guarantee any specific standard in practice.  According to some experts, the EPC is simply an administrative compliance method,  not an energy efficiency measure or predictor, partly because the outcome depends on each householder’s behaviour (quoted in LGHPC, 2021: 6).  Whatever the modest gain, it may be superseded later by a higher standard, thus requiring an extra upgrade at a greater overall cost. 

A comprehensive programme would need householders’ enthusiasm, based on seeing initial retrofits visibly saving heat costs  in other households.  This has been one reason for a ‘fabric first’ approach, i.e. installing effective insulation before alternative heat sources in order to maximise  their benefit from the start.  This is necessary but insufficient because a ‘fabric first’ approach prioritises technical considerations.  By contrast, ‘an occupant-centred “folk first” approach may justify overcoming financial and related barriers which themselves do far more to restrict the choice of options for improving energy efficiency’ (CommonWeal et al., 2019: 3).

Such barriers feature the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) level C.  Why did Glasgow’s programme adopt this?   As one driver,  a minimal standard simplifies competitive tendering, the wider neoliberal regime which has driven the overall retrofit programme. This creates competition among organizations that instead could cooperatively raise standards on a case-by-case basis.  According to a housing association, ‘The funding is not being allocated strategically. Funding is still allocated through a bid process, which means that we are competing against other organisations’ (quoted in LGHPC, 2021: 19).  According to the relevant Minister, ‘innovative collective models of transition may play an important role in increasing the pace of retrofit’ (Harvie, 2022). Yet any such model has been constrained by the regime of competitive tendering, which can be understood as a techno-market fix. 

As a related obstacle, a competitive call  favours large foreign companies with administrative capacity for the necessary documentation but perhaps minimal standards for energy efficiency.  Price competition can drive down quality in practice.  Competitive tendering excludes and/or fragments small local suppliers which have skills for higher standards. This arrangement deters the large-scale cooperative programme that would be necessary for the greater skills investment, mutual learning and differentiated approach to the diverse building types (Glasgow TUC-Common Weal interview, 10.03.2022).  In those ways the programme’s public-good benefits have been limited by Glasgow’s decades-old neoliberal regime (Boyle et al., 2008; Webb,  2019). 

Like many cities, Glasgow has lacked the skills for normal repair and maintenance of the housing stock, much less for new skills.  So a strong incentive would be necessary for workers to learn retrofitting skills.  As the labour movement proposal had said, ‘Scaling up delivery poses a huge skills challenge, particularly given the large number of self-employed contractors understandably reluctant to take time out of being paid to learn new skills’ (STUC, 2021: 3).  

In 2021 Glasgow initiated such a training programme, but it had little take-up, for several reasons.  The Scottish government’s low, short-term financial commitment has provided a weak incentive for building-trades workers  to take up the opportunity. As a plausible disadvantageous scenario, some workers who already have building skills (such as electricians or plumbers) could obtain retrofit training, find that the programme is short-lived and then have difficulties returning to their original trade.  Such doubts have been voiced as reasons for little interest in the training opportunity (Glasgow TUC-Common Weal interview, 10.03.2022).

Public-good alternative

In 2019 Common Weal, a Scottish ‘think and do tank’, had anticipated such obstacles and so proposed a comprehensive decarbonisation plan.  It lay within a broader Common Home Plan, also called a Green New Deal for Scotland.  This would provide a comprehensive alternative to Glasgow’s techno-market fix.

As a key message of the Common Home Plan,  

You’re not powerless…..  We’re going to show how a Green New Deal for Scotland will not just save the world but will benefit our country, our communities and you individually. Better food, better homes, better jobs, cleaner air, less waster and pollution and an economy based on repairing the things that we need rather than throwing away things that we don’t need….   By leading as an example, by coming up with the solutions and then exporting our skills and our innovations to others we can bring the word with us rather than sitting back or asking the world to stop so that we can catch up (Source News, 2019).

Rather than try to drive GDP growth, this plan promotes an economy of sufficiency.  It invites people to help create the necessary innovation, which prioritises repair, refurbishment, digital services and better resource use (Common Weal, 2019).  

For decarbonising heat in houses, the plan identified many ways to replace natural gas, reduce GHG emissions and address fuel poverty.  Ideally, district heating systems would distribute surplus heat at low cost.  Heat pumps would have a stronger rationale in rural areas, though also a wider relevance.  By contrast, the gas industry agenda for CCS-hydrogen ‘poses serious risks to the decarbonisation of Scottish energy supplies’ (Common Weal et al., 2019: 8). 

Image by Pete Cannell – Air Source Heat Pump on Shetland CC0

This had significant differences from prevalent decarbonisation agendas.  While they depend on  future techno-solutions, this one is ‘based almost entirely on current or old technology’.  The dominant ‘market-pricing-and-subsidy regime’ would increase inequality, so this plan emphasises public-sector responsibility (ibid: 11).  This change would be necessary so that state procurement becomes a true public service,  beyond the transactional-based profit-oriented economy.

Its plan outlined many inherent complexities of decarbonising heat in houses, as stronger grounds for state-led institutional change, in particular: ‘Set up a National Housing Company to retrofit all existing houses to achieve 70-90 per cent thermal efficiency. Change building regulations and invest in domestic supply chains to make almost all new construction materials in Scotland either organic or recycled’ (Common Weal, 2019: 39).  

It also made specific proposals for low-carbon heat sources.   Given several disadvantages of electricity-based heat, the report promoted district heating systems as cheap, viable means to deliver renewable heat to homes (Common Weal, 2020b). For both those aspects, public-sector responsibility would be necessary to implement effective solutions and overcome potential obstacles, as the reports emphasised. 

Those proposals had anticipated limitations that later arose in the Scottish government’s 2021 retrofit programme and Glasgow City Region’s role.  In response, the labour movement network tried to persuade the Scottish government to establish the necessary long-term commitment, higher standards and institutional framework, including a National Infrastructure body for overall decarbonisation. Likewise they tried to persuade the City Council to replace the competitive tendering regime with  a more flexible basis that would facilitate more diverse bids and raise quality standards. 

Although technical studies per se cannot overcome the problem, they can help identify institutional weaknesses and policy obstacles.  Solutions need political changes which can drive economic change towards shorter, high-quality supply chains supporting long-term skilled livelihoods.  The necessary political changes would depend on a high-profile campaign that links issues such as labour standards, housing quality, environmental protection, fuel poverty, etc.  

As a potential means to link such groups and issues, the campaign ScotE3 (employment, energy and environment) was already advocating climate jobs within a Just Transition framework.  It was initiated by trade unionists  and climate activists, ‘keen to find a way of taking climate action into workplaces and working class communities’.  Alongside its positive proposals are attacks on false solutions, especially a CCS-hydrogen technofix for decarbonising fossil fuels.  The latter has been a basis for the North Sea Transition Deal,  endorsed by the Scottish government (Scot.E3, 2021).   

Scotland has a special opportunity for a socially just, environmentally sustainable decarbonisation agenda. This is partly due to its devolution arrangements, with a larger budget and greater legal powers than the UK’s regional authorities.   Yet the Scottish government has made false promises, such as through its neoliberal retrofit framework or hypothetical technofixes, thereby avoiding responsibility for decarbonisation.  By default, these promises may be accepted by a passive public – unless opposed by a strong alliance for climate justice.

As the Glasgow case shows, a Green (New) Deal has become a widespread banner, attracting divergent agendas for a retrofit programme.  These promote divergent sociotechnical forms, linking technical standards with different social orders, especially a rivalry between market-competition versus community-worker cooperation.  To realise the potential benefits, a public-good agenda would need to undermine and displace the dominant policy framework.  

Author’s note: 

This blog piece comes from my book chapter on Green New Deal agendas.  It starts by comparing US and UK nation-wide agendas, especially trade-union pressures to endorse false solutions (also in Levidow, 2022).  Then it analyses GND local agendas to decarbonise heat by retrofitting houses, e,.g. from Leeds Trades Council (2020), followed by the Glasgow case – as below. 

Book details: Les Levidow, Beyond Climate Fixes: From Public Controversy to System Change, forthcoming from Bristol University Press, 2023, 
https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/beyond-climate-fixes

References

Boyle, M., McWilliams, C. and Rice, G. 2008.  The spatialities of actually existing neoliberalism in Glasgow, 1977 to present, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 90(4) 313-325. 

Common Weal. 2019.  Our Common Home: A Green New Deal for Scotland, 
https://commonweal.scot/index.php/building-green-new-deal-scotland

Common Weal et al. 2019.   The Future of Low Carbon Heat for Off-Gas Buildings: a call for evidence.  Glasgow:  Common Weal, Glasgow Caledonian University, and the Energy Poverty Research Initiative, https://commonweal.scot/index.php/policy-library/future-low-carbon-heat-gas-buildings

Common Weal. 2020a. The Common Home Plan: Homes and buildings, https://commonweal.scot/our-common-home/homes-buildings

Common Weal. 2020b. The Common Home Plan: Heating,   https://commonweal.scot/our-common-home/heating

CXC. 2022. Clean Heat and Energy Efficiency Workforce Assessment.  Edinburgh: ClimateExchange, Clean Heat and Energy Efficiency Workforce Assessment (climatexchange.org.uk)

Glasgow City Council. 2021.  Glasgow Green Deal: Our roadmap and call for ideas. 

Glasgow City Region. 2021a.  Home Energy Retrofit Programme, 
https://invest-glasgow.foleon.com/igpubs/glasgow-greenprint-for-investment/glasgow-city-region-home-energy-retrofit-programme/      (Note: webpage indicates no date, so guessing that it is 2021).

Glasgow City Region. 2021b.  Home Energy Retrofit Final Report: Next Steps, Home Energy Retrofit Programme, https://invest-glasgow.foleon.com/igpubs/glasgow-greenprint-for-investment/glasgow-city-region-home-energy-retrofit-programme/

Harvie, P. 2022.  Letter from the Minister for Zero Carbon Buildings, Active Travel and Tenants’ Rights to the Convener , 11 January, Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee,  Scottish Parliament, https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/committees/current-and-previous-committees/session-6-local-government-housing-and-planning/correspondence/2022/retrofitting-housing-for-net-zero-january-2022  

LCH. 2021. Pre-COP26, we revisit Glasgow’s retrofit scene, Low Carbon Homes, 24 May,  https://www.lowcarbonhomes.uk/news/retrofit-revisited-glasgow/

Leeds Trades Council. 2020.   Retrofit Leeds homes with high-quality insulation and heat pumps:  a plan and call to  action!, Leeds Trades Council, https://leedstuc.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/draft-document-decarbonising-leeds-homes-with-a-huge-programme-of-deep-retrofitting-and-installation-of-heat-pumps..pdf

Levidow, L.  2022.  Green New Deals: what shapes Green and Deal?,  Capitalism Nature Socialism (CNS), https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2022.2062675  (free download).

LGHPC.  2021. Retrofitting Housing For Net Zero.   Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, 30 November 2021.  Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament. 

PAC. 2021.   Green Homes Grant Voucher Scheme.  London: UK Parliament: Public Accounts Committee, https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/127/public-accounts-committee/news/159264/pac-report-green-homes-grant-scheme-underperformed-badly/

Paciaroni, S. 2021.  Springfield Cross: Low carbon social housing project takes shape Glasgow’s East End, Glasgow Times, 8 November, https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/19701701.springfield-cross-low-carbon-social-housing-project-takes-shape-glasgows-east-end/

Sandlands, D. 2021. Massive’ energy retrofit programme could target over 420,000 homes across Glasgow, Glasgow Live, 11 April,  https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgow-news/glasgow-energy-refit-housing-programme-20360138

Scot.E3.  2021.   Briefing #13: The Use & Abuse of Hydrogen, https://scote3.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/briefing-13.pdf

Source News. 2019.  A Green New Deal for Scotland,  https://sourcenews.scot/a-green-new-deal-for-scotland/

STUC. 2021.  Our Climate: Our Homes.  Scottish Trades Union Congress, https://stuc.org.uk/files/campaigns/Homes/Our-Homes_briefing.pdf

Webb,  J. 2019.  New lamps for old: financialised governance of cities and clean energy, Journal of Cultural Economy 12(4):  286-298.   

Wilson, C. 2021.  COP26: ‘Green’ tenement plan could cut fuel bills by 80%, Herald Scotland, 10 November, https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19705494.cop26-green-tenement-plan-cut-fuel-bills-80/

Stop Jackdaw – week of action

From 20-27 August, Stop Cambo are hosting a UK-wide week of action to #StopJackdaw. To make this work, we need many groups and individuals taking action with a range of tactics. There are many ways to support this amazing campaign – from hosting a local action to helping push the word out about the week.

Find out more and get involved here: https://bit.ly/jackdawweek

  • The UK government recently approved Shell’s Jackdaw gas field, even though scientists have said time and time again that we can’t have any  more new oil and gas if we want to stay within safe climate limits.
  • Jackdaw’s gas won’t lower energy bills, but will make millions for Shell while wrecking the climate.
  • Jackdaw is just the tip of the iceberg. The UK government wants to approve dozens of new fossil fuel projects by the year 2025 including the giant Rosebank oil field, and is due to launch yet another licensing round for new oil and gas exploration this autumn.
  • We’re going to challenge the Government and Shell from every side to delay and eventually stop this field.


Only have a minute? you can support the campaign by sharing these videos:

Global Climate Jobs Conference 2022

ScotE3 is part of the Global Climate Jobs network and we hope you’ll be able to attend all or some of the 2022 conference.

Register through the link here: https://forms.gle/i3W1ycKEz74TSMME7

We know that the points of convergence between the labor and the climate movements are immense, but that several challenges lie ahead of us. It is nevertheless of extreme importance and urgency to cut emissions and do so by drawing on plans that are created by the workers and communities and in regard to their interests and needs.

Often, we do know what work needs to be carried out in order to cut emissions, but workers are being left out of the discussion and climate science is being disregarded. We need to build a movement that not only is capable of setting its own program, but that has the power to implement it.

As so, we are bringing together people from all around the world, and bringing together the labor and climate movements to discuss how we win a program that can allow us to stop climate collapse. Join us for two days of thematic sessions about the strategies, technical and social perspectives, and challenges we face in building Climate Jobs Campaigns.

Invited speakers:

  • Negrai Adve; 
  • Max Ajl;
  • Chris Baugh; 
  • Jeremy Brecher; 
  • Leonor Canadas; 
  • Claire Cohen;
  • Rehad Desai; 
  • Patricia De Marco; 
  • Suzanne Jeffries; 
  • Paul Le Blanc; 
  • Josua Mata; 
  • Suda Sim Meriç; 
  • Jonathan Neale; 
  • Andreas Yetterstad 

Schedule

All the sessions will be recorded and available online. Sessions will be 1 hour and 30 minutes and will be composed of a introduction by the invited speakers and a workshop space between the participants.

Saturday, September 17

12:00 GMT [5 pm ET] – General Session: Strategic Orientation

14:00 GMT [7 pm ET] – Special Sessions

1) Building Climate Jobs Movements

2) Food and Farming

16.00 GMT [11 pm ET] – Special Sessions

1) Ecofeminism

2) Racism and Refugees

Sunday, September 18

12.00 GMT [5 pm ET] – General Session: Workers in the Fossil Fuel industry

14.00 GMT [7 pm ET] – Special Sessions

1) Cutting Emissions

2) Resilience

16.00 GMT [11 pm ET] – General Session: Summing Up

Briefing 16: oil and gas are costing us the earth

Here’s the text of out latest briefing on climate, oil and gas and the cost of living. You can download it here.

Cost of Living

Everyone knows that we are in a cost-of-living crisis.  Most of us in Scotland rely on natural gas for cooking and heating and North Sea gas is a guided missile sent into every home in the country which will drive thousands of new people into poverty and will kill the most vulnerable.  Oil and gas producers are making mega profits and demanding money with menaces.  

Before this happened around a quarter of Scots lived in fuel poverty.  As a result of the price rises hundreds of thousands more will be forced to make impossible choices between food and heating.  The response from the Tories has been derisory. Their so-called Energy Security Plan does nothing to tackle immediate hardship and doubles down on the most expensive energy options for the longer term – nuclear, oil and gas, hydrogen for heating and carbon capture and storage.  

Business as usual – the North Sea Transition Deal

There is a simple reason why the Tories have made these choices.  In the face of the climate and cost of living crises they’ve chosen to protect the interests of big oil.  It’s not just that they won’t tax the enormous profits that are being made from North Sea Oil and Gas – it’s that they are following the logic of the oil industry’s ‘North Sea Transition Deal’.  

A phony deal

The ‘Deal’ is a partnership between the UK and Scottish governments and the unions.  It aims to continue the exploitation of North Sea oil and gas up to and beyond 2050.  It talks about a net-zero oil and gas basin where the greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas would be captured and stored.  This is not going to happen, certainly not in the next few decades, and the consequence will be that the UK will fail to meet its contribution to restricting global temperature rises.  

Maintaining profits – wasting resources

Moreover, the ‘Transition Deal’ drives high-cost energy options at every step and leaves working people to pay the price.   The latest UK government energy strategy aligns entirely with the ‘Deal’. Most of the electricity produced by new nuclear power stations will be required to produce the hydrogen for domestic heating.  Using electricity to produce hydrogen for domestic heating at large scale is hugely inefficient.  Moreover, nuclear produces much more carbon emissions over its lifecycle than wind or solar.

Torness CC-BY-SA-4.0 Image by NH2501

The alternative

There is an alternative.  Electricity produced by wind and solar is already much cheaper than that produced by nuclear, oil and gas and the costs of renewables continue to fall.  The money the Tories want to spend on new nuclear is enough to retrofit most homes across the UK – creating jobs, improving health and well-being and cutting energy demand.  

An economy based on renewables results in many more jobs than the fossil fuel and nuclear options.

A challenge for the trade union movement

It’s time for a decisive shift in policy and end to partnership with the oil industry.  Just transition, indeed arguably any transition that restricts temperature rises to 1.5 degrees, is incompatible with the ‘North Sea Transition Deal’.  Sticking with the ‘Deal’ is a disaster for the planet and undermines the ability of the workers movement and the climate movement to build the power we need to win over climate and the cost of living.

A new policy for the union movement

Tackling the cost-of-living crisis and the climate crisis means breaking the partnership with big oil that is inherent in the Transition Deal and campaigning for an end to the development of new North Sea oil and gas and the rapid planned phase out of existing fields.  Large-scale investment in renewables and a massive programme of retrofitting would result in lower energy prices and reduced carbon emissions.   A serious plan would include support for the oil and gas work force while they transition to new jobs and ramping up options for reskilling, education and training in the new industries.

No more subsidies

The oil and gas industry has been subsidised heavily over the lifetime of the North Sea.  The subsidies must stop.  Working people are suffering because what they pay for energy fuels super profits for big oil and goes into the pockets of the richest in society whose wealth grows as hedge funds speculate on the oil market.  There’s plenty of money to pay for an energy transition.

Among the components of a new policy for the workers movement should be: 

Massive investment in wind, solar and tidal energy.

Large-scale expansion of energy storage options.

No more North Sea development. 

Taking the North Sea into public ownership and beginning a planned phased out of production.

Support for oil and gas workers to transition to new jobs.

Regulate energy prices to consumers and tax big oil and the rich to end the cost-of-living crisis.

COP26 gave us a glimpse of the potential power when the workers movement and the climate movement come together.  Together we can win.