The shadow chancellor has told Barclays that he is “on their case” as he backed a direct action campaign against the bank for financing fossil fuel projects. The Momentum group yesterday confirmed plans to disrupt Barclays branches by turning them into “pop-up discos” and “children’s play areas” in climate-change protests next weekend. Staff would be handed boxes of chocolates to apologise for the inconvenience, the group said. The support from John McDonnell comes as Labour seeks to capitalise on the popularity of the activism fed by the Extinction Rebellion movement and the 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg.

Times 29th April 2019 read more »

Ministers were accused yesterday of deliberately undermining their own fracking tsar before she resigned in frustration at their “paralysis”. Natascha Engel quit seven months after she was appointed shale gas commissioner by the energy minister. The former Labour MP said that the government had caved in to pressure from campaign groups and had “instituted a de facto ban” on extraction. The row revolves around the government’s rule that fracking must be suspended every time tremors of magnitude 0.5 and above are detected, which companies say makes drilling all but impossible. Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, said that Labour would ban fracking altogether. “We don’t think it is responsible to lock us into that fossil fuel-related future at a time when we should be throwing our weight behind low-carbon and renewable technologies,” she said.

Times 29th April 2019 read more »

Natascha Engel: As the sometime commissioner for shale gas (I resigned over the weekend) it became clear to me that fracking was the only way to reduce our carbon emissions at any sort of scale. Properly regulated, the process is as safe as any other drilling industry. Over a million wells have been fracked in the US in 20 years with no reliable evidence of systemic health problems or pollution. More important, fracking is an essential element in any transition to a renewable future. The scale of that ambition is not generally recognised. If asked, people tend to say about a third of our energy is currently supplied by wind and solar. The real answer is less than 5 per cent. So disregard the fact that wind and solar need fossil fuel power to back them up in times of calm and cloud – renewables currently provide a negligible amount of energy required. Getting from 5 per cent to 100 per cent renewable energy requires a transition strategy. Fracked gas with half the emissions of coal is the solution to that. If environmental groups really cared about reducing carbon emissions quickly, they would be fracking’s biggest supporters.

Times 29th April 2019 read more »

Anti-fracking campaigners have welcomed the resignation of the government’s shale gas commissioner, who quit in frustration at “ridiculous” regulations limiting drillers from causing earth tremors, which she claimed were hobbling the industry. Natascha Engel stood down at the weekend after just six months in the post and accused ministers of being too heavily influenced by climate change campaigners such as the Swedish 16-year-old Greta Thunberg and anti-fracking protesters. The former Labour MP told the business secretary, Greg Clark, that “a perfectly viable and exciting new industry that could help meet our carbon reduction targets, make us energy secure and provide jobs in parts of the country that really need them is in danger of withering on the vine” because the government insists fracking operations are stopped if a tremor with a magnitude of 0.5 is recorded. Speaking to BBC Radio 4 on Sunday, she added: “If you applied the same standards to anything else, you wouldn’t build another school or a hospital, you probably wouldn’t have any buses or lorries on the roads.” She said she could not understand “why politicians would listen to a teenager who tells children not to go to school”. The environmental charity Greenpeace UK said the fact that Engel appeared to have lost patience with the pace of progress was “good news”, while the former Green party leader Natalie Bennett, said it was proof that “campaigning works”.

Guardian 28th April 2019 read more »

The UK shale gas revolution promised by David Cameron seven years ago has in effect been declared dead after the government’s “fracking tsar” quit, claiming policy was being driven by “environmental lobbying rather than science”. Natascha Engel, a former Labour MP and deputy speaker, told business secretary Greg Clark that she was resigning with immediate effect as commissioner for shale gas after just six months in the job, complaining that “a perfectly viable industry is being wasted”. Her resignation came as the government prepares this week to publish a report by its climate change committee on whether and how Britain can reduce its carbon emissions to zero, amid speculation that 2050 could be set as a target date. Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will tap into recent environmental protests by forcing a Commons vote on Wednesday on a motion claiming Britain is facing a “climate change emergency”, attempting to put Conservatives on the back foot. But Labour’s green credentials have also come under scrutiny: Labour councillors in Cumbria recently voted to approve Britain’s first new deep coal mine for 30 years, while Ms Engel carried out consultancy work for shale gas company Ineos in 2017. Ms Engel said the industry was being killed in the UK by Mr Clark’s refusal to review the limit for earth tremors caused by fracking, which is 0.5 on the Richter scale.

FT 28th April 2019 read more »

Several big fund managers believe that oil companies should shut themselves down because soon they will become impossible to invest in as the world switches to renewable energy. A survey of 39 fund managers with $10.2 trillion under management found that 24 per cent wanted the oil industry “to wind down their businesses and return cash to shareholders”. All but two of the funds said that oil stocks would not be attractive investments within ten years if they failed to respond to climate risks. Among respondents to the survey by the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association and the Climate Change Collaborative were leading names such as Aviva, Legal & General Investment Management, M&G Investments, Invesco, Hermes Asset Management and Schroders. Financial services companies increasingly are seen as crucial players in the fight against climate change. By pricing environmental and policy risk into their models, they will be less likely to extend funds to producers or heavy users of fossil fuels and, as a result, will accelerate the shift to alternative energy sources. The Bank of England has warned that climate change could wipe up to $4 trillion off the value of fossil fuel assets and up to $20 trillion across all sectors of the economy. Mark Carney, the Bank’s governor, has said: “If some companies and industries fail to adjust, they will fail to exist.” BP is worth £110 billion and Royal Dutch Shell £200 billion. The survey of fund managers’ attitudes to investment in oil companies found that 86 per cent wanted the industry to align itself with the Paris goals and nearly half were aiming for the most ambitious target of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures.

Times 29th April 2019 read more »

Other banks appear more tone-deaf to the climate change debate. US rival Wells Fargo has been expanding its financing of fossil fuels, extending $61bn last year, up 13 per cent. France’s Natixis was the most aggressive of all, according to the Rainforest Alliance, boosting financing of the industry by more than 70 per cent last year to $10.3bn. Overall, as another environmental organisation – the Sierra Club – notes, the world’s top 33 financiers of fossil fuels have pumped $1.9tn into the industry over the three years since the Paris climate accord was signed in late 2015. And the number was up in each of the past two years. In the UK, Barclays will be braced for its annual shareholder meeting this week. Protesters gatecrashed last year’s AGM demanding the bank stop financing controversial pipeline and fracking companies. It seems to have had some effect: the bank sold a Yorkshire fracking company only last week. And it cut fossil fuel funding by nearly 20 per cent to $20bn last year, the Rainforest Alliance says.

FT 29th April 2019 read more »

Thousands of mechanical “trees” could soon begin absorbing carbon emissions from the air under a new deal to bring a breakthrough climate technology to market. An Ireland-based tech company will announce the landmark deal this week to develop vast forests of carbon capture columns, said to be thousands of times more effective than trees at stripping carbon dioxide from the air. Silicon Kingdom, backed by a string of oil industry veterans, will work alongside US polluters to roll out the technology developed by carbon capture pioneer Professor Klaus Lackner at Arizona State University. The company is already in talks with US oil and transport companies, which face unprecedented pressure from politicians and investors to reduce their carbon footprints.

Telegraph 28th April 2019 read more »

Guardian 28th April 2019 read more »