Mining colossus Anglo American has been accused of “greenwashing” by the secretive research outfit Boatman Capital, which claims that a group of South African coal mines it will spin off this week are “worthless”. In its largest attack since targeting UK defence contractor Babcock nearly three years ago, Boatman alleges Thungela Resources’ clean-up costs could be three times greater than the amounts currently disclosed to investors. A 39-page dossier entitled “Thungela Resources Ltd: Drowning in Liabilities”, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, argues that Anglo American has also overstated future coal sales and understated costs. It says: “The demerger allows Anglo to dump enormous environmental costs onto a much less well capitalised company. “To us, this looks like greenwashing: Anglo is claiming to be acting positively by reducing its greenhouse emissions while seemingly washing its hands of clean-up obligations.

Telegraph 5th June 2021 read more »

The activist hedge fund behind ExxonMobil’s boardroom coup last week has claimed another seat from the oil giant’s board, to take the number of new directors who will push for climate action from within the company to three. The result of last week’s shareholder vote has installed the hedge fund, named Engine No 1 after a San Francisco fire station, as a reluctant hero of the climate movement. But its founders insist that the green agenda is not the primary motive behind its David v Goliath battle to drive down the oil giant’s carbon emissions. A strong climate strategy, they say, just makes good business sense.

Guardian 4th June 2021 read more »

Does defunding fossil fuel companies make economic and environmental sense? Analysis: The fossil fuel financial divestment movement is gathering pace, removing some $14.5 trillion from the sector. But it has been criticised in some quarters as unrealistic and even counterproductive. For Mark Campanale, of the Carbon Tracker think tank, the case for divestment by investors is less about putting pressure on fossil fuel boards than persuading investors and banks where their own financial self-interest really lies. “This is fundamentally about a technology shift, where an old technology [fossil fuels] is being driven out by a new more reliable and efficient and cheaper technology and investors are just responding,” he says. “It’s not a moral case, it’s a technology argument.” “What I fear is happening is that people are conflating climate as an ESG [environmental, social, governance] issue,” he says. “This is fundamentally about investment risk – it’s about who is going to win the technology race.” Campanale says that the problem is that the investment world has not yet caught up with the sheer speed of the revolution, which has resulted in collapsing wind and solar power prices, and the fact that it’s essentially “game over” for the fossil fuel economy. Divestment campaigns, from this point of view, are a salutary wake-up call.

Independent 3rd June 2021 read more »

US President Joe Biden’s administration will suspend oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge pending an environmental review. The move reverses former President Donald Trump’s decision to sell oil leases in the refuge to expand fossil fuel and mineral development. The giant Alaskan wilderness is home to many important species, including polar bears, caribou and wolves. Arctic tribal leaders have welcomed the move but Republicans are opposed.

BBC 2nd June 2021 read more »

Letter from 50 campaign groups urges government to heed recent advice of International Energy Agency that growing fossil fuel supply is incompatible with a 1.5C world Pressure is mounting on the UK government to end all new oil and gas exploration and extraction licenses in the North Sea, following the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) landmark warning last month that further investments in new fossil fuel supplies must end this year if the chances of limiting global warming to 1.5C are to be kept alive. More than 50 campaign groups and NGOs – including Greenpeace UK, E3G, Friends of the Earth Scotland, Christian Aid, Oxfam and the UK Student Climate Network – have penned an open letter to the Prime Minister Boris Johnson today demanding an immediate moratorium on new licenses for oil and gas in UK waters. The letter calls for an end to all new licenses to explore and extract oil and gas from the North Sea, the scrapping of all direct and indirect subsidies for oil and gas extraction, and the introduction of a new net zero mandate for industry regulator the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA).

Business Green 1st June 2021 read more »

Can early-stage technologies such as carbon capture, – and planting trees – really suck enough carbon from the air to help us reverse global temperature rise? The proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions due to energy and transport is about 76 per cent. That is what’s covered by the IEA report. When all sources of greenhouse gas emissions are taken into account – that is, from waste and agriculture/land use change – reaching net zero by 2050 looks extremely challenging. Those now scrambling to advocate various means of actively removing carbon from the atmosphere as a way of compensating for our inability to cut emissions will have to prove that the technologies they propose can step up to the mark. The verdict of Mike Childs at Friends of the Earth UK, quoted in the Financial Times. “On a list of priorities for spending money, CCS would be at the bottom,” he says. He favours first massively ramping up renewables, investment in hydrogen, and improving energy efficiency. To which we can add repairing soils and ecosystems, and becoming less reliant on meat products. CCUS is analogous to treating heroin addicts with methadone. It allows addicts to function but doesn’t remove the base cause of the problem, the dependency. For dependency to end, a managed withdrawal from the drug is usually preferable to enforced cold turkey. Unless we can wean ourselves off fossil fuels this decade, we may be left with no choice but to go cold turkey. Then again, addiction does sometimes unfortunately end in the death of the subject.

The Fifth Estate 31st May 2021 read more »

Guyana’s government is being taken to court by two citizens seeking an end to offshore drilling by ExxonMobil and other large oil firms that will exacerbate the climate crisis. The case has been filed by Quadad de Freitas, a 21-year old Indigenous tourist guide from the Rupununi region, and Dr Troy Thomas, a university lecturer and former president of the anti-corruption organisation Transparency Institute Guyana. They claim Guyana’s approval of oil exploration licences violates the government’s legal duty to protect their right and the right of future generations to a healthy environment. It is the first constitutional climate case in the Caribbean to challenge fossil fuel production on climate and human rights grounds.

Guardian 31st May 2021 read more »

Environmentalists should think twice before celebrating the week that shook Big Oil to the core. Green activist victories against Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron are pregnant with unintended consequences. One of them is to interfere with future crude supply just as the market tightens ineluctably as a result of declining oil wells and chronic lack of past investment, increasing the risk of a violent price spike in the early 2020s and a disruptive shock before the world has reduced its economic dependency on oil. It is to tackle global warming the wrong way round, vilifying the drillers when the essential problem is the rest of us: global consumers, governments, and above all Xi Jinping’s China. If we want to cut fossil use, there is a beautifully simple, fair and clean market mechanism that avoids diversionary witch hunts: price fossils properly with a carbon tax and dividend (recycled to the least well off). This takes political courage, so instead we put oil executives in the dock, glibly dishing out moral opprobrium.

Telegraph 31st May 2021 read more »