Alaska wins lawsuit that could open Arctic refuge to oil exploration

A federal judge has reversed a Biden administration decision that suspended oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

BY: JAMES BROOKS - MARCH 25, 2025 5:34 PM

Research biologists pause among the wetlands of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain, with the Brooks Range in the background. (Photo by Lisa Hupp/USFWS)

A federal judge in Anchorage has ruled in favor of Alaska’s state-owned investment bank in a lawsuit that could clear the way for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

In an order published Tuesday, Judge Sharon Gleason wrote that the U.S. Department of the Interior acted illegally when it canceled oil and gas leases held by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority on land within the refuge.

“Having reviewed the parties’ arguments, the court concludes that DOI was required to obtain a court order before canceling AIDEA’s leases,” Gleason said in her 22-page decision.

AIDEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Cori Mills, Alaska’s deputy attorney general, called the decision a victory.

“The state looks forward to working with the current federal administration on fully realizing the vast potential of ANWR to grow Alaska’s economy and help America’s energy independence,” she said by email. “It is unfortunate we have lost a significant amount of time litigating, instead of moving forward with field studies and development. We will continue to review the decision in more detail but it’s definitely a victory.”

Tuesday’s order was the result of a lawsuit filed by AIDEA against the federal government last year, when the Biden administration canceled oil and gas leases that AIDEA won in a January 2021 sale.

Two other companies also won leases during the sale but later surrendered them to the federal government, leaving AIDEA as the only company holding leases within the refuge’s coastal plain, which is believed to hold significant oil and gas reserves, just as nearby state land does.

The Biden administration claimed that the sale — conducted under the auspices of the first Trump administration — was flawed and thus illegal.

It first suspended, then canceled the leases, prompting AIDEA to sue in 2024.

Gleason had upheld the Biden administration’s suspension order, but when it came to the cancellation, she ruled in AIDEA’s favor, citing a provision of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that enabled the ANWR leases.

That act said in part that the Interior Department “shall manage the oil and gas program on the Coastal Plain in a manner similar to the administration of lease sales under the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act of 1976.”

Gleason wrote: “Among the NPRPA’s implementing regulations is a regulation that provides that ‘(p)roducing leases or leases known to contain valuable deposits of oil or gas may be canceled only by court order.’”

But the Interior Department didn’t obtain a court order, Gleason noted.

“Accordingly, federal defendants’ cancellation of AIDEA’s leases was not in accordance with law because it failed to seek a court order,” she wrote.

Several environmental and tribal groups sided with the federal government during the course of the lawsuit and had requested the ability to offer alternative solutions if Gleason ruled in favor of AIDEA.

She turned them down, writing, “DOI’s error is serious: DOI cancelled AIDEA’s leases without following the congressionally mandated procedure for doing so.”

In light of that finding, she vacated the department’s lease cancellation decision, saying the department — now back in the hands of the Trump administration — may decide what to do next.

In a statement released last week, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said he intends to open the refuge’s entire 1.56 million-acre coastal plain to development, indicating that AIDEA will be given a free hand on its leases.

For its part, AIDEA has said in multiple court filings that if allowed to proceed, it will conduct seismic testing and other preliminary work necessary to determine how much oil and gas lies within its leases.

Among the various environmental and tribal groups that stood with the federal government in opposition to AIDEA was the Gwich’in Steering Committee, represented by attorneys from Trustees for Alaska.

“This disappointing ruling ignores the destruction oil drilling will do to our communities and only deepens our resolve in fiercely defending the coastal plain from oil and gas extraction,” said Kristen Moreland, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee. “We will always protect the caribou, our way of life, and future generations.”

The Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government, Arctic Village Council, and Venetie Village Council, represented by the Native American Rights Fund, said in a statement that they will continue to oppose drilling in ANWR and that “multiple legal and administrative pathways remain to ensure proper environmental review before any ground-disturbing activities could occur.”

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JAMES BROOKS

James Brooks is a longtime Alaska reporter, having previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. A graduate of Virginia Tech, he is married to Caitlyn Ellis, owns a house in Juneau and has a small sled dog named Barley. He can be contacted at jbrooks@alaskabeacon.com.

Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

BOTTONLINE: The only state who makes less use of their oil and natural gas resources than New York is Alaska. When is the federal government going to stop treating Alaska like a second class state?

We realists

   in climate debate

know other side

   wants to demean, bully,

cancel us.

“Denier” …

   “shill” …

“right winger” …

   “stupid” …

“idiot”…

   “capitalist” …

are pejorative words

hurled at critics

of climate alarmism.

The climate activists of certainty

   have gone too far,

acting like enemies of half America

    not the loyal opposition.

Steve Heins

Spreading nitrogen fertilizer on a wheat field in France. Three potent greenhouse gases, nitrogen and methane, are closely linked to climate change. Pascal Rossignol/Reuters

Three greenhouse gases, three all-time highs

By David Gelles

The extreme weather. The melting glaciers. The weirdly warm oceans. They’re all the product of global warming, which is being driven by the release of the three most important heat-trapping gases: carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

And according to a new study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, emissions of those three greenhouse gases continued to surge last year to historic highs.

Global average carbon dioxide concentrations jumped last year, “extending the highest sustained rate of CO2 increases” in NOAA’s 65 years of record-keeping. Methane and nitrous oxide levels also rose sharply last year. All this despite a wave of global policy measures and economic incentives designed to wean the world off fossil fuels.

These weren’t just one-off anomalies. In each case, the rising emissions continued a long-term trend. By analyzing more than 15,000 air samples from around the world, NOAA found that the upticks in emissions last year “were in line with the steep increases observed during the past decade.”

The result has been a series of profound changes to the planet in a remarkably short amount of time. “The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere today is comparable to where it was around 4.3 million years ago during the mid-Pliocene epoch,” the NOAA report found. That was when the “sea level was about 75 feet higher than today” and “large forests occupied areas of the Arctic that are now tundra.”

Carbon dioxide

Last year, humans spewed some 36.6 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, the most ever. That number may well be higher this year.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now more than 50 percent higher than it was before the industrial revolution.

It’s no secret where all this carbon dioxide is coming from. The burning of oil, coal and gas is the main source of CO2 emissions, and the use and production of fossil fuels continues to rise around the world, with the United States producing more oil and gas than ever before.

And even as the build out of renewable energy is speeding up, the appetite for fossil fuels remains strong, in part because overall energy demand is soaring.

Fossil fuels aren’t the only source of carbon dioxide. The extraordinary forest fires that have charred Canada, Europe and Chile over the past year are also adding CO2 into the atmosphere. Yet even there, the vicious cycle of human-caused climate change is easy to see: Many of those fires were made worse because of the warming that has already occurred.

Methane

For a while, it looked like methane emissions were slowing down. After a rapid rise in atmospheric methane concentration during the 1980s, levels stabilized in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Then in 2007, they started rising again, and fast.

Researchers acknowledge they don’t fully understand what accounted for the relative stability of methane output and then its renewed growth. But what is clear is that methane emissions are booming today.

Last year saw the fifth-highest ever jump in methane concentration since record keeping began, and methane levels are now more than 160 percent higher than they were before the industrial revolution, according to NOAA. Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas; while it breaks down faster than carbon dioxide, it is more powerful at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

The vast majority of the increased methane emissions can be traced back to humanity’s insatiable appetite. Agriculture is the biggest source of methane emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, followed closely by the burning of fossil fuels.

Nitrous oxide

While carbon dioxide and methane are the two gases most commonly associated with climate change, nitrous oxide is another potent heat-trapping gas, and is also on the rise.

N2O emissions are also linked to food. In this case, they are largely the result of nitrogen fertilizer and manure used in agriculture. Another source is aviation. Nitrous oxide levels in the atmosphere are now 25 percent higher than before the industrial revolution.

Where all that gas goes

In just a few hundred years, humans have radically altered the composition of Earth’s atmosphere, quite literally setting the planet back millions of years. Slowing down global warming, and potentially even reversing it, will require an equally herculean effort to stop emitting the three gases most responsible for climate change.

Reducing carbon dioxide emissions will require radical overhauls to our energy and transportation systems. Drawing down methane and nitrous oxide emissions will mean fundamentally overhauling how food is produced.

The changes won’t be easy. But until we figure out how to limit the release of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, our world will keep warming.

Continue reading the main story

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Supporters and members of the association Senior Women for Climate Protection held banners outside the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, on Tuesday. Christian Hartmann/Reuters

A landmark ruling in Europe could mean more climate litigation

Europe’s top human rights court said on Tuesday that the Swiss government had violated its citizens’ human rights by not doing enough to stop climate change, a landmark ruling that experts said could bolster activists hoping to use human rights law to hold governments to account.

“I expect we’re going to see a rash of lawsuits in other European countries, because most of them have done the same thing,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “They have failed to meet their climate goals, and failed to set climate targets that are adequate.”

It was the latest sign that the global wave of lawsuits seeking to hold companies and governments responsible for damage caused by climate change is gaining momentum.

In the United States, states, cities and counties are suing fossil fuel companiesover the damages caused by climate change, and young people are suing states and the federal government over what they say was a failure to protect them from the effects of global warming.

Legal experts are watching closely to see whether the Supreme Court will take up a lawsuit that Hawaii has brought against big oil companies. Should the country’s top court intervene, it could be helpful for fossil fuel corporations, which believe they have a better chance at winning in federal court than in many state courts.

The European ruling is unlikely to affect how U.S. courts rule, according to Gerrard. “The U.S. courts traditionally pay little regard to international tribunals,” he said.

But Gerrard added that many similar concepts are involved in the European case and those making their way through the court system in the United States.

“The idea that climate change impairs fundamental rights resonates throughout the cases,” he said. “The language is different, but the underlying concepts, and the idea that the governments have a duty to act, are the same.”

Similar legal efforts are unfolding around the world. India’s Supreme Court handed down a ruling last month concluding that people’s right to be shielded from the effects of climate change falls under the articles of the country’s constitution that protect the right to equality and to life. And the Inter-American Court is also preparing to issue an advisory opinion on whether countries are legally required to protect citizens from climate change. — David Gelles and Manuela Andreoni

COMMENTARY

Plan to relocate Line 5 oil tunnel ‘unusual and especially risky.’ Here’s why. | Opinion

Ashley Rudzinski

Detroit Free Press

The oil company Enbridge wants to move its Line 5 oil pipeline from the Straits of Mackinac into a tunnel beneath the lake, and the Michigan Public Service Commission recently signed off on this plan, issuing Enbridge a site permit. Encasing Line 5 in concrete and burying it deep beneath the Great Lakes may sound like a reasonable idea, given that Line 5 currently lies exposed on the bottomlands of the Straits of Mackinac, just one anchor strike away from an environmental disaster.  

Believe it or not, that decision could actually make things worse.

Transporting propane and crude oil involves highly hazardous, volatile substances that always bear an inherent risk of explosion. That’s just one reason why four tribes and numerous Great Lakes advocates are contesting the commission's decision in the Michigan Court of Appeals.  In their testimony to the commission, highly qualified experts spoke out safety concerns on behalf of the Bay Mills Indian Community against Enbridge’s tunnel design. Commissioners should have listened. 

We need Line 5 out of the Great Lakes all together -- not in a tunnel, not on the lake bottom. This permit should be revoked, and President Joe Biden should revoke the presidential permit that has allowed Line 5 to operate since 1953.

One geological engineer and tunnel expert, Brian O’Mara, the founder and Principal of Agate Harbor Advisors LLC, identified three potential explosion scenarios for the proposed tunnel. The first could happen during the tunneling process, when highly explosive dissolved methane could enter the tunnel. After construction, due to the immense pressure under the Straits, groundwater containing methane could enter the tunnel. (Enbridge has already found dissolved methane in 20% of groundwater samples taken during geologic surveys.) Finally, an explosion could be caused if the crude oil itself leaked from Line 5 itself.

In any of these scenarios, O'Mara testified, a single spark would cause the pipeline to detonate like a bomb. O’Mara noted, chillingly, that “the spark generated between a person’s finger and doorknob after walking across carpeting on a dry day produces significantly more energy than required to ignite a methane/air explosion.” This becomes even more worrisome when you consider that Enbridge is still exploring ways to include other third-party utilities in the tunnel, like proposed fiber optics facilities and others.  

Another pipeline safety technical expert, Richard Kuprewicz, president of Accufacts Inc., pointed out that the design is also “unusual and especially risky” because it allows the pipeline to move in such a way that it will create abnormal loading on the seams where the segments of pipe are welded together, or adjacent areas that may have been weakened or stressed by the heat of the welding process. Ultimately, he testified, this could “result in full bore pipeline rupture.” 

If you think our regulators won’t let this flawed design proceed, you’re sorely mistaken. No one agency has complete oversight over its approval — not Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, nor the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Even the federal administrator charged with pipeline oversight, the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration does not have authority to avert disaster. According to Kuprewicz, “Compliance with PHMSA regulations does not assure that a pipeline will not fail; if that were true, we would not see pipeline rupture failures happening across the country, but we do.” 

And that's the larger problem with the entire tunnel approval process — it is happening piecemeal, with no single agency held to account for the full impact of the project.

And no, we can’t trust Enbridge to avert a spill using the best available technology. For example,  O’Mara stated, “Enbridge has no active fire suppression system for the Line 5 tunnel and relies only on passive fire-resistant concrete and stopping ventilation.” He went on to testify that the plan to seal both ends of the tunnel would likely make a potential fire burn hotter. 

Let’s review the company’s history, starting with the catastrophic 1991 Line 3 rupture in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, when Enbridge adopted its so-called "10 minute rule" — if operators can’t figure out why monitors indicate a problem, they shut down the pipeline after 10 minutes. However, experience tells us that Enbridge doesn’t play by its own rules. Take, for example, the $1.2 billion dollar Line 6B spill in Marshall, Michigan, in 2010. Operators were alerted to a problem, yet allowed the pipeline to continue to run for 17 more hours, as thick oil blanketed 40 miles of the Kalamazoo River.

There's more. In 2021, Enbridge made maritime navigational history when its own contractor managed to actually hit the iconic Mackinac Bridge. The company has failed to prevent three known anchor strikes in recent years, plus one instance where its contractor lost a 15,000-pound anchor in the Straits. Enbridge also has failed to prevent 35 oil spills, releasing over a million gallons of fuel from Line 5 during its 70-year life span.

In short, this Canadian company cannot be trusted. 

So, now what? The Public Service Commission has approved the tunnel permit, but the appeal process still looms long. In the meantime, Line 5 will keep pumping crude oil through aging pipes strung atop the bottomlands of the Mackinac Straits, making Enbridge an estimated $1.8 million per day. Make no mistake, Enbridge will continue to run this pipeline — and pitch this tunnel pipe dream at all costs.

Biden should revoke the Line 5 presidential permit now. Thats would shutdown the existing 645-mile-long pipeline, and eliminate any future debate about the oil tunnel once and for all.  

Ashley Rudzinski is the Climate and Environment Program Director for Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities.

The Folly Of Climate Leadership

Tilak Doshi

Contributor

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Jan 29, 2024,03:38am EST

Lessons of UK Energy Policy Failure

Citing an International Energy Agency report, The Daily Telegraphreported on Wednesday that UK electricity prices have risen faster than almost any other developed country since 2019. The price of electricity in the UK rose by 19 percent in 2023 alone, compared to the US where electricity prices have risen by 5 percent annually since 2019. Referencing a separate report from the House of Commons library, the same article finds that the price increases have been driven by taxes and levies linked to the country’s commitment to the “net zero” emissions target which made up almost a fifth of household electricity prices.

Rupert Darwall’s 76-page penetrating analysis of Britain’s energy policy, “The folly of climate leadership: Net Zero and Britain’s disastrous energy policies” with a foreword written by Andy Puzder was published last month by the RealClear Foundation. It provides the context necessary to understand how UK’s political elites practically sleep-walked the country into its binding net zero legislation. The follies of quixotic climate leadership are not Britain’s alone, as the Biden Administration took office three years ago as America’s first “environmental administration”. Mr. Darwall’s analysis provides an excellent assessment of the lessons of Britain’s failing energy policies for those of the Biden administration. Under Democrat leadership, the US government unleashed a tsunami of green subsidies under its misnamed Inflation Reduction Act to achieve its net zero targets.

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Lies, Damn Lies and Wind Energy

Not to be outdone in its claims to global “climate leadership”, the UK Labour government under Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2008 committed the country to a legally binding target of reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 below the 1990 level. It was all the more remarkable that this policy target was implemented during the global Great Recession that began with the financial crisis in the United States in late 2007 and which lasted until mid-2009.

In 2019, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) – “UK’s leading independent authority on climate change” — published a report which recommended that the government adopt a more ambitious target, from 80 percent to 100 percent emission reduction by 2050. In a breathtaking maneuver that elevated political narrative over facts, the committee claimed that “There have been rapid cost reductions during mass deployment for key technologies” with reference in particular to offshore wind energy. After an 88-minute debate in the House of Commons, the 100 percent reduction target was passed and became law.

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Britain’s quest for global climate leadership was primarily based on offshore wind as a ready source of “cheap” renewable energy. Indeed, in the lead-up to Britain’s hosting of the UN annual climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, prime minister Boris Johnson waxed lyrical at a UN meeting in New York. He said that he was making a "big bet" on renewables, turning the UK into the "Saudi Arabia" of wind power. Emphasizing the country’s "extraordinary potential" for the technology, he said "We've got huge, huge gusts of wind going around the north of our country - Scotland. Quite extraordinary potential we have for wind." As Mr. Darwall points out, a gushing Boris Johnson in one of his final public appearances as prime minister said that “Offshore wind is now the cheapest form of electricity in this country. Offshore wind is nine times cheaper than gas because of the insanity of what Putin has done.”

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Mr. Darwall tracks down Boris Johnson’s “9 times cheaper” claim to a July 2022 post by Carbon Brief, a climate website funded by the European Climate Foundation which is in turn funded by green billionaire foundations such as the Bloomberg Family Foundation, Climate Works Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. In this and a myriad other ways, Mr. Darwall shows with forensic precision how Britain’s energy policy is captured by vested interests and climate NGOs in the climate industrial complex where the welfare of working Britons matters little if at all.

As Siemens, the world’s largest wind turbine company grappled with a share price collapse late last year amidst cost escalation, component failure, disappointing productivity and “ramping-up” challenges, its chairman Joe Kaeser warned last week that energy bills will have to keep rising to pay for the green transition as he attacked “fairytale” thinking about net zero. He suggested higher energy bills were inevitable as turbine makers grapple with huge losses, forcing them to pass on costs to their customers. In September, not a single bid was received at a key government auction for offshore wind acreage, dealing a blow to the UK's renewable power strategy and even higher government subsidies to rescue a faltering industry.

Where Are The Experts?

On Wednesday, Chris Morrison of The Daily Sceptic revealed that the Climate Change Committee used just one year of high wind data to convince members of parliament in 2019 to pass the then-prime minister Theresa May’s rushed legislation for Net Zero by 2050. The dubious cost estimates for wind energy by the likes of the CCC naturally leads to the question: where are the expert agencies which advise government based on analytical rigour and empirical facts?

The Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) are the two key government agencies that act as watchdogs for policy coherence and cost-benefit analysis of key policy proposals. Mr. Darwall, who is not one to mince words, states baldly that “they share responsibility for propagating fantasy economics on the likely costs and consequences of net zero.” Darwall describes in detail how U.K. politicians and their expert advisors in the Treasury and the OBR effectively sold “green snake oil” to their voters. In a “travesty of policy analysis", these agencies were effectively “selling voters a fairy tale of green growth”.

The OBR, indulging in climate group think and virtue-signaling luxury beliefs, “fabricated a scenario of spiraling public debt reaching 289 percent of GDP in 2100 out of unevidenced climate catastrophes caused by tipping points such as a complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reckons might happen over several millennia.”

The Treasury’s published its Net Zero Review in October 2021. While claiming that its report is “not a cost-benefit analysis”, it nonetheless asserts that “a successful and orderly transition for the economy could realize more benefits—improved resource efficiency for businesses, lower household costs, and wider health co-benefits—than an economy based on fossil fuel consumption.” The Treasury claims that “The costs of global inaction significantly outweigh the costs of action.” Yet it does not consider the most likely scenario that the developing countries, constituting 80 percent of the global population, will continue to use fossil fuels in their imperative for economic growth and improving the well-being of their citizens.

So how would the UK’s net zero target, if achieved, affect global climate, given that its share of global carbon emissions in 2022 amounted to a puny 0.79 percent? According to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s climate model, the global average temperature (assuming this itself is a meaningful concept) in 2100 would be lower by 0.011 degrees centigrade. A ludicrous objective, this would be an undetectable statistical measure.

Impoverishing Britain At The Altar of The Green God

In 1950, a young parliamentary candidate by the name of Margaret H. Roberts, the future Mrs. Thatcher, complained that her country had become weak with an economy in tatters under years of incompetence by a Labour government intent on creating a welfare state. It was time, she said, “to make Britain great again”. During her years in office as Prime Minister (1979 – 1990), the policy watchwords were those of a Hayekian conservative, with emphasis on greater individual liberty, the privatization of state-owned enterprises, reducing the power and influence of trade unions, and making “private enterprise” not a dirty phrase anymore.

The understanding of what it would take to “make Britain great again” has evidently undergone a profound change since the days of Mrs. Thatcher. “Climate change” alarmism and the government’s policy responses to its alleged threats became central concerns of government leaders and their advisors. Mr. Darwall shows that politicians in Britain on both sides of the aisle adopted “climate jingoism” early on.

Even at the cost of impoverishing its citizens, Britain’s political elite has striven in its hubris to make the country a global “climate leader” in the United Nations-led drive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Britain’s economic performance deteriorated markedly since the global financial crisis and remains far below its pre-2008 trend. Mr. Darwall cites the work of the late economic historian Nicholas Crafts who showed that 2007–19 saw Britain achieve the lowest peacetime growth rate since 1780.

As Europe’s farmers in France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Lithuania, Romania and Belgium engage in mass uprisings against government climate policies across the continent and as Paris is being blockaded by tractors, the publication of Rupert Darwall’s study could have not been more appropriate.

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Sequestered in Sheboygan

on the shores of oceanic

Lake Michigan

for twenty years

Within one mile of where

I overlook the great inland sea

landed my Great, Great Grandfather Charles

in 1850

from Germany

Alone

barely sixteen

he braved the Atlantic passage

the Saint Lawrence seaway

to precede me here

I treasure that thought

pioneer Heins

on American soil

my neighbor

Stephen Heins

I am reposting Stephen Heins poem as I've created a 'poetry poster' for him of his great poem about his great great grandfather. Thank you Stephen.

Search to read more of Stephen Heins positively brilliant poetry (🔎 poet's name in upper right-hand corner of group page).

Also, venture to subscribe to Stephen's page & website The Crude Life which addresses environmental consciousness. What does a writer do? He writes. He pens with a passion. This makes life worth living, expressing one's self in carefully chosen articulated words... as Stephen does so well.

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BY RUTH HAYHURST ON DECEMBER 30, 2023 • ( LEAVE A COMMENT )

A landmark legal challenge to UK onshore oil and gas production was heard by the country’s highest court in 2023.

In June, five Supreme Court justices considered the case brought by campaigner, Sarah Finch. She argued that the climate impact of burning fossil fuels must be assessed before any decision could be made on production plans.

The case, which had previously gone to the High Court and Court of Appeal, focussed on Surrey County Council’s approval of oil production at the UK Oil and Gas (UKOG) site at Horse Hill, near Horley.

But the outcome, which is still awaited, could have major implications for all new fossil fuel projects in the UK, including the controversial new coal mine in Cumbria.

The significance of this case was revealed when the UK’s newest environmental watchdog, the Office of Environmental Protection, intervened, along with the levelling up secretary and the company behind the Cumbrian coal mine.

Ms Finch said Surrey County Council acted unlawfully when it failed to consider greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the use of Horse Hill oil. The council said it needed to consider only the climate impact of the production operation.

The arguments are already influencing other legal challenges. DrillOrDrop will report in detail on the Supreme Court ruling when it is published.

Oil and gas in protected areas

The impact of onshore oil and gas operations on protected areas was the focus of three more legal challenges in 2023, each supported by small local campaign groups.

SOS Biscathorpe is seeking to overturn a ruling by a planning inspector, who granted permission for long-term oil production in the Lincolnshire Wolds area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB).

The campaigners, some of who have campaigned against oil operations at Biscathorpe since 2014, were shocked and angered by the inspector’s decision, published in November. He accepted that the production scheme would harm the AONB and contravened some local planning policies. He also acknowledged that the volume of produced oil may be small and could be exported. But he said the national need for oil justified planning permission.

SOS Biscathorpe submitted papers to the High Court in December. The site operator, Egdon Resources, and Lincolnshire County Council must respond by early January.

In West Sussex, Balcombe villagers are applying to challenge permission for testing an oil well in the High Weald AONB.

The Balcombe site, now operated by Angus Energy, has been controversial since 2013, when daily protests against a new oil well made national headlines.

The county council refused planning permission for the well test in 2021. Angus Energy successfully appealed. In October, Frack Free Balcombe Residents’ Association failed to overturn that decision at the High Court and is now seeking a hearing at the Court of Appeal.

Thirty miles away, on the edge of the Surrey Hills AONB, another campaign group is challenging oil drilling near the village of Dunsfold.

In this case, Surrey County Council twice refused planning permission. The site operator, UKOG, successfully appealed. Protect Dunsfold and Waverley Borough Council failed to overturn that decision in the High Court and are now applying for a hearing at the Court of Appeal.  

More legal challenges

• The government is facing a second court challenge over its net zero strategy. Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth and the Good Law Project argue that the strategy is unlawful. In 2022, they successfully forced the government to revise its original strategy.

• Two people are bringing a legal challenge to the government’s climate change national adaptation programme. They argue it is inadequate and breaches the Climate Change Act.

• The broadcaster, Chris Packham, outlined plans to challenge Rishi Sunak over changes to government commitments on phasing out new fossil fuel cars and boilers (See COP28 and climate change).

• Uplift and Greenpeace were granted permission to bring a High Court challenge to the issue of new oil and gas licences in the North Sea (See COP28 and climate change).

• In a separate challenge, the two organisations announced they were seeking to overturn the approval of development of Rosebank, described as the UK’s largest untapped North Sea oil field.

• The hearing in a legal challenge by Friends of the Earth and South Lakes Action on Climate Change against the Cumbrian coal mine was delayed until after the ruling on Sarah Finch’s Horse Hill case.

• Ineos was ordered to pay costs in a legal challenge against the company’s protest injunction.

• Egdon Resources withdrew its appeal against refusal of planning permission for drilling at North Kelsey, a week before a public hearing. A new planning application is expected.

• The onshore shale gas industry failed to bring a case for damages over the reinstatement of  fracking moratorium in England in October 2022.

• The Supreme Court refused an application by Friends of the Earth to challenge UK government funding of a $1.15bn gas project

The UK onshore shale gas industry appeared to be in retreat in 2023, after the momentous but brief lifting of the moratorium on fracking in England the year before. (See 2022 Review of the Year)

In August, the industry regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), ordered Cuadrilla to plug and abandon its fracked wells at Preston New Road in Lancashire. The company was given until 30 December 2024 to complete the work. Operations at the site in 2019 caused the strongest fracking-induced earthquake onshore in the UK.

In June, Lancashire County Council gave Cuadrilla until June 2025 to decommission the Preston New Road wells and return the site to farmland. The council later revealed that Cuadrilla aimed to plug and abandon the wells by 31 March 2024, subject to the availability of a rig.

Also in 2023, Cuadrilla’s owner, the Australian mining group, impaired the value of its UK shale gas assets by more $157m and relinquished three shale gas licences in Yorkshire (PEDL287, PEDL290 and PEDL342). It gave up operation of PEDL347, also in Yorkshire, in an agreement with Egdon Resources and York Energy.

IGas, later renamed Star Energy, cut the value of its shale gas assets and decided not to sue the government over reinstating the fracking moratorium.

In the autumn, work began to decommission Star Energy’s remaining shale gas well, at Misson in Nottinghamshire. A rig left the site in November.

Two potential shale gas sites, owned by IGas near Chester, were put up for sale. The NSTA no longer lists PEDL190, the licence covering the area.

Major oil incident

A major incident was declared in Poole Harbour, in Dorset, in March after a pipeline leak from Wytch Farm, the UK’s biggest onshore oil field.

About 200 barrels of oil and reservoir fluid (about 11,000 gallons) are estimated to have leaked into the water. People were advised to stay away from beaches and avoid gathering shellfish.

The environment minister, Lord Benyon, described it has a “significant spill” and said the site operator, Perenco, would be held responsible for any damage.

Seven months later, in November, the Environment Agency said it was still working to understand what happened to cause the spill. Floating barriers were likely to remain in place “for some time” and Perenco would be required to carry out “ongoing monitoring and reporting”, the EA said.

COP28 and climate change

Representatives of almost 200 countries gathered at the UN COP28 conference in Dubai to agree the next global steps to tackling climate change.

King Charles opened the event with a warning that a “vast, frightening experiment” on the natural world risked triggering feedback loops in the climate system which would cause irreversible disaster.

The COP president, Sultan Al Jaber, also head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, said there was “no science” behind demands to phase out fossil fuels.

The final agreement included the first ever move to transition away from fossil fuels. But small island states complained the deal had been rushed through without them. It also left out earlier stronger language to phase outfossil fuels, pushed for by the US, UK, and EU.

COP28 had the biggest carbon footprint of any climate summit so far. Analysis also suggested the conference admitted a record number of people affiliated with oil and gas industries, at least 2,456.

While preparations were underway for COP28, global temperature records were broken in July and September. EU scientists warned that 2023 would be warmest year on record. The global mean temperature for the first 11 months hit the highest level on record, 1.46C above the 1850-1900 average.

Despite this, Rishi Sunak promised to “max out” North Sea oil and gas reserves and grant hundreds of new licencesin the North Sea (July). He later delayed plans to phase out fossil fuel cars and boilers (September). Both announcements were criticised by environmentalists, climate campaigners and political opponents. Analysis suggested that proposed new North Sea fields would produce enough gas to satisfy UK needs for, at most, three weeks a year.

In October, the NSTA announced the award of the first 27 licences in the 33^rd oil and gas licensing round. The regulator said it had received 115 applications, the highest number since the 29^th round in 2016-17.

A new Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill, introduced to Parliament in November, would require new North Sea oil and gas licences to be offered annually. It also said licensing rounds would be subject to “stringent new emissions” tests.

Also in 2023, the NSTA, whose single shareholder is the energy and net zero secretary, announced the approval of the Rosebank oil field, 80 miles off Shetland. It was described as the biggest untapped UK offshore oil field, estimated to contain 500 million barrels of oil. Opponents said that decision was heading for the courts (see More Challenges).

The UK government’s climate advisor, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) warned ministers that the expansion of fossil fuel production was “not in line” with the UK’s goal to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The CCC also urged ministers to kick the fossil fuel habit to avoid the worst climate impacts. It said the prime minister’s roll back on fossil fuel cars and boilers would make emissions targets harder to reach. The government has refused to disclose the impact of this policy change on carbon emissions.

Despite the warnings, the government also rejected calls to bring forward a ban on flaring on oil and gas sites from Chris Skidmore, the reviewer of the net zero strategy, the Environmental Audit Committee and 25 non-governmental organisations.

Also this year, new analysis revealed that UK council pension funds had invested £16bn in fossil fuels, of which more than £8 billion were in new oil and gas projects. The British Museum announced a 10-year partnership with BP, worth £50m, to help fund one of the biggest redevelopments in its history.  More than 40 UK universities were also reported to have accepted £40m+ in fossil fuel funding since 2022

Protest

New government legislation outlawing certain types of protest came into force in 2023.

The Public Order Act increased police powers to respond to protests and put restrictions in place.

These included new and expanded use of stop and search, as well as orders that could ban people from participating in protests and control their movements. The act also included new offences that criminalised some forms of protest, such as locking-on and being equipped to lock-on, causing serious disruption by tunnelling, obstructing major transport works and interfering with key national infrastructure.

The government had cited anti-fossil fuel protests by groups, such as Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain, to justify the legislation.

Protests continued, including a weekend of action in September calling for the phase out of oil and gas operations.

A month later, the Metropolitan Police used the new powers for the first time to arrest climate protesters. The Guardian reported more than 60 climate activists were arrested during a slow march outside parliament.

The Swedish climate campaigner, Greta Thunberg, was also charged in October for allegedly breaching a Section 14 order outside an oil and gas conference in London. She later pleaded not guilty and is awaiting a trial.

Gail Bradbrook, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, was found guilty of breaking a window at the Department of Transport. The judge told jurors she had no defence in law and that her motivation was irrelevant. She was later given a 15-month suspended prison sentence.

In November, Just Stop Oil reported that 612 of its supporters had been arrested in four weeks. In one march in central London, the organisation said 14 people were arrested within 30 seconds of stepping off the pavement.

The UN’s rapporteur for climate change and human rights warned that long jail sentences given to two Just Stop Oil protesters for scaling the M25 bridge over the Thames was a potential breach of international law.

Onshore production

Onshore UK production was boosted in 2023 by output from the newest oil field at Wressle, in North Lincolnshire, and resumed gas extraction from Saltfleetby, in Lincolnshire.

But about 80% of onshore oil production continued to come from Wytch Farm. And DrillOrDrop analysis revealed that almost a fifth of UK onshore production fields extracted no oil or gas in the past five years.

In August, the Wressle operator, Egdon Resources, reported that the well was also producing water. An artificial lift on the well aimed to increase pressure in the reservoir and improve oil flow rates. The Environment Agency has also raised the limit on the flow rate. Official data released in the New Year will reveal the impact of the operation on production. Egdon has also confirmed plans for two new production wells at Wressle, one of which will target gas. A planning application is expected in early 2024.

At Saltfleetby, Angus Energy completed a sidetrack well in March. The company later said well cleaning had taken longer than expected because of incomplete acidisation of mud additives during drilling. A permanent flowline was commissioned in November.

A partner in the mothballed Avington oil site in the South Downs National Park in Hampshire revealed that production was due to resume. The site operator, Star Energy, has given no details of the plans but local people have opposed the move.

Also in 2023, Star Energy secured planning permission for a new oil production site at Glentworth in Lincolnshire. Egdon Resources revealed that it wanted to expand a suspended oil site at Waddock Cross in Dorset and restart production.

At West Newton, in East Yorkshire, plans for a horizontal production well were postponed until autumn 2023 and then 2024. The operator, Rathlin Energy, said it was seeking extra funding to meet its drilling and testing obligations.

At Horse Hill, UKOG announced in February it had installed three groundwater monitoring boreholes as part of plans for water reinjection at the site. The Horse Hill-1 well, once described as the Gatwick Gusher and said to be nationally significant, saw its value downgraded for the third time. UKOG impaired the asset to £80,000. Since 2020, the well has been impaired by more than £13m.

Two new production wells at Horse Hill that were put on hold in 2022 were also not drilled this year. UKOG announced an initial farm-in agreement  with the Texas-focused PennPetro Energy. The deal, later extended to June 2024, would see PennPetro pay all the costs of seismic surveying and a new production well at the site. Since May, PennPetro has been chaired by David Lenigas, formerly executive chairman of UKOG.

Renewables

A controversial site proposed for fracking became a pioneer of renewable energy in 2023. Third Energy announced its KM8 well at Kirby Misperton in North Yorkshire would be a pilot test site for geothermal energy. It is the first of its kind to move from onshore gas to clean energy production.

IGas changed its name to Star Energy in June to reflect its interest in renewable energy. It became the preferred contractor to deliver geothermal heat schemes for hospital trusts in Salisbury and Greater Manchester. The company was also granted two geothermal licences in Croatia and appointed two new directors with renewables experience. Despite this, renewables remain a small part of Star Energy’s business. The company operates 26 onshore UK producing oil fields and one gas field. Plans were refused in 2023 for fossil grey hydrogen production at Albury, in Surrey. This follows a previous refusal in 2022 at another Star Energy site in Surrey at Bletchingley.

Company news

In March, Egdon Resources acquired Aurora Production Limited, a private company which held 18.75% of the Waddock Cross licence PL090 and 8.33% of the Avington field, PEDL070. In May, Egdon announced it had agreed to a £26.6m takeover by Petrichor Partners, a subsidiary of the Dallas-based Heyco Energy Group. Egdon’s ultimate parent company is now Explorers Petroleum Corp, controlled by George Yates.

In November, shareholders challenged directors of Reabold Resources, a key player in the West Newton oil and gas development in East Yorkshire, and in Europa Oil & Gas. A meeting will discuss changes to the Reabold board on 10 January 2024.

Ineos, which holds the largest number of UK shale gas licences, bought the US shale assets of Chesapeake Energy for $1.4 billion. Also in 2023, Ineos plans for the Project One ethane cracker in Antwerp, were blocked by a Belgian court.

A Partial List of Economists, Business Authors, Scientists, Climatologists, Engineers, Scholars,  Financiers, Businessmen, Lawyers, Regulators, Policy Wonks, Energy Activists, and Thinkers…

who favor global energy fairness, practical environmentalism, adequate health care, good economics, and electricity abundance for all people.

        Robert Bryce, Roger Pielke, Jr., Michael Shellenberger, Judith Curry, David Blackman, Francis Menton, Doug Sheridan, Daniel Yergin,  Tom Finton, Scott Tinker, Mark Mills, Terry Etam, Tracy Shuchart, Vaclav Smil, Jude Clemente, Willis Eschenbach, Tom Shepstone, Eric Worrall, Jusper Machogu, Nicholas Lewis, Ryan Meyers, Dr. Matthew Wielicki, Douglas Pollock, Jim Willis, Ed Ireland, Meredith Angwin, Wayne Crews, Mark Steyn, Craig Rucker, John Droz, Nicole Jacobs, Jason Spiess, William Allison, Tammy Nemeth, Nic Lewis, Rich Nolan, Lynne Balzer, Jonathon Cohler,  Gordon Hughes, Paul Homewood, Charles Rotter, Smythe Anderson, Terence Corcoran, Richard  Morrison, Brian Gitt, Paul Driessen, Isaac Orr, Anthony Watts, Jim Steele, Andreas Thanos, Steve Reese, Chris Wright, Bette Grande, Jim Vinoski, Timothy Birdnow, Charles Rotter, Hank Campbell, Alex Epstein, H. Sterling Burnett, James Taylor, Tim Benson, Joe Bastardi, Bruce Everett, Jim Lakely, Harold Hamm,  Stephen Wilson, William Prentice, Captain Kieran Kelly, Benjamin Zycher, Nick Deiuliis, Sha Huam, Prfed Dvorak, Benny Peiser, Robert Bradley, Duggan Flanakin,  Paul Williams, Andrew Fillat, Lynne Balzer, Henry I. Miller, Tom Nelson, David Friedman, Terry Branstad, Travis Fisher, Michael Kelly, Todd Staples, Steve Goreham, Alexander Stevens, William F. Shughart II, Thomas Catenacci, Gregory Wrightstone, Geoff Simon, Mark Nelson, Dr. Chris Keefer, Greg Walcher, Joe Sinnott, Doomberg, Ron Barmy, William Barr, Steve Bakken, Kent Lassman, Ken Silverstein, Donald Kendal, Marlo Thomas, Myron Ebell, John Christy, Miles Pollard, Richard Stern, Kevin Dayaratna, Steve Milloy, Peter Lilley, Jonathon Constable, Seth Whitehead,  Rich Nolan, Stu Turley, Ron Stein, Roger Caiazza, Todd Royal, David Hoyt, Marc Morano, Chris Horner, Bob Tisdale, Pat Michaels, Franz Unterreiner, Bjorn Lomborg, Alexander Stevens,  Matt Ridley, Fred Singer, William Barr,  Mark Adams, Michael Deacon, Joel Kotkin, Tom Finnerty, Thomas Richard, Jack Hellner, Alex Neuman, Andy May, David Strom, David  Middleton, Nick Pope, Kip Hansen, Brendan O’Neill, Andy Rowland, Steve Koonin, Roy Spenser, Christopher Monckton, Patrick Moore, Ross McKitrick, Irina Slav, William Happer, Liz Peek, Peter Ridd, Glenn Hubbard, Willie Soon, Stephen McIntyre,  Richard Lindzen, Justin Haskins, Freeman Dyson, Tyler Durden, Pierre Gosselin, Chris Talgo, Mark Adams, Linnea Lueken, Simon Kent, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Christopher Rufo,  Kevin Mooney, Sam Karnick, Steve Heins, Kevin Killough, Robert Hargraves, Nick Deiuliis, Tom Long and Mackie McCrea, Walter Russell Mead, Rick Whitbeck, Jack Spencer, Thomas Richard, Brent Bennett, Andrea Hitt, Jeff Eshelman, Andrew Gray, Gordon Bullivant, Barry James, Max Wilbert, Lars Schernikau, Robert Lyman, and many 100s more to be added going forward.

(Please make recommendation of other allies who belong in this remarkable group.)

)

Q&A: The Sort of ‘Breakthrough’ Moment Came in Dubai When the Nations of the World Agreed to Transition Away From Fossil Fuels

But, says climate advocate Alden Meyer, “the atmosphere only cares about one thing: emissions. It's a matter of physics. It doesn't care what ministers or leaders say in declarations or treaties or pledges or action announcements … So the acid test for this is going to come in the next couple of years.”

Interview by Steve Curwood, "Living on Earth"

December 16, 2023

From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by host Steve Curwood with Alden Meyer, a climate advocate and senior consultant at E3G, an independent climate change think tank. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

STEVE CURWOOD: For days the recent U.N. climate summit in Dubai courted deadlock. This 28th Conference of the Parties could not move forward unless all of the nearly 200 nations attending agreed on a course of action. And with some demanding a complete phase out of fossil fuels, including oil and gas, while others sought to block or slow down such changes, it seemed there was little room for compromise. 

But in the end the rising number of catastrophes linked to climate disruption made it hard to deny the problems, and the risks of doing nothing. So, with nuanced words agreed to by all during overtime negotiations, COP28  declared fossil fuels are indeed on their way out. Exactly how and when will be determined at future COPs, with climate advocates looking to the 2025 summit in Brazil to set rules in keeping with the 2015 Paris Agreement. Alden Meyer is a climate advocate and senior consultant at E3G. 

What was your reaction to the final text that was hashed out after the all night sessions? 

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ALDEN MEYER: Well, I think overall, it clearly wasn’t everything we want. We wanted something closer to the text that was tabled four days before the COP ended, which called for the phase out of fossil fuels. This one does not, it calls for a transition away from fossil fuels in the energy sector. It calls for tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, doubling the rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030. And it has some potential loopholes such as a clause that talks about the need for transition fuels. And people read that to mean natural gas. So it’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than we’ve had before out of this process. 

Just to put it in context, until COP26 in Glasgow two years ago, there was not a mention of the need to phase down, phase out, transition away from fossil fuels in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process. Now, in Glasgow, we got the language calling for the phase down of unabated coal emissions from the power sector. That’s the first time that we got any real commitment to move away from fossil fuels. This sort of raises the stakes there because it expands it to oil and gas. And it dominated these talks for two weeks. It was the center of attention.

Everyone was saying this was the key litmus test for how serious this process was. Was it gonna say something about the need to get off of fossil fuels? And well, it’s definitely not perfect, and not everything we want. And it was a bit of a sausage-making process to get here, it does signal to the world that the transition away from fossil fuels is accelerating. And that’s a good thing.

CURWOOD: Alden, overall, would you say the COP28 created a breakthrough moment?

MEYER: I think it’s a breakthrough in the sense that for the first time, you’ve got the countries of the world agreeing that we need to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels, to a clean energy economy based on renewable energy, energy efficiency, and other technologies. So that’s historic.

Of course, it’s not specifying the rate of change, or the scale of change, or the pace of change. So it was not just the Saudis, there were countries like the U.S. and others that would not have accepted specific targets for when we’re going to reduce production and consumption of oil and gas by x percent. That was just never in the cards. But it does say that by mid-century, we need to be on track to get to net zero emissions as a planet. That could involve some countries like India and China taking a little bit longer. And maybe some countries like the U.S. having to do that a little bit faster. But we need to get there. And to get there, you have to phase down fossil fuel consumption pretty radically and pretty soon. You can’t wait until 2045 or 2049, you’ve got to start doing it right away. 

It does call for all countries in their next round of pledges under Paris, encourages them to put forward economy-wide pledges covering all greenhouse gases. Of course, China agreed to do that in the Sunnyland[s] Statement about a month ago with Secretary Kerry. And that’s a big deal, because I’ve been told that China’s non-CO2 emissions—it’s methane, nitrous oxide, other greenhouse gases—if taken separately from CO2 would represent the third largest country in the world, just behind China and the U.S., in terms of emissions. 

We also have language in here calling for transforming the global financial system to mobilize much greater sums of both private and public sector finance, both to decarbonize developing country paths and to help scale up investments in resilience and adaptation, to cope with the impacts of climate change that are coming at us. 

Now, there’s not enough in there in terms of the specifics, and most of the action on that front is not going to happen. In the UNFCCC, it’s going to happen in places like next year’s G20 meetings in Brazil. So there’s a lot of good things in here. Not everything we want. There’s a lot more work to do, particularly to translate this into action in the real world.

CURWOOD: So, how can we measure the success of this in the years going ahead, Alden?

MEYER: As we’ve discussed before, Steve, the atmosphere only cares about one thing: emissions. It’s a matter of physics. It doesn’t care what ministers or leaders say in declarations or treaties or pledges or action announcements. It’s the bottom line, how much carbon, how much methane, how much nitrous oxide are you emitting to the atmosphere? 

So the acid test for this is going to come in the next couple of years. Will we see countries put dramatically more ambitious national pledges on the table in 2025 in the second round of Paris commitments? Will we see countries like China, rolling back construction of new coal plants and putting a plan on the table to reduce coal emissions in the second half of this decade?

Will we see the U.S. reconsidering expanding production and export of liquefied natural gas, which with the methane emissions incorporated is a bad way to go. Will we see the host country of these talks, the United Arab Emirates, rethink its plans to invest $150 billion in expanding oil production from 3 to 5 million barrels a day? Those are gonna be the kind of tests in the real world that will see whether this is serious, and countries are going to back up the talk with their walk.

CURWOOD: There’s a lot of criticism of the chap who was president of this, Sultan al-Jaber from the UAE, head of the nation’s oil company. And John Kerry, the U.S. special climate envoy, really reached out to kind of put his arms around him metaphorically and say, ’No, this is a good guy, we can work with this guy.’ How important was that relationship, do you think, between John Kerry and al-Jaber, in terms of getting a reasonably positive outcome in Dubai? 

MEYER: Well, I think it was a very important relationship. I would also say that John Kerry’s relationship with Minister Xie from China was very important because they delivered a month in advance of the COP, the so-called Sunnyland[s] Statement, which made some progress in China committing to take on economy-wide commitments to bring methane into the picture. And to try to decarbonize the power sector. And Secretary Kerry and Minister Xie worked very closely over the course of these two weeks, they were both in close communication with Dr. al-Jaber and the rest of the presidency team. 

So I think that was an important relationship. I mean, you have to judge him by the results, right? And, you know, I think there was a lot of skepticism that he would be able to pull this off, that he was too close to the oil countries and the oil and gas industry. Now maybe that actually worked to his advantage, because they knew him. They trusted him, they had a relationship with him. 

I’ve met him only a few times, he’s a very sharp guy, very knowledgeable, has been in this space for 15 years, knows a lot of the players. I was skeptical he was going to be able to pull this off, frankly. But it could be that that expression of skepticism and the concerns about a potential conflict of interest in his role as COP president and his role as CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company lit a fire under him. 

And he said, ‘OK, I’m gonna prove the skeptics wrong.’ And maybe that was a motivating factor to him. I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist, and I don’t know him closely enough to get into his head. But I could imagine that that would be a motivational factor to prove the skeptics and the doubters wrong.

CURWOOD: Now, let’s talk a bit about money world wide. How does what is being sought in the agreement struck in Dubai compare to the subsidies to the fossil fuel business around the world? 

MEYER: Well, just to put it in one comparison, the first day of the COP, we had a decision to operationalize the loss and damage fund that was called for in last year’s COP in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. They adopted that. And very soon thereafter, they assembled a little over $700 million in pledges from a number of countries to provide some seed funding for that fund to get up and running. 

Just to put that in perspective, we spend about $3.5 billion a day subsidizing people to produce and consume fossil fuels. Almost a trillion and a half dollars a year. So that $700 million represents about four or five hours of fossil fuel subsidy spending. And when you think about it, it’s insanity. 

We’re actually paying people to produce and burn something that we say is an existential threat to humanity, and is going to make the need for loss and damage funding much, much greater. It makes no sense. I was in Pittsburgh in 2009 when President Obama convinced other G20 country leaders to commit to phase out fossil fuel subsidies in the medium term, as they said. I think you can make an argument that 14 years later is the medium term. And far too few countries have actually followed through on that. 

Matter of fact, the International Monetary Fund says that fossil fuels subsidies have been increasing in recent years, not cut back. So that’s literally the definition of insanity: digging the hole deeper and paying people to do something that you say you don’t want.

CURWOOD: Alden, by the way, there were demonstrations calling for a ceasefire in Palestine at this point. What impact did that have on the negotiations? That particular issue?

MEYER: Well, that was an issue over here, it was the subject of statements by a number of countries on the floor. As you say, there were demonstrations and actions and chants and protests. People are very aware of what’s going on in Gaza and the human suffering that’s happening there. And there was broad support among both the civil society groups here and a number of countries here for a ceasefire. But I would say, I didn’t see that disrupting or interfering with the ability of countries to work seriously to get the deal they reached at the end of the COP. 

There was a moment at the opening days of the COP where Iran walked out of the room when Israel made an intervention on the floor. But they did not leave the premises and, you know, not participate at all for the rest of the two weeks. Other than that, there was nothing that I saw that was impeding or interfering with the negotiations on the climate agenda. But it just shows that, you know, this process is not immune from geopolitical stresses, whether it’s the war in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine, the debt crisis in a growing number of developing countries, the tensions between the U.S. and China. 

But in an interesting way, climate has become positioned as an area that is seen as a common threat, that we sort of have to rise above those divisions and work together as a species if we’re going to address it. And I think you saw that, that spirit here at the end, even though there were very different positions on the final deal and the issues at play.

CURWOOD: Alden, you’ve been coming to these meetings for a long time, I think all but one. What gives you hope at this point?

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MEYER: Well, what gives me hope is the fact that despite all the tensions and the disagreements, countries were able to come to a consensus on a path forward here. It’s not perfect, it’s not as ambitious as I would have liked to see. But it definitely is a historic shift in these negotiations to say we have to come to grips with our addiction to fossil fuels. 

Now, that being said, the proof of the pudding is going to be in the next year or two, to see what countries actually do at home, what kind of commitments they put on the table, what impact this has on investors in the business community. But it was a real achievement. 

Another thing that gives me hope is the tremendous reductions that we see in the cost of the clean energy technologies that can replace fossil fuels, whether it’s solar photovoltaic cells, wind turbines, electrolyzers, LED light bulbs, electric vehicles and batteries. I mean, just the force of those technology costs coming down is making tremendous shifts in the market. Not fast enough, not at the rate that we need, but it’s accelerating. That gives me hope. 

And I would also say what gives me hope is the diversity of constituencies and voices coming into this process. When I started out in the run up to Rio in 1992, it was primarily the science community and some of the environmental movement that was driving this process. 

Now you have healthcare professionals, you have doctors, you have the faith community, you have labor unions, you have progressive business, you have Indigenous people. And most importantly to me, you have the youth coming in and saying this is our future. You need to leave us an inhabitable planet. And so I think the fact that this has emerged as an issue that mobilizes all sectors of society to come in and demand action, gives me hope. 

CURWOOD: Alden Myer is a senior associate at the climate change think tank E3G. Alden, thanks so much for taking this time with us today.

MEYER: It was good to talk with you, Steve.

Climate Sanity Spokespeople

A Partial List of Economists, Business Authors, Scientists, Climatologists, Engineers, Scholars,  Financiers, Businessmen, Lawyers, Regulators, Policy Wonks, Energy Activists, and Thinkers…

who favor global energy fairness, practical environmentalism, adequate health care, good economics, and electricity abundance for all people.

        Robert Bryce, Roger Pielke, Jr., Michael Shellenberger, Judith Curry, David Blackman, Francis Menton, Doug Sheridan, Daniel Yergin,  Tom Finton, Scott Tinker, Mark Mills, Terry Etam, Tracy Shuchart, Vaclav Smil, Jude Clemente, Willis Eschenbach, Tom Shepstone, Eric Worrall, Jusper Machogu, Nicholas Lewis, Ryan Meyers, Dr. Matthew Wielicki, Douglas Pollock, Jim Willis, Ed Ireland, Meredith Angwin, Wayne Crews, Mark Steyn, Craig Rucker, John Droz, Nicole Jacobs, Jason Spiess, William Allison, Tammy Nemeth, Nic Lewis, Rich Nolan, Lynne Balzer, Jonathon Cohler,  Gordon Hughes, Paul Homewood, Charles Rotter, Smythe Anderson, Terence Corcoran, Richard  Morrison, Brian Gitt, Paul Driessen, Isaac Orr, Anthony Watts, Andreas Thanos, Steve Reese, Chris Wright, Bette Grande, Jim Vinoski, Timothy Birdnow, Charles Rotter, Hank Campbell, Alex Epstein, H. Sterling Burnette, James Taylor, Tim Benson, Joe Bastardi, Bruce Everett, Jim Lakely, Harold Hamm,  Stephen Wilson, William Prentice, Captain Kieran Kelly, Benjamin Zycher, Nick Deiuliis, Sha Huam, Prfed Dvorak, Benny Peiser, Robert Bradley, Duggan Flanakin,  Paul Williams, Andrew Fillat, Lynne Balzer, Henry I. Miller, Tom Nelson, David Friedman, Terry Branstad, Travis Fisher, Michael Kelly, Todd Staples, Steve Goreham, Alexander Stevens, William F. Shughart II, Thomas Catenacci, Gregory Wrightstone, Geoff Simon, Mark Nelson, Dr. Chris Keefer, Greg Walcher, Joe Sinnott, Doomberg, Ron Barmy, William Barr, Steve Bakken, Kent Lassman, Ken Silverstein, Donald Kendal, Marlo Thomas, Myron Ebell, John Christy, Steve Milloy, Peter Lilley, Jonathon Constable, Seth Whitehead,  Rich Nolan, Stu Turley, Ron Stein, Roger Caiazza, Todd Royal, David Hoyt, Marc Morano, Chris Horner, Bob Tisdale, Pat Michaels, Franz Unterreiner, Bjorn Lomborg, Alexander Stevens,  Matt Ridley, Fred Singer, William Barr,  Mark Adams, Michael Deacon, Joel Kotkin, Tom Finnerty, Thomas Richard, Jack Hellner, Alex Neuman, Andy May, David Strom, David  Middleton, Nick Pope, Kip Hansen, Brendan O’Neill, Andy Rowland, Steve Koonin, Roy Spenser, Christopher Monckton, Patrick Moore, Ross McKitrick, Irina Slav, William Happer, Liz Peek, Peter Ridd, Glenn Hubbard, Willie Soon, Stephen McIntyre,  Richard Lindzen, Justin Haskins, Freeman Dyson, Tyler Durden, Pierre Gosselin, Chris Talgo, Mark Adams, Linnea Lueken, Simon Kent, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Christopher Rufo,  Kevin Mooney, Sam Karnick, Steve Heins, Kevin Killough, Robert Hargraves, Nick Deiuliis, Tom Long and Mackie McCrea, Walter Russell Mead, Rick Whitbeck, Jack Spencer, Thomas Richard, Brent Bennett, Andrea Hitt, Jeff Eshelman, Andrew Gray, Gordon Bullivant, Barry James, and many more to be added going forward.

(Please make recommendation of other allies who belong in this remarkable group.)

WRITTEN BY JOHN STOSSEL ON DEC 13, 2023. POSTED IN LATEST NEWS, VIDEOS

Stossel: The Not-So-Scary Truth About Climate Change

United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry says it will take trillions of dollars to “solve” climate change. Then he says, “There is not enough money in any country in the world to actually solve this problem.”

Kerry has little understanding of money or how it’s created. He’s a multimillionaire because he married a rich woman. Now he wants to take more of your money to pretend to affect climate change. [emphasis, links added]

Bjorn Lomborg points out that there are better things society should spend money on.

Lomberg acknowledges that a warmer climate brings problems. “As temperatures get higher, seawater, like everything else, expands. So we’re going to maybe see three feet of sea level rise. Then they say, ‘So everybody who lives within three feet of sea level, they’ll have to move!’ Well, no. If you actually look at what people do, they built dikes and so they don’t have to move.”

People in Holland did that years ago. A third of the Netherlands is below sea level. In some areas, it’s 22 feet below. Yet the country thrives. That’s the way to deal with climate change: adjust to it.

“Fewer people are going to get flooded every year, despite the fact that you have much higher sea level rise. The total cost for Holland over the last half-century is about $10 billion,” says Lomberg. “Not nothing, but very little for an advanced economy over 50 years.”

For saying things like that, Lomberg is labeled “the devil.”

“The problem here is unmitigated scaremongering,” he replies. “A new survey shows that 60% of all people in rich countries now believe it’s likely or very likely that unmitigated climate change will lead to the end of mankind. This is what you get when you have constant fearmongering in the media.”

Some people now say they will not have children because they’re convinced that climate change will destroy the world.

Lomborg points out how counterproductive that would be: “We need your kids to make sure the future is better.”

He acknowledges that climate warming will kill people.

“As temperatures go up, we’re likely to see more people die from heat. That’s absolutely true. You hear this all the time. But what is underreported is the fact that nine times as many people die from cold. … As temperatures go up, you’re going to see fewer people die from cold. Over the last 20 years, because of temperature rises, we have seen about 116,000 more people die from heat. But 283,000 fewer people die from cold.”

That’s rarely reported in the news.

When the media doesn’t fret over deaths from heat, they grab at other possible threats.

CNN claims, “Climate Change is Fueling Extremism.”

The BBC says, “A Shifting Climate is Catalysing Infectious Disease.”

U.S. News and World Report says, “Climate Change will Harm Children’s Mental Health.”

Lomborg replies, “It’s very, very easy to make this argument that everything is caused by climate change if you don’t have the full picture.”

He points out that we rarely hear about the positive effects of climate change, like global greening.

“That’s good! We get more green stuff on the planet. My argument is not that climate change is great or overall positive. It’s simply that, just like every other thing, it has pluses and minuses. … Only reporting on the minuses, and only emphasizing worst-case outcomes, is not a good way to inform people.”

Read more at Townhall

I still need your financial support right now (paid subscriptions, etc.) to support my efforts to archive of my written and collected writings of Internet and energy experts. Broadband and AI are becoming more and intertwined with energy, technology, health, efficiency, government policy, and the multitudinous Cloud: and, I want to make my contribution to global energy fairness and abundance.

In my 23 years of studying the complexity of the cosmos of energy and telecommunications issues, may I suggest the converging of the following: (1) Internet, Broadband, Open Access, Net Neutrality, the Internet of Things, FCC; (2) EPA, FERC, DOE, DOI, energy, energy efficiency, renewables, clean energy, utilities, regulations, regulators, technological innovation, practical environmentalism, Virtual Power Plan; (3) EU-ETS & Chicago Climate Exchange, emission reductions and trading, carbon tax, climate change, Clean Power Plan, IPCC; (4) fossil fuels, shale oil, tight oil, fracking, refineries, upstream-midstream-downstream production, hydrogen gas liquids (HGL), feedstock, flaring, LNG-gathering systems-tankers-export terminals, cracker plants, plastics, pipelines, transmission lines; (5) capital formation, economic development, socio-economics, human health including inner and outer air pollution, health care, sanitation, hospitals, reliable electricity, clean water, community development in US and other developed countries, and community development in emerging countries and continents.

CLIMATE ECONOMICSGOVERNMENT IDIOCY

Some More Energy Reality In New York City

14 hours ago

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From the MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN

Francis Menton

New York thinks it is going to be the “leader” in showing the world how to transition away from fossil fuels to “green” energy. Our politicians and bureaucrats have not bothered with things like feasibility studies or demonstration projects showing that this can be done, because after all they are geniuses and it is up to the little people to figure out the details. So the energy transition has been ordered up via statutes filled with mandates and deadlines and penalties, with no attention paid to feasibility or cost. We now all get to sit back and watch as this crashes and burns.

In New York City, the main statute on this subject, enacted in 2019, has the title of Climate Mobilization Act, also known as Local Law (LL) 97. The most significant impending mandates are for reductions in “emissions” from buildings, with the first deadline for residential buildings coming right up in January 2024. Few building will fail the 2024 cap, but the mandated emissions limits keep ratcheting down over time. The mandate for 2030 for residential buildings over 25,000 square feet is set such that it cannot be met if the building continues to use gas or oil for heat; so effectively this is a mandate to convert to electric heat by that time.

Daughter Jane — a board member of a co-op in Queens which is over the 25,000 square feet and thus subject to the 2030 mandate — has previously covered this subject at Manhattan Contrarian. Here is her piece from October 2022. The gist was that boards in Queens that had looked into how to convert had been advised of very large costs that were not remotely affordable for their middle-class owners. Jane is currently on maternity leave from Manhattan Contrarian, having just delivered her third baby, so I am taking up this subject while we await her return.

So how big a problem will it be for these buildings to convert to electric heat? Nobody really knows. Remarkably — given that the first deadline, applicable to at least some buildings, is barely over a month away — as far as we can find there doesn’t exist a single example of a large building that has successfully completed a conversion that others can look to to benchmark feasibility and cost. New buildings can be built with all-electric infrastructure without great difficulty. But nobody has any solid idea how much will it cost, and how much disruption will be involved, to retrofit heat pumps into large apartment buildings built in the 1970s, or 60s, or 50s, or even the 1920s.

However, that may be about to change. There is at least one conversion project for a large building that is under way, and near completion, and scheduled to begin operation imminently, in December 2023. You won’t find any reporting about that project in the New York Times or other such media operations that constantly hype the dire need to reduce emissions. However, here is a piece, dated October 28, in a local newspaper called the West Side Rag that covers the Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan. The headline is “Heat Pump Project in Frederick Douglass Houses Nears Completion; ‘Powered by Electricity’.”

So, how is it going? The answer is that this effort is an unmitigated disaster. Let’s look into the details.

The conversion in question is taking place at one building in an eighteen-building New York City Housing Authority complex called Frederick Douglass Houses, located in Manhattan along Amsterdam Avenue between West 100th and 104th Streets. NYCHA is effectively exempt from LL97, since it is not subject to the penalties for non-compliance that apply to privately-owned buildings. However, the mandated emissions limits do nominally apply to NYCHA, and for this conversion NYCHA partnered with the New York Power Authority (NYPA) to finance the work.

From the West Side Rag:

A two-year project to convert a public housing building to an electrically powered heat pump system is nearing completion on the Upper West Side. The 58-year-old 20-story tower at 830 Amsterdam Avenue (100th Street), part of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) Frederick Douglass Houses development, is being retrofitted to provide heating, cooling, and hot water for residents – and to serve as a possible template for converting more of the 2,410 buildings NYCHA maintains citywide. . . . The project is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and give tenants more control over the temperature in their individual units. . . .

The agencies [NYCHA and NYPA] said the new heat pump system would be the first of its kind at a public housing facility in New York state, and the Amsterdam building would be the first to move away from burning fossil fuels. That makes it “a model for the portfolio,” said Vlada Kenniff, the housing authority’s vice president for energy and sustainability. . . .

So with the first deadline for LL97 compliance barely over a month away, they are just approaching the completion of a heat pump conversion on exactly one of their 2,410 buildings.

Here, from the West Side Rag, are pictures first of the building, and then of the array of large heat pumps that have been installed out in what apparently previously was part of the parking lot:

Then the West Side Rag gives figures for the number of units in the building and the cost of the project. The number of units is 159. And the cost? $28 million.

Holy shit! That’s over $176,000 per unit, just for the heat pump conversion. At a current financing rate of about 7%, that would mean an addition to rent of well over $1000 per month per unit just to finance the purchase and installation of the heat pump system. For comparison, NYCHA here gives the average monthly rent of its apartments as $557 in 2023. So if the tenants were expected to pay the cost of buying and installing this heat pump system, that would mean more than tripling each tenant’s monthly rent. Maybe we shouldn’t worry, because undoubtedly NYCHA’s plan would not be to burden the residents, but rather to get the money from the infinite pile of federal loot available from Washington.

At that same NYCHA link, they give their total number of apartments as 177,569. To provide each of them with heat from one of these heat pumps at $176,000 each would cost a total of over $31 billion.

In other words, converting this building has shown that retrofitting a central heat pump system like this for such buildings is infeasible to the point of being ludicrous. But of course, this is New York, and nobody is allowed to say that. The West Side Rag seeks out a comment from one Paul DiMichele, identified as a spokesman for NYPA:

NYPA spokesman Paul DeMichele explained via email that “the complexities of the project motivated NYPA and NYCHA to think about other scalable solutions to bring heat pump technology to NYCHA residents.”

Ah, the “complexities.” Well, how about another possible approach, such as a heat pump on the roof?:

An earlier effort to install a different kind of heat pump mechanism on the roof of the Fort Independence Houses in the Bronx experienced similar challenges, with program manager Jordan Bonomo quoted in astory about that project on the Grist media platform explaining, “Each apartment had a story. We quickly realized that while we like the technology, we couldn’t possibly scale that across our portfolio.”

And thus, with a month to go to the first (theoretical) deadline under this LL97, we are exactly nowhere in coming up with a way to convert older buildings built with gas or oil heat to electric heat pumps at any remotely affordable cost. Energy reality is rising up once again

Dear Fellow Practical Environmentalists,

I still need your financial support right now (paid subscriptions, etc.) to support my efforts to archive of my written and collected writings of Internet and energy experts. Broadband and AI are becoming more and intertwined with energy, technology, health, efficiency, government policy, and the multitudinous Cloud: and, I want to make my contribution to global energy fairness and abundance.

In my 23 years of studying the complexity of the cosmos of energy and telecommunications issues, may I suggest the converging of the following: (1) Internet, Broadband, Open Access, Net Neutrality, the Internet of Things, FCC; (2) EPA, FERC, DOE, DOI, energy, energy efficiency, renewables, clean energy, utilities, regulations, regulators, technological innovation, practical environmentalism, Virtual Power Plan; (3) EU-ETS & Chicago Climate Exchange, emission reductions and trading, carbon tax, climate change, Clean Power Plan, IPCC; (4) fossil fuels, shale oil, tight oil, fracking, refineries, upstream-midstream-downstream production, hydrogen gas liquids (HGL), feedstock, flaring, LNG-gathering systems-tankers-export terminals, cracker plants, plastics, pipelines, transmission lines; (5) capital formation, economic development, socio-economics, human health including inner and outer air pollution, health care, sanitation, hospitals, reliable electricity, clean water, community development in US and other developed countries, and community development in emerging countries and continents.

Climate Sanity Spokespeople

A Partial List of Economists, Business Authors, Scientists, Climatologists, Engineers, Scholars,  Financiers, Businessmen, Lawyers, Regulators, Policy Wonks, Energy Activists, and Thinkers…

who favor global energy fairness, practical environmentalism, adequate health care, good economics, and electricity abundance for all people.

How does this look:

Climate Sanity Spokespeople

A Partial List of Economists, Business Authors, Scientists, Climatologists, Engineers, Scholars,  Financiers, Businessmen, Lawyers, Regulators, Policy Wonks, Energy Activists, and Thinkers…

who favor global energy fairness, practical environmentalism, adequate health care, good economics, and electricity abundance for all people.

        Robert Bryce, Roger Pielke, Jr., Michael Shellenberger, Judith Curry, David Blackman, Francis Menton, Doug Sheridan, Daniel Yergin,  Tom Finton, Scott Tinker, Mark Mills, Terry Etam, Tracy Shuchart, Vaclav Smil, Jude Clemente, Willis Eschenbach, Tom Shepstone, Eric Worrall, Jusper Machogu, Nicholas Lewis, Ryan Meyers, Dr. Matthew Wielicki, Douglas Pollock, Jim Willis, Ed Ireland, Meredith Angwin, Wayne Crews, Mark Steyn, Craig Rucker, John Droz, Nicole Jacobs, Jason Spiess, William Allison, Tammy Nemeth, Nic Lewis, Rich Nolan, Lynne Balzer, Jonathon Cohler,  Gordon Hughes, Phelim McAleer, Ann McElhinney, Magdalena Segieda, Paul Homewood, Charles Rotter, Smythe Anderson, Terence Corcoran, Richard  Morrison, Brian Gitt, Paul Driessen, Isaac Orr, Anthony Watts, Andreas Thanos, Steve Reese, Chris Wright, Bette Grande, Jim Vinoski, Timothy Birdnow, Charles Rotter, Alex Epstein, H. Sterling Burnette, James Taylor, Tim Benson, Joe Bastardi, Bruce Everett, Jim Lakely, Harold Hamm,  Max Wilbert,

Stephen Wilson, William Prentice, Captain Kieran Kelly, Benjamin Zycher, Nick Deiuliis, Sha Huam, Pfred Dvorak, Benny Peiser, Robert Bradley, Duggan Flanakin,  Paul Williams, Andrew Fillat, Lynne Balzer, Henry I. Miller, Tom Nelson, David Friedman, Terry Branstad, Travis Fisher, Michael Kelly, Steve Goreham, Alexander Stevens, William F. Shughart II, Thomas Catenacci, Gregory Wrightstone, Geoff Simon, David Turner, Mark Nelson, Dr. Chris Keefer, Greg Walcher, Joe Sinnott, Doomberg, Ron Barmy, William Barr, Steve Bakken, Kent Lassman, Ken Silverstein, Donald Kendal, Marlo Thomas, Myron Ebell, John Christy, Steve Milloy, Jonathon Constable, Seth Whitehead,  Rich Nolan, Stu Turley, Ron Stein, Roger Caiazza, Todd Royal, David Hoyt, Marc Morano, Chris Horner, Bob Tisdale, Pat Michaels, Franz Unterreiner, Bjorn Lomborg, Alexander Stevens,  Matt Ridley, Fred Singer, William Barr,  Mark Adams, Michael Deacon, Joel Kotkin, Tom Finnerty, Alex Neuman, Andy May, David Strom, David  Middleton, Nick Pope, Andy Rowland, Steve Koonin, Roy Spenser, Christopher Monckton, Patrick Moore, Ross McKitrick, Irina Slav, William Happer, Peter Ridd, Glenn Hubbard, Willie Soon, Stephen McIntyre,  Richard Lindzen, Justin Haskins, Freeman Dyson, Tyler Durden, Pierre Gosselin, Chris Talgo, Mark Adams, Linnea Lueken, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Christopher Rufo,  Kevin Mooney, Sam Karnick, Steve Heins, Kevin Killough, Robert Hargraves, Nick Deiuliis, Tom Long and Mackie McCrea, Walter Russell Mead, Rick Whitbeck, Jack Spencer, Thomas Richard, Brent Bennett, Andrea Hitt, Jeff Eshelman, Karr Ingham,  James Woudhuysen, Ian Plimer, Malcolm Roberts, Alex Antic, Andrew Bolt, Andrew Gray, Gordon Bullivant, Michael Magoon, and many, many more to be added going forward.

(Please make recommendations of other allies who belong in this remarkable group.)

Why The ESG Craze Is Fading On Wall Street

Wall Street rushed to embrace sustainable investing just a few years ago. Now it is quietly closing funds or scrubbing their names after disappointing returns that have investors cashing out billions.

The about-face comes after tightened regulatory oversight, higher interest rates that have slammed clean-energy stocks, and a backlash that has made environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) investing a political target. [emphasis, links added]

“This really is the result of too many managers looking to cash in on increased awareness and demand for ESG investments,” said Tony Turisch, senior vice president at Calamos Investments.

The third quarter was the first time more sustainable funds liquidated or removed ESG criteria from their investment practices than were added,according to Morningstar.

Source: Morningstar Direct

That is a reversal from not that long ago when companies were rebranding faltering funds to cash in on the billions of dollars flowing into sustainable investment products.

In 2021, Hartford Funds inserted “sustainable” into the name of its core bond product and subsequently saw investors pour $100 million into it. But after missing its performance targets last year, Hartford is switching gears again.

Later this month, the bond fund will be known as the Core Fixed Income Fund and potentially sell some of the holdings that made it sustainable when it pivots to a conventional investment strategy, according to company filings.

Hartford declined to comment on why it is rebranding the fund.

At least five other funds also announced they would drop their ESG mandates this year, while another 32 sustainable funds will close, according to data compiled by Morningstar and The Wall Street Journal.

[According to Morningstar,] the retreat comes after investors withdrew more than $14 billion from sustainable funds this year, leaving them with $299 billion.

Conventional funds also lost money, but the pain was more acute for climate and other thematic products hit by high-interest rates and other factors.

Ron Rice, vice president of marketing at Pacific Financial, said a legal fight over the Labor Department’s rule letting retirement fund managers consider ESG factors may have weighed on the popularity of his firm’s sustainable products.

Companies, countries, and organizations are attracting consumers and investors with promises to be more environmentally friendly.

But what happens when they fall short? Here’s how greenwashing is misleading consumers about how sustainable products and services are.

“We found that the demand for ESG investing, by financial professionals working with retirement-plan participants, was more limited than we anticipated,” he said.

Earlier this year, Pacific Financial removed sustainability from the name of three mutual funds then-holding more than $187 million. All three funds subsequently saw their assets under management jump, Rice said.

Political pressure could be a factor in the changes as well. Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has been a vocal ESG critic.

Last year, Florida said it was pulling $2 billion of its assets managed by BlackRock partly due to the company’s support of ESG.

Read rest at WSJ

Higher in the Rockies,

winds tune themselves

on the mountains and Ponderosa needles.

September cold, the wind blows asters

flat for seconds, then yellow-eyed,

they spring back purple as any distant peak.

Steamy, bubbling clouds announce summer’s end

and spill over the bowl edge of the Sangre de Christos.

A few aspens huddle near the tree-line,

they hear the clouds and yellow their leaves

before colder winds bring them

a harsher change of costume.

These aspens reveal the first vague

map of Autumn’s advance where

mountains, clouds, and trees

hear the howling winds I can’t.

Steve Heins

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PwC GlobalToday's issuesMaking the transition to net zeroTackling the Scope 3 challenge

Tackling the scope 3 challenge

Measuring and tracking Scope 3 emissions may be tricky, but companies don’t need to do everything at once to make meaningful progress.

By Emma Cox and Casey Herman

When it comes to reducing a company’s Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions, supply chain managers face a daunting task. Scope 3 emissions are both large (making up 65–95% of most companies’ carbon impact) and indirect—a consequence of a company’s activities outside its direct control. This can make estimating and tracking them, let alone reporting them, seem devilishly complicated. For example:

• One global consumer goods company we’ve worked with had a supply chain that included thousands of suppliers—and tens of thousands of stock-keeping units (SKUs). The company’s estimates of its Scope 3 emissions reflect not just how each SKU is produced but also how it’s used (and for how long), cleaned and disposed of at the end of its useful life. 

• One financial institution we supported had Scope 3 financed emissions via multiple loans to various operations and activities of the same oil and gas company in different parts of the world, as well as up and down the value chain.

The good news is that while perfect data might be difficult to come by (especially beyond Tier 1 suppliers) useful, actionable data is not. In many cases, an incremental approach to data collection can ease the burden. We’ve typically found that as much as 80% of an organisation's supply chain emissions come from as few as one-fifth of its purchases. At one public-sector agency, just 20 suppliers were responsible for 94% of the agency’s Scope 3 emissions. This means that in principle the agency could, within about ten years, cut its Scope 3 supply chain emissions in half by focusing on just those 20 suppliers.

In situations where companies can’t get direct information from suppliers, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol allows them to use industry averages, proxies and other sources to calculate their Scope 3 emissions. Any number of third-party data suppliers, as well as the International Energy Agency and various government agencies, can help.

Nonetheless, calculating Scope 3 emissions using incremental and third-party approaches presents challenges. Here are four of the most common that we’ve helped organisations address:

• Collecting and reporting data can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. Because companies that rely very heavily on third-party sources often aren’t involved in the Scope 3 calculations themselves, they may struggle to understand their own Scope 3 footprint—and thus improve it.

• Scope 3 modelling approaches, such as one based on product spend with a given supplier, may not be detailed enough to support better management decisions or identify distinct opportunities for a company to lower carbon emissions. (Spend-based modelling, for example, relies on industry-average emissions factors and thus doesn’t necessarily reflect the actual emissions footprint of a given company.) What’s more, an overreliance on modelling can tempt managers to pay more attention to the model and its assumptions than making real improvements to Scope 3 emissions—particularly when executive rewards are tied to the model’s output.

• Extrapolating results from a small sample of suppliers is a common (and useful) approach to estimating Scope 3 emissions. But when companies lack the necessary statistical expertise, the result is unreliable data.

• Even when companies have the right expertise, they often lack the organisational structure and processes to oversee the estimations, quantification and extrapolation of Scope 3 data in multiple parts of the business. Because these activities involve subjective choices and judgments in a mostly unregulated process, the risk is that the only things included in Scope 3 reporting will be the ones that can be most easily measured, rather than the most material, “big ticket” items.

Despite all the complexity surrounding Scope 3 emissions, one thing remains simple: the end goal of measuring and tracking them is to shape business decisions that mitigate the effects of climate change. For business leaders, the resulting agenda for corporate action should be equally clear: leverage your data to focus efforts where they will have the greatest impact, establish a baseline of performance, prioritise efforts with suppliers and craft meaningful performance incentives for them. Do these things, and you’re making a positive contribution.

One beneficiary is the broader ecosystem. After all, your Scope 1 and 2 emissions are another organisation’s Scope 3. And until all companies measure, track and report their emissions, the availability, accuracy and transparency of data will continue to be one of the biggest challenges to reducing carbon emissions. Another beneficiary? Your bottom line. The work companies do to tackle Scope 3 emissions can help strengthen relationships with suppliers and improve collaboration—actions that can lead to cost savings, new revenue-generating opportunities or both.

Finally, soon you may not have a choice. Scope 3 reporting has thus far been mostly voluntary, but the pressure to make it mandatory is growing. The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), the US Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System (eSRS) and the US Securities and Exchange Commission have all drafted recommendations requiring some disclosure of Scope 3 emissions—with the ISSB also requiring qualitative information to explain how reported emissions were calculated. What’s more, a recent PwC survey of 325 investors (representing $14 trillion in assets under management) found that more than one-third of them identified reducing Scope 3 emissions as a priority.

Forward-looking organisations will read the writing on the wall and start developing the capabilities and expertise they’ll need to measure—and manage—their Scope 3 emissions. By adopting an incremental approach to data collection, organisations can begin making meaningful progress now—before it’s too late.

This article was originally published in collaboration with The Climate Group as part of our Executive Series sponsorship of Climate Week NYC 2022.

3:57

28/10/22

Tracking your Scope 3 emissions

PwC’s Global Climate Leader Emma Cox hosted a conversation with Elisabeth Brinton, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, Sustainability.

Emma Cox is global climate leader at PwC. She has worked on a wide range of climate-related projects in both the public and private sectors. A partner with PwC UK, she is based in London.

Casey Herman leads PwC’s ESG practice in the United States. Based in Chicago, he is a partner with PwC US.

Editors' notes

Scientists combine climate models for more accurate projections

by Reece Brown, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

A new method for analyzing climate models brings together information from various lines of evidence to represent Earth’s climate sensitivity. Credit: Jason Smith, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Researchers from institutions including the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have created a new method for statistically analyzing climate models that projects future conditions with more fidelity.

The method provides a way to adjust for models with high temperature sensitivities—a known problem in the community. By assigning different weights to models and combining them, the researchers estimate that the global temperature will increase between 2 and 5° Celsius by the end of the century.

This projection, published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, aligns with previous projections, although this novel framework is more inclusive, avoiding the rejection of models that was common practice in previous methods.

"We don't judge models individually," said Elias Massoud, a computational ecohydrologist at ORNL. "Instead, we see how they can be put together, using their combined information to get projections of the future."

A key parameter for these models—known as equilibrium climate sensitivity or ECS—describes the relationship between change in carbon dioxide and corresponding warming. Although the Earth system has a true ECS, it is not a measurable quantity. Different lines of evidence can provide a plausible picture of the Earth's true ECS, which can alleviate the uncertainty of simulation models.

However, many models assume a high ECS and predict higher temperatures in response to more atmospheric carbon dioxide than occurs in the real Earth system. Because these models provide estimates about future conditions to scientists and policymakers, it is important to ensure that they represent the conditions of the Earth as faithfully as possible.

Previous methods mitigated this issue by eliminating models with a high ECS value. "That was a heavy-handed approach," said Massoud. "The models that were thrown out might have good information that we need, especially for understanding the extreme ends of things."

"Instead, we adopted a tool called Bayesian Model Averaging, which is a way to combine models with varying influence when estimating their distribution," said Massoud. "We used this to constrain the ECS on these models, which enabled us to project future conditions without the 'hot model problem.'"

Many models come from similar code or have the same parameters, thereby creating concerns about model independence. "If two models are dependent, then they give the same information," said Massoud. "Our work uses the results of the weights to estimate how much independence each shows and then factors that into their influence, so the same information is not double counted."

This new method provides a framework for how to best understand a collection of climate models. The model weights included in this research informed the Fifth National Climate Assessment, a report released on Nov. 14 that gauges the impacts of climate change in the United States. This project also supports the Earth System Grid Federation, an international collaboration led in the U.S. by DOE that manages and provides access to climate models and observed data.

"Our work integrates model data with observed data to get the best estimate of the state of the Earth system," said Massoud. "This enables scientists to make more accurate, precise projections about how the Earth and climate are changing."

More information: Elias C. Massoud et al, Bayesian weighting of climate models based on climate sensitivity, Communications Earth & Environment (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-023-01009-8

Journal information: Nature Communications Earth & Environment , Communications Earth & Environment

Provided by Oak Ridge National Laboratory