The climate talks are a stitch-up, as no one is talking about supply.
by George Monbiot
Published in the Guardian (December 11 2007)
Ladies and gentlemen, I have the answer! Incredible as it might seem, I
have stumbled across the single technology which will save us from
runaway climate change! From the goodness of my heart I offer it to you
for free. No patents, no small print, no hidden clauses. Already this
technology, a radical new kind of carbon capture and storage, is causing
a stir among scientists. It is cheap, it is efficient and it can be
deployed straight away. It is called ... leaving fossil fuels in the ground.
On a filthy day last week, as governments gathered in Bali to
prevaricate about climate change, a group of us tried to put this policy
into effect. We swarmed into the opencast coal mine being dug at
Ffos-y-fran in South Wales and occupied the excavators, shutting down
the works for the day. We were motivated by a fact which the wise heads
in Bali have somehow missed: if fossil fuels are extracted, they will be
used.
Most of the governments of the rich world now exhort their citizens to
use less carbon. They encourage us to change our lightbulbs, insulate
our lofts, turn our TVs off at the wall. In other words, they have a
demand-side policy for tackling climate change. But as far as I can
determine not one of them has a supply-side policy. None seeks to reduce
the supply of fossil fuel. So the demand-side policy will fail. Every
barrel of oil and tonne of coal that comes to the surface will be burnt.
Or perhaps I should say that they do have a supply-side policy: to
extract as much as they can. Since 2000 the British government has given
coal firms GBP 220 million to help them open new mines or to keep
existing mines working {1}. According to the energy white paper, the
government intends to "maximise economic recovery ... from remaining
coal reserves" {2}.
The pit at Ffos-y-fran received planning permission after two ministers
in the Westminster government jumped up and down on Rhodri Morgan, the
First Minister in Wales. Stephen Timms at the department of trade and
industry listed the benefits of the scheme and demanded that the
application "is resolved with the minimum of further delay" {3}. His
successor, Mike O'Brien, warned of dire consequences if the pit was not
granted permission {4}. The coal extracted from Ffos-y-fran alone will
produce 29.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide: equivalent, according to
the latest figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
to the sustainable emissions of 55 million people for one year {5}.
Last year British planning authorities considered twelve new
applications for opencast coal mines. They approved all but two of them.
Two weeks ago Hazel Blears, the secretary of state in charge of
planning, overruled Northumberland County Council to grant permission
for an opencast mine at Shotton, on the grounds that the scheme (which
will produce 9.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide {6}) is
"environmentally acceptable" {7}.
The British government also has a policy of "maximising the UK's
existing oil and gas reserves" {8}. To promote new production, it has
granted companies a ninety per cent discount on the licence fees they
pay for prospecting the continental shelf {9}. It hopes the prospecting
firms will open a new frontier in the seas to the west of the Shetland
Isles {10}. The government also has two schemes for "forcing unworked
blocks back into play" {11}. If oil companies don't use their licences
to the full, it revokes them and hands them to someone else. In other
words it is prepared to be ruthlessly interventionist when promoting
climate change, but not when preventing it: no minister talks of
"forcing" companies to reduce their emissions. Ministers hope the
industry will extract up to 28 billion barrels of oil and gas from the
continental shelf {12}.
Last week the government announced a new tax break for the companies
working in the North Sea. The Treasury minister Angela Eagle explained
that its purpose is "to make sure we are not leaving any oil in the
ground that could be recovered" {13}. The government's climate change
policy works like this: extract every last drop of fossil fuel then pray
to God that no one uses it.
The same wishful thinking is applied worldwide. The International Energy
Agency's new outlook report warns that "urgent action is needed" to cut
carbon emissions. The action it recommends is investing $22 trillion in
new energy infrastructure, most of which will be spent on extracting,
transporting and burning fossil fuels {14}.
Aha, you say, but what about carbon capture and storage? When
governments use this term, they mean catching and burying the carbon
dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels. It is feasible, but there are
three problems. The first is that fossil fuels are being extracted and
burnt today, and scarcely any carbon capture schemes yet exist. The
second is that the technology works only for power stations and large
industrial processes: there is no plausible means of catching and
storing emissions from cars, planes and heating systems. The third, as
Alistair Darling, then in charge of energy, admitted in the House of
Commons in May, is that the technologies required for commercial carbon
capture "might never become available" {15}. (The government is prepared
to admit this when making the case - as Darling was - for nuclear power,
but not when making the case for coal).
Almost every week I receive an email from someone asking what the heck I
am talking about. Don't I realise that peak oil will solve this problem
for us? Fossil fuels will run out, we'll go back to living in caves and
no one will need to worry about climate change again. These
correspondents make the mistake of conflating conventional oil supplies
with all fossil fuels. Yes, at some point the production of petroleum
will peak then go into decline. I don't know when this will happen, and
I urge environmentalists to remember that while we have been proved
right about most things we have been consistently wrong about the dates
for mineral exhaustion. But before oil peaks, demand is likely to
outstrip supply and the price will soar. The result is that the oil
firms will have an even greater incentive to extract the stuff.
Already, encouraged by recent prices, the pollutocrats are pouring
billions into unconventional oil. Last week BP announced a massive
investment in Canadian tar sands. Oil produced from tar sands creates
even more carbon emissions than the extraction of petroleum. There's
enough tar and kerogen in North America to cook the planet several times
over.
If that runs out they switch to coal, of which there is hundreds of
years' supply. Sasol, the South African company founded during the
apartheid period (when supplies of oil were blocked) to turn coal into
liquid transport fuel, is conducting feasibility studies for new plants
in India, China and the US {16}. Neither geology nor market forces is
going to save us from climate change.
When you review the plans for fossil fuel extraction, the horrible truth
dawns that every carbon-cutting programme on earth is a con. Without
supply-side policies, runaway climate change is inevitable, however hard
we try to cut demand. The talks in Bali will be meaningless unless they
produce a programme for leaving fossil fuels in the ground.
References:
1. Under two schemes: Coal Investment Aid and the UK Coal Operating Aid
Scheme. See Department of Trade and Industry, 2006. Coal Industry in the
UK.
http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/sources/coal/industry/page13125.html
and
DBERR, 2007. UK Coal Operating Aid Scheme: Coal Subsidy Programme /
823100 Cops0010 - Expenditure Profile by Tranche.
http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file34209.xls
2. Department of Trade and Industry, May 2007. Meeting the Energy
Challenge: a white paper on energy. Paragraph 4.07, page 107.
3. Stephen Timms MP, Department of Trade and Industry, 20th January
2004. Letter to Rhodri Morgan AM.
4. Mike O'Brien MP, Department of Trade and Industry, 14th December
2004. Letter to Rhodri Morgan AM.
5. The scheme will extract 10.8 million tonnes of coal. Average C/tonne
of coal = 746 kilograms
http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html.
CO2 is 3.667 times the weight of Carbon. The figure for sustainable
emissions - 0.537 tonnes/person/year - is explained in the column I
wrote last week:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/12/04/what-is-progress/
6. 3.4 million tonnes of coal.
7. Banks Developments, 29th November 2007. Banks Group's Shotton surface
mine proposals approved.
http://www.banksdevelopments.com/news/153/
8. Department of Trade and Industry, 19th December 2006. West of
Shetland task force forge ahead into new year.
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.aspReleaseID=251607&NewsAre...
9. Under the "Frontier" and "Promote" licences. Department of Trade and
Industry, 16th March 2006. Shake-up Of Unused Blocks Keeps Pressure On
North Sea Exploration.
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?ReleaseID=191617&NewsAr...
10. Department of Trade and Industry, 19th December 2006, ibid.
11. Department of Trade and Industry, 1st February 2007. Oil is well
under the North Sea.
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?ReleaseID=261127&NewsAr...
12. The formula they use is "oil equivalent". Department of Trade and
Industry, 6th September 2005. North Sea Licences Surge To All Time Record.
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/content/detail.asp?ReleaseID=168865&NewsAreaID=2&N...
13. Quoted by Ed Crooks, 7th December 2007. Boost for North Sea
Companies. Financial Times.
14. International Energy Agency, 2007. World Energy Outlook, 2007, Table
1.9, p95. http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/
15. Alastair Darling, 23rd May 2007. Parliamentary answer. Column 1289.
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/c...
16. Ed Crooks, 9th November 2007. Pay-off time for Sasol pioneers?
Financial Times.
Copyright © 2006 Monbiot.com
