Just transition Archives https://www.climatechangenews.com/tag/just-transition/ Climate change news, analysis, commentary, video and podcasts focused on developments in global climate politics Fri, 19 Jul 2024 14:54:23 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 Scottish oil-town plan for green jobs sparks climate campers’ anger over local park https://www.climatechangenews.com/2024/07/19/scottish-oil-town-plan-for-green-jobs-sparks-climate-campers-anger-over-local-park/ Fri, 19 Jul 2024 14:26:36 +0000 https://www.climatechangenews.com/?p=52172 The oil and gas industry aims to bring clean jobs to Aberdeen, but it involves paving over part of a much-loved park, igniting a debate on just transition

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In the Scottish city of Aberdeen, a debate over the region’s energy transition away from fossil fuels is playing out over roughly one square mile of green space.

In question is a proposed development called the Energy Transition Zone (ETZ), which is intended to bring in more renewable energy investments as the city tries to cut its dependence on the oil and gas industry that has defined it for half a century. 

As the UK’s new Labour government promises not to issue any more oil and gas licences, the future of the sector is in doubt and the company behind the ETZ says it wants to “protect and create as many jobs as possible” in the region through investing in clean energy.

But the ETZ has received significant pushback from community groups in the part of Aberdeen it is destined for. That’s because the proposed development, as currently designed, would pave over about a third of St. Fittick’s Park in Torry, the only public green space in one of Scotland’s most neglected urban areas.

The battle over St Fittick’s Park illustrates the friction that is emerging more frequently around the world as the ramp-up of clean energy infrastructure changes communities. Climate Home has reported on these tensions provoked by Mexico’s wind farms, Namibia’s desert hydrogen zone, Indonesia’s nickel mines and Germany’s Tesla gigafactory.

Just transition?

The ETZ is backed by fossil fuel giants BP, Shell and local billionaire Ian Wood, whose Wood Group made its money providing engineering and consulting services to the oil and gas industry.

The plan is to create campuses focused on hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, offshore wind, and skills development in an area initially the size of 50 football pitches, but expanding as private investment grows. 

To this end, ETZ Ltd – the company set up to build and run the zone – will receive up to £80m ($103m) from the UK and Scottish governments. Announcing some of that funding in 2021, the Scottish government’s then net zero, energy and transport secretary Michael Matheson said “urgent, collective action is required in order to ensure a just transition to a net-zero economy”, adding “Scotland can show the rest of the world how it’s done”.

But many Scottish climate campaigners don’t see this as a just transition. About 100 of them travelled to St. Fittick’s Park last week to hold a five-day “Climate Camp” in a clearing that would become part of the ETZ.

One camper, who did not want to give her name, told Climate Home that the energy transition should not “exacerbate existing inequalities, but try to redress existing inequalities”. A just transition, she said, must protect both workers in the fossil fuel industry and community green spaces.

Another protestor who did not want to giver her full name is Torry resident Chris. She said “the consultation process was flawed”. Not many people participated to start with, and some stopped going to meetings because “they were disillusioned with the way that good ideas were co-opted and then used to justify the expansion of the industrial area into the park”, she added.

Green MSP Maggie Chapman at the Climate Camp on 13 July (Photo: Hannah Chanatry)

Local Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) Maggie Chapman, from the Scottish Green Party, agreed, adding “the best transition zone plan in the world will fail” if it is done to a community rather than with meaningful input from them.

Another protesting resident, David Parks, said wealthier parts of the city would not have been disregarded in the same way. “You wouldn’t see this in Old Aberdeen and Rosemount,” he said. “[Torry] is just kind of the dumping ground for all these projects that you wouldn’t get off with anywhere else.”

Industrial developments have encroached on the old fishing town of Torry for decades. Today, residents are hemmed in by an industrial harbour, roads and a railway and live alongside a waste-to-energy incinerator, a sewage plant, and a covered landfill. 

David Parks at the Climate Camp in St. Fittick’s Park on 13 July (Photo: Hannah Chanatry)

Some of the activists also take issue with the emphasis the ETZ places on hydrogen and carbon capture and storage, which they see as “greenwashing”. 

Hydrogen is a fuel that can be made without producing greenhouse gas emissions, and used to decarbonise industries like steel-making which are difficult to clean up.

But a Climate Camp spokesperson told Climate Home that, “given the industry’s tendencies” and the fact that 99% of hydrogen is currently made using fossil fuels, they assume it will be produced in a polluting way at the ETZ.

Backers respond

ETZ Ltd told Climate Home in a statement that the project is committed to collaborating with the local community, particularly on efforts to refurbish what would be the remainder of the park. 

While the ETZ’s opponents argue there are existing industrial brownfield sites in the area that could be used instead of the park, the company said the area in St. Fittick’s Park next to the port is essential for the development to draw in substantial investment for renewables and for Aberdeen to compete in a new energy market.

Many brownfield sites are already planned for use by the ETZ, and would not provide the kind of logistical access needed for the planned projects, they added.

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“Almost all other ports in Scotland are making similar investments, and we simply don’t want Aberdeen to miss out on the opportunity to position itself as a globally recognised hub for offshore renewables and the significant job benefits this will bring,” said the statement.

The company added that the original plans for use of the park had been considerably reduced and the new master plan includes several measures to revitalise parts of the park and boost public access. It includes several parklets, a boardwalk, enhanced wetlands and a skate and BMX bike park.

While the oil industry’s backing has raised campaigners’ eyebrows, ETZ Ltd said the industry’s involvement is key to ensuring the development of skills and jobs central to the ETZ’s goals. 

The section of St. Fittick’s Park  up for development was rezoned in 2022 by the Aberdeen City council in order to allow industrial use of the land. Campaigners have challenged that decision and Scotland’s highest civil court will issue a judicial review later this month.

“You can’t just switch it off”

The ETZ dispute is just one example of efforts across Scotland to navigate the planned shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Tools to support a transitioning workforce have stalled. An offshore skills passport is meant to streamline and unify the certification process for both the fossil fuel and renewable offshore industries, to enable workers to go more easily from one sector to the other. But it was delayed for years before a “roadmap to a prototype” was released in May this year.

“The people can see a future, but it’s not happening – and they can see the current reality, which is [fossil fuels] declining, and that makes it very challenging,” said Paul de Leeuw, director of the Energy Transition Institute at Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University. 

He said the focus needs to be on manufacturing and the supply chain, as that supports about 90% of employment in renewables such as solar and wind power. “If you don’t get investment, you don’t get activity, you don’t get the jobs,” he added.

That’s the key concern for Alec Wiseman, who spoke to Climate Home while walking his dog in St. Fittick’s Park on Saturday. He seemed mostly unbothered by the climate camp, but complained it meant he couldn’t let his dog off leash. 

Alec Wiseman walks his dog in St. Fittick’s Park on 13 July (Photo: Hannah Chanatry)

A Torry resident, Wiseman worked offshore for 25 years. He said he wants the ETZ to leave the park alone – and he also wants the overall energy transition to slow down until there is a clear plan.

“The government needs to sit down with the oil companies and figure out something proper” for both the transition and the ETZ, he said, expressing scepticism about employment in wind energy. Overall, operating wind farms, once they’re up and running, does not require as many skilled workers as operating an oil and gas field. “You can’t just switch it off [the oil and gas],” he said.

Lack of planning is what worries Jake Molloy, the recently-retired regional head of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Union (RMT). Before leading the union, Molloy spent 17 years working offshore, and now sits on Scotland’s Just Transition Commission. He has spent years advocating for a fair deal on behalf of workers and local communities.

“We need to do that value-sharing piece, that community-sharing piece, which was lost with oil and gas,” he said, referencing the privatisation of the industry in the 1980s. Right now, he says, communities that bear the brunt of the impact of oil and gas production don’t see the majority of the benefits – those flow to corporations. “If we allow that to happen again, we’re a million miles away from a just transition,” he warned.

UK court ruling provides ammo for anti-fossil fuel lawyers worldwide

Molloy also thinks the investment and jobs promised by the ETZ are not realistic, because previous changes to government policies caused too much whiplash, making investors shaky. However, he is curious about what will come from Labour’s announcement of Great British Energy, described as a “publicly-owned clean energy company” headquartered in Scotland.  He also hopes to see climate change addressed on a crisis footing, similar to the approach to the COVID pandemic.

There are indications of renewed momentum on renewable energy in the UK. The Labour government has already lifted an effective ban on onshore wind in England and brought together a net-zero task force led by the former head of the UK’s Climate Change Committee,  Chris Stark. 

“In the context of an unprecedented climate emergency,” the ETZ said in a statement, “there are widespread calls from government and industry for energy transition activities to be accelerated.”

But, for many, it is still too soon to know whether that shift will materialise, and be implemented in a just way.

“The opportunities are there,” said MSP Chapman. But, she added, “it requires political and social will to make it happen and that’s the big challenge.”

(Reporting by Hannah Chanatry; editing by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)

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Bonn bulletin: Fears over “1.5 washing” in national climate plans https://www.climatechangenews.com/2024/06/13/bonn-bulletin-fears-over-1-5-washing-in-ndcs/ Thu, 13 Jun 2024 14:34:27 +0000 https://www.climatechangenews.com/?p=51686 Next round of NDCs in focus as negotiations wrap up with a final push to resolve fights on issues including adaptation and just transition

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At an event on the sidelines of Wednesday’s talks, the “Troika” of COP presidencies was very clear that the next round of national climate plans (NDCs) must be aligned with a global warming limit of 1.5C. The three countries – the UAE, Azerbaijan and Brazil – have all promised to set an example by publishing “1.5-aligned” plans by early next year.  

What their negotiators were not so clear on, however, was what it means for an NDC to be 1.5-aligned.

Asked by Destination Zero’s Cat Abreu about the risk of “1.5 washing”, Brazil’s head of delegation Liliam Chagas replied that “there is no international multilaterally agreed methodology to define what is an NDC aligned to 1.5”. “It’s up to each one to decide,” she said.

The moderator, WWF’s climate lead Fernanda Carvalho, pointed out that IPCC scientists say 1.5C alignment means cutting emissions globally by 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 – but without giving national breakdowns.

She added that Climate Action Tracker does have a methodology. This shows that no major nations so far have climate plans aligned with 1.5C.

E3G expert Alden Meyer followed up, telling the negotiators that “while we may have some disagreements on exactly what an NDC must include to be 1.5-aligned, we know now what it must exclude – it must exclude any plans to expand the production and export of fossil fuels”.

All three Troika nations are oil and gas producers with no plans to stop producing or exporting their fossil fuels and are in fact ramping up production.

Claudio Angelo, international policy coordinator for Brazil’s Climate Observatory, said the onus is on rich countries to move first, but “this is no excuse for doing nothing”. Even yesterday, he noted, President Lula was talking to Saudi investors about opening a new oil frontier on Brazil’s northern shore.

Whether 1.5-aligned or not, no government has used Bonn as an opportunity to release an early NDC. Azerbaijan’s lead on Troika relations Rovshan Mirzayev said “some”, but “no more than 10”, are expected to be published by COP29 in November.

Rovshan Mirzayev (left), Fernanda Carvalho (centre-left), Liliam Chagas (centre-right) and Hana Alhashimi (right) in Bonn yesterday (Photo: Observatorio do Clima/WWF/Fastenaktion/ICS)

Climate commentary

Napping on NAPs or drowning in paperwork?   

As he opened the Bonn conference last week, UN climate head Simon Stiell bemoaned that only 57 governments have so far put together a national adaptation plan (NAP) to adjust to the impacts of climate change.

“By the time we meet in Baku, this number needs to grow substantially. We need every country to have a plan by 2025 and make progress on implementing them by 2030,” he said.

The South American nation of Suriname is one of the 57. Its coast is retreating, leaving the skeletons of homes visible in the sea and bringing salt water into cropland – and its NAP lays out how it wants to minimise that.

Tiffany Van Ravenswaay, an AOSIS adaptation negotiator who used to work for Suriname’s government, told Climate Home how hard it is for small islands and the poorest countries to craft such plans.

“We have one person holding five or seven hats in the same government,” she said. These busy civil servants often don’t have time to compile a 200-page NAP, and then an application to the Green Climate Fund or Adaptation Fund for money to implement it, accompanied by a thesis on why these impacts are definitely caused by climate change.

“It takes a lot of data, it takes a lot of work, and it takes also a lot of human resources,” she said. What’s needed, she added, are funds for capacity-building, to hire and train people.

Cecilia Quaglino moved from Argentina to the Pacific Island nation of Palau to write, along with just one colleague, its NAP. She told Climate Home they are “struggling” to get it ready by next year. “We need expertise, finance and human resources,” she said.

According to three sources in the room, developing countries pushed for the NAP negotiations in Bonn to include the “means of implementation” – the code phrase for cash – to plan and implement adaptation measures, but no agreement was reached.

Talks on the Global Goal on Adaptation are also centred on finance. Developing countries want to track the finance provided towards each target, whereas developed countries want to avoid quantification – and any form of standalone adaptation finance target for the goal.

They are also divided on the extent to which negotiators themselves should run the process for coming up with indicators versus independent experts. Developed countries want more of a role for the Adaptation Committee, a body mainly of government negotiators, whereas developing nations want non-government specialists with a regional balance to run the show.

Bonn bulletin: Fears over "1.5 washing" in NDCs

The island of Pulo Anna in Palau, pictured in 2012, is vulnerable to rising sea levels (Photo: Alex Hofford/Greenpeace)

Just transition trips up on justice definitions 

At COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, governments agreed to set up a work programme on just transition. But justice means very different things to different governments and different groups of people.

For some, it’s about justice for workers who will lose their jobs in the shift away from fossil fuels. For others, it’s more about meeting the needs of women or indigenous people affected by climate action.

Many developing countries view it as a question of justice between the Global South and North, and trade barriers that they believe discriminate against them. Or it can be seen as all of the above.

That’s why negotiations in Bonn about how to work out what to even talk about under the Just Transition Work Programme have been so fraught – resulting in “deep exasperation”, according to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative’s Amiera Sawas.

While the elements of justice that could be discussed seem infinite, the UNFCCC’s budget is very much not – a fact brought up by some negotiators when trying to limit the scope of the talks.

Ultimately what does make it onto the agenda for discussion matters, because climate justice campaigners hope there will be a package agreed by COP30 in Belem that can help make the clean energy transition fairer and mobilise money for that purpose.

Caroline Brouillette from Climate Action Network Canada has been following the talks. “The transition is already happening,” she told Climate Home. “The question is: will it be just?”

E3G’s Alden Meyer described it as a “very intense space”. Rich countries, he said, don’t want a broader definition of just transition in case that opens the door to yet more calls for them to fund those efforts in developing nations.

Despite these divisions, after a late night and long final day of talks, two observers told Climate Home early on Thursday afternoon that negotiators had reached an agreement to present to the closing plenary session – where it’s likely to be adopted.

Just Transition Working Group negotiators huddle for informal talks yesterday (Photo: Kiara Worth/IISD ENB)

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Indigenous lands feel cruel bite of green energy transition  https://www.climatechangenews.com/2024/04/26/indigenous-lands-feel-cruel-bite-of-green-energy-transition/ Fri, 26 Apr 2024 16:27:47 +0000 https://www.climatechangenews.com/?p=50819 Mining companies have been offered a path to sustainability but few are taking it - Indigenous people need to be at the table demanding change

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Rukka Sombolinggi, a Torajan Indigenous woman from Sulawesi, Indonesia, is the first female Secretary General of AMAN, the world’s largest Indigenous peoples organization. 

Gathered in NYC in mid-April, 87 Indigenous leaders from 35 countries met to hammer out a set of demands to address a common scourge: the green energy transition that has our peoples under siege.  

Worldwide, we are experiencing land-grabs and a rising tide of criminalization and attacks for speaking out against miningand renewable energy projects that violate our rights with impacts that are being documented by UN and other experts. Their research confirms what we know firsthand.    

And yet political and economic actors continue to ignore the evidence, pushing us aside in their rush to build a system to replace fossil fuels, while guided by the same values that are destroying the natural world.  

Ironically, we released this declaration amid the UN’s sustainability week – renewable energy was on the agenda. We were not.  

Q&A: What you need to know about clean energy and critical minerals supply chains

Indigenous peoples are not opposed to pivoting away from oil and gas, nor are we opposed to investing in renewable energy systems as an alternative.  

But we must have a say. More thanhalf the mines that are expected to produce metals and minerals to serve renewable technologies are on or near the territories of Indigenous peoples and peasant communities.  

Resource extraction causing triple crisis  

In the words of the UN’s Global Resource Outlook 2024, released in March with little fanfare by the UN Environment Programme: “the current model of natural resource extraction…is driving an unprecedented triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution”. 

Mining companies have been offered a path to sustainability. Few have started down that path.  

And they won’t unless global and national decision-makers take advantage of this key moment in history to demand change. Indigenous leaders need to be at the table too.

As donors dither, Indigenous funds seek to decolonise green finance

We are not willing to have our territories become the deserts that mining companies create, leaking toxins into our rivers and soils and poisoning our sources of water and food, and by extension our children. 

The playing field for Indigenous peoples is massively unjust. The authors of the Global Resources Outlook cite evidence of national governments that favor companies’ interests “by removing the judicial protection of Indigenous communities, expropriating land…or even using armed forces to protect mining facilities”.  

Why should this matter to people on the other side of the planet? 

Proven to outperform the public and private sectors, Indigenous peoples conserve some of the world’s most biodiverse regions. Negotiators at global climate events do cite our outsize conservation role, but treaty language allows our governments to decide when and whether to recognize or enforce our rights.  

Companies are advised to “engage” with our communities – not so they can avoid harming us, but to prevent costly conflicts that arise in response to outdated and destructive practices. 

These “externalities” that chase us from our ancestral homes and damage our health and the ecosystems we treasure are revealed only when they become “material”, of concern to investors and relevant to risk analysts. 

Tensions rise over who will contribute to new climate finance goal

Our resistance is costly and material. Failure to properly obtain our consent before sending in the bulldozers can bring a project to a halt, with a price tag as high as $20 million a week. And communities are learning to use the tools of the commercial legal system to defend themselves. 

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School report that, over time, shareholders benefit most when companies heed the demands of their most influential stakeholders. Indigenous peoples are the stakeholders to please.  

Our communities disrupt supply chains, but when our rights are respected, we can also be the best indicators of a company’s intention to avoid harm to people and planet. 

Call for ban on mining in ‘no-go’ zones 

In the declaration we released in New York earlier this month, we called for laws to reduce the consumption of energy worldwide, and we laid out a path for ensuring that the green transition is a just one. 

We urged our governments to recognize and protect our rights as a priority; to end the killings, the violence and the criminalization of our peoples; and to require corporations to secure our free, prior and informed consent, and avoid harming our lands and resources. 

A growing body of evidence suggests that Indigenous peoples rooted to their ancestral lands can draw on traditional knowledge, stretching back over generations, to help nature evolve and adapt to the changing climate. We understand the sustainable use of wild species and hold in our gardens genetic resources that can protect crops of immeasurable economic and nutritional value. 

Current practices for extracting metals and minerals put our peoples at risk and endanger climate, biodiversity, water, global health and food security. Researchers warned earlier this year that the unprecedented scale of demand for “green” minerals will lay waste to more and more land and drive greater numbers of Indigenous and other local peoples from our homes. 

Q&A: What you need to know about critical minerals

So our declaration also calls on governments to impose a ban on the expansion of mining in “no-go” zones – those sites that our peoples identify as sacred and vital as sources of food and clean water. Indigenous communities, rooted in place by time and tradition, can help stop the green transition from destroying biomes that serve all humanity. 

The UN Secretary-General launches a panel on critical minerals today that seems to recognize the importance of avoiding harm to affected communities and the environment.  

This is a step in the right direction, but Indigenous peoples and our leaders – and recognition and enforcement of our rights – must be at the centre of every proposal for mining and renewable energy that affect us and our territories. This is the only way to keep climate “response measures”, made possible by the Paris Agreement, from harming solutions that exist already. 

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Louisiana communities are suffering from Japan-funded LNG exports https://www.climatechangenews.com/2024/04/09/louisiana-communities-are-suffering-from-japan-funded-lng-exports/ Tue, 09 Apr 2024 16:21:21 +0000 https://www.climatechangenews.com/?p=50543 When the Japanese and US leaders meet in Washington, they should back a renewable energy future that will end harm to our health and livelihoods from fossil gas

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Travis Dardar is a Louisiana shrimper and founder of Fishermen Interested in Saving Our Heritage (FISH).

I was six when I started catching shrimp in the waterways of Louisiana. I inherited the livelihood that sustained my father, grandfather, and generations before them. My boat in the Gulf of Mexico is my second home. But I may lose it all – in part to Japan’s dangerous investments in fossil gas.

Eight years ago, fossil fuel companies and their government allies moved Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) projects into the region and turned our fishing community upside down. The Calcasieu Pass LNG export terminal was just 300 feet from my house, and promised “deep-water access, proximity to plentiful gas supplies and ease of transport for buyers”. Vibrations from its operations were so intense they knocked pictures off my wall. My wife suffered a heart attack, and my children were frequently ill. Facing dire health consequences and daily interruptions, my family was driven from our home.

Most people don’t realize that Japan is bankrolling LNG and the destruction along the US Gulf Coast. Japanese private banks MUFG, Mizuho, and SMBC are the first, second, and third biggest financiers of LNG export projects in the US. These banks have committed more than $13 million,  $11 million, and $10 million respectively to US-based LNG projects.

On April 10, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will meet with President Joe Biden in Washington, DC to discuss the US and Japan’s commitment to promoting stability in the world and the advancement of clean energy supply chains. Biden clearly understands the need to take a hard look at the impacts of future LNG development as indicated by the pause he announced recently.

His administration has called the climate crisis the “existential threat of our time,” and sees the US as a champion to support other world leaders’ transition to green energy. But my family, and so many around me, are still waiting for change.

Travis Dardar drives his boat on the water with the Calcasieu Pass LNG terminal shown in the background. (Photo: Susanne Wong / Oil Change International)

Massive LNG tankers now crowd the water and wildlife is disappearing. Before the Calcasieu Pass LNG terminal started operating last year, local fishermen caught about 700,000 pounds of shrimp annually. The shrimp catch is now down nearly 90%, with no compensation for losing our livelihoods.

The devastating impacts of LNG on communities like mine and our unwavering opposition is the reason why in January President Biden paused LNG export approvals. The US Department of Energy is supposed to consider how to determine whether these projects are in the public interest and to take into account impacts on communities, ecosystems, and climate. Unfortunately, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently indicated this pause could be lifted within the year, when what we really need is for President Biden to stop all new LNG export projects for good.

European court rules climate inaction by states breaches human rights

Increasingly, the international community recognizes fossil fuels’ toxic effects on the environment and communities and the momentum is shifting towards clean energy.  Yet, Japan is still driving the expansion of gas and LNG in the US, across Asia and globally. In spite of Japan’s declining LNG demand at home, Japan is staking its economic growth on pushing governments across South and Southeast Asia to import LNG.

I invite Prime Minister Kishida to travel on my boat while he is in the US to see for himself the impact of Japan’s dirty energy projects on Gulf communities.

Air pollution hits health

Health deterioration in my community is unsurprising, given the plant’s pollution emissions. Long-term exposure to LNG chemicals can lead to heart disease and certain types of cancer, and living near a pollution center has been linked to increased stress, depression, and other mental health problems.

According to research by the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, the Calcasieu Pass LNG export terminal violated its air pollution permits on 286 of the first 343 days it was in operation – 83% of its first year. Rather than working to clean up its operations, Venture Global, the gas company behind the LNG facility, petitioned the state air quality agency to increase its allowable pollution limits. If the gas project already built can’t even follow pollution regulations, how can we expect the two plants posed for construction upstream to do so?

Despite this, the Gulf area buzzes with Japanese LNG operations. The proposed Calcasieu Pass 2 terminal is part of a 20-year contract with JERA, Japan’s largest gas company and the world’s largest LNG buyer. JERA agreed to buy 1 million tons of LNG annually from the project. INPEX, Japan’s largest oil and gas producer, also signed a 20-year contract to buy 1 million tons of LNG annually. These corporate operations and their profits are behind Japan’s push to expand LNG markets around the world.

Zambia’s fossil-fuel subsidy cuts help climate and kids – but taxi drivers suffer

Japan has developed a regional initiative, the Asia Zero Emissions Community, that will expand and prolong the use of fossil fuels by proposing to abate their emissions. This is a greenwashing effort to push governments in Asia to adopt dangerous distractions like hydrogen, ammonia, and carbon capture and storage. In reality, this will expand and prolong the harm of fossil fuels on communities like mine.

Although Biden’s pause on LNG export authorizations is a step in the right direction, it’s hard to celebrate here in Cameron Parish. LNG tankers dominate the water, and fishers are left to collect the scraps of our communities and livelihoods. Even with the setbacks, our community hasn’t given up hope. I founded Fishermen Interested in Saving Our Heritage (FISH), a united front that will fight to protect our homes, the environment, and access to the Gulf waters. We are focused on saving our way of life.

As the largest LNG exporter in the world, the US holds major influence in this tainted market. During their upcoming meeting, I urge Prime Minister Kishida and President Biden to recognize our future in renewables and stop sacrificing frontline communities for profit.

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Biden’s union-friendly green jobs pitch meets sceptical response https://www.climatechangenews.com/2023/07/21/biden-green-jobs-unions-labor/ Fri, 21 Jul 2023 07:19:35 +0000 https://www.climatechangenews.com/?p=48932 Workers in Philadelphia questioned whether green jobs could permanently replace dirty ones and pay the same high rates

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US President Joe Biden traveled on Thursday to Philadelphia to pitch the promise of a green economy to union workers sceptical that the solar, wind and electric vehicle (EV) industries can deliver the same economic punch for organized labor as fossil fuel-powered refineries and power plants.

Biden is trying to reshape the U.S. economy by investing billions of taxpayer dollars in green technology, while forcing companies that want lucrative subsidies being offered to help the push do more of their manufacturing in the U.S.

Biden took a small tour of Philadelphia’s shipyard and praised the upcoming construction of the Acadia, a union-built vessel that will support hundreds of jobs and be used to help build offshore wind farms.

“When I think climate, I think jobs, union jobs,” Biden said, adding that the ships blades, hull and other parts – some the size of city skyscrapers – will be built by nine unions across the country.

Frans Timmermans steps down from EU’s climate leadership

Biden is betting that union workers whose jobs are threatened by the energy transition will eventually find a place in the green economy, but that’s a hard sell in union-friendly Philadelphia.

About a dozen union workers in the Philadelphia region Reuters spoke to questioned whether the new industries can produce a similar number of jobs at the same high wage scale.

They may have good reason to worry.

Roughly 80% of the more than 50 EV battery, solar panel and other factories announced since passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in August are in states with laws that make it harder for workers to unionize, a Reuters analysis published this year found.

Dozens of oil & industry lobbyists attended secretive shipping emissions talks

Nancy Minor, 57, worked as a union operator at a Philadelphia’s largest and oldest refinery for nearly three decades before it shut after a 2019 explosion. Now a refinery safety consultant, she made enough money to buy a house, raise her kids as a single mother and send them to private school.

She worries clean energy projects like solar and wind farms, along with hydrogen pipelines, oversell and under deliver when it comes to long-term, full-time employment.

“The initial promise of jobs is spectacular but after the equipment is built they can run it with a fraction of the people,” Minor said.

Overall energy jobs in the U.S. grew 3.8% in 2022, to more than 8.1 million, led by fast growth in clean energy jobs, the Department of Energy said in June. Clean energy jobs, a wide category including wind and solar power, nuclear, and grid technologies and battery storage, made up 3.1 million of those.

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Ali Zaidi, Biden’s national climate adviser, says the president is pushing to make sure unions are part of the energy transition, and to get unions and companies working together.

Unions will benefit from an expanded power grid, a boom in manufacturing from clean energy supply chains and new industries like hydrogen, Zaidi said, noting Danish renewable energy group Ørsted’s recent partnership with North America’s Building Trades Unions.

Biden’s union push comes as business and labor are divided over who will benefit from the changing economy with the Auto Workers are bracing for a possible labor shortages unless there are new union protections for EV battery plants.

A potential economically-damaging strike by Teamster-represented UPS workers looms next month.

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Pat Eiding, long-time president and current treasurer of Philadelphia AFL-CIO Council, said a rash of refinery closures in the region over the past two decades crushed some local unions. Many of those laid off workers struggled to find similar paying jobs and he fears the same for any worker hurt by the energy transition.

Eiding also believes the green economy will struggle to replicate the employment from refineries and power plants, which require 24-hour, 365-day staffing and significant annual maintenance.

“I believe Biden when he says that green energy jobs will be union, the question is just how many jobs will there be,” Eiding said.

Seth Harris, who previously served as Biden’s top labor policy adviser at the White House, said unions have made progress in some green industries, like agreeing contracts for wind farms, but are still struggling to get a foothold in a solar industry dominated by China.

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The Biden administration has pushed new funds to help workers like coal miners find new jobs, but more can be done, Harris said, including increased investment in community colleges and apprenticeship programs.

“The labor movement has legitimate cause for concern and they are aggressively in discussions with Congress and with the White House about how to make certain that current members have the opportunity to be represented by a union and to have good quality jobs as a result,” Harris said.

John Hirschfeld, 50, a shipyard security worker with the local electrician’s union who was in the audience, said Biden’s message Thursday made sense. The shipyard was down to just a handful of union employees not long ago, he said, but new wind farm and other projects have breathed life into the facility and made him hopeful.

“This is a big deal for me, as a father, as a husband,” Hirschfeld said. “It helps me sleep at night knowing I can take care of my family.”

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EU reveals climate fund details as critics worry cash won’t be enough https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/01/15/eu-reveals-climate-fund-details-critics-worry-cash-wont-enough/ Wed, 15 Jan 2020 11:42:15 +0000 https://www.climatechangenews.com/?p=41092 EU's climate chief Frans Timmermans acknowledged the €100bn pot to fund the transition away from fossil fuels was 'just a start'

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The European Commission finally lifted the lid on its long-awaited just transition plans on Tuesday but doubts have already been raised over the amount of funding on offer for the next decade compared to the bloc’s green deal ambitions.

At the first European Parliament Strasbourg plenary session of the year, EU climate chief Frans Timmermans introduced the Just Transition Mechanism as a “pledge of solidarity and fairness” to help Europe go green.

The Dutch commissioner said the proposal was “a message to coal miners, peat farmers and oil shale workers”. EU diplomats previously feared the proposal would end up as a de facto coal phase-out fund.

According to the details of the new proposal, carbon-intensive regions and industries will be able to apply for money, opening the door for producers of steel and even plastics to access funding.

“The prospect of a cleaner future may look good to most but the road to it may look daunting,” Timmermans said, praising the EU Parliament for proposing the idea. He also called on the European Council to make time for it and swiftly adopt a decision on the new overall budget.

Siegfried Muresan, a senior lawmaker from the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), called on his colleagues to come to an agreement on the Fund in the first half of the year in order to help bolster the talks on the EU’s long-term budget, which are now being helmed by Council president Charles Michel.

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The Just Transition Fund (JTF) is the beating heart of the wider mechanism, which aims to mobilise capital worth €100 billion, through grants, private investment and support from the European Investment Bank.

But the fund’s promised €7.5 billion figure has already been criticised for being too low to match the size of the challenge ahead.

German MEP Niklas Nienass likened the overall €100 billion figure to a “slight of hand” and compared the Commission to “street magicians”, while Friends of the Earth Europe said it “is too little to match the scale of transformation needed to confront the planetary emergency”.

Trade union group ETUC Confederal said in a statement “the funding proposed for 10 years is what would be needed every year to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 in a fair way”.

“There is a risk that most of the funds being made available will go to research and innovation rather than directly benefiting affected workers,” said ETUC secretary Ludovic Voet.

In an interview with Euractiv France, socialist MEP Pierre Larrouturou deplored the meagre €7.5 billion proposed in the European Commission’s Just Transition Fund. To finance EU climate action, he suggests some of the ECB’s “easy money” could fuel the European Investment Bank (EIB) instead of going into private banks.

In his speech to Parliament, Timmermans acknowledged that the €100bn was “just a start” but insisted that the fairness of the proposal will inspire the rest of Europe’s green deal.

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Friends of the Earth added that only countries “doing their fair share of climate action” should be eligible for money and that all fossil fuels should be excluded from the EU budget as a whole.

Gas seems destined to retain a degree of support from the bloc’s coffers but nuclear will not benefit from the JTF. Regional commissioner Elisa Ferreira told Euractiv in an interview that “it will be excluded”.

Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis outlined the wider €1 trillion-strong Sustainable Europe Investment Plan (SEIP) at the plenary session but explained that there is more to the plan than pots of cash.

The EU’s economy chief cited a recent update to the EIB’s energy lending policy, revenues generated by the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and a newly-brokered sustainable investment taxonomy.

“We will explore how this can be used in the private sphere and public policies,” the Latvian Commissioner said, adding that the EU executive will assist countries in accessing money, although member states have struggled to absorb cohesion funds during the current period.

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Five Star Movement MEP Rosa D’Amato, whose hometown of Taranto is one of the areas likely to apply for funding, said ETS revenues could be funnelled directly into the just transition pot. But that is a contentious issue, as money normally flows into national budgets.

Another issue already likely to divide politicians and diplomats concerns eligibility criteria for the fund, with the Commission taking a political decision to open the door to any member state to file applications on a regional basis.

They will have to fulfil certain economic, social and scientific criteria but some political figures, particularly from Central and Eastern Europe, have already said only countries most affected by the issue should be able to submit applications.

Commissioner Ferreira confirmed that rule of law conditionality will apply to the fund, despite previous rumours the plan would relax those particular criteria to please countries like Hungary and Poland.

However, Swedish Greens MEP Pär Holmgren warned that a lack of criteria on dedication to climate policies was sorely missing from the fund’s details. Poland refused to sign up to a far-reaching decarbonisation plan in December, while other member states have been criticised for drafting weak energy strategies for the next decade.

The attention now switches to the Council, where the budget talks will determine whether the Commission gets its way or if criteria and funding resources will be tweaked.

This story was originally published by CHN’s media partner EURACTIV.

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Merkel: Auto and coal workers need to know what their next jobs are https://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/06/19/merkel-auto-coal-workers-need-know-next-jobs/ Tue, 19 Jun 2018 15:45:44 +0000 http://www.climatechangenews.com/?p=36799 At a meeting of climate ministers in Berlin, the German chancellor stressed the importance of re-training to help people take part in a greener economy

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Auto and coal workers need to know what jobs they will have in a new economy, Angela Merkel has told a gathering of climate ministers in Berlin.

Speaking at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue on Tuesday, the German chancellor promised to protect workers in the shift to clean energy.

For the first time, the annual meeting put a focus on the social aspects of climate action, under the heading “changing together for a just transition”.

Merkel assured workers they would not be left behind in Germany’s climate policies: “Changes are going to happen, but we are thinking of you first, and not of the CO2 emissions first…

“If people get the impression that CO2 emissions are considered more important than their fate, we will not have acceptance for our projects.”

Earlier this month, Merkel’s government launched a commission to develop plans for phasing out coal power and boosting the economies of former mining regions.

The commission’s 31 members range from climate campaigners to trade union representatives, in a bid to defuse political tensions over the issue.

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Merkel said protecting the rights of workers is one of the “major tasks” that Germany will address within its environmental strategy in the coming years.

She emphasised the role that retraining and learning life-long skills will play in ensuring people can find alternative jobs.

“This is a discourse we need to engage in,” she said. “People really want us to be specific about this. This is why the topic of retraining and life-long learning plays a huge role in our coalition agreement.”

In the past, Germany has taken its time to ensure climate policy, such as phasing out coal, has not compromised job security for employees in the fossil fuel industry.

“It took us more than a decade to shape this transformation in a way that means people do not suffer and we do not lose too many jobs.”

The Petersberg dialogue is an annual gathering of top climate officials from more than 30 countries to boost political cooperation in parallel with formal climate negotiations.

At the end of talks, co-chairs issued a statement calling on negotiators to step up the pace of talks on a rulebook to implement the Paris Agreement, due for completion in Katowice this December.

It emphasised the importance of early action to cut emissions and scale up climate finance to developing countries.

Another element of the discussion was biodiversity, brought to the table by French minister Nicolas Hulot.

He highlighted the importance of a multi-dimensional approach to climate change, considering both economic opportunity and the conservation of natural environments.

“We need to preserve our ecosystems, as this will give them back their capacity to store CO2. Linking both of these challenges is not something we are all doing in our approach right now…

“If we do not stop harming our ecosystems, our soil, we will not win this fight.”

Merkel showed her agreement, saying it was a good idea to “make this connection more visible”.

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End of coal: Failure to see it coming will hurt miners most https://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/06/25/just-transition-coal-possible-starts-now/ Sun, 25 Jun 2017 22:01:21 +0000 http://www.climatechangenews.com/?p=34147 History shows governments that don't anticipate and make provisions for the decline of coal burden communities for generations

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Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement was sometimes presented as the president putting coal workers first.

But the history of coal mining transitions, both in Europe and the US, tells us that failing to anticipate before change comes often finishes badly for workers.

In a new report, authors from the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations and Climate Strategies examined past coal mining declines in five European countries (Spain, the Netherlands, UK, Poland and the Czech Republic) and also in the US.

One of the overarching conclusions is that early anticipation is essential to making a ‘just transition’. Given the scale of the challenge, it is necessary to use all of the available time. Workers must prepare for and move to new jobs, regional economic policy has to be redrawn and companies need to develop new business models.

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This can be a long process. However, with anticipation, experience suggests it is possible. For instance, from 1965 to 1990 the Limburg region of the Netherlands – a former coal mining heartland that employed more than 75,000 miners – was able to transition from coal mining to a relatively successful regional economic hub with new industrial activities, with most workers finding reemployment or retiring normally.

However, from a climate policy perspective, we do not have a lot of time. There are very plausible and even quite likely scenarios in which the global demand for coal, including domestic demand in many large coal consuming countries, begins to decline from the coming decade onwards. The just transition is thus matter of urgency for governments and affected stakeholders.

Anticipation and planning is also crucial because, desired or not, once a transition is underway, events can move very quickly, often with severe and long-lasting impacts for workers and regions. Almost everywhere, with the notable exception of Limburg, the failure to prepare and invest in economic alternatives for former mining regions has meant that regional unemployment in mining regions is often significantly higher than the national average.

In southern Poland in the 1990s, a lack of adequate worker reemployment strategies meant that, meant that roughly 40% of former miners were still unemployed 5 years after redundancy. There, as in Spain in the 1990s, workers often faced little option but to retire at age 40 from mining and live off state pensions due to the lack of possibilities to find desirable alternative work.

In the UK, thirty years after the Thatcher government suddenly withdrew support for the industry, many mining regions still only count 50 jobs per hundred working age adults. This has created problems not just for former miners (now retired), but their children too. Low employment can be accompanied by poor educational attainment, lower average wages, higher rates of physical illness, higher suicide rates, higher rates of workers on disability and incapacity benefits.

In the US, failure to anticipate company bankruptcies has meant the pension and health care funds of former miners have been wiped out. The social and economic costs of failing to adequately prepare and implement the transition while time and resources are available can therefore be very high.

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Consensus is crucial. While the state and workers may not agree on everything, the first step should be a basic agreement on the need for, and broad terms of, the transition desired. Historically, where there was relative consensus on the need to phase out activities (like in the Limburg region of the Netherlands), the transition strategy tended to show greater political resilience and implement more coherent and comprehensive adjustment strategies over time.

However, forging this consensus needs to be context specific. For example, hard coal mines for exports to global markets may find different arguments for transition convincing to lignite mines that feed local electricity production.

Of course, short-term interests don’t always align between stakeholders and bargaining power is not always evenly distributed. Companies can sometimes have an incentive to sell or abandon a site as quickly as possible, without playing their part in helping workers and local regions shift away from coal. Environmental clean-up from mining is another thing companies typically get out of paying. Governments need to anticipate this and ensure no stakeholder wriggles out of their responsibilities.

Sometimes badly-managed historical transitions led to generous short term economic compensation to gain the acquiescence of workers, but neglected other long term human needs. These often resulted in poor long term outcomes for workers’ long term employability and health and for those of their children. The future employment and employability of young and middle-aged former miners and their children needs to be ensured. That means investing in intergenerational educational attainment, supporting miners with disabilities to find appropriate work and taking professional pride into consideration when designing employee transition programs.

For governments, a just transition requires long-term financial and institutional commitments. But the costs of failing to invest in the transition early enough are clearly much higher. Typically, prior to transitioning out of mining, the cost of supporting an uncompetitive industry is extremely high. For example, in Spain, approximately €22bn is estimated to have been spent in government subsidies on supporting the profitability of mining activities between 1992 and 2014. That’s before any investment in a transition away from coal.

Failure to invest sufficient resources and political will into a transition can lead to the development of extremely costly economic, social and environmental problems. These net costs for governments can quickly grow into several hundreds of thousands per worker, according to the report.

Coal transitions are not easy. However, early anticipation, building consensus among key stakeholders early and investing in the future of workers and regions are vital ingredients of a just transition.

Oliver Sartor is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations and Andrzej Błachowicz is the managing director of Climate Strategies

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