Climate change summit hijacked by biggest polluters, critics claim

• Shell could help shape post-Kyoto agenda

• Majority of attending firms want ‘business as usual’

Terry Macalister, guardian.co.uk,  Monday 25 May 2009

A vital meeting in Copenhagen this weekend that will help shape the agenda for the most important climate change talks since the Kyoto protocol has been hijacked by some of the biggest polluters in the world, critics claimed today.

Among those attending the World Business Summit on Climate Change is Shell, which has just been named by environmentalists on the basis of new research as “the most carbon-intensive oil company in the world”.

There is concern that the big energy companies will be pushing carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a way of keeping the oil-based economy running.

At the meeting yesterday, the United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, and Nobel prize winner Al Gore urged more than 500 business leaders – including the chief executives of PepsiCo, Nestlé and BP – to lend their corporate muscle to reaching a global deal on reducing greenhouse gases.

Despite the global financial crisis, Ban and Gore said there could be no delay in hashing out the specifics of how to cut greenhouse gases.

“We have to do it this year. Not next year – this year,” Gore said. “The clock is ticking, because Mother Nature does not do bailouts.”

The access available to Shell, Duke Energy and other companies to meet climate change negotiators from the United Nations, China and elsewhere in Copenhagen was condemned last night by the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) campaign group.

“The Danish government appears to be under the impression that some of the world’s most polluting companies are going to put forward tough measures to tackle climate change,” said Kenneth Haar, a researcher with CEO. “But unfortunately this doesn’t seem likely to be the case. The majority of the corporations attending the World Business Summit on Climate Change seem more intent on pursuing business as usual – with the promise that future technologies will resolve the problem at a later date.

“Corporate lobbyists have been trying to influence the UN climate talks from the start. But now they are being invited to set the agenda before the negotiators have even sat down. If their demands are listened to, we might as well give up the fight against climate change now.”

Six of the companies involved in the summit have been nominated for Climate Greenwash Awards because of their failure to live up to their PR spin on tackling climate change.

Shell is almost solely focused on CCS as a mechanism for tackling climate change, sources at the company say, although most independent advisers believe CCS, which has still not proved itself to be commercially or technologically possible on a large scale, will not be ready until 2020 at the earliest. Yet the talks this weekend and the formal climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December are geared to tackling global warming from 2012 – when the Kyoto Protocol runs out – to 2020.

Shell has been described by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth as the most polluting oil company in the world because it is allegedly the most carbon-intensive producer. This is because of its commitment to Canadian tar sands, liquefied natural gas and flaring off gas in oil production.

Shell denies the charges. The company insists its tar sands production is only 15% more carbon intensive on a well-to-wheels basis and says it has always played a constructive role in climate-change issues. A Shell spokesman said: “We are an advocate of cap-and-trade schemes and are doing what we can to increase our efficiency and reduce our relative carbon output.”

But a report, Irresponsible Energy, produced by Greenpeace and others, concludes: “Using ever greater quantities of energy to produce billions of barrels of otherwise inaccessible oil appears to be a strategy for disaster. It appears, however, Shell’s strategy.”

In his address yesterday, Ban said: “Continuing to pour trillions of dollars into fossil-fuel subsidies is like investing in sub-prime real estate. Our carbon-based infrastructure is like a toxic asset that threatens the portfolio of global goods, from public health to food security.”

Anders Eldrup, chief executive of Danish state-controlled oil and gas group Dong Energy, said businesses faced a big choice. “There are two tracks being discussed now, one a tax on CO₂ and a cap and trade [the trading of permits by businesses],” he said, leaning towards the carbon tax. Cap and trade calls for governments to issue pollution allowances, or permits, to businesses that can be traded on the open market.

However, Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister for climate and energy, told the Associated Press the most workable solution would be global limits on the pollution blamed for global warming, rather than an outright tax on carbon dioxide and other major industrial warming gases.

Guardian Article

The energy company has sold out on its renewable investments, claiming they are ‘not economic’

Shell has pulled back from its renewable investments, claiming they are ‘not economic’ Photograph: James Boardman/Public Domain

Shell, I have to report, is the new Exxon. The company that back in December was filling this and other newspapers with double-page adverts promoting its conversion to a “new energy future” of wind farms, hydrogen fuels, fuel made from marine algae and much else, has pulled the plug.

In the 1990s Royal Dutch Shell set its boffins on finding new green fuels, such as forest plantations to make biofuels. I remember them at the Earth Summit in Rio back in 1992. Not long after, Shell was for a time the world’s second largest manufacturer of solar panels. In 2004, it opened the world’s largest grid-connected solar park.

The company seemed to embrace the idea that a modern global oilcompany could and should transform itself into a green energy company. But, to rewrite its old advertising slogan, you can never be sure of Shell.

Just as the other European oil giant, BP, flattered to deceive when it began to call itself Beyond Petroleum, so too with Shell.

At a time when new bosses at Exxon in the US are making overtures to Barack Obama’s idea of a new green deal to fight climate change, Shell is going back to the bad old days.

Last week, this and other papers reported: “Shell will no longer invest in renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydropower because they are not economic.”

In recent years, Shell has invested more than $1bn in the most commercial of the new renewable industries, wind power. It claims to have more than 500MW of wind power capacity altogether — the equivalent of half a regular power station.

It was chicken feed for them. But many hoped for more. Then last year,Shell pulled out of what would be the world’s largest offshore wind farm in the Thames estuary. The London Array would have tripled its wind capacity.

The company claimed at the time that it was going to concentrate its renewables business in the US. Now that promise has quietly disappeared. Last week, its head of gas and power, Linda Cook, told reporters: “We do not expect material amounts of investment [in wind and solar] going forward.” Biofuels will still get cash. Everything else is back into cold storage.

Why? “They continue to struggle to compete with other investment opportunities we have in our portfolio.” In other words, oil prices are back down and Shell is in this for the short term.

We are left with those, shall we say unfulfilled, ads. “Tackling climate change and providing fuel for a growing population seems like an impossible problem, but at Shell we try to think creatively,” said one. If you keep old newspapers, you’ll find it across the centrefold of the Guardian on 15 December. If not, a version is still on their web site.

But now we know the creative thinking had more to do with advertisement copywriting rather than energy technology.

The ad continues: “It won’t be easy. Innovative solutions rarely are. But when the challenge is hardest, when everyone else is shaking their heads, we believe there is a way.” Do smile, amid your tears.

Shell was busted last year by the UK Advertising Standards Authority for an ad claiming that its $10bn investment in sucking oil from tar sands in Canada was a contribution to a sustainable energy future.

Clearly it hasn’t been chastened. Those pre-Christmas ads were more greenwash. But, for anyone who has watched the company over the years, what has happened is not so much a cynical misrepresentation of its policies as an outright betrayal of past promises.

In the race for a greener future, Shell could have been a contender. Now it is on the canvas, flat out cold.

• How many more green scams, cons and generous slices of wishful thinking are out there? Please email your examples of greenwash to greenwash@guardian.co.uk or add your comments via Guardian Article

Posted by Chris Wilkinson: Thursday 8 January 2009 11.27 GMT

Comments (3)

   

Fuel pumps at a Shell petrol station. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters

Last Sunday, as I entered the National Theatre to catch the final performance of Oedipus, a flyer was shoved into my hand. Usually these leaflets are simply plugging a show. Not this one. It was from an organisation called Rising Tide, protesting against the production’s sponsorship by Shell. Using the slogan “Art not oil“, Rising Tide argues that companies such as Shell and BP are using advertising and cultural sponsorship as fig leaves for the appallingly destructive effects that their activities have on the environment.

Rising Tide’s aim is to encourage major arts venues such as the National and the Southbank Centre to refuse money from these companies. As part of its campaign, it has created an online gallery of artistic responses, satirising art’s dependence on Big Oil.

You might think it insane, in the current climate, to suggest that a theatre should refuse to take money from anyone. After all, it is not just the recession that poses a severe risk to the financial health of our arts organisations. One only has to think back to the debacle surrounding Arts Council England’s funding decisions last year to see how precarious the financial situation can be for any arts organisation. One of the National’s great strengths is its ability to produce work on a grand scale. It can mount shows that would be too risky, artistically, for the commercial theatre, but which most other venues simply do not have the space nor resources for.

However, the threat that global climate change poses to human survival is so great that it is hard to think of anything that should take precedence over combating it. By accepting the sponsorship of a major polluter, the National is providing Shell with a significant public endorsement. The theatre is aware of the controversy surrounding this sponsorship deal but defends its position, saying: “We do not believe that refusing to accept sponsorship from oil companies is a constructive approach; it’s hypocritical (we all use energy) and diverts attention from the real challenge, which is to pursue environmental sustainability and to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.”

There are problems with this argument. It’s true that we all use energy, but this fact can hardly be used to prevent us protesting about how that energy is produced. After all, we need an army to defend us, but that should not stop us criticising the behaviour of arms manufacturers. The National is absolutely right to say that we should pursue environmental sustainability and a reduction of our dependence on fossil fuels, but only last August, the Advertising Standards Authority reprimanded Shell for making misleading claims about some of its operations being sustainable.

Imagine, instead, if the National and other high-profile and prestigious organisations decided not to renew their sponsorship deals with Shell. If they came out and said that they would not be associated with such a destructive corporation, then the negative publicity might force Shell to truly clean up its act. If any theatre can afford to do this, surely it is the National. Not only does it receive a very healthy amount of public money, it also has a plethora of other private and corporate donors who provide support. Given that Oedipus sold out weeks in advance and featured a major international film star, the National could have found any number of other companies willing to step into Shell’s shoes.

All of this is particularly unfortunate given the National’s otherwise excellent green policy. It has committed to cutting its electricity and gas consumption by 20% by the end of this year. But so long as the Shell sponsorship remains, there will be a lurid yellow stain on the theatre’s green credentials.

GUARDIAN ARTICLE