LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) – Britain’s decision to authorise new licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea was lawful, London’s High Court ruled on Thursday, dismissing a legal challenge by Greenpeace.
The environmental campaign group had argued Britain’s failure to assess the greenhouse gases produced by consuming oil and gas – so-called end-use or downstream emissions – rendered its offshore energy plan unlawful.
But lawyers representing Britain’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said at a hearing in July that ministers were not required to assess end-use emissions, though they nonetheless considered them.
Judge David Holgate rejected Greenpeace’s case on Thursday, saying in a written ruling that the decision not to assess end-use emissions was not irrational.
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)
Greenpeace is perhaps better known for boarding oil rigs and scaling buildings, but they have always mobilised people to fight for climate action. This time, they’re doing something even more ambitious. They have launched a nationwide door-knocking campaign to recruit at least one million Climate Voters ahead of the next election, and they’re inviting everyone who cares about a healthier, safe and fairer future to take part.
Over the next few weeks and months, thousands of people from all walks of life will go door to door holding conversations about climate, nature and other vital issues on the doorstep. Some of these ‘climate canvassers’ will then train other volunteers to do the same, aiming to create a snowball effect rippling through the country, but especially in those marginal seats where just a few hundreds or thousands of votes will decide the election.
This growing community of Climate Voters will put pressure on all political parties to up their game on climate and nature right now; they’ll vote with climate and nature in mind and crucially hold the next government to account. Climate Voters will give a voice and political agency to a climate majority that already exists in this country, but that’s all too often ignored by politicians. Many MPs know most of the UK public are worried about the climate crisis and want more government action, but they don’t think these are issues people will vote on. We’re going to prove them wrong, and turn the climate majority into a political force all parties will have to reckon with.
Greenpeace International activists from the Rainbow Warrior attach a flag reading ‘Stop Deep Sea Mining” to a cable holding the prototype robot Patania II in April 2021. (Photo: Marten van Dijl/Greenpeace)
“By embarking on mining in the deep sea without sufficient knowledge, we risk destroying unique nature, eradicating vulnerable species, and disrupting the world’s largest carbon sink,” said one advocate.
Calling on Norway to “live up to the responsibilities” it has as co-chair of an international panel on sustainable oceans, more than 30 climate and conservation organizations on Monday delivered a letter to nearly two dozen Norwegian embassies on all continents, intensifying global outcry over plans for deep-seabed mining in the Arctic.
The groups, including Greenpeace, Sustainable Ocean Alliance, and the Blue Climate Initiative, called on officials to abandon plans to open 281,000 square kilometers—an area nearly the size of the United Kingdom—to deep-sea mining, saying the world currently lacks “the robust, comprehensive, and credible scientific knowledge to allow for reliable assessment of impacts of deep-sea minerals extraction, including impacts on the planet’s life-support systems and human rights.”
Therefore, they said, the plan violates Norway’s “ambition to act according to a knowledge-based and precautionary approach.”
“By embarking on mining in the deep sea without sufficient knowledge, we risk destroying unique nature, eradicating vulnerable species, and disrupting the world’s largest carbon sink,” said Sofia Tsenikli, global campaign lead for the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition. “At a time when humanity is racing against the clock to tackle both the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis, we should protect nature—not destroy it.”
“European countries like France, Germany and Spain have taken a precautionary position, advocating a precautionary pause, a moratorium or a ban on deep-sea mining.”
Mining companies have lobbied for deep-sea mining, claiming it is necessary to source cobalt and copper, but advocates have noted that the minerals are already found elsewhere on the planet and have warned that the mining process could disturb the habitat of thousands of marine species.
The advocates behind Monday’s letter, which was delivered on the day Norway’s parliament began its autumn session, noted that the country’s co-chair on the High-Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy—Palau—is among a growing number of governments that have urged caution regarding deep-sea mining.
“European countries like France, Germany and Spain have taken a precautionary position, advocating a precautionary pause, a moratorium or a ban on deep-sea mining,” wrote the groups. “Scientists, Indigenous groups, fisheries and seafood organizations, civil society organizations, and major businesses including Storebrand, BMW, and Google are all calling for a stop to deep-sea mining. The European Investment Bank has excluded deep-sea mining from its investments as it is deemed ‘unacceptable in climate and environmental terms,’ and the European Parliament has called for a moratorium multiple times.”
The international coalition further called on Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre to “step back from the brink of introducing this destructive industry and to support a global moratorium on deep sea mining.”
The letter was sent a week after Greenpeace activists confronted Støre and other Norwegian Labour Party politicians with a 45-foot long octopus model that displayed a banner reading, “Don’t destroy my home.”
Greenpeace campaigners in Denmark shared on social media that on Monday, the letter was delivered by an activist dressed as a jellyfish.
“Norway opening for deep-sea mining while chairing the international Ocean panel, and committing to 100% sustainable use of its waters, is hypocrisy and risks destroying both ecosystems in the vulnerable Arctic and Norway’s reputation internationally,” said Louisa Casson, senior campaigner for the group’s Stop Deep-Sea Mining campaign. “If Norway decides to proceed with their plans, they must give up their seat in the Ocean panel to a state that delivers on ocean protection.”
Campaigners take part in a Stop Rosebank emergency protest outside the U.K. Government building in Edinburgh, after the controversial Equinor Rosebank North Sea oil field was given the go-ahead Wednesday, September 27, 2023. (Photo: Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)
“The disgraceful decision to give Rosebank the green light shows the extent of the U.K. government’s climate denial,” one activist said.
Regulators in the United Kingdom on Wednesday greenlit the Rosebank oilfield in the North Sea, which campaigners warn contains enough oil and gas to match the yearly emissions of 28 low-income countries.
The U.K. government said it welcomed the approval, in a statement that comes one week after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced he was delaying some elements of the country’s net-zero plan.
“By approving Rosebank, Rishi Sunak has confirmed he couldn’t care less about climate change,” climate lawyer and executive director of the advocacy group Uplift Tessa Khan said in a statement. “As we’ve heard repeatedly, our world can no longer sustain new oil and gas drilling. And when we’re witnessing scorching temperatures, wildfires, devastating flooding, and heatwaves in our seas, it could not be clearer that this is a decision by the prime minister to add more fuel to the fire.”
🚨 BREAKING: The UK government has just approved Rosebank, the biggest undeveloped oil field in the UK. We won’t let this stand.
Rosebank, which is located off the northwest coast of the Shetland Islands, is the largest currently undeveloped oil field in the U.K., CNBCreported. Equinor, Norway’s state-owned oil company, has an 80% share in the project, with British company Ithaca Energy holding the remaining 20%.
Equinor said it expected development to begin in 2026-2027 and for the field to produce more than 300 million barrels of oil overall, while Friends of the Earth Scotland said it contained 500 million barrels.
The approval comes despite the fact that the International Energy Agency concluded in 2021 that no new fossil fuel projects should be launched if world leaders wanted to limit global heating to 1.5°C. It also comes on the heels of a government report finding that a record number of people in England died of heat-related causes in 2022.
“This decision is nothing but carte blanche to fossil fuel companies to ruin the climate, punish bill payers, and siphon off obscene profits.”
Green Member of Parliament Caroline Lucas called the approval “the greatest act of environmental vandalism in my lifetime” in a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“This is morally obscene,” she added in a second post. “It won’t improve energy security or lower bills—but it will shatter our climate commitments and demolish global leadership. Govt is complicit in this climate crime—as is Labour unless they pledge to do all possible to revoke it.”
Sunak, a conservative, promised to approve hundreds of oil and gas drilling licenses in the North Sea in July, arguing it was necessary for energy security. The opposition Labour Party says it will prioritize renewable energy if it takes power, but will respect any licenses or approvals already in place, according to Reuters.
“The disgraceful decision to give Rosebank the green light shows the extent of the U.K. government’s climate denial,” Friends of the Earth Scotland’s oil and gas campaigner Freya Aitchison said in a statement. “Fossil fuels are driving both climate breakdown and the cost of living crisis yet the U.K. Government is slamming its foot down on the accelerator.”
Aitchison also called on the Scottish government specifically to oppose the project.
“Delivering a fair and fast transition away from fossil fuels is one of the defining challenges of Humza Yousaf’s term as First Minister,” Aitchison said. “This must start with unequivocally condemning Rosebank and opposing the U.K. government’s decision to go ahead with a project that deliberately prioritizes the interests of Equinor while bringing little or no benefit to Scottish people.”
Campaigners also questioned who would benefit from the project. While the government argued that it would inject cash into the economy and create almost 1,600 jobs, activists pointed out that Equinor made £62 billion in pre-tax profits last year and would get more than £3.75 billion in tax breaks for its work on Rosebank, meaning the U.K. would ultimately lose £750 million in tax money from the field’s development.
“The ugly truth is that Sunak is pandering to vested interests, demonstrating the stranglehold the fossil fuel lobby has on government decision-making. And it’s bill payers and the climate that will suffer because of it,” Greenpeace U.K. climate campaigner Philip Evans said in a statement. “Why else would he make such a reckless decision?
“This decision is nothing but carte blanche to fossil fuel companies to ruin the climate, punish bill payers, and siphon off obscene profits,” Evans added.
Opponents of the project have promised to take legal action to stop it.
“There are strong grounds to believe that the way this government has come to this decision is unlawful,” Khan said in a statement. “We shouldn’t have to fight this government for cheap, clean energy, and a liveable climate, but we will.”
A 1970 report by Eni’s Isvet research centre warned of “catastrophic” climate risk from the build-up of CO2 caused by burning fossil fuels. Flickr via PRP Channel (CC BY-2.0)
Italian oil major Eni knew of the climate impacts of fossil fuel extraction since 1970, according to a report by Greenpeace Italy and advocacy group ReCommon shared with DeSmog.
The report comes four months after the two organizations announced a lawsuit against the company alleging Eni used “lobbying and greenwashing” to push for more oil and gas production, despite having known about the risks fossil fuels posed over the past 53 years.
The two groups had previously unearthed a 1970 report by Eni’s Isvet research centre that warned of the “catastrophic” climate risk from the build-up of carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by burning fossil fuels. They also found a 1978 report produced by Eni’s Tecneco company that included a projection of how much atmospheric CO2 levels would rise by the turn of the 21st century.
But, until now, compared to other oil majors, relatively little evidence was uncovered that Eni had longstanding knowledge of the damage its fossil fuel products would cause.
“Our investigation shows how Eni joins the long list of fossil fuel companies that, as emerged from numerous international investigations conducted in the recent years, were aware at least since the early 1970s of the destabilizing effect of coal, gas, and oil exploitation on global climate balances, due to greenhouse gas emissions,” said Felice Moramarco, a communications strategist with Greenpeace Italy, who coordinated the research for this report.
“If we find ourselves today in the midst of a climate crisis that threatens the lives of each and every one of us,” he added, “the responsibility falls mainly on companies like Eni, which have continued for decades to exploit fossil fuels, ignoring the alarming and growing warnings from the global scientific community.”
The report aims to build on evidence in Eni’s 1970 and 1978 report, and is the result of months of research within public and private archives in Italy, including the company’s own archive.
The findings add to the existing body of research that fossil fuel companies have been aware of the climate risks of burning fossil fuels since at least the 1970s and 80s, but still chose to expand oil and gas production and obstruct climate action.
‘They’ve Been Playing Us All for Fools’
Last week, California filed what may be the most consequential climate lawsuit yet against a range of Carbon Majors, including Exxon, Shell, Chevron, and BP for covering up what they knew about emissions and misleading the public for decades about the climate crisis. Speaking about the fossil fuel defendants, California Governor Gavin Newsom charged, “They’ve been playing all of us for fools,” and noted that the legal action could “illuminate their deception and their lies over 50, 60, 70 years.”
The report in the Italian case shows that Eni also foresaw damages from its products going back more than 50 years.
In 1971, Eni set up a new company in Rome to study pollution problems called Tecneco. In a 1973 report, Tecneco predicted that human activities could cause permanent changes to the atmosphere, including changes that could “gradually cause the disappearance of all life on earth.” Among the atmospheric changes listed was “climatic modifications.” Another section of the report stated that the increase of carbon dioxide “in the atmosphere is considered a potential cause of climate change.”
Another 1978 Tecneco report was even clearer, stating, “Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the ultimate oxidation product of fossil fuels … it exists in air in concentrations of about 300 ppm [parts per million] and only human activity increases this value by interfering with natural processes, so that above a certain threshold it becomes a pollutant.”
The report warned that continued production and use of fossil fuels would “alter the heat balance of the atmosphere, leading to climatic change with serious consequences for the biosphere.” Another section predicted that “climatic changes may occur on a regional scale due to the continued, increasing consumption of fossil fuels, and this may become a major problem by the end of the century … the best available data indicate that the CO2 content of the atmosphere will reach 375–400 ppm in the year 2000; this would increase the temperature of the atmosphere by 0.5 °C.” Eni’s prediction was quite accurate: Global warming in the year 2000 was exactly 0.5 °C and CO2 concentrations were around 370 ppm.
Eni also understood the need to limit fossil fuel pollution decades ago, according to the report. A 1988 issue of the company’s corporate magazine Ecos – widely read by employees and executives – warned that continued use of “fossil sources” of energy would produce a “greenhouse effect that could lead to climate change with devastating effects on the entire earth’s ecosystem.” Another issue of the magazine from the same year stated that as research on global warming continued, “it is incumbent on us to work as of now, as far as possible, to contain the phenomenon of carbon dioxide emissions. … It is generally agreed that it is very important to ‘buy time’ so as to refine the complex prediction models and identify the most appropriate solutions. Buying time means limiting the increase in CO2 as far as possible.”
The same issue also includes an article detailing the link between “greenhouse effect” and fossil fuel “combustion processes,” and contains information on CO2 concentration: “From samples of air trapped in glaciers, data on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air in past times can be obtained. It has been estimated by this route that the concentration of CO2 in the air has increased by about 25% in the last 200 years, from a level of 275 parts per million by volume to a current level of around 330-340 ppm (volume).”
In 1992, Eni claimed it needed more research before taking action on climate change. Credit: Petar Milošević Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-2.0)
Earlier this year, a DeSmog investigation also found that Eni has misleadingly promoted fossil gas since the 1980s as the “clean energy of the future,” despite its damaging effects on the climate.
Eni also continued to be a member of IPIECA – the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association. Starting in the late 1980s, the organization coordinated Big Oil’s efforts to delay fossil fuel controls around the world (and weaken the foundational UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) by emphasizing scientific uncertainty and misleading the public about the industry’s own knowledge.
The report reveals that at a 1992 IPIECA symposium in Rome co-hosted by Eni, for example, the company’s manager of Safety, Quality and Environmental Protection department insisted that “before taking political decisions, such as adopting a carbon tax, which could lead to dire and unexpected economic consequences, it is necessary to obtain more data … on several controversial points such as the role of the oceans and clouds in climate change, as well as data on their behaviour in various countries and economic and geographic areas.”
Experts say Big Tobacco and other polluters used the “we need more research” refrainas a delay tactic. The Eni manager at the 1992 symposium added that “Eni feels that its objectives are very similar to those of IPIECA and strongly supports this important international association founded by oil companies.”
“In due course [Eni] will make the respective pleadings and arguments public so that anyone can get a full, correct, accurate (and free from misleading ideologies) idea of the very significant issues and complexities associated, as well as the correctness of both the company’s behavior and its energy transition strategies,” said the company in a recent statement to Italian newspaper Domani.
And added that “following the logic described by the NGOs, which is devoid of any foundation and knowledge of the industrial and technological history of energy systems, as well as the evolution of economic and industrial systems and the energy mix required for their operation, anyone who has been using fossil energy or fuel for the past 50 years would have ignored these ‘alarms’ and would be similarly responsible for the emissions generated through their use.”
On July 25, Greenpeace Italy and ReCommon received a “request for mediation” from Eni in response to their lawsuit. This is a mandatory prerequisite for filing a defamation lawsuit under Italian law. The company also stated it may seek at least 50,000 euros in damages from each group.
“We intend to resist this attempt at intimidation by Eni and call for the support of all people and public and private entities who care about the cause of climate justice, starting with those who live and work in the territories that are suffering the catastrophic consequences of the crisis themselves,” said Antonio Tricarico, program director at ReCommon.
