Last week we asked our readers if energy companies should pay a price for their contribution to the climate crisis.
Later this month Exxon Mobil is going on trial in New York accused of lying to its investors and misrepresenting the economic risk of climate change to its business. It’s alleged that the US energy giant is one of several petroleum companies that conducted research into climate change and its causes as far back as the 1980s, with some accurately predicting the effect on sea level rises and the increase in extreme weather events.
Direct action: Carbon capture gears up for climate battle
Climate change report urges net zero emissions by 2050
Misleading investors is one thing, but what about misleading the public and intentionally muddying the waters on climate science for decades? Should energy companies face financial or even criminal penalties for their actions? Our readers were quite evenly split on the issue, with 42 per cent saying that energy companies should contribute financially to mitigation efforts. Right behind that, 39 per cent felt that no responsibility rests with the companies and they have simply been providing essential natural resources to power the global economy. Just nine per cent thought the energy industry should face criminal action, while 10 per cent chose the ‘none of the above’ option.
“I see why people might wish to make energy companies pay – but sometimes it is hard to see where the fault lies,” wrote Peter Spence. “Much should depend, I believe, in OFGEM and National Grid as they set the purchasing guidelines and regulations.”
Another Steve commented: “The fact is we are all responsible for the mess we are in, and it’s naive to think if Joe Public had had all the facts that he’d necessarily have changed his ways. Most people have been aware for a long time of what was going on but chose to play dumb.
“A line in the sand should be drawn, moving forward, such that an admission is agreed of the effect on the environment and if they continue with such behaviour then they should be prosecuted and financially penalised.”
The Engineer acknowledges that this can often be a controversial topic, but we do continue to welcome comments below the line. However, this publication accepts the widely held scientific view that increasing global temperatures are largely the result of anthropogenic causes. Comments that seek to obfuscate the issue without citing peer-reviewed science will not be published. Our comment guidelines can be viewed here and we recommend all readers familiarise themselves with them before engaging in the debate.
Depends what exactly you are asking, energy companies have provided a service necessary to fuel economic growth and we were the ones asking them to do it (and paying for it)! However intentially misleading people is another thing entirely and should be treated as fraud, just as with VW and the diesel scandal.
Consumers ultimatly decide the direction businesses move in by voting with their wallets and as the public shift away from fossil fuels, these companies should be investing in order to futureproof their businesses.
There are a number of energy tarrifs that are 100% renewable electricity now, though envirofriendly heating infrastructure seems to be a bit off. It is up to consumers to back up their armchair comments with actions, otherwise nothing changes
Love em or loath em, we’re going to need the cooperation of the energy companies to overhaul society’s energy systems. The language businesses speak is money, so a carrot-and-stick approach of incentives and penalties will see the desired change driven through.
If they’ve been actively suppressing information then they should face punishments for that, but going after them just as a general principle would be counter-productive. We’ll get far more done by getting them on side. The UK has been a good example of how successful this can be. Not so long ago it would have been inconceivable to supply the national grid without coal, now we do so regularly and soon coal-fired power plants will be consigned to the dustbin of history. We’ve already managed to substantially decarbonise the grid, and now need to make similar progress with transport, heating and carbon-intensive industries like steel and concrete.
This has to represent the lowest point any serious engineering publication can have sunk to. How have we arrived at a point in human history when the providers of wealth creation, are being targeted and pilloried. They are providers of safety and security propulsion. Why are they held up to a poll to decide if they are responsible for the benefits the energy and healthier living conditions we now enjoy, and must pay a additional price for their positive contribution to humanity?
The questions are the most loaded yet. While I accept that the editors of the engineer are taking an “ethical high ground” in their support for the global warming meme, so will probably reject this note, there are many papers supporting the non-crisis climate view. Suggest the GWPF publications and Hans Roslings book, Factfulness, are examined objectively by the editors and others who wish the UK to spend over £ 1 trillion meeting a foolish climatic objective while the rest of the world laughs and continues as normal.
Directly charging/fining energy companies will only mean WE, the consumer, will be paying for it, one way or another. Just like the ill fated “Smart Meter” rollout, free it is not.
None of the above.
The fact is we are all responsible for the mess we are in, and it’s naive to think if Joe Public had had all the facts that he’d necessarily have changed his ways. Most people have been aware for a long time of what was going on but chose to play dumb, this mindset persists.
The energy companies have undoubtedly been involved in dodgy practices to preserve their businesses and profits. A line in the sand should be drawn, moving forward, such that an admission is agreed of the affect on the environment and if they continue with such behavior then they should be prosecuted and financially penalised. As suggested, we need to work with them.
Sloppy media reporting (particularly the use of ‘energy’ and ‘electricity’ as interchangeable terms) has given the general public a false impression that renewables provide a significant amount of the UKs energy supply. We engineers ought to know better: they don’t. As the latest (2018) statistics from BEIS, presented as a GANTT chart graphically show:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/818151/Energy_Flow_Chart_2018.pdf
We remain TOTALLY reliant on fossil fuels
I think the fact that we are still so reliant on fossil fuels is symptomatic of the wider problem here. If governments, energy companies and the public had taken repsonsibility for the problem sooner, we could be a lot further down the road to decarbonisation.
I agree with above comments that we all share responsibility for the climate crisis. It would be particularly bizarre to single out and pillory those energy providers who had the nouse and foresight to conduct potential impact studies decades ago, when we the public and our governments did not. I sincerely hope this poll is not another symptom of a world totally losing its marbles.
The accusation is that energy companies knew about the climate impacts and not only didn’t act, but in fact did their best to obfuscate the truth.
I suppose I am a “lukewarm”. I can see something is happening with the freak weather, but I am not convinced by every “dark green” headline, which never seem to be put under the same scrutiny, the poll organisers demand.
Being in the middle, I despair of the extreme positions. Seeing some woman on TV declaring she is going to stop climate change. Really? Is she going to stop plate tectonics? Is she going to stop the long term rising heat from the Sun as it gets older? For my degree, I did a geology module. Go back far enough & Scotland was a tropical paradise South of the Equator. Not even the SNP would claim that now.
Look, I am all for reducing oil consumption where there are viable alternatives, but lets be honest, there are some things, such as long haul flights, that are only doable with kerosene. Yes, short flights will probably be electric powered & medium haul switch to Hydrogen.
Petrol/electric hybrid cars are available now & are great for reducing pollution & fuel consumption. Fully electric cars would need a fleet of new nuclear power stations & the Severn/Wash barriers to be built. Then there are the environmental issues with the batteries that few are willing to talk about.
There are early signs of another global financial slowdown. While it is right to move to cleaner cars/homes/factories/vans, etc. it needs to be done at a pace that ordinary people can afford. No point demanding all new vans are electric & then finding you cannot get a tradesman, as they cannot afford a brand new van.
I know this is a ramble, but my point is that a lot of affordable, small baby steps, would get us to a cleaner world without hitting the lower paid. Virtue signalling, expensive new standards are great if you can afford them, but many cannot.
It would be better if energy companies paid a levy, which would be used to fund new and potential renewable energies, which would assist bringing them to commercial operation and acceptance.
Given we need electricity, the only practical area that blame can be attributed is to successive governments for not actively funding and pushing nuclear power. Everything else is just window-dressing and woke.
Of course blame is a stupid idea really. We all could have used our voice earlier.
Here is a reference documenting advances in our scientific understanding of climate change over the past ~ two centuries https://history.aip.org/climate/timeline.htm
Totally agree with your sentiments Ken.
Money is spent on White Elephants and Joe Public foots the Bill.
How many more projects will they think up and put their hands into our pockets to fund them, it is poor decision making at high level by sub-standard bureaucrats.
I see why people might wish to make energy companies pay – but sometimes it is hard to see where the fault lies.
Much should depend, I believe, in OFGEM and National Grid as they set the purchasing guidelines and regulations.
It might well be that they are not really thinking deeply about issues or they intended (or unintended implications) and they might be “sold” consumers.
One case in point is the “Green” tariffs in which customers are not necessarily getting what they believe they are getting (see – see Greenwash article in WHICH
https://www.which.co.uk/news/2019/09/how-green-is-your-energy-tariff/
“research reveals that many companies selling renewable electricity aren’t doing what customers presume.” ) – and, indeed it is not clear if the green electricity claimed is being generated at every moment in time or just averaged over a month or a year… (so at night in a time of a large area persistent calm in the weather there might well not be enough to go around.).
In some cases, such as for some “sustainable” biofuels, the regeneration (of forests) might take hundreds of years – and there are CO2 costs of transport and drying (see https://e360.yale.edu/features/wood_pellets_green_energy_or_new_source_of_co2_emissions and https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/48193/3153-final-report-carbon-factor.pdf – which includes comparison to natural gas)
So, for bio-pellets it would be unclear who, if anyone, was being fraudulent about CO2 costs and sustainability – unless OFGEM /NG had a certification scheme in place.
It is clear (https://www.regen.co.uk/we-need-to-talk-about-green-energy-tariffs/) OFGEM have been worried for some time (well over a year) about the”gaming” of “green tariffs” but there does not seem to have been a crack down (as, otherwise, the Which article would have not been published).
I am not clear what OFGEM thinks about the “sustainability” of some of the bio-fuels.
Some strong views on a very controversial subject, as one would expect. The free market has caused electricity prices to rise to the level that the UK’s industrial competitiveness is seriously compromised. We have invested in over 20 GW of power plant that generates electricity at guaranteed prices of £ 120 – 140 / MWh, over double the OECD average. Clearly, there is no way that the energy suppliers can be charged money that is not passed on to the users.
The UK’s Climate Change Act imposes uniquely stupid, and continuously increasing, massive cost to the UK while our competitors increase their emissions to have low cost electricity.
This is only a passing observation.
Europe, especially UK, seems alone in the World busting its a** to achieve “climate neutrality”. But even the UK’s plan for zero emissions by 2050, is simply unfeasible as the Climate Change Committee knows perfectly well but will not admit to. It has received the advice of serious Earth Scientists in the form of a letter published at https://www.nhm.ac.uk/press-office/press-releases/leading-scientists-set-out-resource-challenge-of-meeting-net-zer.html
Too many in Europe, including the members of the CCC, are on the “zero-emissions” gravy train which will, most scandalously be paid by our grandchildren.
Let’s hope “The Engineer” will highlight the resource issues with more seriousness? Please?
Yes we are all ‘responsible’, but as consumers we can only purchase what is produced and what producers want to sell us. In that sense we only have any purchasing power if there is a better alternative.
Couldn’t agree more. I would expect engineers to have a better grip on reality.
Hugh Sharman raises the resources issue; does this imply that the lobbyists and the producers of electric cars and windmills could be held to account legally for pushing false solutions (i.e. that cannot realistically eliminate the CO2 emissions)?
Or perhaps compulsory remote working and decentralisation of work would eliminate the transports issues (coupled with a useful train-network) – but who to devise and support such ? (and could they be held legally responsible if they do not do so? A more complicated legal issue, I think )
I think the Elephant in the room no one has mentioned is the globalisation policies over the last 20 or so years. We have moved manufacturing from low carbon footprint countries such as Europe to the most inefficient producers of CO2 in the world so we can’t totally blame the energy companies of the west. If we don’t charge a CO2 levy on cheap foreign imports to account for the extra pollution involved in their manufacture we will never encourage the rest of the world to decarbonise their production methods.
For what it’s worth I’d say the following….
Firstly I believe that climate change represents a huge threat to all the flora and fauna in the world and we should be setting much more aggressive targets than we are currently have in place (even though some might think that even the current targets are unachievable!). There appears to be no consideration that some kind of tipping point event (i.e. sudden acceleration in greenhouse gas emission) could realistically happen. If it does we may be irreversibly “sunk” (excuse the pun) – do we want to take that chance?
Secondly, on a positive note, I believe that so-called “alternative” energy sources will become cheaper to the consumer than fossil fuel based ones (there is evidence that this may be the case already – and thank god for that otherwise it would never happen if government regulation were relied upon to change the balance of energy generation!!). This unexpected bonus should not be surprising. Although the infrastructure is very expensive, alternative energy sources themselves are potentially free. The UK government is very quick to accept praise for the advanced position of the UK in the matter of climate change but I believe this position has occurred by economic default rather than by any determined effort or forethought on their part (maybe I’m too cynical!)
Thirdly, coming on to the main question and having voiced such significant personal concerns on the matter of climate change I do NOT believe that the generation and supply companies should be penalised (other than in cases of blatant mal-practise of course). I would suggest that it is the consumer that should bear the full brunt of responsibility and that some form of proportionate carbon-tax should be levied on all potential sources of carbon emissions. This is never going to be a vote winner but how else do you stop people jumping on an aircraft for a package holiday four times a year or commuting a hundred miles to work each day? It needs to be done in such a way as to protect the less well-off if at all possible. Clearly not a simple task, then! This money should be ring-fenced by the treasury to be spent ENTIRELY on alternative energy schemes and associated climate-change schemes such as tree-planting and carbon capture.
Fourthly it might be easy to become despondent, given that we can only ever have influence within our own national boundaries. But if we (in the UK) can be seen by the rest of the world (especially the developing countries) to have a workable, effective (and possibly even economically advantageous?) model for greenhouse gas reduction, then other countries may be encouraged to follow suit.
Posing this question is just another sign of the times. We now live in an age such that all problems are simply laid at the door of others. Everyone is quite happy to take all of the benefits and advantages of our modern society, but none of the responsibility that goes with it. It is especially dissapointing to see such a proportion of my fellow engineers wanting energy companies to pay up, for what?
It’s not alleged, it’s been proven:
https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/fossil-fuel-companies-knew-about-global-warming
We don’t need any resource that is finite (non-renewable) and destructive to life itself, not only human life, but life for all the over 2.3 millions species identified, at present, that share with us the unique biosphere of Earth. How is intentional destruction of life called, in legal and ethical terms?
We need very few things, the rest are wants and good-to-have, including electricity. One such need for humans to live is a concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere of max 300ppm. It is now at 408 and growing. The difference to the historical level that offered Homo Sapiens the chance to exist, survive and invent/make all those good-to-have, plus enormous amounts of useless, frivolous stuff, is mostly due to burning fossil fuels, followed by other human activities.
In what regards what came first: supply or demand, there was no demand for fossil fuels, until supply was created. The demand is for energy, in many forms. Given that we are in a human-induced climate emergency, the supply has to be only in the forms that solve the emergency, there is no place for fossil fuels, no matter the apparent cost to consumer, which is never the real total cost.
Fresh off the press:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed-20-firms-third-carbon-emissions
Some of these companies will understand their error and change, hopefully soon enough for all of us.
It is all very well for the affluent middle-class people to moralise about saving the world. Process Engineering today has an article about the consequences of the madness, UK steel making is suffering from electricity costs that are between £ 19 / MWh and £ 22 / MWh higher than Germany and France. This industry contributes £ 3.2 b to the UK trade balance. This is clearly unsustainable and 31,900 people are directly employed in this industry.
China and India will take the chance to use their low energy cost basis (coal derived of course) to decimate this industry, all based on a climate change dogma that everyone outside of the EU is not following.
“Comments that seek to obfuscate the issue without citing peer-reviewed science will not be published. Our comment guidelines can be viewed here and we recommend all readers familiarise themselves with them before engaging in the debate.”
Please apply the rules, too many comments don’t comply with them.
Those of us in the fact and science based reality understand that money is an artifact and we can live without it, but we can’t, without a certain balance and distribution of the chemical elements fundamental to life: C, H, N, O, P, S. Our fossil-based economy, practiced and costed without any consideration of the physical, biological, chemical constraints we live under, have brought us to the current climate emergency and other human induced crises. Of course, intelligent, social, empathic and creative beings that we are, we will fix them for everybody, irrespective of wealth (measured in money, of course, an artifact), location or any other criteria, for everybody alive today and in the next ~ 5 billion years. Everybody, including those who still think that economy is fundamental to life. For those, here is a reminder on the dependencies between economy, society and nature.
See fig. 5
http://commonstransition.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Report-P2P-Thermodynamics-VOL_1-web_2.0.pdf
Economy is nested in society and society is nested in nature, so it might be useful for Process Engineering to write more about thermodynamics, biosphere and human society and less about energy costs and their correlation with jobs, as the energy costs quoted are incorrect and the causality to loss of jobs has not been proven. There are many variables that can influence an industry, its employment and its role in trade. Unfortunately, as economics is not and will never be a science, as it is mostly storytelling and ideology dressed up in mathematics, we’ll never know the answer with certainty. What we need to do is structure our economy so that everybody has a good, happy life and the planet remains a livable place for all species. Even some economists understand it and have excellent proposals on how to make the change. Adopt their ideas and thinking and disregard the mainstream.
I was very sad to see that Silvia Leahu-Aluas wants to stop publication of views that differ from hers – that approach was last practiced in Europe the 1930s. While we have never agreed on anything, I do not wish her views to be rejected. However, I cannot see how anyone can believe that economic arguments do not matter, almost all engineering is economically determined. Her statement “measured in money, of course, an artefact” truly reflects the affluent socialist classes that are being rejected because the poor people of the UK and world need economic growth and would dearly like some more of the “artefact”.
I would respectfully suggest an alternative reason (and Engineered from the political and financial Right) for the flow of manufacture to the previously called ‘Third World) that doing so (and actively encouraging such) reduces the number of ‘workers’ with leanings to the Left available to vote for candidates and parties to challenge the almost continuous ‘advance’ of that Right. I would respectfully suggest that the last time our nation was really ‘great’ was when we were the ‘workshop of the world!’ Most other scenarios are simply PR puffing?