Monthly Archives: February 2017

Endgame for Cumbria’s nuclear nightmare – Moorside or Doomrise?

The financial fog swirling around the Moorside new-build project in West Cumbria continues to thicken by the day.

The development consortium NuGen must inadvertently have added to the gloom with its recently published statement that:

“NuGen’s shareholders [Toshiba and Engie] are committed to the development of the Moorside project.”

Folks with longish memories will recall an identical statement (though with names changed) coming just a few short weeks before the widely predicted departure from NuGen of Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) in 2011 and in 2013 when Spain’s Iberdrola also pulled out of the project.

Whether the current consortium partners of Toshiba and Engie will survive NuGen’s kiss of death message remains to be seen, but the omens are not good for NuGen or those who support the development.

For Engie itself, on record last December as “trying to abandon its nuclear projects in Turkey and Great Britain” in order to concentrate on decentralized energy and renewables, is the odds-on favourite to be next through NuGen’s seemingly ever revolving doors.

Is Toshiba’s AP1000 reactor finished?

Toshiba, dubbed as “ailing” by the Japanese media and still suffering the aftershocks of an accounting scandal in 2015 that rocked the corporate world, now has to contend with its wayward and wholly owned subsidiary Westinghouse purchased from British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) in 2006 and which has now landed its parent with a multi billion dollar loss on reactor building projects.

Selling Westinghouse, or lowering its equity stake in the reactor business is an option currently being considered by Toshiba, as is selling off some profitable Westinghouse segments such as its nuclear fuel business which includes the Springfields site in Lancashire.

With Westinghouse and its AP1000 modular reactors selected for Moorside by NuGen in 2014, the turmoil surrounding the reactor builder is set to further undermine the future prospects for the West Cumbrian development.

Toshiba’s decision on the “corrective measures” it intends to take to sort out its corporate mess will not be published until mid-February, but it is widely reported by the international media that the Corporation will cease taking orders related to the building of nuclear power stations in a move that would effectively mark its withdrawal from the nuclear construction business.

Though it will continue work on the two twin-reactor AP1000 nuclear plants under construction in the United States, Toshiba is reported to be reviewing its investment in Moorside. There is no doubt that Moorside’s future currently hangs precariously in the balance, its survival dependent on whether or not Toshiba pulls the plug on any further involvement in overseas developments.

Should that be the case, NuGen faces the game-changer not only of losing its main consortium shareholder and its Westinghouse subsidiary (with Engie to follow?) but having to find one or more new partners prepared to nail their colours to a failing new build renaissance on a greenfield site acknowledged as being less than optimum for new-build construction and ridiculously remote from where its output of electricity is needed.

Korea’s KEPCO to the rescue?

One such potential partner whose interest in Moorside has been quietly simmering on the back-boiler for the last few years is South Korea’s Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO).

In terms of involvement in Moorside, the company appears to have just two options, the first being to take over some of Toshiba’s stake in the development and thereby help finance the project. Such a move however must surely bite the dust if Toshiba does decide in mid-February that it no longer wants any part of Moorside.

The second and only remaing option is for KEPCO to take on the development itself with or without other partners and ditching the US AP1000 reactors in favour of using its own reactor technology such as its Advanced Power Reactor APR1400 – the first of which, Shin Kori 3 in Ulsan, went on line in South Korea only last year having taken eight years to build.

In turning NuGen’s original plan completely on its head, the adoption of KEPCO’s APR1400 at Moorside would automatically put back NuGen’s current but overly-optimistic projection of a Moorside construction start around 2021 by several years as the South Korean reactor undergoes its Generic Design Assessment by the UK’s Regulators. Such a delay may seem a small price to pay by NuGen whose pet project, without the APR1400, would be facing oblivion.

Yet given its recent history, others may take a different view of KEPCO, which is part-owned by the South Korean government.

For like Toshiba, KEPCO is itself still emerging from a major scandal that surfaced in 2012 involving bribery, corruption and faked safety tests for critical nuclear plant equipment which resulted in a prolonged shut-down of a number of nuclear power stations and the jailing of power engineers and parts suppliers.

Or make the taxpayer finance the project upfront?

Without ‘friends like this’, and in the absence of any change of mind by Toshiba, it is difficult to see how else Moorside might be financed in the future, unless the UK Government itself rides to the rescue with taxpayers money.

The suggestion, floated by NuGen to a House of Lords committee just two months ago that some of what it described as non-nuclear elements of the project – the local transport infrastructure and the offshore cooling systems – might qualify for Government support.

After a decade of posturing over its West Cumbrian project, that the private consortium now feels the need for taxpayer support for Moorside underscores the extent of NuGen’s financial woes and highlights the unattractive face of new nuclear build to would-be global investors.

Picking the UK taxpayer pocket to support a technology past its sell-by date wholly undermines the Government’s erstwhile promise that the full costs of developing, constructing and operating new-build reactors would be borne by the developer and is not likely to go unchallenged.

Right on cue however is the GMB union’s view announced today that “the sensible thing is for the Government to step in and guarantee the funding, this will keep Moorside on track and push down the price we will all have to pay for the electricity it will produce.”

In truth, the ulterior motive behind the Union’s support for Moorside as a means of ‘keeping the lights on’ is the rank fear that, without the development – and with Sellafield’s commercial operations soon to end, the decades of West Cumbria’s unhealthy domination by the nuclear industry will be a thing of the past.

Martin Forwood is the Campaign Coordinator for anti-nuclear group CORE (Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment) formed in 1980. He took up the position in 1989 and, with a focus on Sellafield’s commercial operations, has represented CORE locally, nationally and internationally on a range of nuclear issues.

This article was originally published on the CORE website.

Petition: ‘Stop Moorside: biggest nuclear development in Europe. To David Cameron and the Leaders of Europe‘ (38 Degrees).

Also on The Ecologist:

Not just Toshiba – the global nuclear industry is in crisis everywhere

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Recent revelations that nuclear giant Toshiba faces multi-billion dollar losses and write-downs and may rule itself out of future nuclear construction bids around the world have dominated the world’s financial press.

Toshiba was only just recovering from a 2015 accounting scandal in which it padded reported profits by about US$1.3bn over seven years.

The ripple-effects of Toshiba’s latest problems will be many and varied. Japan’s ambitions to develop a large nuclear export business are in tatters.

As recently as last year, Toshiba said it hoped to win 50 contracts to build new nuclear plants in India and China over the next decade. Also up in the air are reactor construction projects being planned in the UK, Turkey, and elsewhere.

Toshiba says it is “re-examining its relationship” with Westinghouse, its struggling US subsidiary. Delays and cost overruns on nuclear construction projects in the US will be expressed as write-downs that could be as high as US$7 billion.

As Toshiba, so the entire nuclear industry

Toshiba’s 2006 acquisition of Westinghouse has turned out to be a “pivotal moment in Toshiba’s decline” according to Bloomberg. Even pro-nuclear commentator Dan Yurman says the looming massive write-down has “doomed” the company’s US nuclear business.

He adds that it “also apparently ends the so-called nuclear renaissance in the US for full size reactors. During 2007-2010 there were more than two dozen applications expected for new reactors, but now only a few licenses have been completed and they do not have any links to near term plans to build the units.”

But it’s not just Toshiba. Other nuclear utilities around the world are also in deep trouble. Their problems were summarised in the July 2016 World Nuclear Industry Status Report:

“Many of the traditional nuclear and fossil fuel based utilities are struggling with a dramatic plunge in wholesale power prices, a shrinking client base, declining power consumption, high debt loads, increasing production costs at aging facilities, and stiff competition, especially from renewables.

In Europe, energy giants EDF, Engie (France), E.ON, RWE (Germany) and Vattenfall (Sweden), as well as utilities TVO (Finland) and CEZ (Czech Republic), have all been downgraded by credit rating agencies over the past year. All of the utilities registered severe losses on the stock market.
French utility AREVA has accumulated €10 billion (US$10.9 billion) in losses over the past five years. Share value 95% below 2007 peak value. Standard & Poor’s downgraded AREVA shares to BB+ (‘junk’) in November 2014 and again to BB- in March 2015. The company is to be broken up, with French-state-controlled utility EDF taking a majority stake in the reactor building and maintenance subsidiary AREVA NP will then be opened up to foreign investment. The rescue scheme has not been approved by the European Commission.
The AREVA rescue scheme could turn out to be highly problematic for EDF as its risk profile expands. EDF struggles with US$41.5 billion debt, downgraded by S&P, shares lost over half of their value in less than a year and 87% compared to their peak value in 2007.
RWE shares went down by 54% in 2015.
In Asia, the share value of the largest Japanese utilities TEPCO and Kansai was wiped out in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster and never recovered. Chinese utility CGN (EDF partner for Hinkley Point C), listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange since December 2014, has lost 60% of its share value since June 2015. The only exception to this trend is the Korean utility KEPCO that operates as a virtual monopoly in a regulated market.
In the US, the largest nuclear operator Exelon has lost about 60% of its share value compared to its peak value in 2008.”

The nuclear power ‘renaissance’ … or a dead cat bounce?

Global nuclear power capacity increased by 9.2 gigawatts (GW) in 2016. By contrast, renewable electricity capacity growth was 153 GW in 2015 and almost certainly greater in 2016.

In broad terms, nuclear power has been stagnant for the past 20 years. Using figures from the World Nuclear Association (WNA) and the International Atomic Energy Agency, global nuclear capacity has grown 12.7% over the past 20 years and 5.7% over the past decade. But those figures include idle reactors in Japan and the inclusion of those reactors is, as former WNA executive Steve Kidd states, “misleading” and “clearly ridiculous”.

The World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR) excludes 34 idle reactors in Japan (and one each in Taiwan and Sweden) from its calculations of current nuclear capacity. Using WNISR figures, nuclear capacity has grown by 1.7% over the past 20 years and it has declined by 4.6% over the past decade.

If we look more closely at recent figures, the picture is a little confusing. Global nuclear power capacity increased “slightly” in 2016 according to the pro-nuclear WNA while the anti-nuclear WNISR said that a “significant” number of new reactors came online. If there’s some confusion now as to the trajectory of nuclear power, that confusion is likely to grow in the next few years.

To explain, let’s first look at WNA figures on reactor construction starts:

The nuclear power ‘renaissance’ never materialised in the since that the number of ‘operable’ reactors has hovered between 430 and 450 for the past 20 years, with no clear trend in either direction. (The number of operating reactors is currently 406 according to the WNISR, which excludes reactors in long-term outage.).

But we can see the ‘renaissance’ manifest in the sharp increase in construction starts in the few years preceding the March 2011 Fukushima disaster. Those reactors are starting to come online, and more will come online in the next few years. Thus 10 reactors came online in both 2015 and 2016 (a number not previously reached since 1990). And the number of grid connections over the past five years (32 from 2012-2016) was considerably greater than during the five years before that (17 from 2007-2011).

How will this play out in the coming years? Here are predicted reactor start-up (grid connection) figures compiled by the WNA:

We may have been premature in declaring the nuclear renaissance dead. Indeed we’re right in the middle of the renaissance. It will likely span around three years and it will be more a dead cat bounce than a renaissance. Last year, 10 reactors were grid connected and four were permanently shut down. In 2017-18, the WNA anticipates 28 grid connections; the true number will fall short of that figure but grid connections will exceed permanent shut-downs.

But that’s as good as it gets for the nuclear industry. In truth, the industry is in a world of pain.

The reactor fleet is ageing; most reactors are late middle-aged – the average age of the world’s nuclear reactor fleet is 29 years. The number of permanent shut-downs is on the rise and that trend is certain to continue:

The WNA estimates 132 shut-downs by 2035.
The International Energy Agency anticipates a “wave of retirements of ageing nuclear reactors” and an “unprecedented rate of decommissioning” – almost 200 shut-downs between 2014 and 2040.
According to a recent Nuclear Energy Insider article, up to 200 reactors are set to go offline in the next two decades.

Thus 6-10 reactors will need to be commissioned each year for the next 20-25 years just to maintain current nuclear capacity.

The number of reactors under construction is slowly dropping. Using WNA figures, 71 reactors were under construction in January 2014 compared to 60 in January 2017. According to WNISR figures, the number is down from 67 to 55 over the same period. Again, that trend seems near-certain to continue because of a sharp drop in reactor construction starts: 50 from 2007-2011 compared to 31 from 2012-2016. Last year, there were just three construction starts.

Hollow, pyrrhic victories

Most of the nuclear industry’s wins in 2016 may turn out to be hollow and pyrrhic.

The decision to go ahead with two EPR reactors at Hinkley Point in the UK may be a blessing or a curse for the industry. Other EPR projects face mounting problems – long delays; spectacular cost increases; ongoing inquiries into the integrity of EPR pressure vessels; and in the case of the EPR under construction in Finland, litigation.

EDF faces additional problems as a result of Brexit, the UK’s impending withdrawal from the European Union, which will, significantly, include withdrawal from the Euratom treaty. The post-referendum fall in the value of Sterling will cut its income, while costs will remain roughly level; EDF’s ability to import skilled workers to build the reactors is also in doubt. And the Euratom exit creates a host of additional uncertainties.

And even if construction at Hinkley Point goes to plan and to budget, the obscene subsidies will turn the British public against nuclear power for decades to come. Eight of the UK’s 15 power reactors are scheduled to be shut down over the next decade, and it’s unlikely that new reactors will keep pace with closures.

Toshiba’s problems, meanwhile, are adding significant doubt to the future of the Moorside nuclear project next to the notorious Sellafield site in Cumbria, where the company is meant to be building three Westinghouse AP1000 units.

Last August, Russia announced plans for 11 new reactors but there is no likelihood that all will be built and every likelihood that few if any will be built. Already there is some backsliding from the August 2016 announcement.

In a November 2016 referendum, voters in Switzerland rejected a proposal to impose time limits on the operation of the country’s five power reactors. Nonetheless, pre-Fukushima plans for new reactors have been abandoned. Switzerland is tracking towards a nuclear phase-out by attrition. One of its five reactors is to be closed in 2019, and the others will likely all be closed by the end of the 2020s (or by 2034 according to Nuclear Energy Insider) … much the same outcome as that envisaged in the defeated referendum proposal.

The nuclear industry in Sweden certainly had some wins in 2016, but they may not amount to much. There is no longer an end-date for nuclear energy in Sweden other than a non-binding aspiration to exit the industry by mid-century and a (contradictory) aspiration to be 100% renewable-energy powered by 2040; existing reactors can be replaced with new ones (at the same sites); and a nuclear capacity tax will be abolished.

But there are no plans for new reactors and no likelihood of any in the foreseeable future. Keeping existing reactors operating is proving quite a challenge. One reactor closed in 2015 (leaving Sweden with nine), and three more closures are scheduled by the end of 2020.

‘South Africa formally launches new build programme’, Nuclear Engineering International reported in December 2016. But in fact, plans to build new reactors have been deferred – the latest projection is 1.4 GW of new nuclear capacity by 2037 followed by more later – and plans for new reactors may be scrapped altogether once President Jacob Zuma is ousted.

Corruption has undermined South Africa’s nuclear new-build program and developments in a widespread kick-back and bribery corruption scandal in Brazil’s nuclear program was one of the biggest stories of 2016. Corruption has claimed numerous scalps – not least Othon Luiz Pinheiro da Silva, considered the father of Brazil’s nuclear program, who was sentenced to 43 years in prison in August 2016. The partially-built Angra-3 reactor remains frozen due to the corruption scandal and a lack of funding.

Belgium: 10-year extensions for two of Belgium’s seven reactors were approved in late-2015. But all reactors are still scheduled to closed by the end of 2025. There has been ongoing controversy over the safety of Belgium’s reactors – in particular Doel-3 and Tihange-2 – including strenuous efforts by politicians and the public in neighboring countries to force the closure of the reactors.

USA: The nuclear industry had a couple of wins last year, convincing state legislatures in New York and Illinois to stump up billions to keep ageing reactors operating. However the number of operable reactors has decreased from 104 to 99 in recent years and the pattern of slow decline is certain to continue – 44 out of the 99 reactors have been operating for 40 years or more.

Misery

In some other important nuclear countries, there were no victories for the nuclear industry last year, pyrrhic or otherwise … just misery.

France: The French nuclear industry is in its “worst situation ever”, former EDF director Gérard Magnin said last November. Just one reactor is under construction – the Flamanville EPR that is many years behind schedule and three times over-budget.

EDF will need to spend around €100 billion (US$107 billion) upgrading its fleet of 58 reactors by 2030, the country’s state audit office has said, to meet new safety requirements and to extend the lives of the units beyond 40 years.

In 2015, concerns about the integrity of some EPR pressure vessels were revealed, prompting investigations that are still ongoing. Last year, the scandal was magnified when the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) announced that at least 400 of the 10,000 quality documents reviewed by Areva contained anomalies, affecting a range of reactor components in many countries.

Both Areva and EDF are financially stressed, to put it mildly – hence a taxpayer-funded bailout agreed last year. A government-led rescue of Areva and the wider nuclear industry may cost the state as much as €10-billion, Reuters reported in January 2017, and in addition to its “dire financial state, Areva is beset by technical, regulatory and legal problems.”

French finance authorities raided the offices of EDF in July 2016 as part of a probe into EDF’s disclosure of information to the market regarding domestic nuclear maintenance costs as well as planned reactors in the UK.

Last year, former Areva chief executive Anne Lauvergeon was placed under formal investigation for the “publication of inaccurate accounts” and the “spreading of false information” in relation to the acquisition of a number of African uranium mines.

Japan: Only two of the country’s 42 ‘operable’ reactors are actually operating. The future of Japan’s nuclear program remains a guessing game, but projections are being steadily reduced. According to the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency and the IAEA, installed capacity of 42.4 GW in 2014 could fall to as little as 7.6 GW by 2035 “as reactors are permanently shut down owing to a range of factors including location near active faults, technology, age and local political resistance.”

Another reactor was permanently shut down in 2016 (Ikata-1) in addition to five shut-downs in 2015 and the six Fukushima Daiichi reactors shut down in the aftermath of the March 2011 disaster. Japan also decided last year to permanently shut down the troubled Monju fast breeder reactor. For all the rhetoric about Generation IV fast reactors, and the US$100+ billion invested worldwide, only five such reactors are operating worldwide (three of them experimental) and only one is under construction (in India).

Late last year, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry revised the estimated cost of decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and compensating victims of the disaster, to around US$187 bnillion (€175 bn). The latest estimate is four times greater than estimates provided in 2011/12. Indirect costs (e.g. fuel imports, adverse impacts on agriculture and fishing, etc.) are likely to exceed the direct clean-up and compensation costs.

India has 22 operable reactors (6.2 GW capacity) and five under construction. In early 2015, India claimed to have resolved one of the major obstacles to foreign investment by announcing measures to circumvent a liability law which does not completely absolve suppliers of responsibility for accidents. But that hasn’t led to any construction starts; indeed the last construction start was in 2011.

Newcomer countries: The WNA claims that “over 45 countries are actively considering embarking upon nuclear power programmes.” Codswallop. Only two newcomer countries are actually building reactors – Belarus and the United Arab Emirates. Numerous potential newcomers have deferred or abandoned nuclear plans over the past two years, including Chile, Indonesia, Vietnam and Lithuania (which operated reactors until 2009).

Newcomers will be few and far between. Moreover, some countries – including Germany, Belgium, and Taiwan – are deliberately phasing out nuclear power, while nuclear power faces attritional phase-outs in some other countries (e.g. Switzerland).

The July 2016 World Nuclear Industry Status Report noted that over the past two decades, only two countries started power reactors for the first time (Romania in 1996 and Iran in 2011) while two countries closed theirs (Kazakhstan and Lithuania).

China: With 35 operable power reactors (up from 30 at the start of 2016), 22 under construction, and many more in the pipeline, China remains the only country with significant nuclear expansion plans. There are indications of a slow-down with only two construction starts in 2016. There were 25 construction starts from 2008-2010 and 15 in the six years since.

Yellowcake blues

“It has never been a worse time for uranium miners”, said Alexander Molyneux from Paladin Energy in October 2016.

“No major commodity had a worse 2016 than uranium”, Bloomberg said in January 2017. “In fact, the element used to make nuclear fuel has had a pretty dismal decade.”

Uranium mining ramped up 5-10 years ago in anticipation of the nuclear renaissance that never materialised. Hence a glut, hence the low price. The price has fallen for seven of the past nine years. The spot price fell 41% in 2016, sinking to a 12-year low (US$18 / lb U₃O₈ in November).

The spot price averaged about $26 last year, and is expected to average just $23 in 2017 according to the median forecast of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg in December 2016. “I don’t think there’s a mine profitable at current spot prices”, Leigh Curyer from Canadian uranium miner NexGen Energy told Bloomberg.

The long-term contract price fell from $44 in January 2016 to $30 in December. It would need to double to encourage the development of new mines. KPMG noted in December that “uranium producers are expected to reduce production and cut costs through 2017 and 2018, with high cost mines likely to scale back or close. New projects are expected to remain on hold.” RBC expects the sector will be oversupplied until around 2024.

The uranium enrichment industry is in much the same place as uranium mining. The spot uranium enrichment price has fallen consistently since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, and it fell by a third between early 2015 and late 2016 to reach an all-time low.

And since cheap, abundant enrichment capacity can substitute for newly mined uranium (either by extracting more uranium-235 during uranium enrichment, or re-enriching tails), this has and will continue to keep uranium prices down.

Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and editor of the Nuclear Monitor newsletter, where a longer version of this article was originally published.

Also on The Ecologist today: ‘Endgame for Cumbria’s nuclear nightmare – Moorside or Doomrise?‘.

Nuclear Monitor, published 20 times a year, has been publishing deeply researched, often critical articles on all aspects of the nuclear cycle since 1978. A must-read for all those who work on this issue!

MEPs may veto ‘dirty Britain’ Brexit deal

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The environment was notably absent from Theresa May’s recent speech laying out her Brexit negotiating priorities. It was also rarely mentioned during the referendum campaign.

But worries that the UK could turn itself into a post-Brexit pollution haven have now been thrust front and centre by another often overlooked political actor: the European Parliament.

The parliament is often derided as a symbol of the Brussels’ gravy train, or more recently a boxing ring for UKIP’s MEPs. Yet it is an increasingly significant force in EU affairs, and has a long-held reputation for trying to enhance its own powers and for promoting greener policies.

Over the years, the parliament’s environment committee – a cross-party group of 68 MEPs – has led efforts to tighten car emissions, ban leaded fuel and the use of sealskins and, more recently, to secure strong climate change legislation.

It has also provided an entry point to the EU legislative process for less powerful actors like environmental campaigners, who struggle to have their voices heard by national policymakers or the European Commission.

EU Parliament can veto Brexit deal

But how and why will this institution make a difference to Brexit? The European Parliament’s consent is needed for any deal negotiated between the UK and the EU.

So not only does Theresa May’s government need to secure the support of 27 EU states for its final Article 50 deal, but also a simple majority of the 751 MEPs.

The parliament has now decided to flex its legislative muscles by outlining the areas it views as priorities in the upcoming negotiations. Maintaining environmental standards is apparently a red (or green) line for members of the chamber’s influential environment committee.

The committee’s paper “calls on the UK to continue to respect its environmental and climate change commitments”, adding: “Existing legislation which provides for commitments (financial, emissions reduction or of a political nature) cannot simply disappear on the day of Brexit and will require transitional measures.”

Crucially, air quality has been identified as a central issue for MEPs and is an area that the UK government continues to struggle with. Yet again, this year EU mandated air quality limits have already been breached in London and other urban centres (see photo).

But why would ‘Brussels’ care what kind of environmental rules the UK chooses to adopt post Brexit?

Dirty Britain would be a bad neighbour

There are two main reasons why UK environmental policy is of interest to its European partners. First, environmental pollution is transboundary: the UK gained its reputation as the dirty man of Europe in the 1970s and 1980s because its emissions from coal fired power stations led to acid rain in Scandinavia.

Its unpleasant habit of pumping raw effluent into the North Sea was also unwelcome. It is unlikely that our EU neighbours will want to see the UK return to its old habits of using prevailing winds and currents to dispose of unwanted waste in cost-efficient ways.

Second, environmental rules have major trade implications. EU policy was developed to even out differences across states, to prevent those with weaker environmental policies being able to secure competitive advantages. There are consequently good trade reasons for the EU to ensure that the UK maintains the same environmental standards.

No European country wants its farmers or carmakers, bound by restrictions on pesticides or emissions, to have to compete with a UK that relaxes such regulations or scraps them entirely.

The European Parliament can play a useful role in reminding EU negotiators of the importance of environmental regulations for the effective functioning of the single European market.

The parliament’s intervention adds another important voice to the Article 50 debates that may be useful to the Greener UK campaign that seeks to see UK standards maintained post Brexit.

Charlotte Burns is Senior Lecturer in Environmental Policy, University of York.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Exposed: Coca Cola’s big ‘fight back’ against tackling plastic waste

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Coca Cola has been lobbying against plans for a new bottle collection scheme in Scotland designed to reduce plastic waste, according to an Energydesk investigation.

A leaked internal document from the firm reveals the company prioritised a “fight back” against EU moves to introduce deposit return schemes (DRS).

The schemes are designed to encourage consumers to return their drinks bottles by adding a small refundable charge at sale.

The DRS system has been shown to raise collection rates in Germany, Sweden and Denmark and is now being considered by other countries including Scotland.

But major drinks companies, including Coca Cola, are pushing back against the plans, arguing it could negatively impact their business.

Beyond the leaked plans, Energydesk has found evidence that Coca Cola has been lobbying Scottish politicians against DRS for years. The company also spent close to €1 million lobbying the EU commission, and met several times with politicians in Westminster.

Deposit return schemes work fine elsewhere – so why the problem?

Richard Lochhead was the Scottish Minister responsible for exploring DRS until May 2016. He confirmed to Energydesk that he had been approached by Coca Cola and other industry representatives several times.

Lochhead noted that the same companies were working with DRS schemes in other countries, saying: “I am puzzled as to why drinks companies that participate in successful deposit and return schemes in many markets around the world continue to resist new schemes being introduced in Scotland and elsewhere.”

“If we don’t introduce a deposit and return scheme in Scotland in the coming years and attach a value to items that are too often just thrown away, we’ll be missing out on all the benefits and too many valuable cans and bottles will continue to be a blight on our environment both on land and on our shores and in our waters.”

A Coca-Cola spokesperson said: “Our packaging is not only valuable, but is also essential for our business and vital for people to be able to enjoy our drinks. Any changes to policy around it are therefore important to us and so no one should be surprised that we closely follow these discussions.

“We meet with a wide range of organisations and individuals with an interest in a given topic, including politicians, Government officials, charities and campaign groups, to understand their latest thinking on policy issues.

“In Scotland, along with other drinks manufacturers, we have had several constructive meetings with the Government, policy makers, industry groups and NGOs to discuss plans to reduce littering and increase recycling.”

16 million plastic bottles going to waste every year – in the UK alone

As many as 16 million plastic bottles go unrecycled in the UK every day. The average household recycles just 270 of the 480 plastic bottles they use a year, according to campaign group Recycle Now.

Many of those bottles that are not recycled can end up littering our local environment, blowing into ditches, rivers and streams, and ultimately disfiguring our beaches and polluting the seas, with devastating impacts on marine wildlife.

DRS involves adding a small deposit to plastic bottles at sale, which is returned once the bottles are returned to collection points. In Germany, the introduction of a DRS led to 98.5% of refillable bottles being returned by consumers, according to Zero Waste Europe.

The scheme has been likened to the plastic bag charge which reportedly caused bag usage to drop dramatically across the UK.

However, drinks companies have been less than enthusiastic about the prospect of a DRS in Scotland. The leaked internal report from Coca Cola Europe includes a risk matrix which outlines possible EU policies that could impact the company’s business. Circled by the label ‘Fight back’ is a point marked ‘EU scheme for deposit system’.

The same document, and others leaked in the tranche, also revealed the company’s intention to push back against a proposed sugar tax amongst other initiatives.

‘Looking to force our hand’

Our investigation reveals Coca-Cola’s ‘fight back’ has, in fact, been going on for years. Documents released to Energydesk under Freedom of Information requests, show that representatives from Coca Cola have been lobbying Scottish ministers to drop the DRS scheme for at least the past two years

Coca Cola is part of industry group Packaging Recycling Group Scotland (PRGS). In January 2014 that group – including the Coca Cola’s Managing Director – met with then-Secretary of Rural Affairs Richard Lochhead to discuss the DRS plans. In that meeting was Simon Baldry, Managing Director of Coca-Cola Enterprises.

Almost exactly a year later the Coke’s VP of Public Affairs met again with Lochhead, accompanied by representatives from PRGS.

Lochhead’s briefing notes from that meeting, supplied through FOI, note: “PRGS will be seeking to force our hand on deposit return – and will be looking to leave the meeting with a commitment that it will be taken off the table as an option for consideration for the foreseeable future.”

As spokesperson from PRGS said: “PRGS represents a broad range of businesses whose customers could be impacted by the introduction of a deposit return scheme. The formulation of good policy requires government to hear the views of all parties and assess those views in relation to its policy objectives.

“The government has consulted charities, NGOs and business while considering the potential of a deposit return scheme. In common with others, PRGS has been happy to set out the issues and consequences we believe would arise.”

Lobbying across the UK

The lobby group tried setting up meetings with other politicians, including John Swinney, Fergus Ewing and Marco Biagi. But in each case they were told it was only appropriate to meet with Lochhead. However, Lochhead held strong.

Coca Cola then changed their target. A visit by SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon to a Coca Cola bottling plant in East Kilbride in July 2015, provided another opportunity for lobbying.

In a follow-up letter from PRGS to Sturgeon’s office, uncovered by The Ferret, the lobbying group notes that the issue of DRS was brought up during Sturgeon’s visit to the Coca Cola factory.

The letter goes on to argue that a DRS scheme would “cause expense and inconvenience to consumers, particularly vulnerable people; damage business and existing recycling and anti-littering initiatives … And increase carbon emissions and environmental impact.”

While DRS has been discussed for years in Scotland, it has not yet been seriously considered in England and Wales. However, last week environment minister Therese Coffey responded to a question about DRS saying the government is “developing a new litter strategy which may well address this issue.”

Coca Cola has also been talking to ministers in Westminster. Records show that in January 2016 they met with Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs representative George Eustice to discuss “the food and drink sector”.

Then in March 2016 Coca Cola and many other companies met with Rory Stewart, who was then DEFRA’s Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, to talk about the ‘circular economy’ which involves companies taking responsibility for waste products. Minutes for these meetings were not made available.

A Coca Cola spokesperson said: “We hold regular meetings with NGOs to update them on our progress towards delivering our current ambitions to boost the sustainability of our packaging and seek their advice on where we could improve things in future.

Only last week, we organised a round table with 15 expert organisations and campaign groups, including Greenpeace, to ask them what more they thought we should be doing to help improve packaging recovery and recycling in the UK.

“We support recovery and recycling of our packaging and we want to help find ways to ensure that less of it is littered and ends up in the sea. Whilst we support and participate in deposit schemes in some countries, in some cases we have believed a different approach could be more effective and more sustainable than DRS – and in the UK we have raised some concerns about the impact of a DRS scheme on household recycling rates.

“However, we are open to engaging in constructive dialogue and working with others to create effective, long-term solutions.”

Clarissa Morawski, Managing Director of Reloop, said: “The tactics used around the world by big business opponents of deposit systems are very familiar by now. They are always determined not to take responsibility for the litter the current approach generates, but they cloak this in concern for small businesses and local taxpayers, despite the evidence that both do very well out of such systems.

“Industry would much rather put a token sum into anti-litter media campaigns, as if that can solve the problem, than sit down and work with business supporters and other stakeholders to design systems that can work well for them.”

DRS could ‘increase our costs and reduce demand for our products’

In an published consultation on the Scottish deposit return scheme, Coca Cola argued against the idea of DRS. They warned that “no cost-benefit analysis has been undertaken” and that “Consumers don’t want it.” They also note: “Scottish businesses, such as ours, will be negatively impacted.”

In fact the concept of a deposit return scheme appears to be popular in Scotland. A Greenpeace survey, under taken by Survation, of a sample group of more than 1,000 people found that more than three quarters said they would support a deposit return system in Scotland. A different survey by Sky News found that across the UK, 60% of respondents support DRS.

Instead the company’s financial reports reveal that it was seriously concerned that DRS could impact its profits.

In Coca Cola’s 2015 Annual Report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company notes: “Changes in laws and regulations relating to beverage containers and packaging could increase our costs and reduce demand for our products.”

The report notes an increased interest in recycling and “beverage container deposits” and goes on to say: “If these types of requirements are adopted and implemented on a large scale in any of the major markets in which we operate, they could affect our costs or require changes in our distribution model, which could reduce our net operating revenues and profitability.”

But Coca Cola’s massive EU lobbying effort may prove fruitless

The latest EU Commission transparency register shows Coca Cola spent more than €900,000 lobbying the commissioner in 2015. That work involved at least 11 Coca Cola employees.

But the company also pushed for change through other groups. Nikolaus Tacke, Coca Cola EU’s Public Affairs Director, was appointed to the board of American Chamber of Commerce to the EU in March 2015.

Energydesk has learnt that as recently as December 2016, Coca Cola representatives were still meeting with European Commission ministers, to push for change on recycling issues and to discuss deposit return schemes.

Environmental campaigners argue the lobbying is unlikely to prove successful.

Samantha Harding, Litter Programme Director at the Campaign to Protect Rural England said: “The plastic lobbyists are frantically trying to shore up a sinking ship. People have woken up to the ridiculousness of using an indestructible product for single-use packaging. They see through the traditional status quo that allows producers to make what they like and to hell with the consequences.”

While Reloop’s Morawski noted that Coca Cola and other companies had put up similar resistance in other countries only to change message when schemes were implemented.

After implementation, she said, “Coca Cola and others often magically find it’s not a problem for them, or even that this approach helps them meet their environmental targets. I sense we might not be far off that moment across the UK.”

Maeve McClenaghan is a freelance journalist and Senior Investigator for Greenpeace UK whose reports regularly feature on Energydesk. See her website or follow her on Twitter @MaeveMCC.

Sign the petition: ‘I support the creation of a plastic bottle deposit return scheme‘.

Read the documents: Leaked report and lobbying FOI response

This article was orginally published on Greenpeace Energydesk.

Trump’s war on humanity – which side are we on?

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The UN, the EU, the US Armed Forces and all the world’s major scientific bodies all agree that the climate emergency is the greatest threat facing humanity.

Meanwhile over 7 million people across the globe are dying every year from the air pollution caused by burning fossil fuels.

Yet Trump, with (as usual) zero factual evidence, believes that climate change is a “hoax” invented by China – who by the way have announced a $360 billion investment in clean renewable energy.

In a chilling statement on Monday, President Trump’s top environmental transition adviser Myron Ebell declared that the environmental movement is “the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world.”

So it is not authoritarian Russia;
it is not communist China;
it is not Islamic fundamentalist extremism;
it is not the western corporate takeover of media and democracy;
it is not global tax-evasion by the wealthiest 1%;
and it is not the concentration of over half the world’s wealth in the hands of just eight men.

According to Trump’s adviser, all of these are nothing when compared to the threat to freedom posed by … envirionmental NGOs.

According to him, they are our greatest “threat” by working peacefully with civic society and democratic processes to protect people from being poisoned by lead from coal burning, mercury from oil burning, particulates from diesel burning or to protect the what remains of the natural world, with over 60% of it already shamelessly destroyed in just my lifetime.

This is dangerous perverted logic.

But why do I say chilling?

I say it because the oiligarchy of Exxon Mobil and the Koch brothers for whom Trump’s adviser is the spokesperson for, now control almost all the levers of power in the US, from the Presidency to Congress to Murdoch’s Fox News and most terrifyingly to the US National Security Council, the State Department and the intelligence services.

If Trump’s fascist propaganda succeeds in making environmental NGOs and peaceful campaigners the public’s top ‘enemy of freedom’, then all the huge resources of the US security services could rain down on them, a tiny taste of which we have seen at the North Dakota Pipeline Protection Camp.

So what aggressive war actions has Trump already taken?

Declared he would renege on the USA’s responsibilities to the global Paris Climate Treaty, humanity’s best last hope of averting the worst of the climate disaster.
Appointed the head of Exxon Mobil to head up US State Department, meaning that the oil industry now leads US global foreign policy, giving it the opportunity to trash climate action not only in Trump’s USA but across the globe.
Appointed a far-right extremist climate science denier to head up the destruction of the Environmental Protection Agency, and already issued a gagging order on all government employed climate scientists and banned any replacements for retiring scientists.
Announced he will slash energy efficiency standards for fossil fuel car manufacturers.
Removed all climate change references from the White House website.
Said he will support a resurgence in the criminally lethal coal industry, the single largest source of fossil fuel pollution and climate destroying carbon.
Pledged to renege on all US treaty commitments to fund climate change protection and adaptation funding for developing countries via the UN.

The list goes on …

Make no mistake!

After the hottest year (again),
after the hottest decade (again),
with ice-caps melting before our eyes,
with the permafrost heating up,
with wildfires blazing across the world
and with scientists stating that without truly urgent action, the planet faces temperature rises of up to 6C, which as they say is “incompatible with life as we know it”,

Trump has not just declared war on Muslims, but on humanity itself and the precious fragile remaining damaged ecosystems on which future generations depend.

Do what can we do? Today I would suggest six things to get started with:

Commit yourself to living as low a carbon lifestyle as you can practically achieve.
Email your MP urgently today, urging them to vote for an amendment today that would grant the British people the final say on Brexit Deal. The UK must stand united with the liberal democracies of Europe, against the Brexit / Trump climate destruction agenda. Really easy to do from this link.
Join the Advertising Action on Climate Projects campaigns to stop the climate action blocking media billoinaires climate denialism propaganda.
Support in whatever way you can, the peaceful climate activists and protests which are on the frontlines now, on the Keystone XL Pipeline, North Dakota Pipeline, Preston Road Fracking Protest (and others around UK), Risingup Heathrow Protests, Stop Killing Cyclists HM Treasury Protest on February 11th, etc etc …
Sign the huge petition calling for refusal of State Visit to war-mongering President Trump.
What ever other actions, you personally are moved to undertake.

This is the greatest war threat that humanity has faced. But together, we can take on Trump and the oiligarchies in Russia, US and across the globe and win.

The clean renewable energy industry that we created is now nearly a trillion dollar global industry, slashing costs year after year and now employing more people than the dinosaur fossil fuel criminals, even in the USA.

Yes we can!

Donnachadh McCarthy is an environmental campaigner and author.

Also by Donnachadh on The Ecologist.

Book: ‘The Prostitute State – How Britain’s Democracy Has Been Bought‘ is available as an E-book and paper (100% recycled).

Free ebook version of The Prostitute State, which explains in detail how Murdoch and the UK’s five far-right media billionaires are trashing the UK’s democracy, is available to Occupiers, Fractivists, Momentum / Green Party members, students and others who cannot afford to buy a copy by emailing contact@3acorns.co.uk.