Rob Edwards

RBS involved in £40 billion loans for fossil fuels

from The Guardian, 28 May 2012

The publicly-owned Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has been involved in at least £40 billion worth of loans to fossil fuel companies around the world over the last six months, according to a new analysis seen by The Guardian. 

RBS has played a leading role in funding coal, oil and gas industries in the US, Europe and Asia, despite their major contribution to the carbon pollution which scientists say is disrupting the global climate. 

The bank, which is 82% owned by the UK government, is due to stage its annual general meeting at its Edinburgh headquarters on 30 May. It has come under fierce fire from environmental groups for bankrolling projects that are “environmentally and socially destructive”.

RBS, however, pointed out that it was not the only bank involved in the loans, and that society was “heavily reliant” on fossil fuels. The bank was the biggest lender to renewable projects in the UK, it said.

But the analysis for Friends of the Earth Scotland (FoES) concluded that only £3 billion of all the £67 billion power and energy loans that RBS helped fund between October 2011 and March 2012 were for renewable electricity projects.

By far the biggest chunk - £37 billion – went to oil and gas extraction, refining and distribution industries, with a further £2.5 billion to fossil fuel electricity generation. The remaining £24.5 billion were for electricity and gas utilities, networks, financiers and others, where it’s difficult to know the level of fossil fuel investment. 

The loans included £414 million for coal-fired power stations in India, plus investments in the US coal giant, Duke Energy, and the London-based exploration company, Tullow Oil. RBS was also said to be involved in arranging a £7.5 billion loan package to the US oil firm, ConocoPhillips, which has been criticised for a spill in northern China and for its links to tar sands extraction in Alberta.

The UK loophole that permits massive coal pollution

from Sunday Herald, 27 May 2012

A loophole in the UK government’s new energy bill will allow the coal-fired power station proposed for Hunterston in North Ayrshire to belch out hundreds of millions of tonnes of climate pollution and wreck Scotland’s targets to cut emissions.

The hitherto unnoticed get-out clause was slipped in by Westminster after lobbying behind the scenes by the coal industry, and contradicts promises made by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, and the Liberal Democrats. It has been condemned as “utterly ridiculous” and “crazy” by leading environmental groups.

The loophole exempts coal stations that adopt government-approved technologies to trap carbon emissions from tough new limits on pollution. But the technologies – known as carbon capture and storage (CCS) – may only cover a minority of the pollution, and may not work.

The £3 billion coal station planned for Hunterston by Ayrshire Power, set up by the property company, Peel Holdings, is intending to trap less than a fifth of its emissions with CCS technology. Due to face a public inquiry later this year, it has prompted over 20,000 objections, making it one of Scotland’s most disputed planning applications.

The loophole was inserted in the UK energy bill’s small print to appease coal companies anxious about their future. An internal industry memo in December to the UK energy minister, Charles Hendry, set out what they wanted in the bill.

Hendry was urged “to re-affirm the government’s interest in coal-fired electricity production” by adopting measures to maintain the annual 20-million-tonne market for coal. This could include offering “relief in some form” from new pollution limits for plants with CCS, the memo said.

The Scottish towns most at risk from the recession

from Sunday Herald, 27 May 2012

Towns in the south west of Scotland face a grim and uncertain future because they are most at risk from the recession, according to an authoritative new analysis of the state of rural Scotland.

Nine out of the ten towns judged to be most vulnerable to job losses and cutbacks are in Ayrshire, Argyll and Dumfries and Galloway. The worst off are said to be Campbeltown and Dunoon, which share joint first place in the league of economic losers. 

Other towns that feature high in the so-called “vulnerability index” are Girvan, Stranraer, Sanquhar, Cumnock, Ayr, Maybole and Kilwinning. The only place in the top ten that is not in the south west is the village of Castlebay on the island of Barra.

The index has been drawn up the Scottish Agricultural College’s Rural Policy Centre as part of a 104-page report to be published tomorrow. It suggests, according to the centre’s Dr Jane Atterton, that some communities could die.

“Ongoing vulnerability in some settlements may lead to increasing unemployment, population out-migration and a decline in local service provision, and may place the long-term sustainability of these settlements at risk,” she warned.

“This has implications for the population of the town itself, and of its surrounding rural hinterland in terms of the ability of people to access vital services, including employment and health care. This is particularly the case in remoter areas where residents often have limited choice in terms of the service centres they can access.”

Scotland’s rural areas – more people, less jobs and twilight zones

for Sunday Herald, 27 May 2012

More people are expected to live in most of rural Scotland in the next 20 years, but there are likely to be fewer jobs for them to do.

Those are two of the headline findings from one of the most comprehensive surveys of the state of the nation’s smaller towns and villages, due to be unveiled tomorrow.

The report, compiled by experts from the Scottish Agricultural College’s Rural Policy Centre in Edinburgh, also sounds clear warnings about the need to boost business and voluntary activity, bring superfast broadband and cut climate pollution.

Projections suggest that overall Scotland’s rural population will grow 10% by 2035. The largest increases are likely to be in prosperous areas like Perth and Kinross, where a rise of 32% is predicted, and in places close to the main cities.

In remoter areas, however, the population will decline, with an 11 per cent drop forecast in the Western Isles. “Migration into and out of rural areas is a key aspect of this growth and decline,” said the report’s editor, Dr Sarah Skerratt.

“Younger people often leave to find opportunities for jobs, entertainment, and education. Families with young children move back to rural areas, as well as retirees who may have holidayed in those areas for years.”

But she warned that private and public sector employment were likely to decline over the next few years. “When a small business closes, the impact can be significant in rural towns and villages,” she said.

“Rural areas typically see many people employed in the council, hospitals, doctor’s surgeries and schools, so as public resources continue to be reduced and targeted, employment impacts will continue to be felt at individual, household and community level.”

Revealed: the dinners that drove disputed Indian oil deal

from Sunday Herald, 20 May 2012

Westminster secretly lobbied the Indian government to give the go-ahead to a disputed multi-billion pound deal with a leading Scottish oil company, internal emails passed to the Sunday Herald reveal. 

UK government officials, briefed “over dinner” by Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy, offered to “polish” and send a letter drafted by the company. At a lunch, they also had a quiet word urging a key Indian government minister to back the deal.

The Indian government subsequently gave permission for Cairn’s £5.5 billion deal to sell off the bulk of its Indian oil business to Vedanta, an Indian mining and metals giant much criticised by human rights and environmental groups. The deal, labeled “the largest transaction ever to happen in India”, is now being challenged in the Indian Supreme Court.

The UK government has been condemned for doing Cairn’s bidding “slavishly” and “shamelessly” by campaign groups. “The political and industrial elite of India conspire with their counterparts in other countries to short-change local people and hand over national resources on a platter to multinationals,” said the leading Indian campaigner, Nityanand Jayaraman.

The controversial deal with Vedanta was at the root of the shareholder rebellion that swept through Cairn’s AGM in Edinburgh on Thursday. Plans to reward the company’s founder and chairman, Sir Bill Gammell, up to £5 million in bonuses for securing the deal were voted down two-to-one by shareholders.

The 75 ways in which UK nuclear plants failed to respond to Fukushima

17 May 2012

The operators of Britain’s ageing nuclear plants at Sellafield and Aldermaston have failed to properly assess the risks of floods, fires, extreme weather, earthquakes and power failures in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan last year, according to the government’s nuclear safety watchdog.

A 324-page report by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) also criticises BAE Systems and Rolls Royce for shortfalls in emergency arrangements at their nuclear submarine plants in Barrow and Derby.

The report, released this week, assesses the plans for dealing with Fukushima-like events at over 20 nuclear sites across the UK, including military bases, defunct reactors and processing plants. Known as “stress tests”, the assessments are meant to ensure that plants could withstand extreme events without triggering disaster.

But although the ONR report concluded that there were “no serious safety weaknesses”, it highlighted 75 areas where arrangements were inadequate and more work had to be done. These include better protection against floods, fires, storms, snow and earthquakes, as well as improved back-up power supplies in emergencies.

ONR made 25 recommendations to improve safety at the Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria and ten at the nuclear bomb factories at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire. Submarine plants run by Rolls Royce near Derby were required to make 12 improvements, while ten have to be made at BAE Systems shipyard in Barrow.

Torness nuclear reactor shut down by electrical "fault"

One of the reactors at the Torness nuclear power station in East Lothian has been shut down because of a "fault" in an electrical system, according to the operators, EDF Energy.

The reactor was unexpectedly closed on Sunday but until now no explanation has been offered as to why. But in a letter today to the local liaison committee, the station's director, Paul Winkle, has admitted that something went wrong.

"Reactor 2 was automatically shut down due to a fault on a component within the protection equipment on one of our electrical systems," he said.

"This equipment is designed to ‘fail safe’; in other words a fault with protection will result in a safe reactor shut down. The reactor shut down safely and cooling to the reactor was maintained at all times."

Winkle insisted that there were no health or environmental impacts. The reactor was scheduled to be shut down for maintenance later this week. "We will now take the opportunity to start some of this work early," he added.

Fire safety lapses at nuclear plant ‘could cause accident’

from Sunday Herald, 13 May 2012

Allegations that scores of fire safety lapses could trigger a serious accident at the Hunterston B nuclear power station in North Ayrshire are under investigation by the UK government’s nuclear safety watchdog, the Sunday Herald can reveal. 

The station’s former fire safety officer, Maxwell Lyall, has warned that numerous flaws in fire doors, seals and other critical safety measures could lead to loss of life and leaking radioactivity in the event of a fire. He has accused contractors of cutting corners, covering up mistakes and putting public safety at risk.

The Office for Nuclear Regulation said that Lyall had identified some areas where safety could be improved and that its inspectors were examining “specific elements” of his allegations. His concerns will also be raised at the next meeting of Hunterston’s official site stakeholder group in Ardrossan on 7 June. 

Lyall has been backed by his local SNP MSP and Scottish education minister, Michael Russell, who is demanding urgent action. “I take his accusations very seriously indeed,” Russell said.

“If they are correct and are confirmed, Hunterston would have to be closed immediately. We need to know as quickly as possible whether they are true.”

Green watchdog accused of “going soft” on polluters

from Sunday Herald, 06 May 2012

Moves by the government’s green watchdog to half the number of company inspections and cut back on environmental monitoring have prompted accusations that it is “going soft” on polluters.

In order to save money and reduce red tape, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) is conducting far fewer checks on businesses and has slashed by more than a quarter the samples it takes from rivers. The number of enforcement actions against polluters has also fallen 22% over the last two years. 

Sepa says that it is pursuing “better regulation” that will more effectively target resources to reduce environmental harm, and denies that it is letting polluters off the hook. But its critics say it is just trying to make the best of a bad job.

“Despite protestations to the contrary, evidence shows that less regulation almost invariably leads to companies that pollute escaping detection,” said Professor Andrew Watterson, head of the occupational and environmental health research group at the University of Stirling.

Sepa’s decision to reduce effective oversight of potential polluters was “tragic” because it would lead to weaker protection of human health and the environment, he argued. “Going soft on regulation by having soft regulations and enforcing them softly will lead to greater pollution threats in Scotland.”

Hundreds of sites could be contaminated with radioactive waste, says government report

from The Guardian, 02 May 2012

Hundreds of sites across England and Wales could be contaminated with radioactive waste from old military bases and factories, according to a new government report.

Up to 1,000 sites could be polluted, though the best guess is that between 150 and 250 are, says a report on contaminated land released last month by the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

This is far higher than previous official estimates, with evidence from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) last December suggesting that there were just 15 sites in the UK contaminated with radium from old planes and other equipment.

The MoD has come under fire from the former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, for trying to evade responsibility for cleaning up the contamination it has caused. His constituency in Fife, north of Edinburgh, includes one of the most notorious examples of radioactive pollution at Dalgety Bay.

In the last year, the MoD has realised that there are others areas of radioactive contamination across the country that may need to be cleaned up, Brown said. “They’ve started to use their lawyers to get out of what is, in the first place, I think, a moral responsibility and in the second place, will become a legal responsibility.”

People power wind turbine blocked by Scottish Water

from The Herald, 01 May 2012

A pioneering plan for Scotland’s first ‘people power’ wind turbine in an urban area has been blocked by Scottish Water because of an insurance hitch, undermining ministers’ attempts to boost locally-owned renewable energy developments.

The voluntary groups proposing to build a large wind turbine at Seafield sewage works in Leith, Edinburgh, are furious that they have been thwarted by the government-owned company, despite having already received backing from the Scottish government and from the private sector.

They are now demanding that ministers step in and order Scottish Water to find a way of enabling the turbine to be built. “We are bitterly disappointed to have got this far only for the project to be stalled on what looks like a technicality,” said Charlotte Encombe, chair of the Greener Leith group.

“We are exploring every available option to resolve this impasse, and will not give up on the project yet. We owe it to the thousands of supporters who voted for us, the hundreds of local people who will benefit and our project funders to try to find a way to break the deadlock.”

Greener Leith, along with the neighbouring group, Portobello Transition Town, proposed building a turbine to be owned and run for the benefit of local people three years ago. Experts identified Seafield sewage works as the best site, and all the funding is now in place to make a planning application.

RSPB accused of acting ‘like Donald Trump’

from The Herald, 01 May 2012 

One of Scotland’s biggest environment organisations, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), has been accused of acting “like Donald Trump” by trying to dictate the route of a popular footpath around a loch.

Local residents and the recreation group, Ramblers Scotland, are angry that RSPB Scotland wants the 200,000 walkers, runners and cyclists who use the Loch Leven Heritage Trail near Kinross every year to take a detour around its nature reserve in order to protect birds.

But, in a fierce counter-attack, the RSPB has insisted that the route through the reserve proposed by Ramblers Scotland would cause “considerable damage” to one of the UK’s most important areas for wintering geese and ducks. It was under a legal obligation to protect the wildlife, the conservation group said.

Following prolonged negotiations, a planning application to complete the footpath around Loch Leven has been submitted to Perth and Kinross Council. But at the insistence of the RSPB it follows a road skirting around the outside of its reserve at Vane Farm on the southern shore of the loch. 

But this route also takes it around the homes of two local residents, who have attacked the RSPB for being a bad neighbour. “The RSPB is operating like a commercial company not like a charity,” said John Haynes (51), a joiner who lives in West Newhall Cottage.