by Andy Gheorghiu

Read Part I

Alleged “Frack-Free” Germany

Many people think that Germany has banned fracking but this is not completely true. And even the existing partial ban is at risk at the moment.

Let’s have a look at the legal framework: In Germany, fracking is officially banned outright in shale and coal bed methane layers until 2021. However, with the approval of an expert panel established in June 2018, up to four fracking research projects in these layers might be allowed and conducted.

In addition, fracking and fracking waste disposal is also prohibited in designated water protection areas, areas with water bodies linking to natural lakes or dams that serve as public water supplies, areas with wells for the production of beverages or drinks, or areas that fall under the water security law.

However, the details of Germany’s current fracking legal framework reveal a number of cracks. Just as in the UK, nature protection zones and national parks appear to be protected. However, this protection only applies to the construction of facilities related to fracking projects directly in the park. It does not prohibit drilling projects from being authorised just outside the protected areas. This allows operators to drill horizontally under them, thereby putting these restricted areas at risk.

The legislation also includes a ban on fracking within the European nature protection zones, the so-called Natura-2000 areas, but this only covers the construction of facilities related to shale gas and coal bed methane projects. In other words, other kinds of tight gas or oil development involving the use of fracking would be allowed. Tight gas is usually extracted from sandstone or limestone layers. The ongoing lobbying of the oil and gas industry has been so sucessfull that the German government has even re-branded sandstone and limestone layers as “conventional layers’ in order to creat the artificial term of “conventional fracking” – which helps tight gas fracking bypass the otherwise applicable ban.

Furthermore, an official request to the German government revealed that Germany provides public funding of €4.75 million towards the above-mentioned fracking research projects.

With this policy, the German government undermines its own goal of being a climate protection leader.

Read the full article…

by Andy Gheorghiu

Part I

Many folks around the world see Germany as a progressive “green energy“ country and think it has banned fracking. Unfortunately, both statements are untrue.

In October 2017, federal environment ministry calculations showed that – without further action – Germany would miss its 2020 climate target by a wider margin than previously anticipated (a drop in emissions of only 31 – 33 percent instead of 40 percent).

But instead of increasing desperately needed further actions, the current (and former) government watered down the 2020 emission reduction goal. Conservatives (CDU) and Socialdemocrats (SPD) now want to close the current gap “as much as possible” and reach the target “as soon as possible”.

However, it is simply beyond belief that this is anythiing but a spineless promise particularly if we take a closer look at Germany’s gas consumption.

“Gassy” Germany Beats “Green” Germany

 Despite its “green” image, Germany remains the biggest gas consumer in Europe. With almost 92 billion cubic metres (bcm) of consumption in 2017, fossil gas accounted for 24 percent in Germany’s primary energy consumption.
Read the full article…

by Andy Gheorghiu

The Green Island is on a positive path towards a fossil-free future. However, things are far from perfect and the country might even miss the 2020 climate targets, which could force Ireland to pay fines of up to €600m.

But despite the hard economic struggles that the small and proud nation had to navigate through, Ireland made some real progress towards a sustainable, clean energy future.

Green Island banned onshore fracking and wants to divest from fossil fuels

In the Summer of 2017, the Ireland banned onshore fracking, enacting the best formulated fracking ban legislation in Europe. It doesn’t include “offshore” fracking, but Irish activists won’t stop until offshore fracking is also banned.

Previously, in January 2017, the Irish Parliament (Dàil) had voted in favour of divesting coal, oil and gas holdings from the €8 billion Ireland Strategic Investment Fund. The Fossil Fuel Divestment Bill is set to go to report stage ahead of the Dáil’s 2018 summer recess.

In April 2018, on Earth Day, a group of several Catholic institutions (including the Sisters of St. Joseph of Chambery and Sisters of Mercy, from the Northern Province in Ireland) announced a partial divestment from the fossil fuel industry – as did the Church of Ireland in May 2018. These developments should also encourage the Catholic Church of Ireland to do something against the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure in the country.
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ExxonMobil has lied about the facts of climate change for decades.

Ask the European Parliament to hold the oil and gas giant accountable for its disinformation campaign!

Send an email or tweet to the coordinators of the petition campaign:

Send an email to: [email protected]

Send an email to: [email protected]

Sample email: Subject: Support petition 0900/2016 – hold ExxonMobil accountable for its climate-change denial campaign

For half a century, ExxonMobil knows that its fossil fuel activities aggravate climate change. Nevertheless, the company decided to hide these facts and started a disinformation campaign. Today, oil and gas giant ExxonMobil is active in several EU Member States and among the biggest greenhouse gas emitters globally. While in the US an initially promising vigorous push to hold the corporation accountable was recently stalled, it is crucial that the issue is discussed at EU level. The EU has to protect its citizens and companies such as ExxonMobil have to be required to provide honest and transparent information – a request which is certainly not conflicting with freedom of speech.

I am asking you, a representative of the European Parliament, to take appropriate measures and do everything possible to convince ExxonMobil to act in line with the Paris Agreement and communicate the evidence of climate change appropriately.

Kind regards, ________

Tweet: Peter Jahr

Tweet: Beatriz Becerra

Sample tweet: #ExxonKnew about climate change since the 70s-yet they lied about it. @peter_jahr @beatrizbecerrab please support petition 0900/2016 on ExxonMobil during the upcoming Coordinators meeting and protect EU citizens from the #oil& #gas giant’s denial campaigns! #beyondgas #beyondoil

Do you want to know more about this issue?

Read about the ExxonMobil climate change denial campaign in our blog.

Change to ASEA law would have enabled conflicts of interest in environmental monitoring of fossil fuel industry in Mexico

This is the translation of a blog written by the Mexican Alliance Against Fracking (Alianza Mexicana contra el Fracking), a coalition of 40 local, state and national organizations in Mexico advocating for a ban on fracking. Food & Water Watch is part of this coalition.

Thanks to the work of organizations supported by citizens and some lawmakers, we managed to prevent a legislative proposal that would have possibly enabled dangerous conflicts of interest in the environmental monitoring authority of the fossil fuels sector in Mexico.

Two weeks before the end of the last legislative session, the Committee on Environment and Human Resources of the Chamber of Deputies passed an amendment to change the Law of the National Agency of Industrial Security and Environmental Protection in the fossil fuel sector (ASEA). The Mexican Alliance Against Fracking (Alianza Mexicana contra el Fracking) set out to assess this proposal, then reported on the significant risks it posed.

With the passage of energy reform in Mexico in 2013, ASEA was created to follow environmental issues specific to fossil fuel development. This has meant that instead of Mexico’s federal environmental agency (Semarnat) plus the environmental attorney’s office (Profepa) that have traditionally been in charge of all environmental issues, Mexico now has ASEA that oversees drafting regulations and permitting, monitoring, and sanctioning oil and gas companies. This agency has been bad news for communities and great news for the industry, because all permits have been fast tracked. This agency has shown significant deficiencies, including a clear distance to communities affected by contamination through fossil fuel operations.
Read the full article…

Ineos CEO James Ratcliffe makes a fortune from fracking in the U.S. Now he wants to frack the UK—but community resistance is stopping him

The British media are buzzing about a big change at the top: The richest man in the UK, it turns out, is now a fabulously wealthy chemical CEO who tries to keep a low profile.

Jim Ratcliffe made it to the very top of the Sunday Times’ “Rich List” with a fortune of around $28 billion. Many of the stories about him point out that he is publicity shy and came from relatively humble beginnings, amassing considerable wealth all on his own.

But Ratcliff’s road to riches sounds pretty familiar: it was paved with risky corporate takeovers, a hostility to workers’ rights, and a willingness to cut corners on safety and violate environmental regulations the world over.

While he might be eager to avoid the spotlight, Food & Water Watch has been raising awareness about Ineos on both sides of the Atlantic. Ineos is a petrochemical giant that relies on fracking to provide the raw materials to create plastics around the world. The company has amassed a terrifying record of environmental and public health disasters—air and climate pollution, massive fires and other industrial accidents, and alarming emissions of carbon dioxide. He’s already benefitting from fracking in Pennsylvania, where communities are fighting the Mariner East 2 pipeline that would bring even more raw materials to the UK for Ineos to convert into plastics for profit.

But Ratcliffe wants more. His nightmare vision for the UK is to bring fracking to Scotland and England. The company holds valuable shale licenses and aims to start drilling in sensitive areas in both countries.

Read the full article…

Have your say on the building of a huge fracked gas LNG terminal by May 13th.

Ireland banned fracking but Sambolo Resources wants to open one of Europe’s biggest projects to process fracked material in a Shannon Estuary nature reserve where whales and dolphins swim. Right now, they’re trying to renew planning permission with An Bord Pleanála – who have acted very strangely.

The proposed plant is called Shannon LNG and it is huge: the proposed final maximum regasification capacity of at least 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year would equal the European Union’s most ambitious gas project, the Southern Gas Corridor, and supply Ireland’s fossil gas needs twice over. Fracked hydrocarbons would be tankered in from the United States, processed and much of it then sent to Europe. This project is a game changer, especially in jittery Brexit times.

Read the full article…

On 21 March Food & Water Europe co-organized a webinar on methane with Robert Howarth, Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology at Cornell University. Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas that is closely linked to the extraction and transport of fossil gas.

Howarth states that methane emission reductions are crucial if the global community wants to have a chance to stay well below 2 degrees global warming (a temperature rise beyond 2 degrees is more than dangerous for humanity). There has been a clear rise in methane emissions in the past few years: methane emissions from human activity have increased by 170 percent.

Read the full article…

See the 24 July 2019 updated blog

By Andy Gheorghiu and Frida Kieninger

This month, Food & Water Europe analyzed the utilization rate of EU LNG terminals based on data from Gas Infrastructure Europe. LNG terminals are facilities that enable the import of liquefied natural gas (LNG), gas that is cooled down so its volume is reduced by a ratio of 1:600 and can be shipped across the ocean via LNG tankers.

What is a utilization rate, and why does it matter?

The utilization rate is the percentage at which existing LNG infrastructure is actually being used. In other words, if a terminal has an annual import capacity of 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas, but only imports 5 bcm, its utilization rate is at 50 percent.

The time period we looked at was from 2012 until early 2018 and it is striking at how little these costly facilities have been used during the past six years. It is important to take into account the low utilization rates since they show clearly that there is no need to invest in more LNG facilities. Nevertheless, there is a push for more LNG terminals in Europe and several of these costly facilities are being planned. If we don’t want to lock Europe into even more fossil fuels and move to a renewable energy system, we cannot waste money on LNG infrastructure but have to channel as much financial and political support as possible to renewables.
Read the full article…

By Frida Kieninger

The fossil fuel industry has been trying hard to promote gas in many forms as “sustainable” or “green”. There are different ways of producing gas that the industry calls renewable, but this term is misleading. Is it sustainable or green to create dependence on waste, cut trees for biomass, and produce methane with the same chemical structure and characteristics as fossil gas?

Why does the fossil fuel industry want to promote the idea of non-fossil gas? As big infrastructure operators generally push for gas use in Europe, using the magic idea of renewable gas is very handy for them to justify decades of infrastructure buildout that serves both fossil and non-fossil gas. The question is: Does it add up? Will these gases significantly reduce CO2 emissions? Where does the feedstock for these gases come from? Does all this make economic sense?

Here are a few of the issues that need to be taken into account when we’re talking about non-fossil “renewable” gas.

Biogas: The Biofuels Deja-vu

Since their introduction, biofuels have earned a lot of criticism for their role in land grabs, displacing food crops for energy, loss of biodiversity, climate change and pollution. While biofuels – liquid fuels based on biomass – turned out to be a very bad idea, something similar seems to have been re-introduced through the back door: biogas. Biogas is a mix of gases generated through the breakdown of organic matter through anaerobic digestion (digestion in the absence of oxygen).

Feedstock for biogas, for example, can be waste, sewage sludge, energy crops, manure or biomass. Using waste to generate energy can make sense in a few limited cases but we should not lock ourselves into a society dependent on producing enough waste that we can heat our homes or cook. Also, using manure will turn into an issue sooner rather than later, quite apart from the fact that manure does not automatically create methane and to a big extent it can be avoided. Biogas production is no justification for big agribusiness. But in Europe, big factory farms may only get built because they commit to produce biogas.

Read the full article…