Archives: Press Releases

La Coordinadora Stop Ganadería Industrial demanda al Gobierno de España una moratoria a la ganadería industrial

Categories

Fossil Fuels

¡Firma la petición!

  • La Coordinadora Estatal Stop Ganadería Industrial lanza hoy 22 de diciembre una recogida de firmas en apoyo de su petición de una moratoria a la ganadería industrial en España.
  • Se pide al Ministro de Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentación y a la Ministra para la Transición Ecológica y el Reto Demográfico que, en base a sus competencias, se suspenda la concesión de licencias de nueva creación y ampliación para explotaciones de ganadería intensiva ante su proliferación desmesurada y descontrolada en España.
  • Las explotaciones ganaderas intensivas generan graves riesgos para la salud pública, el medioambiente, el mundo rural y el bienestar animal, por lo que es urgente actuar.

 

Para la Coordinadora Estatal Stop Ganadería Industrial, que agrupa decenas de movimientos vecinales rurales de diversos lugares de España junto con organizaciones nacionales e internacionales, la desmesurada y descontrolada expansión de la ganadería intensiva en España en los últimos años, que ha encontrado una fuerte contestación social, requiere que la Administración del Estado tome medidas para regular este sector con una visión de conjunto.

“No se está evaluando la capacidad de cada territorio para acoger este tipo de actividades, que son más industriales que ganaderas, lo que está llevando a que muchos pueblos se queden sin agua potable”, asegura Inma Lozano, portavoz de la Coordinadora Estatal. “En el medio rural necesitamos empleo de calidad con actividades sostenibles que cuiden de un recurso imprescindible, y un derecho humano, como es el agua”, añade la portavoz.

La Coordinadora Estatal Stop Ganadería Industrial aboga por frenar este crecimiento descontrolado del sector y orientarlo hacia un modelo que responda a las necesidades de las personas consumidoras, los y las ganaderas, la población del medio rural, el medioambiente y la urgente lucha contra la crisis climática. Para ello recoge desde hoy firmas en https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/moratoria-ganaderia-industrial con el apoyo de Food & Water Action Europe, Amigos de la Tierra, Justicia Alimentaria, València Animal Save, Ecologistas en Acción y Compassion in World Farming.

 

 

EU Green Deal Undermined by Infrastructure Legislation that Opens Backdoor for Fossil Gas

Categories

Fossil Fuels

BRUSSELS – The EU Commission’s new proposal for a revised Trans European Networks for Energy (TEN-E) regulation creates, despite improvements, still loopholes for fossil gas, which risk the overall credibility of the European Green Deal.

The legislative proposal determines rules for top-priority cross-border energy infrastructure (Projects of Common Interest or PCIs). It is one of the first energy draft laws since the EU Green Deal was announced one year ago, and aims to  align EU support for infrastructure with climate targets.

“Proudly presenting a TEN-E regulation that fails to exclude climate-wrecking fossil gas projects is beyond cynical, says Frida Kieninger, Campaign Officer at Food & Water Action Europe. “We are in the middle of a climate crisis, and we cannot afford to continue with fossil fuel business as usual, let alone expand fossil fuel infrastructure with tax money. It is now up to the EU Parliament and Council to fix what the EU Commission failed to present: A truly fossil-free TEN-E regulation.”

While Europe needs to swiftly move away from fossil fuels, the TEN-E regulation draft proposes new gas categories which could benefit from streamlined environmental impact assessments, accelerated permitting procedures and EU taxpayers’ money. Both the categories for smart gas grids as well as mega hydrogen pipelines (a ‘hydrogen backbone’) risk being back doors for fossil gas infrastructure which will further lock Europe into a costly and polluting trajectory. 

The EU Commission’s inclusion of hydrogen infrastructure among priority infrastructure in the TEN-E does not specify the kind of hydrogen that should be transported. While less than 0.1% of hydrogen generated in the EU today is renewables-based, fossil fuels-based “blue” hydrogen combined with carbon capture and storage (CCS) to abate CO2 emissions is often hailed as a climate solution. The TEN-E draft proposes both hydrogen and CO2 transport infrastructure as top EU priorities. This risks supporting ‘blue hydrogen’ and CCS, a dangerous, unproven technology which the fossil gas industry promotes as a silver bullet. As long as the TEN-E does not explicitly exclude fossil-based hydrogen, our chances to limit global warming are dire. 

The links between hydrogen and the fossil gas lobby are documented in the recent report ‘The hydrogen hype: Gas industry fairy tale or climate horror story?’

A number of NGOs’ have criticised the crucial role that the current TEN-E grants to the gas transport industry (ENTSO-G) in the PCI selection process. The draft proposal, unfortunately, only suggests minor changes. The blatant conflict of interest the proposal keeps largely unaddressed risks harming its credibility as a legislation in line with EU climate targets.

“It was already unacceptable that the fossil gas-heavy TEN-E allows the fossil gas transport industry to hand out EU tax money to its own members. It is even more unacceptable that a revised TEN-E that wants to be aligned with the Paris Agreement and EU climate targets tasks again the very same fossil gas transport industry to select allegedly ‘green’ infrastructure projects like hydrogen pipes or biogas grids. The companies that have a clear vested interest in expanding the gas network should not be tasked with  building the energy networks of the future,” says Frida Kieninger.

***

Notes to the editor:

Food & Water Action Europe and Friends of the Earth Europe report on the role of ENTSO-G in securing subsidies for its members’ projects, titled “On The Inside: How the gas lobby infiltrates EU decision making on energy” and Global Witness report “Pipe Down How gas companies influence EU policy and have pocketed €4 billion of taxpayers’ money“.

The Commission proposal places ENTSO-G, among other things, at the heart of determining the methodology for the Cost Benefit Analysis of the projects and at the heart of determining which projects can be included in the network plan (TYNDP), a prerequisite to become a PCI. 

Disclosed: gas industry lobby uses hydrogen to secure billions in tax payers’ money

07.12.2020, Brussels – The European Hydrogen Strategy (1), as announced by the European Commission in July, is in fact a ‘Trojan horse’ for the gas industry which managed to secure massive tax payers’ support for investments. That is one of the conclusions of a new investigative report ‘The hydrogen hype: Gas industry fairy tale or climate horror story?’, published today. The report by Brussels based lobby-watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), Food & Water Action Europe and Re:Common, is based on an analysis of over 200 documents obtained through freedom of information.

The next few days are packed with significant dates including the first anniversary of the European Green Deal (11 December) and the European Council summit of national leaders (10-11 December) with the EU’s proposed Climate Law on the agenda. Also imminently expected will be the presentation of the Commission’s plans for the new TEN-E regulation, which will be decisive in determining the level of support for gas infrastructure across Europe. Today’s report shows that the EU and national governments’ embrace of ‘hydrogen hype’ risks derailing the Green Deal and Europe’s climate ambitions.

The European Commission’s hydrogen plans are almost identical to the demands of the influential lobby group ‘Hydrogen Europe’, including goals and investments needed for hydrogen both inside and outside the EU, estimated at €430 billion by 2030. The reality is that the EU risks being caught in a fossil gas trap (2).

Belén Balanyá, researcher and campaigner at Corporate Europe Observatory, said: “Today less than 0.1 per cent of hydrogen produced in Europe is from renewable electricity and can thus be called green. More than 90 per cent is produced with climate-destroying fossil fuels. But thanks to a coordinated, massive lobbying campaign the gas industry has secured massive amounts of tax payers’ subsidies. Every policy-maker should acknowledge that the gas industry’s hydrogen hype has nothing to do with tackling the climate emergency, and everything to do with ensuring the core business model of energy giants is seen as relevant – and profitable.”

Our new research finds that in just one year the hydrogen lobby spent almost €60 million influencing European policy-makers, and met with key hydrogen-related EU commissioners and their cabinets more than 13 times a month between December 2019 and September 2020.

The mastermind behind two of the most influential groups pushing the hydrogen hype, Hydrogen Europe and the Hydrogen Council, is PR firm FTI Consulting, recently exposed in the USA (2) for creating fake pro-fossil fuel grassroots organisations on behalf of Big Oil and Gas. Also revolving doors are in full swing: two deputy directors general for energy at the European Commission have ended 30 year careers to go straight into jobs with law firm Baker MacKenzie, which is building up its hydrogen profile.

Frida Kieninger, campaigner at Food & Water Action Europe said: “Our report reveals how big gas pipeline operators like Snam, Gasunie, Enagás and Fluxys are using hydrogen to get support and funds for Europe’s oversized fossil gas infrastructure network. This so called ‘Hydrogen Backbone’, a plan for a network that could include 23,000 km of pipelines by 2040, is a rebranding exercise of the gas industry. Even if Energy Commissioner Simson is not yet clear whether gas projects will be excluded from priority infrastructure-projects under TEN-E, there is a high risk the EU will lock us in further to a fossil fuel future.”

Elena Gerebizza, energy campaigner at Re:Common said: “Conflict of interests are big. The European Commission has put the gas industry in the driving seat of new hydrogen-focused bodies, such as the ‘Clean Hydrogen Alliance’, tasked with drawing up a list of hydrogen projects eligible for public funds. The gas lobby intends to use  hydrogen hype to preserve the current centralised, fossil fuel-based energy model that is owned and controlled by a small handful of Big Energy corporations, including the Italian transmission system operator Snam. Instead the EU should be focussed on real climate solutions which lie in decentralised, electrified, sustainable energy production which would benefit both the climate and citizens.“

ENDS

Please find the report here: https://fweuro.pe/HydrogenHype

For interviews or more information please contact:

Frida Kieninger (French/English/German) [email protected] +32(0)487249905

Belén Balanyá (English/Spanish), [email protected] +31(0)633090386

Elena Gerebizza (English/Italian), [email protected] +39(0)340 6705319

Notes to editors:

  1. European Commission, ‘A hydrogen strategy for a climate-neutral Europe’, 7 July 2020, https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/hydrogen_strategy.pdf
  2. Europe in the Gas Trap – Investigate Europe (investigate-europe.eu)
  3. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/climate/fti-consulting.html

 

 

Industry-Friendly Methane Tracking Schemes Are Insufficient

Brussels, 23 November, 2020 – The Oil and Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP) which is a Climate and Clean Air Coalition initiative led by the UN Environment Programme with the European Commission and Environmental Defense Fund, today committed to a new framework for monitoring, reporting and reducing methane emissions.

The partnership includes polluters like Shell, BP or Total among its 62 corporate members. On board are also European’s most important fossil gas transmission system operators (TSOs) who have benefited greatly from the EU mega gas infrastructure build-out so far, including from EU tax money thanks to the Project of Common Interest (PCI) label.

Frida Kieninger, Campaigns Officer at Food & Water Action Europe released the following statement:

“The oil and gas industry has routinely and massively underestimated methane emissions associated with drilling in order to sell the bogus narrative that fracking is a cleaner form of fossil fuel extraction, and that fossil gas can be somehow stripped of these climate-wrecking emissions. We cannot waste time on industry-friendly tracking schemes; what we need to do is ban the import of fracked gas and the important emissions that come with it. We need to transition off fossil fuels. We know that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees or even 2 degrees is not possible if Europe continues its dependence on fossil gas. Purely cosmetic changes, like finding new ways to quantify the harms inflicted on our planet by fossil fuel corporations, are a distraction from the most urgent task: We need to ban fracked gas imports and stop the expansion of dirty fossil gas infrastructure before it’s too late.” 

***

A presentation of the framework on the EU Commission website can be found here.

—

Contact: Frida Kieninger – [email protected], +32 487 24 99 05

EU Ombudswoman Acknowledges Commission’s Climate Failures Heavily subsidized fossil gas projects lack real climate impacts analysis

Brussels, 19 November 2020

In a final decision published today, the EU Ombudswoman confirmed that since 2013 the EU Commission has failed to conduct adequate climate/sustainability assessments for the fossil gas projects on the Projects of Common Interest (PCI) list.

Initially, the EU Commission ignored any climate impacts of PCI projects, and in 2019 the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas (ENTSOG) was tasked with including a sustainability assessment in the cost/benefit analysis they had been doing since 2013. Unfortunately, ENTSOG’s proposed approach was based on the assumption that all gas projects would automatically show only positive benefits towards CO2 mitigation, erroneously claiming a shift from coal to gas would be good for the climate, ignoring negative impacts such as increases in greenhouse gas emissions.

In February, the EU Ombudswoman opened an official inquiry into the failure of the European Commission to consider the climate impacts of subsidized projects on the PCI list, some of which are directly linked to imported fracked gas from the United States. The inquiry is a result of an official complaint filed with the Ombudsman on October 29 of last year by Andy Gheorghiu, Policy Advisor for Food & Water Europe, an environmental NGO based in Brussels. 

Despite the increasing pressure on the European Commission to avoid additional fossil fuel infrastructure, it adopted the Delegated Act establishing the fourth list of PCI projects – ignoring the overwhelming scientific evidence about the negative climate impacts of fossil gas, and instead relying on this flawed analysis from ENTSOG to justify more fossil fuel infrastructure.

With today’s decision the EU Ombudswoman confirms core points of the complaint, stating that “the sustainability of gas projects that were included on the fourth PCI list (and previous lists) has not been sufficiently taken into account,” and that “the Ombudsman finds it regrettable that the Commission did not attempt at an earlier stage to improve the available data and the analytical methodologies applied, so that a ranking of candidate gas PCIs based on their sustainability would have been possible”.

In its assessment, the Ombudswoman also notes that the EU’s objectives concerning climate change targets and sustainability have gained urgency with the increasing awareness of the accelerating climate crisis and concludes: “As the Commission is working on improving the methodology and data collection for assessing the sustainability of candidate gas projects for the PCI-list, the European Ombudsman considers that no further inquiries are justified at this point.”

The 5th PCI process already kicked-off with a meeting of TEN-E cross-regional groups on electricity, gas, smart grids and CO2 thematic areas on November 17, 2020 – with ENTSOG at the center stage once again. The final EU Parliament vote on the next PCI list is expected to happen by the end of 2021.

In response to this decision, the complainant Andy Gheorghiu states: 

“The Ombudswoman clearly confirms the lack of crucial climate assessments of highly subsidized fossil fuel projects for all PCI lists so far.The Commission must walk the talk and truly deliver on real climate analysis in the next list. Unfortunately, the Commission still plans to work with ENTSOG, whose biased assessment is at the very heart of the problem. A more rigorous and independent sustainability test is necessary for future PCI’s.”

 

For more information contact:

Andy Gheorghiu, Policy Advisor, Food & Water Europe

Tel. +49 160 20 30 974, email [email protected]

Official complaint

Letter of the EU Ombudswoman

EU Ombudswoman Acknowledges Commission’s Climate Failures

Heavily subsidized fossil gas projects lack real  climate impacts analysis

Brussels, 19 November 2020

In a final decision published today, the EU Ombudswoman confirmed that since 2013 the EU Commission has failed to conduct adequate climate/sustainability assessments for the fossil gas projects on the Projects of Common Interest (PCI) list.

Initially the EU Commission ignored any climate impacts of PCI projects and in 2019 the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas (ENTSOG) was tasked with including a sustainability assessment in its cost/benefit analysis that they had been doing since 2013. Unfortunately, ENTSOG’s proposed approach was based on the assumption that all gas projects would automatically show only positive benefits towards CO2 mitigation, erroneously claiming a shift from coal to gas would be good for the climate, ignoring negative impacts, such as increases in greenhouse gas emissions.

In February, the EU Ombudswoman opened an official inquiry into the failure of the European Commission to consider the climate impacts of subsidized projects on the PCI list, some of which are directly linked to imported fracked gas from the United States. The inquiry is a direct result of an official complaint filed with the Ombudsman on October 29 of last year by Andy Gheorghiu, Policy Advisor for Food & Water Europe, an environmental NGO based in Brussels.

Despite the increasing pressure on the European Commission to avoid additional fossil fuel infrastructure, it adopted the Delegated Act establishing the fourth list of PCI projects – ignoring the overwhelming scientific evidence about the negative climate impacts of fossil gas, and instead relying on this flawed analysis from ENTSOG to justify more fossil fuel infrastructure.

With today’s decision the EU Ombudswoman confirms core points of the complaint, stating that “the sustainability of gas projects that were included on the fourth PCI list (and previous lists) has not been sufficiently taken into account,” and that “the Ombudsman finds it regrettable that the Commission did not attempt at an earlier stage to improve the available data and the analytical methodologies applied, so that a ranking of candidate gas PCIs based on their sustainability would have been possible”.

In its assessment, the Ombudswoman also notes that the EU’s objectives concerning climate change targets and sustainability have gained urgency with the increasing awareness of the accelerating climate crisis and concludes: “As the Commission is working on improving the methodology and data collection for assessing the sustainability of candidate gas projects for the PCI-list, the European Ombudsman considers that no further inquiries are justified at this point.”

The work on PCIs is coordinated by regional groups, dedicated to each type of energy infrastructure. The 5th PCI process already kicked-off with a meeting of TEN-E cross-regional groups on electricity, gas, smart grids and CO2 thematic areas on November 17, 2020  – with ENTSOG entering centre stage again.. The final EU Parliament’s vote on the next PCI list is expected to happen by the End of 2021.

In response to this decision, the complainant Andy Gheorghiu states:

“The Ombudswoman clearly confirms the lack of crucial climate assessments of highly subsidized fossil fuel projects for all PCI lists so far.The Commission must walk the talk and truly deliver on real climate analysis in the next list. Unfortunately, the Commission still plans to work with ENTSOG, whose biased assessment is at the very heart of the problem. A more rigorous and independent sustainability test is necessary for future PCI’s.”

***

For more information contact:

Andy Gheorghiu, Policy advisor, Food & Water Action Europe

Tel. +49 160 20 30 974, email [email protected]

Official complaint

Letter of the EU Ombudswoman

Assessment/Conclusion of the EU Ombudswoman