Ben Jasper, Greenpeace
climate campaigner
in the Czech Republic writes...
In January, the Federated
States of Micronesia (FSM) brought new optimism
to the post UN Climate Summit blues - by
stepping into the debate about the Czech
Republic’s largest coal-fired power plant,
Prunerov, owned by the energy company CEZ.
The FSM submitted an
official viewpoint to the Czech Ministry
of Environment raising concerns about the
power plant’s CO2 emissions contributing
to global climate change, which is causing
harm to vulnerable countries such as the
low lying Pacific islands of the FSM. Despite
their concerns being supported by independent
expert analysis, CEZ refused to let the
legitimate concerns of a small island developing
state get in the way of its business plan.
And a former CEZ employee, Rut Bizkova,
was appointed as Environment Minister earlier
this year - tasked with getting governmental
approval for the plant's Environmental Impact
Assessment (EIA). The subsequent EIA approval
came as no surprise to us and was clearly
a shamefully manipulated political decision,
which did not respect expert analysis. This
Prunerov debacle is by no means the only
time that CEZ has undermined climate action
with dirtied politics.
This week, in response
to CEZ’s underhanded tactics, we presented
their management group with a dossier at
their Annual General Meeting in Prague --
to ensure shareholders are aware of the
dirty truths behind CEZ’s dealings. The
dossier highlights the many ways in which
the company has manipulated Czech politics
by bending rules to avoid pollution controls
and saving money at the expense of climate
protection. Petitions were also given directly
to CEZ’s Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors,
Daniel Benes, from local residents rejecting
CEZ’s plans for the expansion of Prunerov
II brown coal-fired power plant where our
activists recently took action.
The CEZ Group is the
7th largest energy company Europe - earning
record profits of around 2 billion euros
in 2009 - mostly from coal fired power plants.
Many key politicians here in the Czech Republic
have worked for CEZ and these are often
the strings which CEZ pulls in order to
get government backing for its dirty energy
projects. Some people here even joke grimly
that the country’s name should be changed
to the “CEZ Republic” to reflect accurately
who holds the real power there.
In June 2009, the Czech
parliament agreed to give CEZ the maximum
possible carbon emissions allowances for
the period starting in 2013. These allowances
would potentially be worth 2.6 billion euros
for the state budget if auctioned, but instead
the government wants to hand them to the
richest Czech company - for free!
Czech residents pay
amongst the highest electricity prices in
Europe and with 74% of the Czech market,
CEZ is the controlling force there. The
company makes hundreds of millions of euros
each year by exporting electricity generated
in the Czech Republic to Germany, Austria
and Slovakia. In doing this, CEZ burns large
amounts of dirty fossil fuels and releases
millions of tons of climate changing emissions
in the global atmosphere. People all over
the planet - especially in vulnerable areas
like the FSM - are suffering the impacts
while CEZ makes record profits.
Now this is all very
doom and gloom and it may seems like the
situation is out of control - but at least
the suspicions of foul play are being raised
and several investigations have been initiated
to look into improper conduct by the company.
An unannounced raid last November by the
European Commission on CEZ’s Prague headquarters
may have been obstructed by CEZ after it
is believed a leak allowed the company time
to shred documents and erase files which
could have provided incriminating evidence.
We're calling on the
Czech government to stop free allocations
of emissions allowances for CEZ and the
entire energy sector after 2012. And we're
demanding that the government refuse CEZ
permission to use dirty, inefficient technology
at Prunerov.
Energy companies such
as CEZ must become part of the solution
to climate change by embracing the Energy
[R]evolution. If they did then CEZ’s shareholders
would have a clean business to really be
proud of.
+ More
Arctic Oil: A Very Crude
Idea
Even now, as the disastrous
situation in the temperate waters of the
Gulf of Mexico continues, oil companies
are still pushing for opening up the Arctic
for, oil drilling. Last month the Obama
administration commendably postponed the
planned exploratory oil drilling in the
Arctic Ocean off Alaska, pending further
investigation, and a plan to dump 1,200
litres of crude oil as a “test” into Lancaster
Sound in the Canadian Arctic has been shelved,
following major opposition. Meanwhile, Greenland
last week has announced a plan to start
drilling in Baffin Bay. My Google Alerts
for the word “Arctic” are suddenly full
of fossil fuel industry references, much
more than this time last year.
It’s a bitter irony
that climate change, caused by the burning
of fossil fuels, is opening up the Arctic
to the very industries that are helping
put the Arctic under pressure in the first
place.
The methods employed
further south to deal with a warm water
oil spill in good weather, with readily
available personnel and equipment, have
so far failed. Dealing with a similar spill
in subzero conditions (possibly even in
the dark of polar winter) with drifting
sea ice and icebergs in the remote Arctic,
without anything like the good weather or
infrastructure of the Gulf of Mexico, would
be a nightmare. In Greenland, the oil drilling
is planned for Disko Bay, an area notorious
for its icebergs – it’s even known as “Iceberg
Alley”, and special vessels would need to
be employed just to keep these massive hunks
of ice away from the oilrigs. Can you imagine?
Up here in the Arctic
Ocean, we have in recent days encountered
huge areas of sea ice drifting at a speed
of 1.5 knots – that’s pretty bloody fast,
and not something you want to try and block
with a manmade, stationary object like an
oil rig. The technology to clean up oil
spills in sea ice doesn’t exist today, but
that doesn’t mean that “learning as we go”
can even be an option.
A 2009 Arctic marine
shipping assessment by the Arctic Council
(made up of countries who have Arctic territory),
described the possibility of a “cleanup”
of oil spills in Arctic conditions as “extremely
challenging,” “limited, and “unreliable
and untested”. No kidding.
Politicians like US
Senator Mark Begich are demanding guarantees
of compensation money from oil companies
planning to drill in the US Arctic – something
that misses the point entirely. Compensation
following an Arctic oil spill might reimburse
humans in the short term (in the case of
Exxon Valdez, it actually 20 years), but
no amount of financial compensation will
either negate or reverse damage done to
the environment those humans earn their
living from. To suggest otherwise is to
assume that dung can be put back in the
cow.
The fact is, after hundreds
of years of Arctic exploration, we are still
learning about its climate and ecosystem
– very little has known at all about the
ecosystem below the waves. That’s why the
Esperanza is here, shining a light on the
incredible ocean life below the Arctic Ocean
waves. We want the precautionary principle
applied in the Arctic – roughly put, if
you don’t understand an ecosystem, you shouldn’t
even begin to mess with it.
The Arctic needs an
international moratorium on industrial development,
and a proper governance system put in place.
The United States has already made a commendable
move of its own, halting all commercial
fishing in its own historically ice covered
Arctic waters off Alaska, and citing the
precautionary principle; it simply doesn’t
have enough information about the ecosystem
to proceed, in good conscience, with industrial
fishing in the area. Now other countries
need to get involved, and work together
to protect the Arctic. The means to do this
exists – it just a matter of political will.
