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DeSmog is hiring, but you’ll have to be quick! Applications for a new Deputy Editor close at 11.59pm on December 23.
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While many of us will be reflecting on how we can become better versions of ourselves in 2023, we all know others (the “new year, old me” types) who are stubbornly resistant to change.
Step forward Benny Peiser, director of the UK’s main climate denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). As Adam Barnett reports, Peiser spoke at a Heritage Foundationevent on December 8, where net zero was branded a “religion”.
In the same year that the GWPF published two reports rejecting the science of the greenhouse effect, Peiser used the webinar to claim that the energy crisis is caused by “a dogmatic prioritization” of renewable energy over alternatives such as shale gas or nuclear.
That’s strange, because according to the International Energy Agency, the energy crisis is caused by the high wholesale cost of gas and fuelled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In other news, Matthew Green reported on Reuters Events how oil companies are targeting carbon markets to finance large-scale carbon capture initiatives and sell the world on – brace yourselves – “net-zero oil”.
Northern Lights, a joint venture between Shell, TotalEnergies and Norway’s Equinor, aims to store carbon emissions from European industry in disused oil fields under the North Sea, the largest project of its kind in the world.
All told, existing CCS projects store about 40 million tonnes of CO2 a year – amounting to just 0.1 percent of global emissions.
Speaking of the North Sea’s buried secrets, last week DeSmog and the Times revealed that Russian-state owned energy giant Gazprom expects to continue exploring for new reserves in the North Sea, having paid itself a £28 million dividend from drilling operations in the area.
Svitlana Romanko, founder of Ukrainian climate group Razom We Stand, was shocked that Gazprom was still being allowed to “fund Russia’s war machine” from North Sea profits. “Justice must be done by the UK government, by ending business with Gazprom,” she told DeSmog.
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