Nafeez Ahmed looks at the way powerful oil and gas lobbies could be hijacking climate change policy at the expense of taxpayers
A new investigation can reveal how the fossil fuel industry is benefiting from the Government’s own net zero advisory panel.
As the Conservative backbenches attack the Government’s net zero strategy due to the cost-of-living crisis supposedly because renewables are too expensive, they have missed the real issue: it’s not net zero that’s the potential problem, but the Government’s hijacking of net zero to lift fossil fuel industry profits at the expense of taxpayers.
Last year in the run-up to the COP26 climate change summit, Byline Times can reveal, a senior Government climate and energy official joined an investment firm that played a key role on a Government net zero advisory panel alongside giant oil company Shell.
Around the same time, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Government’s resulting net zero strategy – which experts say relies on “unproven technologies” – is a firm with major fossil fuel interests, Atkins Energy, which was previously involved in the same panel. Shell is also a major client of Atkins.
The ‘revolving door’ relationship at the little-known ‘Net Zero Innovation Board’ offers yet another window into how the Government’s net zero strategy has become polluted by carbon capture approaches – which the same firm has described as “not economically viable.” Fossil fuel firms and companies linked to them are not only advising ministers at the highest levels on how to achieve net zero, but also profiting from the same advice.
The Government’s failure to pursue a net zero strategy robustly supported by scientific evidence coincides with the influence of these powerful oil and gas lobbies.
Impax and the UK Government
In 2016, Catherine Bremner joined the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), to become director of international energy and climate finance. She played a key role in crafting the Government’s net zero strategy. Last March, she was appointed the acting director-general of net zero strategy and international at BEIS.
Just five months later, she abruptly left the role – during the run-up to COP26 in August. She took up the role of chief commercial officer at Impax Asset Management. Impax is a London-based investment fund specialising in sustainability issues. Managing a £34 billion portfolio, it also seems to have a charmed relationship with the Government.
Since 2019, Impax’s founder and CEO Ian Simm has been an “independent member” of the Government’s Net Zero Innovation Board, which plays a key role in providing “strategic oversight of public programmes on energy innovation”, including making recommendations to ministers.
Working alongside Simm as an “independent member” is Jo Coleman, UK energy transition manager at oil giant Royal Dutch Shell. Shell was not only the biggest lobbyist of the Government in the run-up to COP26 – having met ministers at BEIS 44 times between January 2020 and June 2021 – it was also the top spender on Facebook ‘greenwashing’ ads.
This odd partnership illustrates how fossil fuel lobbying is increasingly successful – through partnerships with sustainability advocates and companies designed to ‘greenwash’ their activities.
Carbon Captured
As early as 2017 and 2018, before the appointments of Simm and Coleman, meeting minutes published by the Government reveal that the Net Zero Innovation Board had already rubber-stamped ‘carbon capture and storage’ (CCUS) as a primary mechanism to get to net zero.
That’s despite the fact that CCUS has been described by numerous experts, such as Basav Sev of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C., as an “unproven technology.”
Although the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognises a potential role for CCUS, it has also said that our best chance of keeping global warming at or below the 1.5°C danger point makes limited to no use of engineered carbon capture technologies. The most effective pathway to net zero, it says, is a rapid fossil fuel phase-out along with carbon withdrawal based on reforestation and soil carbon uptake.
But in contrast with the IPCC’s recommendations, minutes for a Government Net Zero Innovation Board meeting in July 2017 argued that CCUS “should be a primary focus”, including “CO2 capture from concentrated sources” and “CO2 captured directly from the air”. The board called on the Government to seek “external advice” on the potential of greenhouse gas removal technologies.
Where did the Government get this “external advice” from? Not the scientific community.
The following year, in May 2018, Net Zero Innovation Board meeting minutes describe a CCUS presentation from Government officials referring to the establishment of a “CCUS Cost Challenge Taskforce” four months earlier.
As Byline Times has previously reported, the CCUS cost challenge taskforce was run by a team from global law firm Linklaters LLP, which runs a major oil and gas business. One of its biggest clients is BP, which was also a member of the same task force – along with many other fossil fuel giants including Shell and ExxonMobil.
Impax’s Ian Simm is also a commissioner on the Energy Transitions Commission, originally funded by a number of fossil fuel incumbents including Shell and BHP Billington. Shell’s vice president Jeremy Bentham, BP Group chief economist Spencer Dale, and Drax CEO Will Gardiner are among the commissioners appointed. Although the Energy Transitions Commission includes input from a variety of organisations supportive of renewables, the