Read the latest insights and analysis from the experts at Oil Change International.
Two years ago today, the Norwegian Supreme Court ruled that one of the biggest wind turbine developments in Europe had violated the rights of the Indigenous Sámi reindeer herders in the country.
We have known for decades now that we must end the disastrous dirty oil age and transition to clean, renewable energy. The wording often used by scientists and activists is that we need a “just transition”. There is where society enables an equitable transition from polluting, undemocratic fossil fuel industries to cleaner community-led renewable technologies.
For years, coal lobbyists have been saying we needed the dirty fossil fuel for when the wind didn’t blow or the sun didn’t shine. We always knew that was a lie. For years, Donald Trump tried to prop up a dying industry. And now the market has proved them both wrong. And there will be no going back.
The energy company EDF is coming under intense pressure in Scotland to help pioneer a “just transition” from oil to renewables by investing in wind turbine manufacture in the UK, rather than outsourcing the work to Asia.
As yet another British nuclear plant is scrapped, the renewables industry says it is ready to come to the rescue to help the UK deliver low carbon energy.
Would you take it seriously if tobacco companies announced that smoking trends weren’t expected to change much over the next 30 years? And imagine then, that this is what governments used to make tobacco policy: “Forecasts show that people aren’t going to quit smoking, steady rates of smoking around the world are inevitable, so all anti-smoking policies will assume not much is going to change.”
As the dust settles on the British General Election, many commentators are still trying to analyse what the results means for policies on energy, fracking and climate. All the signs is that it is great news for frackers and bad news for the renewables industry, especially onshore wind companies.
Stealth lobby group ALEC is teaming up with our old-friends, the climate denial-machine, the Heartland Institute to write laws that repeal state-level renewable energy targets.
