decarbonization

By Jonathan Essex - Greener Jobs Alliance, March 19, 2024

The Greener Jobs Alliance was very pleased to invite Jonathan Essex to speak at our AGM on 13 February. Here Jonathan expands on the ideas in that presentation in a two-part blog posting, focusing, in this first part, on the urgent need for a different approach to transition in several specific sectors.

Green jobs plans are an important part of the transition to a zero-carbon economy. But they need wider political commitments to make this happen. This piece explores the need for a stronger position by the UK government on phasing out fossil fuels, for a transition for heavy industry such as steel, for reducing overall demand for energy and materials, and for this to be set within an economics of redistribution. 

No more oil, coal and gas

First, we need to stop extracting ever more coal, oil and gas. We can’t afford to extract and burn current reserves, let alone new reserves. That Rosebank, the large new oilfield in the North Sea, should not be exploited, is a litmus test of political commitment to sufficient climate action. It has long been known that we must leave at least 80% of coal, oil and gas as unburnable to stay within 2°C of global warming. In 2021, the International Energy Agency said that no more oil, gas or coal reserves should be developed to stay within the limit of 1.5°C. In 2023 researchers have estimated that 60% of existing oil, gas and coal fields and mines already open or under construction need to be shut down. 

The implication for the UK is clear. No more offshore or onshore fossil fuel extraction should start, and existing North Sea oil and gas fields should be phased out. 

But to constrain fossil fuel burning within global limits we need more global restraint of supply and demand than has been envisaged, let alone agreed, at global climate conferences.

Firstly, a non-fossil fuel proliferation treaty is needed to keep large amounts of existing reserves, including that already being exploited, in the ground in a fair manner. This needs a global transition fund and clear agreed plans for its implementation. 

The UK and other historic emitters should lead by example. For the UK this means not just no to Rosebank but no new coal mine in Cumbria, no fracking or other onshore extraction. 

But that is only half of the story. Research by Fergus Green on climate policy highlights that to be effective, policies to limit fossil fuel extraction and constrain demand for oil, coal and gas need to work together. They use the analogy of a pair of scissors. Unless pressure is put on both sides, to reduce supply and demand together, then policies to cut carbon will not work. 

So, alongside limiting extraction, real efforts to curtail demand are needed. Such demand reduction must start with key sectors of the economy that have to date largely defied efforts to decarbonise. Three are explored here: transport (particularly aviation, shipping and road freight), heavy industry and the overall demand for high carbon ways of living. To explore this the fastest growing form of transport emissions – aviation – and perhaps the cornerstone of heavy industry – the steel industry – are considered, before exploring how society as a whole might make sufficient changes.

By Kira McDonald, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Ruthy Gourevitch - Climate and Community Project, March 2023

The massive backlog of deferred maintenance for public housing in the United States demands a comprehensive, holistic solution that brings every unit in the country up to the highest health and environmental standards: A Green New Deal for Public Housing. This plan would deliver healthy green upgrades and deep-energy retrofits of the nation’s public housing stock to massively increase residents' health and quality of life, finally remedy the long backlog of repairs in public housing, and eliminate all carbon pollution from public housing buildings, while creating badly needed, high quality jobs in the green economy for people in public housing communities. In so doing, a Green New Deal for Public Housing would also build on successful models in the US and abroad that have leveraged investments in public housing to accelerate green technologies throughout the buildings sector – benefiting consumers and hastening decarbonization well beyond only public housing.

Public housing is facing an existential crisis. Chronic underfunding has created the conditions for a rapid decline of units, with the loss of one out of every four public housing units in just over a decade. Our analysis shows that between 2009 and 2022, the public housing stock has shrunk from 1.2 million units to just over 900,000 as a result of demolition, privatization or other conversions from Section 9. In the context of decades-long underfunding of public housing, the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) emerged as an option to address the large and growing capital repairs backlog. RAD mandates a transfer of ownership or management from PHAs to other entities, who can then circumvent restrictions associated with traditional public housing funding streams and access additional funding from which PHAs are excluded. RAD can often entail the privatization of public housing, although the new managing entity can also be a tenant association, non-profit, or a public subsidiary of the PHA. RAD has accelerated – but did not initiate – the loss of Section 9 public housing in the United States. Since RAD began in 2012, 230,000 public housing units have already been converted or are in process to convert to this alternative ownership model. 

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Sarah Lazare, Union Jake, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, February 22, 2024

By Matthew Paterson - The Ecologist, February 12, 2024

Britain’s climate 'leadership' is based on the profoundly unjust and violent transition that was the defeat of the 1980s miners' strike.

Margaret Thatcher is often taken as an early pioneer in climate change among leading politicians. Her speech to the Royal Society in September 1988 helped propel climate change onto the political agenda not just in Britain but around the world. 

But her government was much more important in shaping the course of Britain’s actions on climate change a good deal earlier in her period of office. 

Her decisive intervention was rather in the assault on the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), with the strike of 1984-5 as the decisive event.

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, February 2, 2024

Green New Deal initiatives at local, state, regional, and civil society levels around the country have drawn together diverse, sometimes isolated, or even conflicted constituencies around common programs for climate, jobs, and justice. How have they done so?

Transcript Follows:

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 30, 2024

It’s not every day that workers get to tell representatives of Congress how federal programs affect their work lives. But that’s just what happened when union members working on clean energy projects in Illinois, Maine, and New York spoke about the impact of federal climate investments in their communities to the Clean Energy Workers Roundtable hosted by the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC).

Kilton Webb, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 567 told the Roundtable how his union is training clean energy workers in Maine:

I’m in my final year as an apprentice, and after five years, I have put in 8,000 work hours on commercial, industrial, and solar fields. The work is hard, but rewarding because I am part of this new clean energy industry that is doing great things for the state of Maine. It’s also exciting because of the potential of having more union jobs ready for the next generation of workers. Students who were in middle and high school when I started my journey of becoming an electrician are now apprentices that I work with and teach every day.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 30, 2024

According to the leading environmental publication Grist, “In 2023, organized labor became core to the climate movement.”

2023 was marked by symbiosis between the labor and climate movements. Workers across industries and geographies loudly declared that a world in which their safety and well-being are disregarded is even more dangerous to them and to others in a time of energy transition and climate crisis. After decades of hesitancy, several major unions recognized an urgent need to organize those who will do the hard work of decarbonizing the nation’s economy.”

The article by Katie Myers, Grist Climate Solutions Fellow, noted that, as public opinion and public policy have shifted in favor of organized labor, “calls for a just transition rattled union halls and corporate offices” as “organized labor enjoyed one of its most active years in recent memory” and “environmental organizations, long uncertain about where unions stood, found new allies.

The article describes numerous examples of union fights for climate protection. The reality of a warming world was a central concern for UPS, Amazon, and airport workers who demanded protection from extreme heat. And the UAW made a just transition a key demand in their strike against the auto Big Three. At the same time, “Environmental organizations became vocally supportive of labor this year, with Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and others supporting the UAW’s calls for a just EV transition.”

The article quotes J. Mijin Cha, an environmental studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a co-author of the LNS report “Workers and Communities in Transition”: “The UAW strike showed the vision a lot of people have been looking for.”

For the full article: https://grist.org/labor/in-2023-organized-labor-became-core-to-the-climate-movement/

For the LNS report “Workers and Communities in Transition”: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/jtlp-2021/

By Todd Smith - Safe Landing, January 28, 2024

By Florian Ranft and Johanna Siebert - Green European Journal, January 19, 2024

External shocks, coalition infighting, and an opportunistic far right have driven the German government’s approval rate to a new low. Contested climate policies offer Greens in Berlin and across Europe some useful lessons: to gain support from the people, the green transition needs to address social concerns, allow for democratic participation, and be implemented locally.

Economic recession, budget cuts, and the rise of the far right are the new reality in Germany – an explosive mix, we know from historical experience. Little over two years into government, the self-proclaimed “coalition of progress” is being put to the test. The approval ratings of the coalition parties ‒ the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) ‒ are at a new low, even though the coalition has implemented many of its policy pledges. 

While it’s not uncommon for mid-term approval ratings to be low, the government is going through a particularly tough time. Setting out with the ambition to “dare more progress” by boosting renewables, expanding affordable housing, and raising spending on education, the governing parties have found themselves sidetracked. The multiple interlocking crises of Putin’s war in Ukraine, surging energy prices, the rising cost of living, and higher borrowing costs certainly played a role.

On top of that, the ideological differences between the coalition partners have made finding common ground on economic and social reforms difficult. This is particularly true for climate policies, as demonstrated last year by the dispute over the Building Energy Act. The Green party’s flagship bill ‒ aimed at phasing out oil and gas heating systems ‒ was vehemently opposed by the FDP as too costly, opening a rift in the coalition. What was intended as a major step towards reaching Germany’s emission target in the building sector has now been so watered down that the country looks unlikely to reach its 2030 emissions reduction target.

While the Greens are pushing for pragmatic change within the limits of what’s possible, the FDP ‒ reflecting a reform-sceptic electorate ‒ is calling for a return to “fiscal prudence” after Germany suspended the constitutional “debt brake” for the fourth year in a row in 2023. The SPD and its Chancellor Olaf Scholz play the role of mediating the tension, while also pushing their own signature policies such as increasing the minimum wage to 12 euros per hour and expanding social security benefits. Yet, there is an open question regarding Scholz’s leadership within the coalition. Especially in terms of international politics, the chancellor’s agenda seems directionless in light of global challenges. 

Meanwhile, the (far) right has been capitalising on the governmental infighting. Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is successfully taking advantage of the general discontent and the heightened sense of economic and social insecurity. In the latest state elections in Bavaria and Hessen last October, the AfD achieved its best-ever results in western Germany. Since last summer, the AfD has been steadily ahead of all government coalition parties in national polls. Today it is in the lead in Brandenburg, Thuringia, and Saxony – three East German states due to hold regional elections this year. And it is also making gains at the local level, with the AfD’s first county commissioner in Sonneberg, Thuringia, and first mayors in Raguhn-Jeßnitz, Saxony-Anhalt and Pirna, Saxony. Although these are relatively small cities, the political victories have a high symbolic meaning.

The furore over the Building Energy Act appears to be a taste of what’s to come. The more ambitious and far-reaching the climate proposal, the stronger the political and societal resistance – a development that tends to play into the hands of far-right actors. How can progressives counter the far right’s challenges without compromising their reform agenda ahead of the European elections in June? 

By Raidin Blue and Betsy Agar - Pembina Institute, January 17, 2024

Canada’s buildings sector is the third-largest contributor to the country’s emissions at 87 Mt CO₂e. That’s 13% of the total. Retrofitting existing buildings is the only climate action that can both drive down emissions and protect Canadians from weather events that are increasing in severity and frequency as our climate changes.

A deep retrofit goes beyond simple renovations, encompassing upgrades to various building systems and equipment, including the envelope, HVAC, lighting and building controls. Retrofits could also integrate renewable energy systems to enhance sustainability by reducing reliance on grid electricity, especially while Canada’s electricity grid continues to decarbonize, thus freeing up grid capacity to enable electrification of other sectors of the economy.

Work on retrofits needs to go deeper and scale up until 4% to 6% of Canada’s building stock is being decarbonized yearly if we are to meet our 2050 decarbonization goals. Investment in retrofitting is an investment in local economies and jobs, and an opportunity to grow the workforce by improving access to equity-deserving groups. The research in this report aims to support the supply chain needed to make these deep retrofits happen.

Recommendations

• Recommendation 1: Provide market certainty by implementing regulations that require deep building decarbonization.
• Recommendation 2: Drive demand by clarifying the benefits of deep retrofits, helping to build trust in industry, and helping reduce complexity.
• Recommendation 3: Work with utilities and other levels of government to increase grants and incentives to help reduce the high cost of innovative, low-carbon technologies used in deep retrofits that is holding back market growth.
• Recommendation 4: Foster a more inclusive industry culture and practice by raising awareness and removing barriers to access for equity-deserving groups, and by requiring the employment of equity-deserving groups.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).