A stark appeal by the world’s top energy body to stop investment in new fossil fuel projects by next year has met a mixed reception from the world’s top producers – from guarded praise and pledges to cut back on coal to outright defiance.
The International Energy Agency said in its “Net Zero by 2050” report last week that investors should not fund new oil, gas and coal supply projects beyond this year if the world wants to reach net zero emissions by mid-century and meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
Its findings aim to encourage ambitious climate targets from countries attending the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference (COP26) in November in Glasgow, Scotland but has yet to garner a full commitment from any country. (Graphic: IEA Net Zero)
G7
The world’s seven largest advanced economies agreed on Friday to stop international financing of coal projects that emit carbon by the end of this year and phase out such support for all fossil fuels.
The United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, plus the European Union, said in a joint statement: “international investments in unabated coal must stop now”.
UNITED KINGDOM
Alok Sharma, the UK minister presiding over the global climate talks in Scotland who requested the IEA publish its Net Zero report, stopped short of committing to the fossil fuel ban.
“I welcome this @IEA report, which sets a roadmap to #NetZero and shares many of the priorities of the UK”, Sharma tweeted, adding that the UK wanted to “consign coal power to history”.
The UK government reached a deal with North Sea industry players in March to allow new offshore oil licensing rounds in exchange for pledges to cut emissions.
Following the G7’s communique on climate, Sharma said: “We are acting abroad as we’re doing at home by agreeing to phase out international fossil fuel finance, starting with coal”.
NORWAY
Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg described the IEA’s roadmap as simply one of “many reports”, telling the NTB news agency it would not change the petroleum policy of Western Europe’s biggest oil producing country.
Norway has offered tax breaks as an incentive for new higher-cost oil projects and is preparing new licenses for offshore exploration.
“If this roadmap becomes a reality … it may in the long run affect the companies’ interest in looking for new discoveries”, Norwegian Oil and Energy Minister Tina Bru told Reuters.
UNITED STATES
White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said the IEA advice deserved close scrutiny but that change would be gradual and fossil fuel projects remained in the pipeline.
“I think that’s one of the things that we have to think about and struggle with … I’m not suggesting this transformation is going to be quick”, she said, noting that hundreds of new U.S. natural gas units were planned.
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry also praised the report but also stopped short of any new commitments.
“New @IEA report is an important guide for how the energy sector can reach net-zero by 2050”, he tweeted. “It shows that we must ramp up existing technologies to rapidly decrease emissions by 2030”.
CANADA
Oil-rich Canada said it was committed to phasing out fossil fuel subsidies by 2025 and those plans remained on track.
“Our government has invested $53 billion in climate action since October 2020, and we’re eliminating coal-fired electricity emissions by 2030”, according to a statement by the office of the federal natural resources minister sent to Reuters.
“IEA members, including Canada, called for this independent analysis to be done. Now that it has been done, we need to consider all of it – not only the oil and gas portion, but also where new jobs will come from”.
EUROPEAN UNION
The European Union’s head of climate change policy, Frans Timmermans, said the bloc seeks to work harder to curb emissions through changes to its tax regime.
“It’s not by chance that we will propose amending the energy taxation regulation”, he said an interview with the Euractiv information website. “We need to get out of oil, gas, and coal. We need to have a fair taxation system that incentivises this”.
“That’s more or less the direction we will take. And I feel very supported in this by the IEA’s recent net zero report”.
JAPAN
Asia’s third-largest carbon emitter in 2019, after China and India, Japan said the report did not align with its policy.
Akihisa Matsuda, the deputy director of international affairs at Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), said the government has no plans to immediately stop oil, gas and coal investments. [L2N2N703B]
“The report provides one suggestion as to how the world can reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, but it is not necessarily in line with the Japanese government’s policy”, he said.
OPEC
Oil producer club OPEC said the IEA’s recommendations on curbing fossil fuel emissions could lead to oil-price volatility if it is acted on. [L5N2N73LK]
“The claim that no new oil and gas investments are needed post-2021 stands in stark contrast with conclusions often expressed in other IEA reports and could be the source of potential instability in oil markets if followed by some investors”, OPEC’s report said.
(Reporting By Noah Browning, Dmitry Zdhannikov, Nerijus Adomaitis, Yuka Obayashi, Sonali Paul, David Ljunggren and Kate Abnett; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
TORONTO – BMO Financial Group says it has won the reversal of a 2022 jury verdict against the bank in a lawsuit related to a Ponzi scheme in the United States.
The Canadian bank says the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals also instructed the district court to enter judgment in favour of BMO’s U.S. subsidiary.
As a result of the decision, BMO says it plans to reverse a $1.19-billion provision, a move that it expects will mean an after-tax recovery of $875 million in its fourth quarter.
Plaintiffs in the case had alleged that Marshall and Ilsley Bank, which BMO bought in 2011, was complicit in the fraud carried out by Thomas J. Petters and others.
They alleged the bank served as “critical linchpin” for Petters who had a chequing account at the bank that was used to launder money.
Petters was convicted in 2009 of orchestrating the scheme and sentenced to 50 years in jail.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Air Canada says some operations will start to be affected today as time is running out before a potential shutdown because of a labour dispute with its pilots
The airline on Thursday called for the government to be ready to intervene to avoid major disruptions a shutdown would cause for its more than 110,000 travellers a day.
It says some services like cargo and vacation packages will start to be affected today, while a full shutdown could happen on Sept. 18.
The airline and pilots will be in a position starting Sunday to issue 72-hour notice of a strike or lockout. The airline has said the notice would trigger its three-day wind-down plan and start the clock on a full work stoppage.
The airline says the union is being inflexible with “unreasonable wage demands.”
The union has said that it is corporate greed that’s holding up talks, as Air Canada continues to post record profits while expecting pilots to accept below-market compensation.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
A humpback whale was so entangled in fishing gear, ropes and buoys that it took four days for a Fisheries Department crew to unravel the mess, Paul Cottrell said.
The rescue off British Columbia’s coast between Prince Rupert and Haida Gwaii was one of the longest he had ever taken part in, he said.
It was clear the animal had been trapped for months, said Cottrell, a marine mammal co-ordinator with the department.
“We didn’t even know how to start on this animal because it was so constricted. Its mouth was closed with two wraps around the head, and there were ropes through the mouth, around the body,” said Cottrell.
He said the team had to make 50 cuts to get the ropes and gear off.
“This poor animal was showing evidence of being exhausted and hadn’t been feeding for quite a while,” said Cottrell, adding that the gear they removed came from Canada and the United States, indicating the long journey the whale had taken while wrapped in fishing gear.
Cottrell said there’s been “a real uptick in entanglements” like this one off B.C.’s coast, which he suspects is related to an influx of humpback whales in the area.
Whale conservation groups are calling for more training and equipment outside of the Department of Fisheries to allow others to help save the animals.
Cottrell said his team was in the Prince Rupert area on Sept. 3 doing a necropsy on a fin whale, when they got the call alerting them about an entangled whale in Hecate Strait.
When they found the whale, estimated to be about 10-metres long, it was “in very poor shape” and hardly able to get to the surface and breathe, said Cottrell.
He said the whale showed a burst of energy after being released, but it suffered many injuries so they’ll be watching the health of the animal.
Cottrell said his team has been running non-stop this summer, dealing with at least one entanglement a week.
Janie Wray, CEO of North Coast Cetacean Society, said northern B.C. has historically been a “hot spot” for humpbacks, where researchers sometimes meet 30 to 40 such whales foraging.
The society has been conducting a study, using drones and photography, to determine how many whales in the area have been entangled looking for scars from fishing gear.
One of their drones caught a photo of a whale with a long rope attached to itspectoral fin in 2022 and they reported it to the DFO immediately, Wray said.
She said she was relieved to see the same whale had survived when it revisited in 2023.
Jackie Hildering, a humpback researcher for the Marine Education and Research Society based out of Port McNeill, B.C., said many of the entanglements are never documented, the whales are never detected and therefore can’t be saved.
Hildering said their preliminary research shows that “50 per cent of humpbacks in B.C. have scarring left from being entangled.”
It’s unclear how many humpbacks have died, she said.
One example of such entanglements is a humpback they’ve called Catalyst that whale watchers have seen without a tail near B.C.’s Discovery Islands.
Catalyst’s entanglement around its tail was never documented, she said, raising questions about how many others die and sink to the bottom of the ocean without discovery.
Wray has also heard about Catalyst’s story and said they haven’t seen it since July 22.
She said more resources need to be added to saving these whales, and that means more teams in the water unravelling the animals.
Wray said she worries that if Cottrell retires in 10 years, there won’t be anyone left to do the work, “so other people need to be trained and know how to disentangle a whale.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
