Victoria University of Wellington is to quit its modest investments in fossil fuel.
“The University recognises that the world is still reliant on the fossil fuel industry and the intent of this decision is not to vilify responsible companies in the sector. The University [wants to align] its investment decisions with the results of its scientific research and its public stance on climate change,” said vice-chancellor Grant Guilford.
In other news
Sir Ian Botham has launched a sweeping attack on the leadership of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, saying it is a ‘dictatorship’ that has ‘messed up its finances’ and betrayed bird lovers and the species that it is meant to save.
Imagine “New Greens” arise who adopt the abandoned spiritual mantle of “guardians of the earth.”
They live in union with both nature and the modern needs of humanity.
Imagine they protest the wind turbines for desecrating the landscape, killing wildlife, endangering people and consuming vast resources.
The New Greens strike at the heart of the wind turbines, showing that they fail their primary purpose because they don’t reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases.
Imagine they lobby the United Nations and the IPCC.
They plead with the bureaucrats to correct their misleading scientific reports.
Imagine they lobby the government and local bodies.
They plead with the politicians not to waste public money chasing an impossible dream.
Imagine they adopt early Greenpeace tactics.
They buy shares in wind turbine corporations so they can attend meetings.
Imagine those meetings: the shambles, the shouting, the tears amid the stony faces.
The New Greens plead with the directors to change their minds.
Imagine they chain themselves to trees as the bulldozers move in.
Some of them are injured or tragically die in clashes with police.
It emerges that the majority shareholders in the “green” wind turbine corporations are Greenpeace, RSPB and Friends of the Earth.
Just imagine.
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If you wish to pursue a financially and intellectually rewarding career in Petroleum Geology, then VUW, the fossil fuel divested university, can offer a range of courses at postgraduate level.
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/sgees/study/postgraduate-study/petroleum-geoscience/
Yes! I noticed this. Torn, are they not, poor things!
>”the majority shareholders in the “green” wind turbine corporations are Greenpeace, RSPB and Friends of the Earth.”
This is what they are investing in:
Save Vestas jobs! Save the planet!
Vestas closed the UK’s only wind turbine blade factories, on the Isle of Wight, in August 2009. Workers occupied the factory, then picketed. This blog is a history of that dispute and of the ongoing campaign for green jobs.
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The Vestas company recently announced it wants to open a factory on another ‘island’, the Isle of Sheppey; again, like the Isle of Wight, a place with relatively high unemployment.
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Again, Vestas is looking for government subsidies as the price for setting up operations, and a compliant workforce that is ‘just grateful to have a job’.
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Worker killed on Vestas site
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Vestas shed (move) 3,000 jobs from Scandinavia (to Spain)
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Vestas workers in Colorado develop allergies to the resin used
In a repeat of the experience of Vestas workers on the Isle of Wight, workers in their new plant in Colorado have been developing allergies because of the resin that Vestas uses in its manufacturing. The local newspaper The Coloradoan has been investigating the incidents.
Report here [hotlink]
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http://savevestas.wordpress.com/
‘Vestas scraps Isle of Sheppey plan’ – 22 June 2012
Plans to create 2,000 jobs in one of the most deprived areas of the south east have been abandoned.
Danish company Vestas has scrapped its plan to manufacture wind turbines at a huge new plant on the Isle of Sheppey, saying it hadn’t secured enough orders to go ahead.
The news has been met with dismay on the island, where unemployment is more than twice the national average.
There’s no doubt it’s a blow. Despite the fact this government describes itself as the greenest government ever, the mood music has changed in recent months.
It emerged earlier this month that Chancellor George Osborne would like to cut subsidies for onshore wind farms by 25%.
Industry leaders warned that level of reduction would “kill dead” the development of wind power sites.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-18555427
‘Vestas ban puts Brazil’s wind industry at risk, warns analyst’ – November 25 2012
http://www.rechargenews.com/wind/article1297907.ece
‘Vestas To Cut 2,335 Jobs Worldwide; 1,600 U.S. Jobs May Be Next’ – January 12, 2012
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/01/vestas-to-cut-2335-jobs-worldwide-1600-u-s-jobs-may-be-next
‘More melt down in wind ‘industry’ as global giant Vestas hits serious debt burden’ – July 2, 2012
Kintyre has, of course, seen it all before with Vestas decamping and Skykon failing, both at the turbine tower manufacturing plant at Machrihanish.
Scotland at large has seen a deal with Korea’s Doosan to build a research facility and factory in Renfrew dropped in December 2011. This was followed by the recent news that another major player in the wind renewables business, Spain’s Gamesa, lured here by subsidy (as are they all), was laying staff off instead of building up its base.
Back only in March this year, Gamesa left Tyneside in the lurch and chased a better subsidy to Scotland, with the promise of a large manufacturing plant at Leith. It signed a memorandum of understanding with Forth Ports as it dumped Tyneside.
However, this enticement away from Tyneside was not orchestrated by the Scottish but by the UK government, in an effort to shore up the pro-union vote. The North East was simply the sacrificial pawn in a bigger game.
Gamesa had promised 1,000 jobs in Tyeside. Its offer to Scotland was more modest – 180 jobs for £1.5 million of public money to locate here, made less than a year ago. With the start of redundancies revealed by The Herald on 26th June, who would bet on Leith ever seeing a manufacturing plant?
Now, yesterday – 1st July 2012, it has been announced that global giant, Vestas, is in trouble with a debt burden – reliably estimated at €1.2billion – and is borrowing heavily.
A major sign of imminent trouble came only two weeks ago when Vestas pulled out of its multi-million pound 70 hectare development of a wind turbine plant at Sheerness Docks in Kent.
Vestas and its would-be partner in the enterprise, Peel Ports, owner of the port – and of Clydeport, made the shock announcement without explanation. That was a hoped for 2,000 jobs down the pan. It was also an indication of the depth of trouble at Vestas.
With its market value down to £700 million – in a loss of 95% of its share value, after a series of profits warnings and going into the red after the second of these in January this year, Vestas has had to borrow £242 million, almost 35% of that current market value.
The company’s lenders – including RBS and HSBC, have instructed it to prepare a thoroughgoing financial restructuring plan and have appointed Ernst & Young as their advisers on the matter, with Vestas taking on PWC to help get it into shape.
There appear to be two option under consideration, one is the sale of some of Vestas’ assets; the other is the sale of the company itself, with Chinese, American and German interests said to be in the frame.
Just as Gamesa has trailed betrayals from Tyneside to Leith, Vestas has done the same. After leaving its workers in Campbeltown in the lurch, following the subsidy dollar to the Isle of Wight, it went on to close a factory there, with another 400 workers made redundant.
Serious investors in a serious industry are there for the long haul. These are fly-by-night carpetbaggers, grabbing and running in an ‘industry’ thrashed into existence simply because the subsidies were there; and governments were desperate to achieve carbon emission targets.
Now, in harder economic times and in the context of the onset of researched realism on the limited value and high cost of wind energy to the consumer, both available subsidies and potential demand are shrinking.
http://forargyll.com/2012/07/more-melt-down-in-wind-industry-as-global-giant-vestas-hits-serious-debt-burden/
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Triple Bottom Line
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2a/Triple_Bottom_Line_graphic.jpg/640px-Triple_Bottom_Line_graphic.jpg
Triple bottom line (abbreviated as TBL or 3BL) is an accounting framework with three parts: social, environmental (or ecological) and financial. These three divisions are also called the three Ps: people, planet and profit, or the “three pillars of sustainability”. Interest in triple bottom line accounting has been growing in both for-profit, nonprofit and government sectors. Many organizations have adopted the TBL framework to evaluate their performance in a broader context.[1] The term was coined by John Elkington in 1994
“People” pertains to fair and beneficial business practices toward labour and the community and region in which a corporation conducts its business.
“Planet” (natural capital) refers to sustainable environmental practices. [,,,,,,,] A triple bottom line company does not produce harmful or destructive products such as weapons, toxic chemicals or batteries containing dangerous heavy metals, for example.
“Profit” is the economic value created by the organization after deducting the cost of all inputs, including the cost of the capital tied up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line
Wow! Trouble in paradise.
More on the Green Energy Bubble, this time from Ireland
http://irishenergyblog.blogspot.ie/2014/11/the-green-bubble-are-we-heading-for.html
Green bubble
>”The only attraction for banks is the guaranteed income from wind energy in the form of subsidies, but how long realistically can households and industry keep funding this ? As Per Wimmer points out, this is hardly sustainable green energy.”
Washing off the green wash.
‘Green disinformation: worse than we thought’
Bishop Hill
The other day, I mentioned a report by a pair of NGOs on the subject of fossil fuel subsidies, noting that the usual suspects in the mainstream media had failed to mention that in the UK oil companies are subject to a supertax on top of the Corporation Tax to which all companies in the country are subject.
It now seems that the report was even more misleading than we thought [hotlink – quote below].
“The report by Oil Change International is a complete distortion of facts. The authors have described as “subsidies” normal deductions of expenses and capital costs from revenues for calculation of taxable income. These are procedures which are followed in all fiscal systems in all countries for all forms of business and investment endeavors. Under normal definitions of “subsidy” the United States has no subsidies for the oil and gas industry which is why Obama has taken no steps to reduce them.” [Dr. Charles A. Kohlhaas]
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/11/17/green-disinformation-worse-than-we-thought.html
The quote is from this post:
‘The Appalling Truth About Energy Subsidies’ by Euan Mearns, November 17, 2014
http://euanmearns.com/the-appalling-truth-about-energy-subsidies/
Warren Buffet:
“I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate,” Buffet told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska recently. “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”