Over at European Tribune, Jerome (an investment banker, previously with an oil portfolio including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and now focusing on wind projects) lays out how in times of plenty the public gets hit, and when things get tight or exceedingly tight the public gets hit. For “gets hit” read “fleeced”. So how to interpret a new – as far as I’m aware – description of the European Investment Bank, that of an anti public-fleecing agent?
The EIB has been touted in the last week as a subsidy vehicle for the roll-out of carbon capture and storage demonstration plants across Europe. According to the European Parliament’s rapporteur on CCS, Liberal Democrat MEP Chris Davies, the necessary EU subsidies for CCS of as much as 10 billion euros would have to be monitored – and stepping into the breach would be the EIB to run tenders for the plants that would ensure that the public was not being “fleeced”.
When it comes to tendering processes, EIB rigour can hardly be guaranteed. Take the London Underground PPP, where in 2002 the UK government Select Committee on Transport, the Environment and the Regions concluded: “It was not possible to establish that the PPP offered value for money.” Yet in 2002 and 2003 the EIB loaned a total of 1.3 billion euros to the two consortia Metronet and Tube Lines.
Counter Balance has documented the improprieties at the heart of the Gilgel Gibe dam project in Ethiopia, where the contract for phase two of the dam was awarded without tender to the Italian firm Salini, which is now under criminal investigation by the anti-Mafia department of the Roman magistrates. While the World Bank has walked away from financing phase three, the EIB is the only public bank still considering it, having already backed phase two.
Just two weeks ago, Friends of the Earth-CEPA (Bankwatch’s Slovak member group) raised the alarm about some interesting tendering processes running through major new road infrastruture construction – a letter to EIB president Maystadt, inquiring whether the bank intends to tolerate such practices via a multi-million euro loan, awaits a response.
When it comes to CCS itself, one of the first mainstream media mentions came in a Times article of May 2004 where people who were asked for the first time about this particular technofix “said it sounded dangerous and unnecessary… They don’t like the idea of a quick fix or burying the problem. Most people would rather see a move to renewables and improved energy efficiency.” Since then industry has heftily ratcheted up the promotion of CCS, though usually neglecting to add in the bit about oil recovery, where the carbon dioxide pumped into ageing oil wells makes more oil recoverable.
It’s debatable whether the wool – or the fleece – has been removed from or pulled more tightly over the public’s eyes when it comes to CCS. With current CO2 emissions provoking further alarm among the climate scientists – with emissions in 2007 up 2.9 percent on 2006 levels – it seems curious that CCS is receiving such forward-thinking leeway (and proposed heavy public subsidy investment) when the ready-made renewable alternatives are staring us in the face, and are more than likely taking a notable hit right about now as a result of the Wall Street meltdown.
And when you stand back from the carbon headlines – as some peer-reviewed science on CCS recently did – consider this: a CO2-burying plant may emit between 71 and 78 percent less CO2, but to get this level the nitrogen oxide and sulphur oxide emissions are up to 40 percent worse than at a standard coal plant. That means more acid rain, more ozone destruction, and more water pollution – and that is quite a hit to take from one of the preeminent climate change solutions of the day.
