By Murdo Fraser
Earlier this year, and under the weight of thousands of job cuts in the
UK’s oil and gas industry, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon remarked that
campaigns for the divestment of pension funds and others from the oil and
gas industry would indeed be “unhelpful” to Scotland’s economy.
Yet, merely months before, SNP MPs could be found in Westminster vehemently
fighting for subsidies for renewable energies, calling for the end of
fossil-fuel consumption in Scotland by the end of the decade. This
hypocrisy is not only “unhelpful” in its own right, but it simply has no
factual basis.
The reality of the situation is that, despite aggressive targets for
renewable energy, 86 per cent of the UK’s energy consumption comes from
fossil fuels. The infrastructure alone could not be approved and built in
time for renewables to be our sole energy provider.
Natural gas in particular will be a key factor in driving down the UK’s
carbon emissions, as it has in the United States, while supporting a
pre-existing and necessary industry in engineering hubs such as Aberdeen or
at the energy park in my Mid-Scotland and Fife constituency. By keeping
that knowledge base at home, we can put our own people to work advancing
new technologies and decommissioning old facilities in the North Sea over
the next two decades, which could bring as much as £40 billion in business
to the UK. Reducing emissions, creating jobs and maintaining essential
talent are all achievable without shunning an entire industry.
The end user will benefit from a thoughtful energy transition too.
Demonstrations by steelworkers in Brussels last month signal the challenge
high energy prices present to energy-intensive industries. Any indication
of undermining the fossil-fuel industry at this stage will only exacerbate
an already difficult situation and force UK businesses to concede further
competitive ground.
The fossil-fuel divestment movement is a culmination of the hypocrisy
finding support in both Holyrood and Westminster. Campaigners have taken to
local council meetings to demand that fossil-fuel stock be dropped by
public pension funds at the same time that UK companies struggle to
readjust to a low oil price. While research suggests that such boycotts do
not affect the bottom lines of the companies targeted, there is also
evidence to suggest that such investment strategies can jeopardise returns
– the result of which will get us no closer to addressing the challenges
presented by climate change.
In other words, activist campaigns such as divestment serve as nothing but
a distraction from the real issues the UK faces. And yet by maintaining
stock in fossil-fuel companies, individual shareholders can have a voice
that would otherwise be lost by divesting. Instead, we’re dedicating column
inches to hearing about fruitless sit-ins on university campuses, or Green
Party MPs securing the support of other extreme politicians as if they were
the majority. It is the definition of counterproductive.
Politicians, the media and the public should be quicker to expose what real
connection such activists have to the communities they are attempting to
influence. The US-based National Association of Scholars determined in 2015
that the global divestment movement is largely funded by well-known
environmentalists like former US Vice President Al Gore, who has a net
worth running into hundreds of millions of dollars.
Grassroots organisers are also coming from the upper echelons of a British
educational establishment that is becoming increasingly biased. The Higher
Education Institute has found that the proportion of college and university
faculties that described themselves as “far left/liberal” has risen from
around 40 per cent in 1989 to more than 60 per cent today. In contrast,
less than half of the population even attend or have attended university,
and instead rely on the jobs and affordable energy that so many fossil-fuel
companies have come to provide.
To help those in fuel poverty, and those working in oil and gas, we must
avoid counterproductive and activist-led campaigns, and instead support
this crucial Scottish industry through these difficult times.
Murdo Fraser MSP is the Scottish Conservative shadow spokesman for finance,
enterprise, energy and tourism and convenor of the Scottish Parliament’s
economy, energy and tourism committee.
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