Monday, 26 October 2020

Surprise. AI needs yet another extension – ‘to compile additional information’

Aggregate Industries' planning application to quarry Straitgate Farm will enter yet another year. Last week the company agreed with Devon County Council to extend the date for determination to 31 March 2021.

It’s not the first extension. There have been others:
And so, this East Devon pantomime goes on. Will this application be extended ad infinitum, or will Devon County Council finally tell Aggregate Industries to shit or get off the pot? 

What’s Aggregate Industries' excuse this time? We haven’t done our homework, Miss. We need more time to compile additional information, Miss. 

Right. Of course. It’s what Aggregate Industries has spent the last decade doing, compiling additional information about quarrying Straitgate – much shown to be inadequate, with faults, omissions and lies. 

Aggregate Industries began compiling back in 2011. A planning application was launched in 2015. The application was withdrawn. More information was compiled. In 2017 a revised application was lodged. Questions were raised. More compiling. In 2019, questions were still being raised about fundamental issues on sustainability, on drinking water sources and the cattle crossing conundrum; information that should have been compiled with the original application, information still outstanding.

Aggregate Industries now claims a few more months will do it. But what has it been doing in 2020? No one would claim this year has been easy, but the company did find the time and wherewithal to address planning applications at Marshbroadmoor, Hillhead and in the Dorset AONB, to name but three.

But let’s not forget the fundamental issue here: There is no need for any aggregate from Straitgate Farm. Aggregate Industries has millions of tonnes right next door to its processing plant at Hillhead. And whilst the company has been sitting on its hands this year, another operator has recently announced plans to flood the Devon market with massive amounts of cheap secondary aggregates.

And yet, Aggregate Industries continues to peddle its unsustainable CO2 intensive plans for Straitgate – with its 2.5 million mile haulage scheme – despite promises from cement giant parent LafargeHolcim that it really does want to do things differently now, that new priorities have been set, that sustainability sits at the top of the agenda, that – according to the company's Chief Sustainability Officer – "it is a cool club to be part of":


Are we to believe all those claims? Or do we look at Aggregate Industries' ridiculous scheme and conclude it’s all "Bullshit"?


Meanwhile, in other news, Alarm as Arctic sea ice not yet freezing.

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Monday, 19 October 2020

LafargeHolcim CEO talks CO2

Aggregate Industries – UK subsidiary of cement giant LafargeHolcim – submitted its first application to quarry Straitgate Farm back in 2015. The application was subsequently pulled, and in 2017 – despite the climate crisis – Aggregate Industries re-submitted plans, which this time involved an outlandish 2.5 million mile haulage scheme.

Aggregate Industries started pushing the phrase "Sustainability is at the heart of our business" in 2016. It still claims that today. They're splendid words, but utterly meaningless if the company's idea of sustainability, the company's idea of action on climate change, is hauling as-dug sand and gravel from Straitgate 23 miles away to Uffculme for processing. No wonder Aggregate Industries' countless pledges to reduce CO2 have come to naught.

But, as we posted, major investors are now starting to demand climate action from big polluters. Here, two cement CEOs discuss CO2 reduction with a senior portfolio manager from Norges Bank:
 

According to the portfolio manager:
Investors are no longer just focussed on words but are also looking at hard numbers and climate-based metrics.
That must be alarming for companies like LafargeHolcim and Aggregate Industries; alarming for companies that have so far thought that words – not actual reductions – might be enough.

One of the cement CEOs involved in the discussion was LafargeHolcim’s Jan Jenisch. He admits that until three years ago, the company hadn’t done enough on sustainability. This was obvious even in East Devon, if Aggregate Industries’ planning application for Straitgate at the time was anything to go by.

Will anything now change? Time will tell:
Jan Jenisch admitted that it was a challenge for himself and LafargeHolcim to get the focus right initially, in terms of agreeing a new way forward on carbon reduction. He explained that, until three years ago, the company hadn’t done enough on sustainability. However the context changed due to the CO2 movement and new scientific evidence, and it became obvious that new priorities had to be set and the agenda had to be accelerated. "It was important to make things happen and I put sustainability at the top of my agenda," said Mr Jenisch.
LafargeHolcim needed to educate itself on the facts, agree a way forward and energise the company to get on board with the new targets. "Communication was missing, and acceleration, which is needed in this situation," he added.
It was important for LafargeHolcim to make people part of the programme. The group's decision to target zero emissions was not an idea generated in the CEO's office. "It was the result of many people around the globe wanting to go on this journey," said Mr Jenisch. 
And, if true, thank goodness they have pushed the CEO to take action.

But why hadn’t LafargeHolcim done enough on sustainability? Why hadn’t it taken climate change seriously enough? This serial polluter – that can trace its roots back to economic collaboration with the Nazis and beyond – will have long been been aware of the harm it was causing to society, year in, year out. Was that not enough to spur action? Did it really need to wait for the money men to raise concerns?

Jan Jenisch points to new scientific evidence, to a conversion 3 years ago, as though anthropogenic climate change is a recent discovery. It might be new to Jan Jenisch, but 1856 was when Eunice Newton Foote showed that the heating effect of sunlight was affected by CO2; 1896 was when Svante Arrhenius calculated the effect of doubling atmospheric CO2 to be an increase in surface temperatures of 5-6°C; 1958 was when measurements confirmed the steady increase of CO2 in the atmosphere; the 1980s was when global temperatures began to rise sharply; 1988 was when the UN established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and 2006 was when even Aggregate Industries recognised that climate change "[is] happening and we have to take action now."

Since then Aggregate Industries' emissions have gone up, and in 2019 – despite new priorities, despite it apparently being "important to make things happen" – LafargeHolcim emitted 148,000,000 tonnes of CO2; more than many countries and still 2% higher than 2017.

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Tuesday, 13 October 2020

Where are we with the cattle crossing issue?

Aggregate Industries' proposal to quarry Straitgate Farm – a dairy farm – would require the introduction of a cattle crossing across the busy B3174 Exeter Road, close to the brow of a hill. This would be used up to four times a day for around 150 cows – in much the same way that cows cross roads elsewhere in Devon and beyond – so they can access pasture to replace that lost to quarrying. 

Aggregate Industries has so far failed to assess the impact of cows on queueing traffic. As traffic consultants Vectos – representing another party – wrote:
The provision of a Cattle crossing over the B3174 may have severe impact on the operation of the B3174, which in the absence of assessment is not known.
Last year, as we posted in Bovine movements revisited – more than 2 years on, Devon County Council – following advice from their Highways Management department – wrote to Aggregate Industries:
The application needs to include the proposed agricultural access (TA 5.5.10) to the west of the existing farm access and directly opposite the existing field gate, to improve upon the current diagonal crossing point. That would enable a shorter traverse of the highway by livestock, effectively reducing crossing times. The Highway Authority also considers that these proposals should include holding pens on both sides of the road to assist in the efficient movement of the livestock. It appears that this would be a betterment of the existing situation and is related to the proposed mineral working based upon the worst case scenario of the available cattle movements, as put forward (TA 3.2.3) in the email from the Tenant Farmer [sic] to the Mineral Planning Authority dated 26 February 2018. The inclusion of the above is, we believe, outside of the application site and therefore it would possibly require a resubmission of the application to include it. However we do not believe that it is sufficient for the applicant to merely offer this to the Tenant Farmer and the Highway Authority without any means of the MPA being able to condition it.
At the start of this year, we made another Freedom of Information request to Devon County Council and learnt that Aggregate Industries informed the Council last October:
[AI’s traffic consultant] remains disappointed that your highways colleagues have done a U-turn from what we agreed with them at our meeting in terms of the cattle/livestock crossing. However, that said it may be in our interests to demonstrate that we have provided betterment that we secure a consent for a new perpendicular cattle crossing and we are currently preparing an application for submission to EDDC. Are you happy with this approach as this would negate altering the red line boundary?
The FOI asked for all Council correspondence relating to the application, but no reply to that communication has yet been provided. We can safely presume, however, that the answer was yes because last December, Aggregate Industries wrote to Devon County Council again:
A planning application for a new cattle crossing over the B3174 Exeter Road is also being finalised for submission to EDDC.
It's hardly a surprise that in 10 months no such application has appeared on EDDC’s planning website.

How would such an application be received? Look what happened last time such a plan was aired: 
Cattle crossing plan labelled ‘outrageous’
Traffic light 'cattle crossing' called 'downright dangerous'
'Outrageous' plans to proposed cattle crossing at Staitgate Farm, Ottery.
Since then, no assessment has been produced to show the impact a cattle crossing would have on the functioning or safety of this main road into and out of Ottery – a fast and busy road linking the town with the Daisymount A30 junction. Aggregate Industries – the company that conveniently forgot to mention the thorny issue of cows in the first place – would obviously rather not assess the dangers, despite claiming – perhaps in jest? – that only they can be trusted to provide data on the movements of cows.

But many will find it surprising that this has not been addressed – given the issue directly results from the proposal, given the issue was flagged to the Council more than three years ago, and given the impact that cow movements – planned and unplanned – seem to have on the roads elsewhere in Devon. As DevonLive recently reported:
It's a proper Devon morning on the roads with warnings to motorists to watch out for sheep, tyres and a whole herd of cows on the roads.
This wasn't an isolated incident. Twitter points us to more:







This Twitter search points us to a multitude of others:

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LafargeHolcim features in new documentary

In Nigeria, LafargeHolcim operates a large cement plant. As we posted in ‘LafargeHolcim pollutes with impunity’, this plant has smothered the local community with dust. The local people have started a class action to compensate for the alleged "pollution and destruction of the plaintiffs’ town, farmlands, rivers, air and general environment, arising from limestone mining and cement manufacture for a continuous period of 60 years." LafargeHolcim's response to the allegations can be found here. 

A new documentary explores how multinationals violate the fundamental rights of local populations and create environmental disasters; two companies are featured, one of which is LafargeHolcim – parent company of Aggregate Industries:

...when multinationals like @Glencore or @LafargeHolcim pollute rivers or suffocate villages with fine particles, they must be held responsible!
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Monday, 12 October 2020

Dormice

Dormice numbers in the UK have declined by over 70% in two decades.

Dormice have been found at Straitgate, but Aggregate Industries wants to grub up their habitat – ancient hedgerow up to 4m wide. Little suitable replacement habitat is yet in place. Any that has been planted will take decades to yield anything worthwhile. The PTES "strongly objects":
An extensive amount of important hedgerow will be destroyed. This is completely irreversible. The hedgerows are present on maps dating from the turn of the 20th century and are likely to have existed for centuries before this. Compensation planting (for that is what replanting is – not mitigation as suggested) for losses of irreplaceable habitat should be at a ratio in the region of 30 – 1. Proposed replanting and that already done falls far short of this.
Plainly, Aggregate Industries couldn't care less. It's not bothered about this species. Its business model relies upon trashing nature: digging up the ground, removing everything in its path.

Close by, however, others are bothered, doing their bit to stop this much-loved species from extinction.
 
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Monday, 5 October 2020

‘Ask Exeter University to help with your CO2 problem’ – suggested DCC to AI

We all know by now that rather than letting Aggregate Industries – subsidiary of cement giant LafargeHolcim – stand on its own two feet, ‘Devon County Council’s job is to deliver Straitgate’, providing any assistance it can.

But did the Council really suggest – in a time of climate crisis – that Aggregate Industries should greenwash away the carbon emissions connected with its application to quarry Straitgate Farm?

Surely not. But in October last year, in an email about the outstanding matter of "the Sustainability appraisal" uncovered by a FOI request, Devon County Council sent this message of help and advice to its friends at Aggregate Industries:
As I previously mentioned on a number of occasions, I can’t stress enough how important that will be and you might want to consider using a known expert in the field such as Exeter University to check it over, if not to produce it.
I can foresee that the road mileage (amongst other issues) will be a main point of debate so the report should also consider more up to date solutions such as an electric fleet before I am asked to go back to you to assess it?
This is only an observation, but is given in the spirit of helping to address issues that I am almost certain will be raised in the consideration of this proposal by the County Council’s development Management Committee. Any report to them currently needs be extremely clear on the carbon/sustainability issue following the declaration of a Climate Emergency.
In December, in a later email, Aggregate Industries confirmed:
I am in the process of arranging a meeting [with a] Senior Research Fellow from Exeter University to address climate change and sustainability issues.
Perhaps Devon County Council thought Aggregate Industries hadn't quite grasped the severity of our climate emergency – the record temperatures, the wildfires, the melting ice caps. Perhaps they hadn't – if Aggregate Industries’ track record on CO2 emissions is anything to go by.

But people might wonder why, if Devon County Council has declared a climate emergency, its planners – "in the spirit of helping to address issues" – are still suggesting ways to ease the passage for Aggregate Industries’ nonsensical plan. People will rightly wonder how hauling as-dug aggregate 2.5 million miles – to a processing site that already has more than 10 millions tonnes of the same material – contributes to Devon’s net-zero ambitions.

And Devon is not alone with net-zero ambitions. Even cement giants are now jumping on the bandwagon, pushing out press releases, proclaiming they've changed:


So, if LafargeHolcim really has changed its spots, how does the carbon-intensive plan for Straitgate – the one that would be operative until the mid 2030s – sit in a #netzero world?

How does it square with what Guy Edwards, CEO at Aggregate Industries, claimed only last month?
We’re proud to be part of the LafargeHolcim Group as it makes the bold and ambitious pledge to go Net Zero by 2050. By being the first building materials supplier in the world to sign up to the SBTi’s ‘Business Ambition for 1.5°C’ demonstrates our genuine desire to achieve real and lasting change in protecting the environment.
In our capacity as one of the UK’s leading construction materials suppliers, we fully support LafargeHolcim’s pledge and accelerating the use of low-carbon and carbon-neutral products is just one of the initiatives we’re currently working on to help create a greener construction industry.’
Or this statement, from Guy Edwards talking about lowering CO2:
Sustainability remains at the heart of what we do, and our aim is to make a positive contribution to the built environment now and for future generations.
You see, words are easy. Words are cheap. The question is, will any of those words herald anything new? Or is it more greenwash? Will carbon-intensive plans be junked in favour of more sustainable ones? Or will it be more of the same-as-usual?

Because as things stand, such grandes déclarations ring hollow – when Aggregate Industries is prepared to put a ridiculous 23 miles between quarry face and processing plant for bog-standard sand and gravel.

In fact, you wonder if this company has any idea what sustainability looks like. If the company really wanted to "address climate change and sustainability issues", if "sustainability remains at the heart of what we do", if there were any genuine desire, Aggregate Industries would have scrapped its plans for Straitgate years ago.

But as extreme weather grips our planet, Aggregate Industries clearly has no qualms about calling upon Exeter University to "address" the CO2 emissions connected with the Straitgate project, no doubt putting it through some greenwashing cycle to help councillors look more favourably upon its gas-guzzling scheme.

We don’t know what came of any meeting at Exeter University. The Senior Research Fellow in question, with "a background in architecture and building physics", is often called upon by local authorities. In fact, somewhat ironically, he has been called upon to help move Devon to net-zero carbon emissions.

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