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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