Oh dear. Aggregate Industries and Devon County Council must have been hoping for great things from the report "Greenhouse Gas Assessment of the Proposed Quarry at Straitgate Farm" by Dr Daniel Lash from The Centre for Energy and the Environment at the University of Exeter.
But it really is a pile of worthless drivel.
In October 2020, we posted ‘Ask Exeter University to help with your CO2 problem’ – suggested DCC to AI, and indeed Aggregate Industries did just that. A report was produced. It should have been titled "How to Greenwash the Proposed Quarry at Straitgate Farm". It concludes:
The calculations show that the proposal for extraction at Straitgate Farm with onward processing at Hillhead Quarry will result in 11% lower GHG emissions than meeting the demand for sand and gravel in proposed markets from existing quarries.
It’s a fantastical illusion, because Hillhead is 23 miles away from Straitgate.
You might have expected more from a company loudly proclaiming it is "committed to tackling climate change", from a parent company apparently "making climate action part of everything we do."
But greenwash is what we've got, with some whitewash thrown in too.
Processing at Hillhead may be feasible, but would generate a massively greater quantity of CO2 emissions from the additional mileage required to be travelled. 8.48
Now, of course, that the company is wanting to process at Hillhead, it's a different story.
Dr Lash's report has glaring omissions and errors too. Although no credentials are provided, Dr Lash is an academic, who has advised the Devon Climate Emergency Response Group, and should know better. An academic would normally cross-check their facts, make sure they’re robust, take a look, ask around, try Google at least, not just take the word of a profit-hungry aggregates business.
Dr Lash has not checked his facts. The giveaway is on the front page of the report:
Any information provided by third parties and referred to herein has not been checked or verified by the Centre for Energy and the Environment, unless otherwise expressly stated in the document.
So, not rigorous at all then.
And it shows. Dr Lash has assessed the "Do Nothing" scenario, i.e:
The GHG emissions that would arise without the proposed quarry at Straitgate Farm, namely that the demand for sand and aggregate at the target markets would need to be met from other quarries
These calculations assume that in the absence of a quarry at Straitgate, Hillhead would NOT produce any gravel. None at all. Zero. Nada. Not for asphalt plants. Not for the Exeter/M5 market. Not now. Not in the future. Not from the 8 million tonne sand and gravel resource at neighbouring Penslade, a Preferred Area in the Devon Minerals Plan. It’s a revelation. It makes you wonder what this is doing at Hillhead:
Hillhead Quarry is an important source of sand and gravel. The site produces high quality sand and gravel and coarse aggregates for the general construction industry, concrete aggregates, building sand, asphalt and coated materials for road-making.
Devon County Council also assumes there is gravel at Hillhead at the Houndaller site:
2.5.4 Information provided by Aggregate Industries UK Ltd [SLR (2015)] in support of their planning application for Straitgate Farm near Ottery St Mary indicates a ratio of 54% gravel to 46% sand at that site, while their reserves at Houndaller near Uffculme have a ratio of 25% gravel to 75% sand.
Photos in the Council's monitoring reports for Hillhead – above and below – give the game away too, as do the piles of unprocessed pebbles previously photographed at the site.
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Aggregate Industries' very own Supporting Statement for the application to import Straitgate material into Hillhead also admits:
2.2.1. Sand and gravel extraction has taken place on the site for some time. The 1890/91 OS map marks an ‘old gravel pit’ to the north of the site...
3.2.3. ...the sand and gravel deposit indigenous to Hillhead Quarry is red in colour and is sand rich, containing circa 20% gravel.
And the area next to Hillhead at Penslade? The Devon Minerals Plan tells us that:
9.3.5 In the event that Straitgate Farm proved to be incapable of being delivered, then the other site, West of Penslade Cross, would have adequate resources to enable sand and gravel supply to be maintained for the Plan period.
In other words, in the past, the present, and the future, there's not zero gravel at Hillhead. This table from Devon County Council's Local Aggregates Assessment gives more detail:
What size is the existing reserve at Hillhead? In 2019, Aggregate Industries helpfully confirmed:
The company's reserves schedule for Houndaller was subsequently revised to 2.9 million tonnes as at 1st January 2019.
So – bearing in mind Hillhead is 23 miles away from Straitgate – what fanciful figures has Aggregate Industries been able to come up with? Dr Lash has calculated that to quarry Straitgate Farm and haul material to Hillhead for processing for onward supply to markets would result in a total of 3.96 million miles. But to not quarry Straitgate, to forget all the gravel at Hillhead, and to source much of the gravel from Cornwall would result in 4.38 million miles. It’s brilliant, but complete and utter nonsense.
If we instead remember that Houndaller next door to Hillhead has 25% gravel, then not quarrying Straitgate would save 1.3 million miles. If we remember the other 8 million tonnes of sand and gravel allocated in the Minerals Plan at Penslade next door to Hillhead, then not quarrying Straitgate would save 2.1 million miles. We’ve calculated three other scenarios too. All five scenarios result in less mileage than the smoke and mirrors from Aggregate Industries. Calculations can be found here.
But forgetting the gravel at Hillhead is just one of many problems with this report. Claiming "17,200m2 of restored orchard" at Straitgate would be planted "at a density of 2,250 trees/Ha" leading to annual sequestration of "9.3 tCO2e" is another problem. Because if 3,870 trees were ever planted in this small orchard there would be no orchard, particularly when Aggregate Industries has previously claimed "cuttings will be taken from 10 trees".
Can Aggregate Industries not offer up a single report without something being seriously amiss?
