\u201cWe fully support their recommendations to make lobbying much more transparent and bring the UK in line with international best practice. These reforms would support more participatory and open decision-making to help rebuild public trust and ensure better decision-making, widening the evidence base for policy making and reducing risks of policy capture by vested interests,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
In 2022, the UK government quietly dropped two criteria from its \u2018Climate Compatibility Checkpoint\u2019 after lobbying from the fossil fuel industry. The checkpoint is used to assess whether proposed oil and gas licenses align with the UK\u2019s climate change goals.<\/p>\n
Oil giants BP and Shell and their industry association, Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), responded to a consultation on the checkpoint by objecting to the inclusion of two key metrics for measuring the impact of fossil fuels, according to InfluenceMap\u2019s analysis of consultation responses obtained via Freedom of Information requests.<\/p>\n
The measures they opposed would have required the government to consider \u2018Scope 3 emissions\u2019 and the \u2018global production gap\u2019 when issuing new oil and gas licences.<\/p>\n
Scope 3 emissions are produced during end-use and contribute the largest share of all emissions from oil and gas production, while the production gap tracks the discrepancy between planned fossil fuel production and what\u2019s needed to limit global warming to 1.5\u00b0C or 2\u00b0C.<\/p>\n
The government dropped both criteria from the final checkpoint, which instead focuses solely on operational emissions, which represent only a fraction of total emissions from oil and gas projects.<\/p>\n
This outcome, InfluenceMap\u2019s report notes, strongly aligns with the positions advocated for by BP, Shell, and OEUK, suggesting their lobbying efforts were successful.<\/p>\n
The following year, the government approved 100 new North Sea oil and gas licences, which had a potential emissions footprint equivalent to Denmark\u2019s annual output.<\/p>\n
InfluenceMap\u2019s report also highlights the issues around government consultations on proposed policies, pointing out that, as in this case, lobbyists typically use these to suggest amendments in favour of their clients, but their responses are not published as standard.<\/p>\n
Similarly, unlike in the other four Parliaments InfluenceMap looked at, corporations in the UK are not required to declare their engagement on policies, how much they spend on lobbying, or which legislation or decisions they are targeting.<\/p>\n
It highlights that this can lead to a situation in which companies make voluntary corporate disclosures that fail to capture the true extent of this advocacy. In this case, InfluenceMap found BP published a summary of its response to the checkpoint that omitted key lines of its opposition, which were only revealed later through Freedom of Information requests.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThis report highlights, yet again, the glaring gaps in our lobbying transparency regime and the potential risks of favouring a small group of vested interests at the public\u2019s expense.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe UK needs to catch up to other comparable democracies and act swiftly to introduce a comprehensive lobbying register with meaningful disclosures.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Domestic hydrogen<\/h3>\n
It is broadly agreed that, in the UK, hydrogen is not a viable solution for decarbonising domestic heating and is an especially bad alternative to heat pumps. Much of our hydrogen comes from burning gas or coal and it cannot be transported through our existing pipelines without massive and costly infrastructure changes.<\/p>\n
This reality has been set out by different independent bodies advising the UK government.<\/p>\n
In 2021, the Climate Change Committee warned that hydrogen had \u201cnot yet been proven at scale and should not be a cause to delay other options\u201d such as the roll-out of heat pumps or low-carbon heat networks. Two years later, the National Infrastructure Commission said the government \u201cshould not support the roll-out of hydrogen heating\u201d because there is \u201cno public policy case\u201d for its use.<\/p>\n
As InfluenceMap\u2019s report notes, this has not prevented the gas industry from waging a successful lobbying campaign in a bid to shore up its market position \u2013 with a clear impact on government policy.<\/p>\n
The think tank found the industry pursued its cause in a number of ways, including setting up Hello Hydrogen, a campaign fronted by TV star Rachel Riley, to make the case for using hydrogen in homes to the public in 2022. While the campaign did not declare its funders, its director was also a director of Cadent Gas, the UK\u2019s largest gas distribution network.<\/p>\n
Cadent is one of the funders of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Hydrogen, which has publicly called for hydrogen to play a part in domestic heating. The APPG\u2019s other funders include Equinor, Shell and the Energy and Utilities Alliance, a lobbying body run by Mike Foster, the former Labour MP for Worcester (home to Worcester Bosch, a major manufacturer of gas boilers).<\/p>\n
Other fossil fuel firms and industry lobbying bodies have also consistently pushed for the use of hydrogen in domestic heating in letters to parliamentary select committees and responses to government consultations.<\/p>\n
Ahead of last year\u2019s general election, Centrica (formerly British Gas) wrote to the Public Accounts Committee, which examines the value for money of government projects, to call for further public investment in hydrogen for home heating. The firm had written to the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee in support of the technology less than 12 months earlier.<\/p>\n
This industry lobbying has led to indecision and disruption on government plans. A February 2023 report by the House of Lords Committee blamed mixed messages on the effectiveness of hydrogen from the government and industry for the poor uptake of a publicly subsidised scheme for heat pumps, which would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create many jobs.<\/p>\n
The lords\u2019 report concluded:<\/p>\n
\n\u201cHydrogen is not a serious option for home heating for the short to medium-term and misleading messages, including from the government, are negatively affecting take-up of established low-carbon home heating technologies like heat pumps.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The UK\u2019s heat pump roll-outs have lagged behind those of its neighbours. Just 55,000 heat pumps were installed in the UK in 2019, compared to 600,000 in France, according to a study cited in the InfluenceMap report.<\/p>\n
In the UK, this reportedly created around 2,000 jobs and reduced emissions of CO\u2082 by 0.08 million tonnes (MT); in France 30,000 jobs were created and 0.84 MT of CO\u2082 emissions avoided.<\/p>\n
\u2018Sustainable\u2019 aviation fuel<\/h3>\n
InfluenceMap also uncovered how industry significantly influenced the government\u2019s so-called \u2018Jet Zero\u2019 strategy for cutting emissions in the UK\u2019s aviation industry, which is heavily reliant on fossil fuels.<\/p>\n
Biofuels, largely made up of used cooking oils, are often suggested as an option for producing Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), although they are generally accepted to be worse in terms of scalability than other, more advanced fuels, and much worse than just reducing the number of flights.<\/p>\n
The government initially proposed limiting the use of used cooking oil for SAF to alleviate competition on the resource \u2013 which is increasingly in demand for other uses, such as producing biodiesel for cars \u2013 and to encourage investment in new technologies for the aviation industry.<\/p>\n
The proposals included two options; either banning the use of used cooking oil for SAF altogether, or rapidly phasing down its use so that it would make up just 8.5% of total sustainable aviation fuel by 2040.<\/p>\n
But the government\u2019s final SAF policy was more closely aligned with industry preferences than scientific warnings, InfluenceMap found. It allows used cooking oil to make up 100% of SAF uptake in 2025 and 2026, 71% in 2030, and 35% in 2040.<\/p>\n
InfluenceMap\u2019s analysis reveals the weakened SAF mandate came after pressure from Shell, BP, the International Airlines Group (which owns several airlines), Airlines UK (the trade body for UK-registered airlines) and Virgin Atlantic airline.<\/p>\n
It also found that business interests were overrepresented in parliamentary meetings on SAF while the policy was being shaped.<\/p>\n
This can be seen in the make-up of Parliament\u2019s Jet Zero Council, \u201ca partnership between industry academia and government\u201d, which was run by Heathrow\u2019s chief operating officer, while the International Airlines Group chaired the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Delivery Group.<\/p>\n
The council comprised 24 members from industry, three from academia and one from civil society. Ministers were also directly involved with the council, with then-prime minister Boris Johnson attending the group\u2019s first meeting along with four ministers.<\/p>\n
Transparency failures again played a key role. Not a single ministerial meeting on SAF referenced the weakening of the cooking oil cap in official records, and industry responses to consultations were only obtained through Freedom of Information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Climate-focused think tank InfluenceMap has uncovered that industry influence appears to have led to the delay and dilution of UK policies on the roll-out of heat pumps, the development of \u2018sustainable\u2019 aviation fuel and the granting of new oil and gas licenses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3515065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79716,213529,79718],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3515032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","category-energy-featured","category-environment"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3515032"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3515060,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515032\/revisions\/3515060"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3515065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3515032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3515032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3515032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}