“Eco-friendly” Gas And “Scientific” Coal Mining

Where disinformation about the fight against the climate crisis is being spread and what it leads to

Liubov Velychko

The year 2023 was the hottest on record for the UN World Meteorological Organisation. The main reason for this was human activity. And this is notwithstanding the fact that 195 countries signed the so-called Paris Agreement in 2015–2016, agreeing to join forces to stop the disastrous rate of global warming.

The purpose of the agreement is to limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius by deliberately reducing CO₂ emissions from all sectors of the economy. 

Global warming refers to the increase in the average temperature of the Earth, which is mainly caused by carbon emissions (CO₂) from human activity. Almost 90% of these emissions come from the combustion of coal, oil and gas, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

Among other things, the signatory countries need to reorient their energy sector away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy sources. In order to achieve the Agreement’s goal by 2030, the number of solar and wind power plants should quadruple every year (a number of countries have committed themselves to not building a single new coal-fired power plant). And the lion’s share of new car sales should be electric cars.

Why is this important?

According to the United Nations, over the past 150 years, the annual global temperature has risen by 1.1 degrees (as of 2020). This has already led to abnormal natural disasters: droughts, hurricanes, and forest fires. And when the temperature rises by 1.5 degrees, 14% of the world’s population will face life-threatening heat by the end of the century. If the temperature grows by 1.6°, wildfires will become more frequent, and mass extinction of animals and pollinating insects will begin, leading to crop failures and, consequently, famine.

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However, the Paris Agreement has a serious drawback: it lacks an enforcement mechanism, i.e., a ‘penalty’ if a country fails to fulfil its obligations. As of 2021, none of the countries has implemented climate commitments in line with the 1.5-degree goal. 

As part of The Bertha Challenge 2024, an international project to study the impact of disinformation on the climate crisis, Mind is launching a series of pieces based on a study of how disinformation influences government decision-making in the energy sector. The main focus of the monitoring is on how the state policy of certain countries is shaped under the guise of the idea of overcoming climate change, which in fact does not contribute to climate protection. In addition to Ukraine, the study also covered the United States, India, russia and Australia, countries where the production and use of fossil energy sources is huge. 

We have analysed the climate policies and efforts of these countries’ governments. And we found out what type of information manipulation is most frequently found in each country’s most visited online media. Because, as the polls show, the media do influence people’s attitudes to climate change and in some way determine government decisions related to it.

India’s War of Priorities

In 2023, it was Asian countries, including India, that suffered the most from natural disasters due to climate-related hazards. Yet, there are very few motivating reports in the local media that would encourage people to do more to tackle the climate crisis. First and foremost, this concerns the winding down of coal mines – of which there are many in India, as more than 70% of the country’s electricity is generated by burning coal. 

India aims to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2070, mainly through a massive transition to large-scale renewable energy. But The Hindu writes that the consequences of this transition are unclear at the local and national levels. And as an example, the outlet’s journalists, citing “some studies”, mention the frightening prospects of setting up solar power plants on a gigantic 75,000 square kilometers. That is more than the area of Ireland and twice the size of the island of Taiwan.

The Indian media is full of articles rhetorically asking: who will pay for the coal phase-out? The Deccan Chronicle writes that India needs about $1 trillion by 2030 to meet its climate change adaptation goals, and it will not be easy to find these funds because the government’s priority is ‘social costs and contingencies.’ 

Wanweiroy Kharlukhi, a member of India’s upper house of parliament, directly condemns the coal ban, arguing that “denying my people coal mining (…) is like denying them food”.

And Chief Economic Adviser Anantha Nageswaran concludes that the new European carbon tax, which applies to products from India, is “unfair”. Instead, “the best insurance against climate change is continued economic growth”.

The Carbon Benefit Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is the European Union’s requirement for coal, oil or gas companies to prove that a carbon tax has been paid during their production. The requirement applies from 2023 to companies that import gas, oil and coal to EU countries.

In order to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, however, coal production must decline rather than grow by 2030. And by 2040, it should cease altogether. 

Yet India has not yet committed itself to a gradual phase-out of coal energy. On the contrary, the government’s appetite for building new mines has doubled: in addition to the 25.6 GW of mines already under construction, India has decided to build additional mines of the same capacity by 2032.

In the final version of the National Electricity Development Plan for 2023, the projected increase in coal production capacity is 23%, which is 5% more than in the draft published in September 2022.

New coal mines continue to open in India, even in places where they have not been operational for decades. And in disregard of the climate crisis, government officials hail this “historic” decision, explaining that many people have “suffered” and the government has lost revenue without the coal industry.

The new coal mines will bring in revenue and close the gap in the state budget, government officials explain. In January-April 2024, coal-based electricity generation in India increased by 10%.

Meanwhile, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar shifts the responsibility for the climate crisis to developed countries. He believes that “unlike developed countries, India has responsibly addressed the issue and has taken strong measures to meet goals set by the Paris Agreement” and “India has not been the reason for climate change”.

But it is already clear that even with the development of alternative energy, half of the country’s electricity will still be generated from coal in 2030.

The Australian Paradox

The distance between Australia and India is measured in thousands of kilometres. And yet Australia has 27 times the GDP per capita of India. But like India, the Australian government plans to increase coal production by around 4% between 2019 and 2030. This is in direct contradiction to the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Another thing these countries share is the narrative in the media sphere about the high cost of clean energy transition. As well as the scarce number of critical publications about the opening of new coal mines. In 2021, Australia’s conservative leaders declared that they would ‘sell coal as long as someone buys it’. Australian MP Kevin Hogan tells the local edition of the international TV channel Sky News that Australia is not yet ready for a future without coal. [screenshot]

49% of Australia’s electricity was generated from coal in 2022. To reach the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal, the share of renewable energy sources in Australia must be 95% by 2030. But given the current vector of federal energy policy development, this goal is unattainable.

No national document has set out a clear plan to phase out coal-fired power generation so far.

In May 2021, the International Energy Agency published a new report warning against new investments in coal mining projects in order to achieve zero emissions in the global energy sector by 2050. “In a zero net emissions scenario, no new coal mines are needed or existing ones expanded as demand for coal falls rapidly,” the document says.

Renewable energy accounted for 31% of total electricity production in 2022. That same year, a new government became in power in the country, but its policy has not moved towards real climate reforms. None of the decisions made give a clear understanding of whether emissions will be reduced. And if so, by what amount.

So far, attempts by the civic sector to influence this policy have not yielded significant results. The Central Queensland Environment Council tried in vain in court to force Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to consider the climate impact of two large coal mines before giving them permission to continue operating – the Narrabri expansion and the Mount Pleasant optimisation project.

The Federal Court did not meet the environmental activists halfway and ruled that the Department of the Environment was not obliged under the Australian Environment Act to consider climate threats when evaluating projects. This court ruling automatically allowed another 740 coal, oil and gas projects to get the green light to proceed.

Disinformation by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, 2022: “Ending coal production in Australia will not reduce global emissions because “what you are going to see is a substitution of coal from other countries, which is likely to lead to higher emissions… because of the quality of the product”. However, to meet the world’s climate goals, the world does not need to simply replace one piece of coal with another, but rather burn far less of it.

To complement the preservation of the old mines, Environment Minister Tania Plibersek approved the opening of the Isaac River coal mine in May 2023. Three other mines followed.

At the end of 2022, there were 114 new fossil energy projects under development in Australia, 69 of which were coal. 

Key developments such as the Scarborough coal field and the expansion of the North West Offshore Oil Refinery in Western Australia, the Barossa offshore gas field, and the Beetaloo shale gas project will ensure fossil fuel production and supply for decades, according to Climate Action Tracker analysts.

Very “Green” Russian Gas

Only 57 companies in the world produce 80% of CO₂  emissions. In this list, the russian energy giant Gazprom is among the top three.

To improve their reputation, oil and gas companies use greenwashing  tactics: they spend a small share of their revenues on environmental projects and begin to position themselves as environmentalists.

Back in 1995, Gazprom approved its Environmental Policy, which states that the company is committed to “taking all possible measures to preserve the climate”. Gazprom’s official website also has an Environmental Protection section. Initially, PR articles about the company’s environmental actions are published here, and later they appear on the most popular Russian media. 

Greenwashing screens itself behind such terms:

• Natural can contain anything that is found in nature, and it does not mean that the ingredients are good for humans.
• Eco-friendly means taking ecological measures to protect the environment, but it is a vague term that carries no weight.
• Green is an undefined vague word that conveys an action or quality related to environmental protection or eco-consumption.
• Carbon neutral, carbon offset, net zero or zero emissions programmes are a red flag due to a lack of oversight, standardisation or a means of measuring the carbon saved.
• Carbon footprint is a term used to shift the focus from fossil fuel companies to individuals. The carbon footprint calculator only measures individual contributions to global warming, not industrial greenhouse gas emissions.

But the headlines of such publications can be misleading. For example, an article on the Komsomolskaya Pravda website titled “Omsk Oil Refinery Gave the City 20 New Eco-Friendly Buses” does not refer to buses that run on electric motors and are safe for the environment. The company means “natural gas” when it comes to environmental friendliness: “The use of gas fuel reduces the environmental impact.” The fact that this sponsorship event took place as part of the Clean Air project makes the situation even more bizarre.

In its reports, the company also refers to natural gas as “an environmentally friendly fuel supplied to consumers using green technologies to improve the quality of life of the population while carefully preserving nature”.

The corporation also involves environmental organisations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature in its PR campaigns. On Life.ru, a popular Russian resource, experts from WWF and several other environmental organisations talk about their visits to the company’s refinery in Moscow, the Russian capital. After inspecting the mechanical treatment facilities, they concluded that the company is a ‘forced leader in the field of ecology’.

President of the Russian federation Vladimir Putin on 22 July 2022: “European countries have neglected the importance of conventional energy and relied on non-traditional ones. They are great experts in the field of non-traditional relations, so in the energy sector, they decided to rely on non-traditional types of energy – the sun, wind.”

To maintain its image as an environmentally friendly organisation, Gazprom reports that it develops alternative energy sources ‘in economically and technically feasible situations, in particular in remote or technologically isolated areas’ at its gas production and bulk transporting facilities.

Rosneft, another Russian oil and gas company, is one of the ten largest in the world. It publicly calls “preserving the environment for future generations” part of its corporate culture. There are a lot of publications in the media about the company’s environmental actions, such as supporting the monitoring of reindeer migration or planting trees with the participation of its employees.

Also, the multibillion-dollar profit oil and gas company can afford to allocate funds for the nutrition and treatment of thirty polar bears in zoos, so that the headlines ‘Rosneft has been taking care of polar bears for 10 years’ can appear in major media. These are the same bears that scientists predict will become extinct by 2100 if humanity does not make more efforts to combat climate change.

Viktoria Sapozhnikova, Deputy Director of Rosneft’s Department for Analysis, Methodology and Development of Industrial Safety, Labour Protection and Environment, 24 April 2023: “Rosneft is focused not just on improving the environmental friendliness of its business and minimising its environmental impact, but on achieving a total positive impact on ecosystems.”

When talking about investments in “environmental protection measures” worth $6 million, the oil company is referring to, among other things, a “programme to improve pipeline reliability” and “increase the efficiency of industrial waste disposal”.

No matter how much the media talks about the environmental friendliness of russian gas and oil, it is the energy sector that accounts for about 80% of all polluting emissions.

According to the Climate Action Tracker, an independent research project, russia’s current policies and actions lead to an increase in emissions, not a decrease, and are in no way in line with the 1.5°C warming limit. If all countries followed the russian approach, warming could reach more than 3°C.

All signatories to the Paris Agreement are required to regularly update their climate goals, making them even more ambitious. But Russia has stopped following this rule. It joined the Paris Agreement in 2019, and the following year it updated its plan without improving it. 

Instead of focusing on further increasing energy production from renewables, in June 2020, the russian government adopted a document with the opposite message – the Energy Strategy Until 2035. It states that russia will continue to sell oil, coal and gas to the rest of the world, and anything that hinders this goal will be considered a threat and a challenge.

In 2021, Russia was the world’s largest exporter of fossil gas – with 23.6% of global exports – and the second largest exporter of oil (12.3% of the total).

Moreover, in 2021, Russia weakened its influence on the largest air polluters at the legislative level, allowing them to simply report on these emissions instead of paying fines for large greenhouse gas emissions starting in 2024.

Uncertainty also remains in the renewable energy sector in Russia. The country has no clear targets for the development of solar and wind energy.

The American Oil Dream

Unlike russia, the US has set itself a very ambitious goal of achieving 100% clean energy by 2035. Achieving this goal depends on the ability to build large-scale solar and wind energy infrastructure.

Still, the most visited US media outlets have a rather pessimistic atmosphere, spreading to a large readership. In March 2024 alone, the top 10 US publications had 2.2 billion visitors. And research shows that the media do influence people’s attitudes to climate change and in some ways determine government decisions.

So we analysed how all of the 10 most popular US media outlets mentioned the climate crisis in their articles. 

USA TODAY reports that local governments ban green energy faster than they build it. Even more, in all parts of the nation, “residents are crying out against solar farms, wind turbines, and new power lines”: they are suing, passing laws, and taking other measures to stop or slow down these projects. On top of that, there are bureaucratic obstacles to obtaining permits for such construction.

The New York Times regularly emphasises that climate promises are hard to keep, and even in the wealthy United States, the government is reluctant to give money to fund the international Green Climate Fund, which benefits poorer countries.

FoxNews quotes climate expert Caleb Rossiter as saying that “unreliable” solar and wind energy will not have any impact on slowing global warming, and will result in a multiple increase in electricity bills.

Citing researchers, CNBC writes that it is “hopeless” to switch to renewable energy sources. They say it is better to focus on saving existing energy. But they don’t explain how.

These words seem to echo the opinion of Saudi Aramco’s CEO, Amin Nasser, who said a month earlier in the same publication that the energy transition is failing, so the world should abandon the “fantasy” of gradually abandoning oil.

“We should phase in new energy sources and technologies when they are genuinely ready, economically competitive and with the right infrastructure,” Nasser said.

At the same time, the US media play along with local oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron. The New York Post, in particular, features a story about the “climate success story driven by fossil fuels”. And Fox News, citing the Energy Research Institute, reported a news story with a call about how a decline in US oil and gas production would harm the environment. 

In support of the point about the oil company’s positive environmental intentions, a lengthy text on CNBC describes ExxonMobil’s pilot project to remove CO₂  from the atmosphere. “Direct air capture technology has tremendous long-term potential as a tool to combat climate change,” says ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods. 

Another option for producing clean energy is offered by oil giants British Petroleum and Shell in another publication on the same website. They are investing in a new “promising industry” called agri-voltaics – to create solar power plants at such a height from the ground that it would allow cattle to graze and beekeeping on the same territory.

Attempts by oil companies to whitewash their reputations with non-standard projects are understandable. After all, the United States is the world’s largest producer of oil and shale gas. But President Joe Biden has positioned himself as a defender of the planet against global warming. In addition, to meet climate goals by 2030, the US should not develop new oil and gas deposits…

Nevertheless, the US passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in January 2023, which is important for climate policy. Along with provisions to support clean energy, the bill also includes incentives for fossil fuel oil and gas production, under the pretext that it allows domestic oil and gas companies to transition away from fossil fuels at a “reasonable pace”.

The law forces the federal government to propose a minimum area of public land for drilling each year. It also contains a provision that oil and gas projects are given priority over renewable energy projects in auctions for the use of federal land.

If emissions continue to decline until 2030, according to the Climate Action Tracker, the US will achieve only 63-77% of its overall emissions reduction goal. This level falls short of the 1.5˚C target.

Just two months after the IRA was launched, the Department of the Interior approved a major oil project, the ConocoPhillips Willow oil project in Alaska. This is one of the few oil projects that US President Joe Biden has approved on his own accord without congressional or court approval. 

And the story did not end there. That same month, the Department of the Interior announced an auction for 73 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. In July, the Supreme Court allowed the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 500-kilometre project to transport gas from West Virginia to Virginia.

The Magic of Ukrainian Media

On 14 May 2024, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law on the opening of biomethane exports. The document, among other things, provides for the creation of a register of biomethane producers connected to gas supply networks. From now on, the customs procedures applied to natural gas will also apply to biomethane. The law was adopted by parliamentarians as a measure that will contribute to decarbonisation and the fight against global climate change.

Biomethane is a gas produced from food and livestock waste, sewage sludge and the organic fraction of household waste. 

Biomethane production in Ukraine only started in October 2021. Therefore, it is not surprising that before that, there were almost no mentions of this type of energy in the Ukrainian media landscape, except for a few overview articles on the economic preconditions for the development of this business. The government’s Energy Strategy of Ukraine Until 2035, approved in 2017, also does not mention the word “biomethane”. However, the updated version of this document already lists biomethane plants as one of the most promising areas for investment.

The Ukrainian Parliament ratified the Paris Agreement in 2016, and since then the government has introduced a number of alternative energy initiatives. But back then, it was all about developing solar and wind power generation, and the number of such power plants in the country began to grow rapidly. But with the start of russia’s full-scale invasion, green progress has stalled: Ukraine has lost 80% of its wind farms and 20% of its solar power plants, according to the Ministry of Energy. 

In the midst of the energy crisis, there were people who decided to take a chance and give a boost to a new energy resource for the country – biomethane – under the guise of a “green” solution. But is biomethane indeed the key to solving climate problems?

In early 2023, several private investors, such as Gals Agro and Vitagro, entered the Ukrainian media world and publicly announced that they had invested tens of millions of dollars in the construction of biomethane plants over the past two years. Before the war started, this business idea made sense: there was a significant demand for biomethane in the European Union, and Ukrainian exporters could meet it. But selling biomethane in Ukraine was not economically viable. 

When the Ukrainian government banned the export of Ukrainian energy due to the war with russia, Gals Agro and Vitagro found themselves in a stalemate: the plants had already been built, but there was no point in launching them. This business problem could have been solved by adopting a law to allow the export of biomethane. But in the Ukrainian reality, drafting, discussing and approving a bill may take years. And the businessmen did not want to wait that long.

Who owns Gals-Agro and Vitagro?

Vitagro is a Ukrainian agri-business holding company that operates in the fields of crop production, horticulture and animal farming. In 2019, the company started investing in renewable energy projects and opened several solar power plants. The key controller of Vitagro is Sergiy Labaziuk, Member of 7th-9th Parliament of Ukraine.

Gals Agro is a group of agricultural companies engaged in crop production, horticulture and animal husbandry, and has the largest number of biogas plants in Ukraine. The co-owner of Gals Agro is Mykola Gavrylenko, Member of the 1st Ukrainian Parliament. From 1991 to 1998, he headed the State Committee on Geology and Subsoil Use of Ukraine. Gals Agro also controls a number of companies involved in the construction and turnaround maintenance of oil and gas wells, including well-workover operation for Ukrgasvydobuvannya, Ukraine’s largest gas producer.

Six months before the draft law on customs clearance of biomethane was registered in parliament, there were only a few extensive pieces in the media about this energy source. All these reports had several factors in common. First, they were all published in popular media. Second, their commentators were well-known public figures in the energy sector.

And third, these texts used the thesis that the biomethane industry development would help Ukraine achieve its decarbonisation goals, a commitment that Ukraine made under the Paris Agreement. Though “in a best-case scenario” biomethane maintains the level of carbon dioxide at the current level, it does not reduce it.

Why cannot biomethane be used on an industrial scale?

Agricultural waste-to-energy projects can be useful for small farms if the biogas produced on the farm is reused only on that farm. When it comes to large-scale industrial waste-to-energy projects, however, the upgrading of the resulting biogas to biomethane to be added to the gas transmission system releases CO₂  and hazardous air pollutants.

Linking biomethane to Ukraine’s compliance with international climate requirements was obviously necessary to draw more attention to the topic of this little-known energy source in Ukrainian society. After all, how else can we draw the attention of lawmakers to climate issues in the midst of a full-scale war with Russia?

According to the Ministry of Ecology of Ukraine, during the full-scale russian-Ukrainian war, greenhouse gas emissions from russia’s armed aggression amounted to 180 million tonnes of CO₂  equivalent, which is more than the emissions of Ireland and Germany combined in 2022.

The first noticeable article about biomethane appeared in late January 2023 in an op-ed on the popular media outlet Ukrainska Pravda. Valeriy Bezus,  Head of the State Agency on Energy Efficiency, explained thoroughly that biomethane projects should be developed as this would help support the “decarbonisation goals of the European community.” 

Three months later, Minister Mykola Solsky personally said on the Ministry of Agrarian Policy of Ukraine’s official website that “biomethane is an ecological gas, the cheapest of all possible renewable gases” (the Minister’s connection and role in lobbying the interests of private investors, as well as the mechanisms used, will be investigated in the next article — Mind).

A few more weeks passed, and the voices of people involved in the biomethane business were heard in the media: Dmytro Lyppa, CEO of the Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine, and Oleksandr Dombrovsky, director of Gals Agro, the biomethane producer. They quoted the previous speakers and added that biomethane will help Ukraine integrate into the European market as a full-fledged partner and make the country energy independent.

After that, the piece was cited by several other specialised agricultural publications. And in July 2023, the draft law was finally registered in parliament. The brief explanatory notes also emphasise that biomethane can be used to accelerate the transition to clean energy. Therefore, it will help Ukraine fulfil its international commitments to reduce carbon emissions. 

The authors of the bill – 12 MPs – referred to information from the Bioenergy Association of Ukraine as an argument for the adoption of this law.

Naftogaz, the state-owned oil and gas industry operator, has also become interested in the technology. Biomethane, after all, can be transported through the same pipes as “conventional” natural gas. Hence, Ukraine’s gas transmission system is ready to go.

“Naftogaz Group sees its future as a modern energy company with oil and gas production, as well as green energy production from wind, solar and biomethane. That is why we are looking at this area very seriously and plan to consider increasing investments,” said Oleksiy Chernyshov, Chairman of the Board of Naftogaz of Ukraine.

Subsequently, the management of this organisation made numerous media appearances calling on lawmakers to vote for this draft law. In just eight months, the most popular news media, specialised outlets and government official websites published about a hundred columns, reports, news and analytical materials claiming that biomethane is an environmentally friendly form of energy that will help fight global warming. 23 materials contained the manipulative statement that biomethane contributes to decarbonisation.

However, the desired effect was achieved – 253 MPs voted in favour and to the delight of biomethane plant owners – the law came into force. 

LIUBOV VELYCHKO is the correspondent of Mahabahu from Ukraine and member of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine since 2006

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