Transport Insights

The transport stories you won't see in the industry-friendly media

Author

Chris Ames

Tag: greenwashing

  • National Highways digs holes in Thames Tunnel carbon pledges

    National Highways has continued its greenwashing of the Lower Thames Crossing but its pledge to wish away emissions from the construction of the unaffordable scheme is full of holes.

    Last week the company claimed in a press release:

    The project aims to cut its construction carbon footprint by 70% by aggressively targeting carbon as it refines the design of the new road and adopting new materials and methods of construction as they emerge. It has also made a legal commitment to responsibly offset any remaining carbon emissions using best practice, and only in the early 2030s once efforts to reduce it during construction are exhausted.

    I have written extensively about how the government-owned company invented a purely notional figure for construction carbon emissions, which it now says it will cut by 70%. One part of this scam was to imagine that the project might not use ground-granulated blast furnace slag – a widely used lower carbon cement substitute – and then to claim a saving from deciding to use it after all.  

    I also reported that, although National Highways claims to have carbon limits built into its contracts with the companies that will build the tunnel, it will not disclose what penalties will result from non-compliance, raising concerns that contractors may find it cheaper to pay the penalties.

    National Highways has banned contractors from using offsetting to meet these targets but its Carbon and Energy Management Plan for the scheme does away with any claim that the targets represent any kind of a cut. It refers to “an upper limit for the use of carbon in construction, based on industry practice”, which implicitly admits that the original figure was using poor practice.

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  • Puttng lipstick on a pig

    Transport Action Network (TAN) has posted another of its National Highways Watch pieces, with significant input from me, and it has been almost simultaneously vindicated by comments in the draft Third Road Investment Strategy (RIS 3).

    The piece Highway robbery – abusing Designated Funds compares National Highways’ use of designated funds, pictorially at least, to putting lipstick on a pig – i.e. prettifying large and potentially environmentally destructive road building schemes with greenwashing.

    TAN has discovered that National Highways is syphoning off money from a dedicated fund for environmental and safety improvements (called ‘Designated Funds’1) to use it as sweeteners or greenwashing for new roadbuilding schemes. National Highways is also raiding the “ringfenced” funding to pay for mitigation that should come out of the scheme budgets.

    The piece highlights a number of alleged misuses of designated funds, including “sweetening the Lower Thames Crossing”:

    A document on “Benefits and Outcomes” submitted as part of the scheme’s planning application mentions “Designated Funds” 25 times, and claims that “Over £30 million of designated funds have been allocated to Lower Thames Crossing”, despite having to make clear that these benefits technically “fall outside of the remit of the DCO [planning application]”.

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  • National Highways steps up the greenwashing

    There’s another closure of the A3 this weekend as part of National Highways’ seemingly interminable M25 Junction 10 scheme.

    I’ve written a lot about the disruption caused by the works and once again the closure, this time between the junction and Send to the south, has diversions that involve using the M25 and a longer diversion for vehicles and drivers that are not permitted to use the motorway.

    But what’s most egregious about this is the astonishingly blatant greenwashing. According to the BBC:

    A National Highways spokesperson said: “We are restoring heathland and upgrading the junction with the A3 Wisley Interchange to reduce congestion, improve safety and create more reliable journeys.

    “We thank drivers and the local community for their patience and ask anyone travelling during these times to plan their journeys carefully.”

    National Highways is cutting down a lot of trees as part of a road widening scheme that will encourage more traffic and worsen climate change. Some of the land currently covered by trees will indeed be returned to heathland but to present this as the primary reason for the scheme is outrageous.

    And there is of course the usual trick, which rail companies also do during disruption, of transferring responsibility to the public by asking them to plan or check their journeys.

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