Published

2 years ago

February 20, 2024

Alice Rush

The UK is considering a new law which would invite applications for new oil and gas production licenses in the North Sea every year.

This Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill will not help with the UK’s energy security, reduce bills or serve anything but fossil fuel giants’ short-term profits.

On top of this, if it passes into law, the UK faces the grave risk of economy-wrecking lawsuits.

This is because the UK is a member of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) – a multilateral investment pact which allows investors in energy to sue governments over policies that affect their investments in over 50 countries across Europe and Asia.

Investors weapon

The ECT is the most litigated investment agreement in the world. It contains Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions which are used by fossil fuel companies to deter, delay or raise the cost of climate policies.

ISDS enables them to sue governments for billion-dollar payouts over their climate policies, in secretive tribunals outside of national legal systems.

Weak attempts at reforming the Energy Charter Treaty have failed numerous times over the years, and thus many European countries including Germany, France and the Netherlands have decided to exit over the risks to their climate action.

Loss and damage must be a focus of IPCC’s next reports

The UK government launched a review of its membership last year and is overdue announcing its outcome.

Recent research by CommonWealth found that at least 40% of the UK’s North Sea oil and gas licenses are owned by foreign investors, many headquartered in ECT member countries like France or Spain.

If the UK government fails to leave the ECT, foreign investment into North Sea oil and gas means not only a headlong sprint in the wrong energy policy direction, but invites a huge bill even if a future government changes course.

The Labour Party, which is far ahead in the polls, says it will stop new oil production. An election will be held this year.

Coming clash

Carbon Tracker recently showed that North Sea oil and gas companies are financially planning for far slower energy transition scenarios than governments are working to.

Switzerland proposes first UN expert group on solar geoengineering

As a result, they are setting up a clash between climate policies and their financial expectations, raising the risk of ISDS claims.

Producing the first oil and gas from a field can take more than 18 years. By then, the climate policy landscape will be vastly different.

The 1.5 C warming limit is likely to be passed within the next decade or two, so the imperative to reduce fossil fuel use will be even greater.

The dearth of long-term thinking in Westminster means policymakers are ignoring the risk of leaving the fossil fuel industry with such a powerful weapon.

An investor using ISDS can claim not only for costs sunk by a government policy but for any future lost profit it expected to earn over a project’s lifetime.

These companies can decry far bigger losses than is reasonable given the fast-moving renewables revolution, and ISDS tribunals are rigged to back them up.

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Facing an ECT claim, any reasonable argument the UK may have developed about the environmental, social – even economic – imperative to phase out fossil fuels will have to be left at the door: it signed up to the fossil fuel giants’ charter, failed to leave it when it had the chance, and breached it.

So much for the polluter pays: the UK taxpayer will have to bail them out.

Failed reforms

There’s no reforming the deadly oil and gas bill, in or out of the ECT. But remaining a member of the treaty adds an incredulous new dimension of fiscal irresponsibility.

The European Commission is proposing a mass withdrawal to neutralise the Energy Charter Treaty’s sunset clause – which extends the right to ISDS claims for 20 years even after countries leave – among exiting parties.

If the countries leaving together agree to cancel the sunset clause between themselves, then the benefits of exit are magnified.

Given how many ECT-covered investors in 1.5C-incompatible projects on British soil are European, the UK joining this coordinated withdrawal would eliminate 99% of the ISDS risk – leaving little logical argument to remain bedfellows with climate laggards in a collapsing treaty.

It’s time to rip up the get-out-of-jail-free card that dirty North Sea projects, fast becoming obsolete, have up their sleeve.

At stake is a chill on policies to address the biggest crisis facing humanity, and an unjust transition that would be billed to the UK public.

Cleodie Rickard is trade campaign manager at Global Justice Now.

The post Oil drilling while in the Energy Charter Treaty is economically reckless appeared first on Climate Home News.

Oil drilling while in the Energy Charter Treaty is economically reckless

Climate Change

A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won

Published

16 hours ago

February 28, 2026

Alice Rush

The case shows that climate change is a fundamental human rights violation—and the victory of Bonaire, a Dutch territory, could open the door for similar lawsuits globally.

Interview by Paloma Beltran, Living on Earth

From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Paloma Beltran with Greenpeace Netherlands campaigner Eefje de Kroon.

A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won

Climate Change

Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit

Published

21 hours ago

February 28, 2026

Alice Rush

SYDNEY, Saturday 28 February 2026 — Greenpeace International and Greenpeace organisations in the US announce they will seek a new trial and, if necessary, appeal the decision with the North Dakota Supreme Court following a North Dakota District Court judgment today awarding Energy Transfer (ET) USD $345 million.

ET’s SLAPP suit remains a blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace International will also continue to seek damages for ET’s bullying lawsuits under EU anti-SLAPP legislation in the Netherlands.

Mads Christensen, Greenpeace International Executive Director said: “Energy Transfer’s attempts to silence us are failing. Greenpeace International will continue to resist intimidation tactics. We will not be silenced. We will only get louder, joining our voices to those of our allies all around the world against the corporate polluters and billionaire oligarchs who prioritise profits over people and the planet.

“With hard-won freedoms under threat and the climate crisis accelerating, the stakes of this legal fight couldn’t be higher. Through appeals in the US and Greenpeace International’s groundbreaking anti-SLAPP case in the Netherlands, we are exploring every option to hold Energy Transfer accountable for multiple abusive lawsuits and show all power-hungry bullies that their attacks will only result in a stronger people-powered movement.”

The Court’s final judgment today rejects some of the jury verdict delivered in March 2025, but still awards hundreds of millions of dollars to ET without a sound basis in law. The Greenpeace defendants will continue to press their arguments that the US Constitution does not allow liability here, that ET did not present evidence to support its claims, that the Court admitted inflammatory and irrelevant evidence at trial and excluded other evidence supporting the defense, and that the jury pool in Mandan could not be impartial.[1][2]

ET’s back-to-back lawsuits against Greenpeace International and the US organisations Greenpeace USA (Greenpeace Inc.) and Greenpeace Fund are clear-cut examples of SLAPPs — lawsuits attempting to bury nonprofits and activists in legal fees, push them towards bankruptcy and ultimately silence dissent.[3] Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands, is pursuing justice in Europe, with a suit against ET under Dutch law and the European Union’s new anti-SLAPP directive, a landmark test of the new legislation which could help set a powerful precedent against corporate bullying.[4]

Kate Smolski, Program Director at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is part of a worrying trend globally: fossil fuel corporations are increasingly using litigation to attack and silence ordinary people and groups using the law to challenge their polluting operations — and we’re not immune to these tactics here in Australia.

“Rulings like this have a chilling effect on democracy and public interest litigation — we must unite against these silencing tactics as bad for Australians and bad for our democracy. Our movement is stronger than any corporate bully, and grows even stronger when under attack.”

Energy Transfer’s SLAPPs are part of a wave of abusive lawsuits filed by Big Oil companies like Shell, Total, and ENI against Greenpeace entities in recent years.[3] A couple of these cases have been successfully stopped in their tracks. This includes Greenpeace France successfully defeating TotalEnergies’ SLAPP on 28 March 2024, and Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International forcing Shell to back down from its SLAPP on 10 December 2024.

-ENDS-

Images available in Greenpeace Media Library

Notes:

[1] The judgment entered by North Dakota District Court Judge Gion follows a jury verdict finding Greenpeace entities liable for more than US$660 million on March 19, 2025. Judge Gion subsequently threw out several items from the jury’s verdict, reducing the total damages to approximately US$345 million.

[2] Public statements from the independent Trial Monitoring Committee

[3] Energy Transfer’s first lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2017 under the RICO Act – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US federal statute designed to prosecute mob activity. The case was dismissed in 2019, with the judge stating the evidence fell “far short” of what was needed to establish a RICO enterprise. The federal court did not decide on Energy Transfer’s claims based on state law, so Energy Transfer promptly filed a new case in a North Dakota state court with these and other state law claims.

[4] Greenpeace International sent a Notice of Liability to Energy Transfer on 23 July 2024, informing the pipeline giant of Greenpeace International’s intention to bring an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against the company in a Dutch Court. After Energy Transfer declined to accept liability on multiple occasions (September 2024, December 2024), Greenpeace International initiated the first test of the European Union’s anti-SLAPP Directive on 11 February 2025 by filing a lawsuit in Dutch court against Energy Transfer. The case was officially registered in the docket of the Court of Amsterdam on 2 July, 2025. Greenpeace International seeks to recover all damages and costs it has suffered as a result of Energy Transfers’s back-to-back, abusive lawsuits demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace organisations in the US. The next hearing in the Court of Amsterdam is scheduled for 16 April, 2026.

Media contact:

Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org

Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit

Climate Change

Former EPA Staff Detail Expanding Pollution Risks Under Trump

Published

21 hours ago

February 28, 2026

Alice Rush

The Trump administration’s relentless rollback of public health and environmental protections has allowed widespread toxic exposures to flourish, warn experts who helped implement safeguards now under assault.

By Liza Gross

In a new report that outlines a dozen high-risk pollutants given new life thanks to weakened, delayed or rescinded regulations, the Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group of hundreds of former Environmental Protection Agency staff, warns that the EPA under President Donald Trump has abandoned the agency’s core mission of protecting people and the environment from preventable toxic exposures.