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https://reneweconomy.com.au/renewable-companies-see-remarkable-progress-in-improving-human-rights/>
"It has been known for many, many decades that the extraction, processing and
use of fossil fuels is comfortably one of the worst human rights disasters in
all of human history.
At every single stage of their life cycle, coal oil and gas have the effect of
eroding basic air, water and food quality, in destabilising democracies or
assisting authoritarians and autocrats, and ultimately overheating Earth’s
atmosphere for many thousands of years to come.
It is a wonderful thing indeed that after a century of reliance on these fuels,
we now have ready alternatives.
Wind and solar, lithium-ion battery storage, pumped hydro and other forms of
clean generation can be paired with the conversion of industry, transport and
buildings to run on electricity, essentially squeezing fossil fuels from human
society.
But the process of building and maintaining the technologies has always had to
exist in the same economic, social and environmental frameworks as the fossil
fuel economy, and that means some parts of the clean tech supply chain have
triggered similar human rights issues to those we’ve seen in the fossil fuel
industry; albeit at a much lower level.
The ‘Renewable Energy & Human Rights Benchmark’, published by the Business &
Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) has been tracking many of these issues
with the explicit aim of ensuring that the process of transitioning away from
fossil fuels does not come burdened with new and avoidable human rights abuses.
It is something that must be addressed for the energy transition to be
sustained at a high pace over the coming decades.
The 2025 edition, released on Wednesday, shows that “the renewables sector is
making significant progress on embedding human rights into its operations,
despite the challenging environment created by adverse government policies
(notably in the USA), high interest and inflation costs”.
The reports authors put this down to two factors. First, a recognition among
the companies that rampant human rights abuses in the renewable sector will
only slow down the transition and weaken their businesses. And pre-emptive
company policy change in advance of new European Union regulations."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
