Decarbonisation can be painful, but universities must lead the way

The headline-grabbing news that TATA Steel will close both of its coal-fired blast furnaces at South Wales’ iconic Port Talbot steelworks calls into question the exclusion of the coal industry from nearby Swansea University’s recently announced ban on fossil-fuel companies advertising jobs to its students.

Swansea is the largest university in the UK to commit to “fossil-free careers”, banning companies dealing in the extraction of oil, gas and tar sands from recruiting via its careers services. And the move is particularly significant because Swansea is more steeped in extractive industries than most universities.

Founded in 1920 by an industrialist, Swansea University was initially funded by local steel and nickel companies to meet their growing needs. Its central buildings are housed in the former estate of a family who made their fortune through Swansea’s infamous 18th century copper smelting industry – a bonanza that poisoned rivers and soils, and which was intimately linked to the slave markets of western Africa.

Swansea’s campuses, moreover, are perched on top of a huge swathe of carboniferous rock, otherwise known as the South Wales Coalfield, and they look out across a bay whose horizon is perforated by the billowing chimney stacks and gas flares of Port Talbot. If extractive industries made Wales into – as is often said – “the birthplace of the industrial revolution”, Swansea was surely its epicentre.

Yet November’s fossil-free careers announcement signalled the university’s willingness – albeit only after months of campaigning by staff and students – to turn the page and accede to young people’s desire for their universities to walk the talk on climate change. But its reluctance to go the whole hog and cut ties with coal industries too relates to Swansea’s research and funding partnerships with Port Talbot, whose furnaces depend on coal from Australia and Brazil to produce approximately 3.5 million tonnes of steel a year (making Port Talbot the second-largest emitter of climate-warming gases in the UK). The steelworks are also a major employer in the area, and up to 3,000 jobs are expected to go with TATA’s January announcement that the coal furnaces will be replaced by an electric arc furnace.

Swansea’s caveat on coal is indicative of the dilemmas that universities face in a changing climate. They are implicated in the climate crisis in systemic ways, from the kinds of knowledge they produce (which have perpetuated extractivism and colonialism), to their ongoing partnerships with fossil-fuel industries. Not surprisingly, business as usual is failing to address the crisis and, while many academics are quietly and creatively subverting day-to-day university strictures, some are becoming increasingly vocal about the imperative for institutions to fundamentally change their ways of working. As highly resourced and influential intuitions, universities have inherently transformative potential if they choose to direct their resources and activities towards social and ecological well-being.  

The IPCC and UN positions on the climate crisis are unambiguous. To have even a 50:50 chance of not exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming requires immediate and deep cuts in the production of all fossil fuels, with rich nations such as the UK making the deepest cuts, fastest. And yet – despite their claims about clean energy transitions – fossil-fuel companies are still increasing their production and expansion, while dialling back on green commitments and lying to the public in the process. As a recent study concludes, “no [oil] major is currently on the way to a clean energy transition”. Alongside divestment of investments (which Swansea University committed to in 2019), cutting off the recruitment pipeline to oil and gas industries sends a clear message to them: we see your inaction and we are holding you to account.

There is no doubt that, without proper government support and a justly managed transition, the announced changes at Port Talbot could be devastating for local communities and for steel supply in the UK (the arc furnace will only be able to reprocess scrap steel, ending the UK’s capacity to smelt steel from iron ore). However, both Swansea’s and TATA’s recent steps towards fossil-free futures, in the geographical heart of past and present extractive industries, signal that the days of fossil fuels are surely numbered.

Universities are well placed to help manage this transition – intellectually and practically, globally and locally. They just need to summon the courage to make some difficult, yet ultimately positive, decisions to do so.

Anna Pigott is a lecturer in geography at Swansea University. She would like to thank Jean-Louis Button, Hal Szary, Fergus Green and all those who helped make the Fossil Free Careers campaign at Swansea a success.