Iceland actions — Scotland & Iceland

Sav­ing Ice­land Block­ades Cen­tu­ry Smelter at Grun­dar­tan­gi
19.07.2007

News of Sav­ing Ice­land’s lat­est action as part of the Sum­mer of Resis­tance to the alu­mini­um indus­try in Ice­land.

GRUNDARTANGI – Sav­ing Ice­land has this after­noon closed the sin­gle sup­ply road from High­way 1 to the Century/Nordural smelter on Hvalfjor­dur and the steel fac­to­ry Elkem – Ice­landic Alloys. Sav­ing Ice­land oppos­es the planned new Cen­tu­ry smelter at Hel­gu­vik and the expan­sion of the Ice­landic Alloys fac­to­ry. Activists have used lock-ons (met­al arm tubes) to form a human block­ade on the road and have occu­pied a con­struc­tion site crane.

Cen­tu­ry Alu­minum, a part of the recent­ly formed Russ­ian-Swiss RUSAL/Glencore/SUAL con­glo­morate, want to build a sec­ond smelter in Ice­land in Hel­gu­vik with a pro­ject­ed capac­i­ty of at least 250.000 met­ric tons per annum. The planned site is designed to accom­mo­date fur­ther expan­sion. Grun­dar­tan­gi has this year been extend­ed to 260.000 mtpa.

Cur­rent­ly, an envi­ron­men­tal impact assess­ment (1) is under review for the Hel­gu­vik smelter, pro­duced by the con­struc­tion con­sul­tants HRV (Honnun/Rafhonnun/VST).

“It is absurd that an engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny with a vest­ed inter­est in the smelter con­struc­tion could be con­sid­ered to pro­duce an objec­tive impact assess­ment. The doc­u­ment makes absurd claims, such as that pol­lu­tion is real­ly not a prob­lem because Hel­gu­vik is such a windy place that the pol­lu­tion will just blow away,” says Sav­ing Iceland’s Snor­ri Páll Jóns­son Úlfhildar­son.”

“This smelter will demand new geot­her­mal pow­er plants at Seltún, Sand­fell, Aus­tureng­jar and Tröl­la­dyn­gju. In addi­tion to the Hengill area which has already been seri­ous­ly dam­aged by Reyk­javik Ener­gy. The impact assess­ment does not take these into account, nor the impact of the huge amount of
pow­er lines and pylons required. The plants will ruin the nat­ur­al and scenic val­ue of the whole penin­su­la. Also, the rec­quired capac­i­ty, 400 MW, exceeds the nat­ur­al capacti­ty of the geot­her­mal spots, and they will cool down in three to four decades (2). And Cen­tu­ry admits it wants the site to expand fur­ther in the next decades. So it is obvi­ous that this smelter will not just ruin Reyk­janes but also need
addi­tion­al hydropow­er.”

The impact pro­ce­dure seems to be com­plete­ly irrel­e­vant any­way, since the com­pa­ny has com­plet­ed an equi­ty offer­ing worth $360 mil­lion to be deployed for part­ly financ­ing the con­struc­tion of the Hel­gu­vik smelter project (3). This indi­cates that Cen­tu­ry already has high lev­el assur­ances that the project is to con­tin­ue no mat­ter what.

This com­plete­ly con­tra­dicts the claims the new gov­ern­ment of
Ice­land, and par­tic­u­lar­ly it’s envi­ron­ment min­is­ter Þórunn
Svein­b­jarnardót­tir, is opposed to new smelter projects.

Ice­landic Alloys wants to expand its facil­i­ty for pro­duc­ing
fer­rosil­i­con for the steel indus­try. It is in fact one of Iceland’s largest con­trib­u­tors to green­house gas­es and oth­er pol­lu­tants (4).

“Expan­sion of Ice­landic Alloys and Cen­tu­ry con­sid­er­ably con­tribute to Iceland’s green­house emis­sions. If there are no fur­ther expan­sions of heavy indus­try beyond Grun­dar­tan­gi and ALCOA Fjar­daal, Ice­land will emit 38% more green­house gas­es than in 1990. If oth­er expan­sion plans con­tin­ue, lev­els would rise to an incred­i­ble 63% above 1990 lev­els. (5). That is com­plete­ly irre­spon­si­ble.

This shows that all the talk about ‘green ener­gy’ from hydro and geot­her­mal is, in real­i­ty, a lie. Ice­landers have to rise up against these for­eign cor­po­ra­tions,” says Úlfhildar­son.

More infor­ma­tion:
http://www.savingiceland.org

Notes and ref­er­ences:
1. Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Ass­es­ment, HRV, may 2007, http://www.hrv.is/media/files/Frummatsskýrsla_2007-05–02_low%20res.pdf
2. Land­vernd, Let­ter to nation­al plan­ning agency, 28th June 2007, http://www.landvernd.is/myndir/Umsogn_Helguvik.pdf
3. Cred­it Suisse, June 12th 2007, http://www.newratings.com/
analyst_news/article_1548857.html
4. Ice­landic Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment, March 2006, http://
unfccc.int/resource/docs/natc/islnc4.pdf
5. Idem.

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Ice­landic Embassy Tar­get­ed by Activists

On the morn­ing of 20th July, the Ice­landic embassy on Queen St, Edin­burgh was tar­get­ed by mem­bers of Sav­ing Iceland(1). Paint was thrown on the build­ing, the lock was glued and a mes­sage was affixed to the exte­ri­or read­ing “The Whole World is Watch­ing”. “Ice­land Bleeds” was also paint­ed on the steps. The action served as response to recent acts of police bru­tal­i­ty against Sav­ing Ice­land activists in Reyk­javik who con­tin­ue to oppose the assault on the Ice­landic wilder­ness by heavy indus­try.

Ice­landic Police attacked a non-vio­lent Reclaim the Streets protest in the cen­tre of Reyk­javik, on July 14th. Video evidence(2) shows Ice­landic police vio­lent­ly throw­ing pro­test­ers to the ground while oth­ers were punched and kicked. Five peace­ful pro­test­ers were held in police cells, one with a bro­ken rib after the police attack. The Reclaim the Streets demon­stra­tion was part of a con­tin­u­ing action camp held near Reyk­javik this sum­mer, involv­ing activists from across the globe, includ­ing Scot­land.

The recent expan­sion of large-scale alu­mini­um pro­duc­tion in Ice­land has involved a bare­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic process and a com­pre­hen­sive dev­as­ta­tion of vast nat­ur­al areas on a scale unprece­dent­ed in Europe today.

The Sav­ing Ice­land activists respon­si­ble for the action against the Ice­landic Embassy state:
“We are send­ing a clear mes­sage to the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment that the destruc­tion of unique ecosys­tems has envi­ron­men­tal impli­ca­tions for us all. The repres­sion of those who are oppos­ing these destruc­tive mega–projects is unac­cept­able. In the con­text of the cur­rent cli­mate cri­sis we must all take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the destruc­tion of our plan­et by crim­i­nal cor­po­ra­tions such as Alcoa. The whole world is watch­ing”.

The action in Edin­burgh was an expres­sion of sol­i­dar­i­ty with the activists and Ice­landic peo­ple who are attempt­ing to stand up to the unjust rule of the alu­mini­um indus­try over democ­ra­cy. Sav­ing Ice­land activists state: “We will not stop until the cor­po­rate inva­sion of the Ice­landic wilder­ness has ceased. The world is not dying, it is being mur­dered. And those who are doing it need to be held account­able.”

(1) Sav­ing Ice­land is an Ice­landic based direct action group opposed to con­tin­ued expan­sion of heavy indus­try in Ice­land. It involves par­tic­i­pants from all over the world in col­lec­tive resis­tance to the Ice­landic state’s “Mas­ter­plan” which includes the damming of every major glacial riv­er in Ice­land by 2020 sole­ly for the pur­pose of alu­minum smelt­ing. Sav­ing Ice­land has organ­ised three sum­mers of inter­na­tion­al protest to halt this vast destruc­tion. It will not cease it’s oppo­si­tion until all alu­minum pro­duc­tion leaves Ice­land. For more info vis­it www.savingiceland.org

(2) Video doc­u­men­ta­tion of the police vio­lence on Sat­ur­day 14th in Reyk­javik can be found at the fol­low­ing link. Note the use of pres­sure points applied for an extend­ed peri­od to the man on the ground and the accom­pa­ny­ing and pro­longed scream­ing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NenbTc0cQs4&mode=user&search

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The Clown Army and Sav­ing Ice­land invade Reyk­javik Ener­gy build­ing
20.07.2007

Clowns redec­o­rate Reyk­javik Ener­gy O.R.s inte­ri­or with ban­ner. Straw­ber­ries were offered by the cor­po­rate scum, but the clowns were not swayed from their action.

Today 25 pro­tes­tors from Sav­ing Ice­land went into Orku­veitu Reyk­javíkur (Reyk­javik Ener­gy, O.R.) and hung up a ban­ner inside stat­ing: ‘Vop­navei­ta Reyk­javíkur?’ (‘Reyk­javik Arms-deal­ers?’). The ban­ner was not hung out­side as planned ear­li­er because of weath­er con­di­tions. Pro­tes­tors stayed in the build­ing from 15.15 until 16.00 hrs.

Páll Erland speak­ing on behalf of O.R. states that they offered straw­ber­ries to pro­tes­tors and wel­comed Sav­ing Ice­land to put up the ban­ner. While Erland might be hap­py to dis­cuss straw­ber­ries with their vis­i­tors, they cer­tain­ly did not give per­mis­sion to hang up a ban­ner indi­cat­ing that they sell ener­gy to com­pa­nies known to be involved in arms pro­duc­tion and seri­ous human rights vio­la­tions (as doc­u­ment­ed in our ear­li­er press release). Sav­ing Ice­land has now con­tact­ed O.R., request­ing they put up the ban­ner and dis­cuss pub­licly with us the ethics of sell­ing ener­gy to cor­po­rate crim­i­nals such as Cen­tu­ry-RUSAL and Alcan-RioT­in­to.