Environmental activist Greta Thunberg was charged with disturbing the peace after a protest on the sidelines of an oil and gas conference in London on Tuesday and will appear in court in November, police announced on Wednesday.
Demonstrations against the hydrocarbon industry continued on Wednesday in the British capital, in front of the hotel where the Energy Intelligence Forum conference is being held, and in front of the British headquarters of TotalEnergies.
The 20-year-old Swede, arrested by police on Tuesday, was released under judicial supervision and will appear in a London court on November 15.
She is part of a group of 26 people charged for this demonstration, in which several hundred protesters participated.
Formally, Greta Thunberg is being prosecuted for not having complied with the police’s injunction not to block the street where this protest action took place against the holding – in a hotel in the wealthy Mayfair district – of Energy Intelligence Forum, which brings together the leaders of major hydrocarbon producing companies.
It is accustomed to blocking actions, as in Malmö in Sweden, which earned it a fine a few days ago.
In January, she was forcibly taken by police from a demonstration against the use of coal in Germany.
“Behind these closed doors […] politicians without stature make deals and compromises with lobbyists from the destructive fossil fuel sector,” Greta Thunberg denounced to the press on Tuesday morning before her arrest.
The demonstrators also criticized the fact that the president of COP28, the annual United Nations climate conference scheduled to take place from November 30 to December 12 in Dubai, is none other than the boss of the United Arab Emirates oil company, Sultan al-Jaber.
On Wednesday, protests continued outside InterContinental Park Lane where the energy conference was being held, with around 100 people greeting conference attendees with “Shame on you!” ” and holding slogan placards reading “Stop Rosebank”, a controversial oil field in the North Sea that the British government authorized for exploitation last month.
Activists from the environmental group Extinction Rebellion also demonstrated on Wednesday in the heart of the City of London in front of the offices of insurers who are members of the Lloyds of London sectoral market, according to a press release.
Nearly 20 demonstrators from Fossil Free London, another environmental group, staged a sit-in to block the entrance to TotalEnergies headquarters in the Canary Wharf business district, using yellow smoke bombs and shouting “l “oil money out” or “Stop Total” among others, noted AFP journalists.
On Tuesday, the boss of the Saudi oil company Aramco, Amin Nasser, reaffirmed during the conference that “new investments” in hydrocarbons were necessary to counter the decline of aging oil fields.
As for Wael Sawan, the boss of Shell, he argued that his company was trying to “ensure energy security”. But, at the same time, he added, “we want to be a player in the energy transition by investing between 10 and 15 billion dollars over the next three years.”
Mr Sawan was speaking via video link, having been unable to access the hotel due to the protest.
Shell returned in June to its commitment to reduce its crude production by 1% to 2% per year, arousing the ire of environmentalists.