During the opening session of the World Leaders Summit at COP27, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi stood before the world’s heads of state and praised his government’s efforts in bringing about “the green transformation.” However, in the months ahead of the summit, the Egyptian government turned to a PR firm with a history of defending major polluting industries to manage communications for the event.

The firm selected for this mission was Hill+Knowlton Strategies, which has a long track record of greenwashing for international oil companies that have caused major harm to the environment. But it is not the first time Hill+Knowlton and the government teamed up, as the company played a key role in promoting the decision to coal use for energy production for the first time in Egypt several years ago.

The Egyptian government did not officially announce it had hired the firm to help organize COP27. Yet, several news sources, as well as sources from Egyptian and international civil society organizations who spoke to Mada Masr, indicated that the firm was in fact present during preparations for the conference. A screenshot from one of the meetings was shared with Mada Masr, in which Timothy Hurst, the firm’s regional director for the Middle East, India, Turkey and Africa, appeared as a representative of the firm, seated in front of a board dotted with the conference’s logo.

The US firm has been working in public relations for almost a century. During this period, the firm organized media campaigns for hundreds of international companies — including major tobacco and oil corporations — to bolster their public image, including running greenwashing campaigns refuting the harmful effects of its clients’ products or the adverse impact they have on the environment and public health. The firm even promoted supposed efforts of these companies in environmental protection and their contribution to the improvement of global public health, according to a report published by openDemocracy weeks prior to the launch of the UN climate conference.

Public relations firms like Hill+Knowlton Strategies have come in for criticism from top policy makers, with US Secretary-General António Guterres singling out in an address to the UN General Assembly in September the “public relations machine” that makes billions to shield the fossil fuel industry. “Just as they did for the tobacco industry decades before, lobbyists and spin doctors have spewed harmful misinformation,” Gueterres said. 

The firm employed similar strategies and tools to counter the environmental and rights campaigns opposing the use of coal in local energy production for the first time in Egypt in 2014.

During that period, Riham El-Adl, who was the deputy manager of Hill+Knowlton at the time, organized sustained media campaigns to sway Egyptian public opinion in favor of coal use. Adl called on several local journalists to interview a group of so-called experts that she selected to defend coal use as a strategy to resolve the Egyptian energy crisis and to deny its negative effects on public health and the environment, according to an email addressed to journalists dated March 2014 and bearing the firm’s signature, a copy of which was shared with Mada Masr.

Email showing Hill+Knowlton Strategies’ participation in the 2014 campaign to allow coal use as an energy source

The list of suggested “experts” sheds light on who it was that benefitted from passing the decision permitting the use of coal.

Medhat Stefanos was at the top of the list. He is the former chair of the Federation of Egyptian Industries’ cement division and the vice chair of Titan Cement Egypt, the largest cement producer in the country that is responsible for high levels of emission in the areas surrounding the plants. Pollution in Titan’s plant in Alexandria’s Wadi al-Qamar was found to have caused respiratory diseases to a number of residents — a fact that the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights successfully argued in in court, leading to a final ruling that held the company liable for damages in August.

The second name on the list was Tarek Eid, a professor of environmental sciences and industrial pollution in the Arab Academy of Sciences and Technology. There is no record of Eid on the internet outside a single 2014 article published in Al-Watan in which he is quoted speaking in favor of using coal.

Additionally, Adl recommended a “therapeutic nutritionist” named Samir Nayrouz as a physician whose opinion the journalists could cite, denying the harmful health effects of coal.

The most prominent figure on Adl’s list was Khaled Fahmy, who had recently served a brief stint as environment minister between January and July 2013. During the 2014 coal lobbying push, Fahmy made several statements promoting the fossil fuelas a safe energy source. Only a few weeks after making these comments, Fahmy was reappointed as environment minister in June 2014, taking the place of Laila Iskandar, who had resigned after a decision was passed months earlier allowing the use of coal in energy production.

Adl’s email had two attachments, one of which was a document explaining the losses the cement and iron and steel sectors had suffered during the Egyptian energy crisis and the importance of these sectors to the Egyptian economy. Adl stressed that the “only” solution for the energy crisis at the time lay in several procedures including “diversifying available energy forms, by using solid fuels [coal, organic waste, garbage] as an alternative,” while emphasizing that “utilizing types of solid fuels like coal will lead the Egyptian energy sector to regain stability, which will in turn lead to economic growth, while boosting construction and heavy industries, creating job opportunities and acting as a catalyst for economic progress and increasing the number of infrastructure projects.”

Adl highlighted the reliance of developed countries, such as the US and Europe, on coal, comparing them to Egypt, which relied on gas and oil, adding that multinational companies operating in Egypt were committed to industrial standards adopted abroad ensuring the implementation of all environmental standards.

Mada Masr reached out to Adl and the firm with questions regarding the campaign, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.

Hill+Knowlton was not alone in its efforts in lobbying for the use of coal. In 2013, as the country faced major natural gas shortages that caused incessant power outages, cement producers said in press releases that the production of their plants dropped by 11 percent as a result of the increasing difficulties in obtaining the natural gas and mazut necessary for operating production lines. The cement makers demanded that the government permit the use of coal in their plants instead of gas, which is what some government officials demanded as well, including Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour, the trade and industry minister at the time.

On the other side, civil society organizations and environmental initiatives, such as Egyptians Against Coal, countered these demands.

And for a full year — the period between the introduction of the idea of using coal and the government decision to greenlight coal in April 2014 followed by its rollout in September of the same year — a sustained media campaign against coal use, led by the former Environment Minister Laila Iskandar and civil society, shed light on the extent of environmental damage caused by coal and put furward less harmful and more sustainable alternatives.

The controversy extended beyond the headlines, entering into a long battle before the courts, with Iskandar and environmental organizations leading the litigation efforts. The legal proceedings only came to a close in 2020, when the Court of Administrative Justice’s investment department approved the incorporation of coal into Egypt’s energy mix.

The controversy around coal use in Egypt arose at a time when the country already faced severe pollution. One study issued by WHO indicated that Cairo ranked second worldwide in cities suffering from particulate air pollution between 2010 and 2015.

And while the government and coal producers pledged to commit to environment-friendly technologies to mitigate the effects of coal, environmental organizations asserted that this was impossible. The government said that cement plants will use coal in compliance with strict environmental standards. However, some cement companies, including France’s Lafarge, had by then already imported coal without waiting for the government’s official decision or the issuance of the environmental regulations. Environmental lawyer Ahmed al-Saeedy said that the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency registered 407 violations for the company during 2014 alone.

Egyptians Against Coal previously stated that the 19 cement producers in Egypt were based in highly populated areas, especially in Suez, Cairo, Alexandria, Beni Suef, Qena, Minya, and Assiut. Within Cairo alone, according to the campaign, cement plants were responsible for around 6 percent of the city’s pollution before the plants transitioned to coal after fully relying on natural gas. This number shot up to 30 percent in areas in close proximity to the plants.

Coal is known to be the largest contributor to climate change, since its combustion for energy production is responsible for 46 percent of the CO2 emissions worldwide. While Egypt’s emissions are fairly minimal on the global scale, the public health risks associated with coal combustion in dense urban areas are significant. Studies suggest that the burning of fossil fuels is responsible for as many as 8.7 million deaths globally each year. Particulate matter that enters the lungs, the heart and blood vessels can cause deadly diseases, including strokes, cardiovascular diseases, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis.

Even developed countries that had relied on “clean” coal for energy production in 2014, which Adl mentioned in her document, were already moving toward phasing out the use of coal due to its impact on the environment and public health.

And while the documents Adl attached to her email made the case that coal was the only way to resolve the Egyptian energy crisis, the campaigns against coal had already put forward several solutions, such as a move to liquefied natural gas, the same energy source the government invested in later on, and relying on energy produced from less polluting solid waste, which, again, the government resorted to a few years afterward.

What was worse, the campaigns argued, was that the modification of the industry’s infrastructure to suit coal use indicated that the fossil fuel would be there to stay. Ahmed Droubi, a general coordinator in the Egyptians Against Coal campaign, said that as cement companies would invest in modifying their plants for using coal, they would have to recoup investments over the span of two decades. But at the time, Egypt had been already moving looking for other ways to solve the natural gas crisis, and less than a year after coal was approved, Zohr gas field in 2015.

*Correction: This piece has been updated to reflect that Riham El-Adl no longer works for Hill+Knowlton Strategies and is not currently the company’s general manager.