NO NEED TO REDUCE CO2 EMISSIONS SAYS LEADING SCIENTIST, WILLIAM HAPPER

Happy New Year to you all.

Below is a link to a very interesting lecture by Dr William Happer in which he completely debunks the idea that increases in the greenhouse effect caused by CO2 emissions could lead to dangerous increases in the temperature of the Earth's surface. It is an hour long and to start with he goes over a lot of basic principles. The most important section is at about 24 minutes in where he looks at a graph showing the amount of radiation which escapes to space and the effect of doubling the amount of CO2 on this. Even if you haven't got an hour to watch the whole lecture, I recommend you look at that part.

 Climate Change and CO2 Not a Problem | Science Matters (rclutz.com)

UK GOVERNMENT MUST ABANDON NET ZERO IF IT IS TO SURVIVE

 London, 29 December - Net Zero Watch has called on Boris Johnson to declare an energy emergency and introduce radical policy reforms in order to prevent the energy cost crisis turning into an economic and social disaster.

The call comes as fears grow over a devastating energy cost and energy security crisis, with spiralling prices hitting households and businesses hard, and warnings that energy bills could double or even treble next year.

It is reported that Boris Johnson is considering to hand out £20 billion of taxpayers' money to energy suppliers who are threatening to double or treble energy costs.

Despite the fact that Britain will need natural gas for decades to come, the ban on fracking and the curtailing of conventional gas exploration has led to serious shortages of domestic natural gas production. The result is super-charged energy prices and rising inflation, a painful cost burden already struggling households are now facing.

The government should suspend costly Net Zero plans as a matter of urgency and put energy costs and security of supply at the centre of national security.

The government has only one way to avoid political oblivion, and that’s for Britain to introduce radical policy reforms and to start using the UK’s massive natural gas resources, which would bring down energy costs and enhance energy security significantly.  

In fact, natural gas prices in the UK are nearly ten times higher ($35/MMBtu) than they are in the US ($4/MMBtu) where fracking is widely used and shale gas is cheap and abundant.

If the shale gas moratorium was lifted tomorrow, it would take at least 12 months to get the gas flowing. But the Government needs to take strong steps now, in order to send out a clear signal to investors. Otherwise the energy and cost of living crises will become permanent, posing an existential threat to this government and many businesses.

The British Geological Survey estimates that the total volume of shale gas in the Bowland basin is between 820 and 2200 trillion cubic feet, with a central estimate of some 1300 trillion cubic feet. It is estimated that if 25 trillion cubic feet of this huge resource could be recovered it would be worth nearly one £trillion at current gas prices.

The current energy cost and supply crisis is the result of decades of ill-considered climate policy which has prioritised costly emissions reductions technologies while neglecting national security, security of supply and economic and social impacts.

The severity of the current crisis merits emergency measures, not only to protect consumers and the economy, but also to avoid the crisis from turning into an economic and social disaster.

Net Zero Watch is calling on the Government to:

1. Suspend Net Zero plans as a matter of urgency and put energy costs and security of supply at the centre of national security.

2. Suspend all green levies on energy bills, funding subsidies temporarily out of taxation, but acting firmly to cancel these subsidies in the near term.

3. Cancel constraint payments, and compel wind and solar generators to pay for their own balancing costs, thus incentivising them to self-dispatch only when economic.

4. Remove all fiscal and other disincentives to oil and gas exploration, including shale gas, to increase domestic production levels.

5. Suspend carbon taxation on coal and gas generation in order to provide consumer relief and ensure security of supply.

6. Re-open recently closed gas storage facilities and support new storage projects.

7. Suspend all further policy initiatives directed towards the Net Zero target, including the Carbon Budgets, the heat pump targets, and the overly ambitious timetable for the ban on petrol and diesel engines, until the UK energy sector has been stabilised.

8. Facilitate the acceleration of building and deploying Small Modular Reactors for both electricity and heat.


Dr Benny Peiser, Net Zero Watch director, said:

"It is almost certain that energy companies, should they survive the coming storm, will not repay the £20 billion fund they are demanding. In any case, handing out billions to energy suppliers while energy prices are going through the roof would go down like a bucket of cold sick with voters."

"Boris Johnson must prioritise national security as a matter of urgency by declaring an energy emergency, restarting North Sea gas exploration immediately and abandoning the effective ban on the development of shale gas."

"By continuing to prioritise the Net Zero agenda over national security and economic stability, Boris Johnson risks turning a crisis into a national disaster."


Contact

Dr Benny Peiser
Director, Net Zero Watch
e: benny.peiser@netzerowatch.com
m: 07553 361717

RENEWABLES WILL POISON THE EARTH

 Here's something to ponder while digesting the Christmas fare:

(PDF) All Electricity - Poisons Planet Earth | Jim Le Maistre - Academia.edu

It's time the media gave more prominence to this.

POLAR SEA ICE TRENDS DO NOT SUPPORT CLIMATE ALARM

 

London, 14 December - A new paper by an eminent meteorologist says that trends in polar sea-ice levels give little cause for alarm. The paper, by Professor J. Ray Bates, has just been published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

According to Professor Bates, climate model simulations indicate significantly decreasing sea ice levels in both hemispheres, with the greatest decreases occurring in September each year.

However, the observed September trend in the Antarctic is actually slightly upwards, and while observed levels in the Arctic have fallen over the last 40 years, they have been quite stable since around 2007.


Professor Bates said:

"In 2007, Al Gore told us that Arctic sea ice levels were 'falling off a cliff'. It's clear now that he was completely wrong. In fact, the trends in sea-ice are an antidote to climate alarm."


Professor Bates also says that little reliance should be placed on model simulations of future sea-ice decline:

"Climate models failed to predict the growth in Antarctic sea ice, and they missed the recent marked slowdown of sea-ice decline in the Arctic. It would be unwarranted to think they are going to get things right over the next 30 years".


Professor Bates' paper is published today, and can be downloaded here (pdf).


About the author

Professor J. Ray Bates is Adjunct Professor of Meteorology at University College Dublin. He was formerly Professor of Meteorology at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and a Senior Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre. He is a former President of the Irish Meteorological Society.


Contact

Professor Ray Bates
e: ray.bates@ucd.ie

REGULATION, REGULATION, REGULATION

 The headline came to mind when I was sent an article containing this extract:

"Our headline session for the conference was a fireside chat with Jonathan Brearley the CEO of Ofgem. We discussed many things but the one thing that I can report clearly, was the certainty that more regulation will be coming as we head further down the net zero pathway.
 
This got me thinking. The broker market is much maligned but there are hundreds if not thousands of brokers out there, who do a great job for their clients. Many are partners for us helping to distribute our future Net Zero Standard, which offers carbon accounting, accreditation and advice.
 
And that is the future. Advice and assistance to help companies cut their carbon and that is a role the brokers can not only fulfil but excel at, because they are seen as independent.
 
More regulation will be needed as we transition – how will we govern peer to peer energy trading? Charging standards and infrastructure? Battery storage and usage tariffs or investments. Financial reporting for carbon and investment vehicles?
 
All of these will be areas for regulation and therefore opportunity. Brokers can be ideally placed to offer the end business consumer the right advice to exploit these opportunities of the future. But they MUST also ensure they and their customers comply to regulatory changes."

This is hardly something the government, or any politician will want to highlight, but it certainly rings true. We already feel over-regulated with all the legislation that we currently have to comply with, but the next generation will look back at this time and think of it as a relatively free period compared with what is coming. I remember when politicians spoke of a "bonfire of regulations", but I have yet to see it. As you can see from the extract, there are large numbers of people whose whole existence depends on regulations.  
 

IMAGINE A WORLD OF CARBON RATIONING FOR ALL

 Since the end of food rationing after world war 2 we have not experienced rationing here in the UK, and yet some are advocating a return to those dark days in order to get to net zero emissions. See this article: Should everyone have their own personal carbon quota? | NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT (wordpress.com)

I would expect such restrictions to result in mass protests and civil disobedience and any government bringing in such policies being voted out of office, but that would require a political party to come forward and oppose the policy - something that none of our major parties has, so far, done. We could be edging towards an Orwellian future if we are not careful. 

LATEST CLIMATE SCARE STORIES

 A whole host of scare stories have been pushed out recently in the media to try and convince a sceptical public that it is necessary to make them pay for much more expensive heating, electricity and practically everything else. Here is an article to keep you up to date:

Climate change: one to savour (eureferendum.com)

Some of the stories are laughable, but they can easily take in the more naïve and gullible members of society, which, sadly, is quite a lot!  

TIME TO SIGN UP TO GET A REFERENDUM ON NET ZERO

 Here is the link:

Hold a referendum on whether to keep the 2050 net zero target - Petitions (parliament.uk)

Currently the petition is just short of 20,000 signatures and it needs to get to 100,000 by next April. How many people are there who have not been brain-washed? If you know any then pass this on.

IPCC REPORTS - WHAT'S IN THEM THAT WE'RE NOT BEING TOLD?

 When you see the headlines to the latest climate reports by the IPCC and others, you find that they say that there is a "climate crisis" and there is "no doubt" about it, and yet inside those very reports there are sections which say very different things. Hardly anyone reads the full reports, so these much less scary sections go unreported. To find out more, watch the GWPF Annual Lecture by Professor Steve Koonin, which is available at this link:

2021 Annual GWPF Lecture | Steven E Koonin | Unsettled - YouTube

CLIMATE SCIENCE IS STILL NOT SETTLED

 Most readers of this blog will be aware that in the current political climate there is no room for any scientific evidence which casts doubt on the current hypothesis that global warming is caused by rising CO2 emissions due to fossil fuel use. However there are serious scientists who have come up with alternatives like these:

How much has the Sun influenced Northern Hemisphere temperature trends? An ongoing debate - Global Warming Solved

You will never find these papers without going to a great deal of trouble as the search engines are configured to hide them. Of course any doubt is a serious problem for politicians, but should that lead to an attempt to censor any other ideas?

REGULATED TO DEATH FOR NOTHING

 I often get sent articles to do with climate and recently I received one which made me realise what is likely to be coming our way here in the UK. Below is a short extract:

"The UK has already signed up to Net Zero by 2050 and, legally, every business must do the same. 

 

That probably still feels like a long way off, so how about 2023 instead?  While COP26 may not have fulfilled all aspirations, a very significant announcement was made by Westminster just before the start of the conference, stating that all large businesses and public organisations must have a plan for Net Zero by 2023. 

 

You may think that you are not a large business. But you probably do business with large businesses and public bodies – or, if not, you are likely to be a supplier to someone else who does – and true measurement runs end to end, including the full supply chain up and downstream. 

 

This means that, if you want to be part of the supply chain, you must have a plan yourself.  And, by the way, most companies need to start planning a year before the deadline date – so if you haven’t got this in hand by the end of next year, your business probably won’t survive very long. "

If you skim through the above extract, you can easily dismiss it as just more waffle, but if you look at it a bit more carefully and analyse what it says, it is actually the start of a nightmare for the businesses of the UK. "Every business has to have a plan for Net Zero by 2023".

 I don't recall this being announced. But just imagine the complexity of complying with it. It would be more complex than filling in your tax return, and it would need to show each year up to 2050. Think of all the new jobs for "climate compliance officers", and the number of plans that all businesses would have to write and then check with all their suppliers. 

No doubt the government would require all these plans to be checked by some vast new Net Zero compliance department employing tens of thousands of civil servants. (These must be the new "green jobs" the government keeps talking about.) It would need to be at least as big as HMRC.

Is this included in the £1.4 trillion estimate of Net Zero given by the government? I doubt it. We are all going to have to pay for this regulation in higher prices and taxes. Welcome to the new "1984-style" world of the (near) future.

The article was written by the head of a business consulting firm, who obviously is delighted to see all this come in. Here is a bit more of it describing what must be in the Net Zero plan:

(My comments in red)

"Fuel for heating and transport, electricity, and everything else upstream and downstream such as business travel or transportation of goods. Every item has a carbon value from its production.  This means EVERYTHING. (that's nice and simple)

 

If every single business measured everything, then suddenly it would become a lot easier.   Expect regulation in the not-too-distant future which demands that every single item lists its carbon rating – just as we have the traffic light system on food today. (who bothers to read that?)

 

Once you know how big your carbon footprint is, and what is driving it, you can take action to reduce it. Next, set a target and a plan. Make it achievable but realistic. As this becomes more prevalent, both consumers and businesses will only want to deal with those taking action, so don’t leave this to the last minute. (most consumers won't care, but that won't stop the government)

 

Keep tracking and keep taking actions to reduce. Once you get down to the last 10%, then, certainly, go and plant some trees." (that's if you are still in business!)

So if this is true we can look forward to sky high prices and bankruptcies galore, mass unemployment and shortages. I loved this bit: "If every single business measured everything, then suddenly it would become a lot easier."  A lot easier for who, I wonder? 

WEATHER SCIENCE IS NOT SETTLED

 We are constantly being told that the science of meteorology is settled, but this article in the Mail on Sunday reveals the truth:

It's weather wars as the Met Office forecasts mild winter while the BBC predicts a big freeze | Daily Mail Online

Clearly one of these opposing forecasts is wrong. Has the Met Office been brainwashed by its own climate change propaganda? Time will tell.

YOU WILL OBEY THE CLIMATE MANTRA!

 During my time as a councillor I have been told more than once that pressure is being applied to council leaders and senior officers on councils to tow the line on climate change or you will be at the back of the queue when grant funding is given out to your council. Believe it or not signing up to declare a "climate emergency" is now considered a mainstream activity. No wonder that so many councils have signed up to this. It is not a real endorsement of actual belief in this, but simply a way of keeping their councils in a good financial position.

The same thing also applies to those trying to further their careers. There is no incentive to articulate any objection to the government's net zero policy, quite the opposite. There is no need for any overt threats, the (not so subtle) message is quite clear.

'USEFUL IDIOTS' WHO LET CHINA OFF THE HOOK

 This is a vital report explaining why the West seems to be letting China get away with using fossil fuels without hardly any criticism while we are subjected to ever more draconian policies making ourselves poorer. Here is the link to this Daily Mail piece: Why is there lack of concern over burning coal, asks DAVID ROSE  | Daily Mail Online 

It seems odd that the link is given such an innocuous title, but once you read it you will see that it lists a number of hugely wealthy environmental charities and their leaders that are working closely with the Chinese communists. The list includes Lord Stern of the Grantham Institute, who is also a UK  government adviser and Bob Ward, Stern's spokesman. Then there is Kate Hampton, chief executive of the Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), which donates tens of millions a year to green groups including Extinction Rebellion.

The more you read articles like this the more you realise the vast sums of money that are behind the current policy of decarbonising the West, while our enemies are being given a free pass. It is a classic case of shooting ourselves in the foot. Useful idiots indeed!  

ESSENTIAL MINERALS TO BECOME VERY COSTLY LEADING TO GREEN ENERGY NIGHTMARE

 The Role Of Critical Minerals In The Clean Energy Transition | NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT (wordpress.com)

The above link is essential reading for those in government pushing for a rapid transition from fossil fuels. They can't say they haven't been warned.

RENEWABLE ENERGY SHOWN TO BE COSTLY AND UNRELIABLE AT COP

London, 9 November - High costs and the unreliability of renewable energy are the single largest obstacle to climate policies and are at the heart of the resistance of developing nations to follow the EU and UK’s favoured Net Zero plans at COP26.

 
This fact has been put in the spotlight by the revelation that the official electricity supplier to COP26, the Griffin wind farm in Scotland, has been paid substantial constraint payments during the conference

The Griffin wind farm in Perthshire is the official electricity supplier to the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, though of course the conference buildings actually rely on the grid mix of electricity generation, including nuclear, gas, and even coal to guarantee security of supply (see Coal keeps the lights on at COP26 as low wind strikes again).

Even more embarrassingly, it now transpires that the Griffin wind farm has been receiving large payments to reduce generation due to low local demand and weak grid connection between the wind farm and the majority of the grid’s consumers.

The Scottish edition of the Daily Express has revealed that the wind farm has received about £500,000 during the conference to reduce generation (UK bill-payers fork out more than £500,000 to switch off turbines at official COP26 wind farm.)

Such payments are highly anomalous in the electricity market, since wind farms lose their subsidy when they are “constrained” off, and this means they demand to be compensated.

Due to the difficulties such wind farms cause the system operator they are able to ask for more than the subsidy they are losing. Consequently, and as a matter of fact, wind farms actually make more money per MWh of electrical energy constrained off than those generated and sold normally to consumers.

Dr John Constable, the energy editor of Net Zero Watch said:
 
“Wind farms are a low quality generator requiring very costly grid management actions to maintain security of supply. The constraint payments to the COP26 official wind farm are typical of these problems, and a good example of the very high costs that deter the majority of the world from abandoning fossil fuels. 

"At some point the green lobby is going to have to chose  between sustainable emissions reductions and their failing pet technologies, wind and solar.”


Contact

Net Zero Watch

UK GOVERNMENT TO BRAIN WASH FIVE YEAR OLDS ON CLIMATE

 The Tory destruction of childhood: Children as young as five will be taught to be little eco-warriors

Daily Mail, 5 November 2021

Teaching primary pupils that humans harm the planet can be our ‘key weapon’ in the fight against climate change, the Education Secretary claimed yesterday.

Nadhim Zahawi is to urge schools to equip children as young as five with ‘the skills and knowledge to build a sustainable future’.

Teachers will also be encouraged to install bird boxes and other wildlife features on school grounds to boost ‘biodiversity’.

For the first time, primary schools will be told to include climate change in the science curriculum. Secondary schools will be shown how to address the topic in other subjects, such as English.

The plans were welcomed by the UN last night – although one critic raised fears that fuelling ‘panic’ among pupils could damage their mental health.

For the first time, primary schools will be told to include climate change in the science curriculum. Secondary schools will be shown how to address the topic in other subjects, such as English (stock image)

The Department for Education said the green policy, to be formally announced by Mr Zahawi today at the Cop26 summit, will ‘put climate change at the heart of education’.

Although teaching the new content will be voluntary, schools will be told it is ‘best practice’ to take it on board.

Climate change is already on secondary schools’ statutory national curriculum in science, citizenship and geography.

But the DfE now wants it covered in other subjects too, and will issue lesson plans showing teachers how to do so.
 
Full story

TV SOAPS ALL BECOME PC ON CLIMATE

 This link gives the details: TV soaps to swap characters to highlight climate change - BBC News

I don't normally believe in conspiracy theories, but this seems beyond doubt. I don't watch these programmes, but millions do and I wonder what their regular fans will think of all this contrived propaganda. 

Apart from being bemused, I suspect quite a few will find it rather patronising to be subjected to this mild form of brain-washing. I bet there won't be any climate sceptic characters to put any contrary points. No, it will be fully sanitised like all the news bulletins.

Just imagine some conversation in the soap pub like;

"You won't catch me getting one of these blooming heat pumps. They're about as much use as a chocolate tea pot."

"Aye, you're right there. These politicians are a load of hypocrites, flying around in their private jets and then having the nerve to lecture us on how to heat our homes."

"And it won't make any blooming difference anyway, with all the extra coal-fired power stations being built in China and India - complete madness".

Of course no such conversation will ever be aired, but these are just the sort of conversations that the public will be having all over the country. They will also be asking why their soaps have been taken over by pc propaganda. 

COST OF NET ZERO IN 6 MINUTES

 Nice short video on the cost of net zero:

WATCH: As #COP26Glasgow opens, Laurence Fox says: "#NetZero will cost you everything" - YouTube

CLIMATE INQUISITION IS COMING - BEWARE!

 Adam Houser: Google, YouTube, and the Climate Inquisition

The Washington Times, 30 October 2021

A slippery slope toward censorship and intellectual tyranny

“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” says the famous Monty Python comedy sketch.

But unfortunately, everyone can expect the coming Climate Inquisition.

Google has announced it will now prevent ads and monetization supporting content that questions climate change alarmism. This includes YouTube.

Google’s support document on the policy says: “… we’re announcing a new monetization policy…that will prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.”

What makes this new policy so concerning is that Alphabet Inc., which is the parent company for Google and YouTube, has a near-monopoly on internet search and video. According to Statista.com, Google has a worldwide market share for internet search engines of almost 88 percent. Global Media Insight says over 2.3 billion people use YouTube at least once a month and that it is the second most popular social media platform.

What are the limits of what a private company can prohibit on its platforms? This is the debate politicians and citizens have been having, at least regarding social media, for years now.

The libertarian argument goes something like this: “As a private company, Google can do what it wants to limit content on its platforms. Don’t like it? Go somewhere else!”

But when that company owns 88 percent of global online search traffic, as well as the largest video hosting platform in the world, there is little else to go to.

Yet Google assures users that the best experts are being consulted, so there is no need to worry!

“In creating this policy and its parameters, we’ve consulted authoritative sources on the topic of climate science, including experts who have contributed to United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Reports.”

What about experts that say the United Nations, and their assessment reports, may have a few things wrong when it comes to climate policy? Google doesn’t pay them any mind.

For example, Dr. Steven E. Koonin, who served as science advisor for President Barack Obama’s Department of Energy, said the UN’s climate models don’t hold up under scrutiny in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal: “The latest models also don’t reproduce the global climate of the past. The models fail to explain why rapid global warming occurred from 1910 to 1940 when human influences on the climate were less significant.”

Dr. Koonin also has a fair amount of criticism concerning AR6, the UN’s latest climate assessment report, saying in that same piece: “The Summary for Policy Makers section says the rate of global sea-level rise has been increasing over the past 50 years. It doesn’t mention that it was increasing almost as rapidly 90 years ago before decreasing strongly for 40 years.”

Physicist Dr. Ralph Alexander also criticized the UN’s climate report. He said, “there’s no scientific evidence that global warming triggers extreme weather, or even that weather extremes are becoming more frequent. Anomalous weather events, such as heatwaves, hurricanes, floods, droughts and tornadoes, show no long-term trend over more than a century of reliable data.”

Unfortunately, scientific experts are beginning to be censored across not just digital media but all media. The Los Angeles Times has banned letters to the editor from those skeptical of a climate emergency. In 2018, Chuck Todd, host of “Meet The Press,” said he would not give any air time to “climate deniers.”

But it goes further than mere censorship. Prominent figures are even advocating for the jailing and prosecution of those who are skeptical of a man-made climate crisis.

When asked what should happen to climate “deniers,” environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said: “I think they should be enjoying three hots and a cot at the Hague, with all the other war criminals who are there.”

When actor Bill Nye was asked the same question, he said, “We’ll see what happens. Uh, was it appropriate to jail the guys from Enron?”

In 2015, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) suggested that climate skeptics could be prosecuted under RICO laws used for racketeering enterprises.

Do these all seem like things that should be done in a free, democratic society? It seems more like the beginnings of the Inquisition by the Catholic church hundreds of years ago.

In 1633, Galileo was charged with heresy as part of the Roman Inquisition for his continued assertion that the earth orbited the sun. Galileo was not sentenced to death. Instead, he was sentenced to lifelong house arrest. He was forced to recant his beliefs.

Like Galileo, will scientists and experts be forced to recant their belief that we don’t face an imminent, dire climate emergency?

Will they even be subjected one day – as ridiculous as it may sound now – to house arrest or prosecution, as Senator Whitehouse wants?

Google’s ad ban may be one more step in a long slippery slope toward censorship and intellectual tyranny – a Climate Inquisition, if you will.

UK COST OF NET ZERO ESTIMATE IS MUCH TOO LOW

 London, 28 October - New data confirms that offshore windfarm costs remain at very high levels, having only fallen slightly in recent years. 

 
Net Zero Watch has compiled the audited accounts of every commercial UK offshore windfarms, together with the associated generation data from Ofgem. This work updates a series of earlier studies of offshore wind in the UK, which reached similar conclusions.

The Prime Minister told MPs recently that the cost of offshore wind power has dropped by 70 per cent in the last decade. He used this to justify his claim that Net Zero can be achieved at modest cost.
 
The new findings show that he is wrong about the cost of wind energy and that Net Zero will cost hundreds of billions of pounds extra.
 
Ministers' claims have been made on the basis of the low bids made to Contracts for Difference auctions by several offshore windfarms. However, the first of these - Moray East - has now published its 2020 accounts, which suggest that its construction cost will be similar to other recent windfarms. 
 
Net Zero Watch's Andrew Montford said:
 
"Except for the wind lobby, there is now widespread agreement that Contracts for Difference results do not reflect underlying costs. The hard data from audited accounts is now giving unequivocal backing to this reality. It is clear that offshore wind is extremely expensive, and will remain so for the foreseeable future".
 
The chairman of the parliamentary Net Zero Scrutiny Group, Craig Mackinlay MP, said:
 
"Boris Johnson assured me that the cost of offshore wind has fallen by 70%. Sober analysis shows beyond all reasonable doubt that this is not the case. Not only does this show that the PM is being given flawed information by his advisers, the public is being led into a cost and energy security disaster." 
 
Details of the findings can be found at the Net Zero Watch website.


Contact

Andrew Montford
e: awmontford@gmail.com

UK MUST GET A LOT WINDIER TO REACH NET ZERO

 Net Zero target relies on rise in windy days

The Sunday Telegraph, 24 October 2021
 
The disclosure prompts questions over the accuracy of the CCC's claims about the feasibility of meeting net zero by 2050

Modelling used to justify the "feasibility" of the net zero target assumed a dramatic fall in the number of days of calm weather, when many turbines stand still, according to new analysis.
 
Data obtained from the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the official advisory body, following a legal battle, shows that a series of assumptions underpinning its advice to ministers included a projection that in 2050 there would be just seven days on which wind turbines would produce less than 10 per cent of their potential electricity output. So far this year, there have already been 65 such days, and in 2016 there were as many as 78.

On Saturday night the disclosure prompted questions over the accuracy of the CCC's claims in 2019 about the feasibility of meeting a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. Ministers rely heavily on the CCC's advice and modelling, and last week its chief executive, Chris Stark heralded Boris Johnson's new Net Zero Strategy as "largely mirroring the CCC advice".

It comes as an analysis by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) think tank warns that the "quality of the CCC's advice is questionable", particularly in relation to the 2050 target adopted by Theresa May in 2019.

"[The CCC] advised that this target was feasible but refused to disclose the calculations on which its costs figures were based, and it became clear that the scale of the challenge of net zero was not well understood when the target was passed into law," states the report, which is published today. The IEA report also accuses the body of having expanded an initial remit as an independent advisory body delivering balanced advice, to becoming a "pressure group".

Mr Stark used a newspaper interview on Friday to say that the Government should be urging people to "understand what they can do" about climate change, including "flying less, eating less meat".

Craig Mackinlay, the leader of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of Conservative MPs and a member of the public accounts committee, warned that if the committee had significantly overestimated the amount of power that turbines would generate, significantly more back-up power could be required from more reliable sources.
 
He said: "These predictions appear somewhat fanciful. The Climate Change Committee seem to be looking at the whole project through rose-tinted spectacles to try and minimalise the unpalatable costs of this whole enterprise."

Analysis of CCC data obtained following a legal battle by the Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF), a climate sceptic think tank, found that the body's assumptions as part of modelling included that the UK would experience just one day in 2050 on which wind turbines would operate at less than five per cent of the industry's overall capacity. That compares with 20 days so far in 2021 - which has seen particularly low wind speeds - ten days in 2020, nine in 2019 and 21 in 2018.

The CCC's modelling, which drew on a study by Imperial College London, also included an assumption that, in 2050, there would be just seven days on which wind turbines produced less than 10 per cent of their overall capacity. That compares to 65 such days so far this year, 30 in 2020, 33 in 2019 and 56 in 2018, according to analysis by Net Zero Watch, a campaign of the GWPF.

A spokesman for the CCC declined to explain the disparity, saying: "Detailed assumptions on power generation were made in 2019 as part of an extensive body of modelling and analysis to inform our advice to government on net zero. We stand by these insights.

"This information, including the study undertaken by Imperial College London, is published in full on our website. We have no further comment to make."

The CCC has previously said that the UK's future energy supply should come from a "portfolio of technologies" including nuclear and hydrogen power, but insisted that the costs associated with the intermittent nature of wind "represent a small proportion of overall system costs."
 
Experts have also suggested that placing turbines in a wider variety of locations around the UK would increase the overall yield when the wind fails to blow in particular areas.

Victoria Hewson, a solicitor and the IEA's head of regulatory affairs, said: "The scale and impact of the areas covered by the advice of the Climate Change Committee is vast... Far from being treated as an irreproachable source of truth, the CCC should be challenged and scrutinised more than any other regulator or advisory body.”