Friday 30 July 2021

RESISTANCE TO NET ZERO POLICIES GETS MORE COVERAGE IN THE PRESS

 The SUN says: Eco revolution for new boilers and battery-powered cars should not make people poorer

Editorial, The Sun, 27 July 2021

SLOWLY but surely the Government begins to see sense on the environment.Its frenzy of rash pledges is rightly being softened into something Britain CAN achieve and support.

The Sun’s own green campaigning has always come with the qualification that the eco revolution must not make our readers poorer.
 
So it was good, firstly, to hear Boris Johnson's Cop26 conference frontwoman Allegra Stratton admit she drives a diesel — and won’t buy a battery car or replace her boiler for years.

And now ministers are to delay the 2035 ban on new gas boilers.
 
Will the Government put the brake on battery-only new cars next? With less than nine years to the arbitrary 2030 deadline they remain absurdly pricey and with derisory mileage ranges.

The cost of Net Zero is mind-boggling enough without pretending so much can be rammed through in just a few years.

If only councils would get real too.
 
Their lust to hammer or ban drivers of petrol or diesel vehicles before alternatives are genuinely viable is shameful. And disastrous for local businesses.

Thursday 29 July 2021

INDIANS PUT A MAJOR SPANNER IN THE COP26 AGENDA

 COP26 in trouble as India asks rich nations to reduce per capita emission by 2030

Times of India, 26 July 2021
 
NEW DELHI: At a time when rich nations, backed by the UN climate body, have pitched for brining all emitters on board to commit for ‘net-zero’ emission goal or carbon neutrality by around mid-century, India has come out with a counter proposal asking them to bring down their own per capita emission to global average by 2030.
 

Per capita CO₂ emissions. Source: Our World in Data
 
The country brought this narrative on table while making its points on the concluding day of the G20 ministerial meeting on climate change and energy and even forced the participants to add this point in the Presidency statement in Naples, Italy on late Friday evening.

India’s per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emission was around 1.96 tCO2e (tonne carbon dioxide equivalent) in 2016 which is less than one-third of the world’s per capita annual GHG emissions (6.55 tCO2e). On the other hand, the US has 17.6 tCO2e, Canada has 15.7 tCO2e, Australia has 14.9 tCO2e, Germany has 10.4 tCO2e, UK has 8.1 tCO2e, France has 6.6 tCO2e and China has 6.4 tCO2e of per capita annual emission.

Citing how rich nations have already consumed most of the ‘carbon space’ available for developmental needs due to their huge emission in the past, Indian delegation intervened with a formal country statement on the issue.Noting “the pledges made by some countries to achieve net-zero GHG emissions or carbon neutrality by or around mid-century”, India said this may not be adequate in view of fast depleting available ‘carbon space’.

“Therefore, and keeping in view the legitimate need of developing countries to grow, we urge G20 countries to commit to bringing down per capita emissions to global average by 2030,” said the statement of Indian delegation, led by environment minister Bhupender Yadav, while finalising the G20 ministerial communique.

The ministers of G20 countries then jointly agreed to include India’s remarks in the Presidency statement while noting that all the nations would together look forward to cooperating in identifying and addressing “related challenges and opportunities for all G20 members to pursue this effort (net-zero emission or carbon neutrality goal) effort”.

India’s power and renewable energy minister, R K Singh, too earlier brought the per-capita point on table while virtually addressing the G20 meet. He, while noting that the per capita emission of many developed countries was 2-3 times above the world average, underlined the need to bring it down to the global average as soon as possible.

There have been a lot of diplomatic efforts to bring India on board to commit to a net-zero (reducing emission of greenhouse gases to zero) goal even as India has been among very few countries who have been well on track to meet their climate action targets under the Paris Agreement.

India’s remarks assume significance at this juncture when the UN climate body has been pushing nations to commit higher emission targets to reach the Paris Agreement goal of keeping the global average temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century and make efforts to keep it at around 1.5 degree Celsius over the pre-industrial level (1850-1900).

Full story

Wednesday 28 July 2021

NET ZERO POLICY FOR THE UK RUNS UP AGAINST REALITY

Fraser Myers: Net Zero by 2050 is dead in the water. So what's plan B?
The Daily Telegraph, 27 July 2021

The truth is, the sacrifices being demanded of us in the name of Net Zero are incompatible with democracy. And the PM knows it.

 Boris Johnson has always tried to take a ‘cakeist’ position on Net Zero. We can drastically cut carbon emissions while boosting living standards, he claims. But the truth is, the sacrifices being demanded of us in the name of Net Zero are incompatible with democracy, and the PM knows it.


Just look at the anguish the gas boiler ban is causing to the government. Johnson has now conceded that the ban will have to be pushed back from 2035 to 2040. It will have to be some other prime minister’s problem.

The boiler ban was a key plank of the government’s Net Zero strategy. Gas boilers were to be replaced with heat pumps. These heat pumps are not what anyone could call a reasonable alternative to boilers. While a boiler can heat your house fairly quickly at the flick of a switch, a heat pump can take around 24 hours to heat your home to between 17 to 19 degrees celsius - i.e., not-quite room temperature.

For the pleasure of living in your not-quite warm house, you will have to fork out around £10,000 for the unit and installation. Then, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC), you can expect to spend an additional £100 per year on your energy bills.

If you want to own a heat pump and have a house that’s more than lukewarm, you’ll need lots of extra insulation. This means yet more tens of thousands of pounds in renovation costs. The Energy Technologies Institute estimates that a ‘deep retrofit’ could cost as much as building a home from scratch. This is not money that any ordinary person has down the back of the sofa - or that the taxpayer can reasonably cover for millions of households.

Getting used to this reduced lifestyle ‘will take an attitudinal shift’, says Chris Stark, CEO of the CCC. This is quite the understatement. It means abandoning what was once a completely normal expectation in a developed country: having a warm home in winter.

In our Net Zero future, we can also forget having a stable and affordable supply of electricity. Boris says he wants to make the UK the ‘Saudi Arabia of wind power’. But we should be wary of green energy experiments. Places like California that have rushed to swap nuclear and fossil fuels with renewable energy are regularly faced with rolling blackouts. Since Germany embarked on its Energiewende (energy transition), its electricity prices are now among the highest in the world, though, ironically, this hasn’t done much to lower CO2 emissions.

Net Zero is easily the largest national project the UK has embarked on since the Second World War. But even as politicians boast about it on the world stage, parading their harsh ‘targets’ at every opportunity, they have tried to downplay its significance to the public. It’s just a tax rise here, a subsidy there, maybe a bit less meat-eating or not rinsing the plate before loading it into the dishwasher. Technology will take care of the rest, anyway, they say.

But when the public really finds out what Net Zero means, will they tolerate it? The gilets jaunes protests in France were the most significant public revolt since 1968. They were sparked by an eco-tax. This tax didn’t affect the metropolitan liberals who dreamt it up. They were baffled that anyone would stand in the way of carbon neutrality. But they had to reverse course. This tax was but a drop in the ocean compared to Net Zero.

All of this is why a Deutsche Bank analyst has, provocatively, suggested that a period of ‘eco-dictatorship’ may be necessary to get to Net Zero. Governments may struggle to stay in power, or may have to deal with civil unrest if they preside over such a drastic reduction in living standards.

Perhaps the most likely outcome is that Net Zero simply doesn’t happen, as the bigger sacrifices get shunted into the long grass for the next government to impose. But if the government and its technocrats truly believe that climate change poses an existential threat, shouldn’t they at least have a Plan B?
 


For further reading see series of GWPF papers on the cost of Net Zero 

Wednesday 21 July 2021

CLIMATE FORECASTS GET IT WRONG AGAIN OVER GERMAN FLOODS

 Read this article - The Weather Follies: Is Climate Change To Blame For Germany's Flooding? - Climate Change Dispatch 

Amazingly, while the media has been happy to repeat all the usual suspects saying its down to climate change, the truth is that climate models predict that summer rainfall in the Rhineland area should get LESS.

Tuesday 20 July 2021

LETTER NOT PUBLISHED

The following letter failed to get published, sadly. It was sent in response to a reader's claims that we face a 'climate emergency'.


Recent correspondent, Richard Russell, seems to be convinced that CO2 controls the climate, despite admitting that Al Gore's video contained 'weak science'. So weak that a High Court Judge decided that its errors were so serious that it must not be shown in schools without teachers pointing them out to students, as pointed out by Dave Christian.

Even if we accept that Human output of CO2 does need to be reduced to zero, surely we should all want to know the cost of such a policy and whether it will achieve that objective. An official estimate of the cost to the UK has recently been published by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) which is £1.4 trillion. The UK emits 0.9% of the world's  human CO2 emissions, while China is 30% and has no policy to reduce emissions, just a vague non-binding intent.

Will readers be happy to contribute their £50,000 share of the £1.4 trillion, knowing that unilateral action by the UK will have no measurable effect on world temperatures or the climate?

Monday 19 July 2021

WE MUST PREPARE FOR FLOOD DISASTER, NOT WASTE BILLIONS IN VAIN ATTEMPT TO PREVENT IT

 

Germany’s flood disaster exposes folly of misbalanced Net Zero policies
 




London, 19 July: The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) has called on the UK government to learn the key lesson from the German flood disaster and adopt policies that prioritise effective and relative low cost flood protection over massively expensive and ineffective renewable energy targets.

In recent days, meteorologists and extreme weather researchers have blamed a ‘monumental failure of Germany's flood warning system’ for the death and devastation triggered by disastrous flooding.

Experts had warned the German government four days before the first floods about the high risk of flooding in the Rhine basin, but the government failed to implement flood protection measures that are, in any case historically underfunded and thus ineffective.

Despite previous flood disasters in recent decades, Germany's priority in dealing with climate change has been to spend hundreds of billions of euros on wind and solar projects, failing almost completely to prepare communities for extreme weather events that are inevitable regardless of climate change.

In view of the habitual failure of UK governments to prevent and alleviate significant flooding events in the past, the Global Warming Policy Forum is calling for No. 10 to learn from Germany’s sad example and implement a radical rebalancing of adaptation and mitigation in the UK’s climate policies.

Since 2002 the UK has been spending increasingly large sums on climate change mitigation, mostly through subsidies to renewables. Between 2017 and today the UK has spent nearly £30 billion in in income support subsidies to renewable energy investors.

The OBR estimates that in the next four years alone (2021 to 2025) the UK will spend nearly £50 billion on these subsidies to renewables investors.

A fraction of these astronomical handouts could deliver greatly improved flood prevention, defences and disaster recovery systems. Comparable spending would help to make the UK extremely resilient in the face of natural disasters.

The German and UK governments obviously have the balance of adaptation and mitigation very badly wrong.

As a direct result of costly and ineffective climate policies both countries have underinvested in protection and adaptation measures. These measures are very effective and “no regrets” policies because they yield dividends immediately and protect citizens against flooding and other natural disasters whether they are related to climate change or not.

Dr Benny Peiser, the GWPF’s director, said:

"The German government’s astronomically costly low carbon policies have delivered no benefit to those communities affected by flooding. The UK has yet to see a disaster on the German scale but the underlying problem is identical.

"Even if the UK were ever to achieve its Net Zero emissions target, towns and communities would still have to deal with flooding and other extreme weather events that won’t disappear just because the Government throws hundreds of billions at wind and solar energy.

"The next time communities and towns are devastated by a flood disaster, no minister or party leader should get away with the lame excuse that climate change is to blame. The truth is that even in regions where more flooding is happening, in affluent societies flood disasters are increasingly the result of failed and underfunded protection measures.

"It is time for the government to redirect resources towards adaptation measures that will help to prevent or minimise much of the misery and economic harm caused by flooding."


Contact

Dr Benny Peiser
Director, Global Warming Policy Forum
e: peiser@thegwpf.com
m: 07553 361717

Sunday 11 July 2021

UK GOVERNMENT TO DELAY ANNOUNCEMENT OF GAS BOILER BAN

 

GWPF welcomes Boris Johnson’s last-minute delay of gas boiler ban






London, 10 July: The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) has welcomed the decision by Boris Johnson to delay the planned gas boiler ban which the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) planned to announce next week.

According to a report in today’s Times, BEIS had been due to publish its heat and building strategy next week

“but this is now understood to have been delayed, possibly until the autumn. At a meeting last week Boris Johnson was said to be concerned that it did not do enough to protect consumers and wanted further safeguards….”

Boris Johnson is right to be concerned about the social and political risks and repercussions of a hugely unpopular ban on gas boilers.

The GWPF has been urging the Prime Minister for some time to pause and reconsider the poorly designed and extremely costly green home heating plans. It’s time to abandon them now before they collapse into a humiliating fiasco.

The last-minute intervention by 10 Downing Street is a clear indication that growing criticism of the gas boiler ban is beginning to make a real difference and that the Prime Minister is now gravely concerned about the economic and political consequences of the ban.

In response to the latest developments, Steve Baker MP has warned that

"if ministers don’t obtain the consent of the public for Net Zero now, with full and frank explanations of the costs and changes they are planning, eventually there will be a terrible revolt. The boiler debacle points the way to utter political fiasco.”

The Prime Minister needs to put a stop to this rush into an inevitable political fiasco. He needs to send his ministers back to the drawing board and allow households to make their own decisions about what heating system is cheapest and works best for them.


Contact

Dr Benny Peiser
Director, Global Warming Policy Forum
e: peiser@thegwpf.com 
m: 07553 361717

Saturday 10 July 2021

UK GOVERNMENT WATCHDOG FAILS TO APPLY RIGOROUS ASSESSMENT OF GOVERNMENT'S NET ZERO POLICY

 

Office for Budget Responsibility has failed in its statutory duties to assess the fiscal risks of Net Zero




London, 9 July: The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) has criticised the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) for failing to assess the full fiscal risks of the government’s Net Zero policy. 

In a statement published today, the GWPF shows that the OBR’s Fiscal Risk Report 2021 relies unquestioningly on unduly optimistic assumptions and cost estimates by the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
 
Despite identifying the fact that the ‘indirect effects’ of Net Zero policies could have negative fiscal consequences, the OBR fails to assess these effects and does not address the likelihood that Net Zero costs could be significantly higher than the CCC’s £1.4 trillion cost estimate on which it bases the risk analysis.
 
The OBR failed to consider the possibility that far from seeing a steady reduction in the cost of decarbonisation,  renewable electricity and low carbon technologies (heat pumps, electric cars/hydrogen vehicles) remain expensive, thus increasing the cost of doing business in the UK, eroding economic competitiveness and reducing fiscal receipts from income and corporation tax.
 
By ignoring these possible and — in our view — likely scenarios, the OBR has failed to identify the grave fiscal Net Zero risks facing the UK state.

The OBR’s adoption of the Climate Change Committee’s blinkered optimism undermines confidence in its projections of direct fiscal costs to government, but the danger of mistakes concerning indirect effects is of even greater magnitude, and suggests that the OBR is failing in its statutory duties.
 
Contact

Global Warming Policy Forum


e: info@thegwpf.com
m: 07553 361717

-----------------
 

OBR turns a blind eye to Net Zero policy risks
Global Warming Policy Forum, 9 July 2021
 

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has failed to assess the true risks of the government’s Net Zero policy and is not a reliable guide to the long-term sustainability of Britain’s public finances.

The latest Fiscal Risks Report from the UK government’s independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) devotes much of its discussion to the costs of implementing the 2050 Net Zero emissions target. Unfortunately, it has failed adequately to discharge its statutory duty to analyse the true risks this policy poses to the sustainability of the public finances.

While it correctly notes a significant potential impact from the ‘indirect effects’ of climate policies it has failed to assess the possibility that these indirect effects could be significantly negative, causing economic contraction that reduces both income and corporation tax receipts.

In short, the OBR’s Fiscal Risks Report 2021 has failed to produce a credible risk assessment and is not a reliable guide to the long-term sustainability of the public finances.

This defect flows from the fact that the OBR relies all but exclusively on the opaque and tendentious cost estimates of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which are extremely optimistic about the net cost of low carbon policies and thus project correspondingly unrealistic technology deployment scenarios. In sharp contrast to its excessive optimism about Net Zero, the OBR presents an unbalanced emphasis on pessimistic assessments of the costs of climate change.

Unjustified optimism on the one hand, and blinkered pessimism on the other results in an overall lack of balance that means the resulting fiscal risk assessment is both incomplete, distorted and unfit for purpose.

A wider range of scenarios, from a wider range of sources, with a stronger emphasis on current trends, however discouraging, not wishful thinking about the future, is badly needed.

This inadequate report is yet more evidence that the lack of objectivity in the institutions of British government has itself become a fiscal risk factor, jeopardising the state’s reputation and potentially increasing the cost of public borrowing, as well as making the UK a less attractive jurisdiction in which to invest capital.

Analysis

The UK government’s independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has in the last week published its latest Fiscal Risks Report. It devotes a large part of the document (pages 83–152) to the consideration of climate change policies, concluding that the “Between now and 2050, the fiscal costs of reducing net emissions to zero in the UK could be significant but not exceptional” (p. 150).

It is important to recall that this conclusion is narrowly focused on fiscal implications. The OBR does not consider the wisdom of current policies overall for British citizens, but only the implications of those policies for the public finances.

The Office for Budget Responsibility operates under a remit set out in the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act (2011) which states that the OBR has the duty of examining and reporting on “the sustainability of the public finances” (see paragraph 4(1)), with the specific obligation to reveal in its reports all the assumptions it has made as well as giving an account of “the main risks which the Office considered to be relevant” (6(b)).

Though narrow, this is not an undemanding specification, and it is reasonable to ask whether the OBR has adequately discharged its statutory duties in this latest report. There are good grounds for thinking it has not done so.

On page 123 the OBR authors write, correctly, that “An assessment of the fiscal risks posed by the transition to net zero must take account of four different ways in which this transition can affect the public finances”. The four items are listed as follows:

* First, government is likely to be called upon to bear some of the direct cost of transition described above, at the very least for the buildings it occupies and vehicles it operates.

* Second, it faces a direct loss of tax revenues linked to fossil fuels and emissions.

* Third, it could derive a direct revenue benefit by taxing carbon more heavily.

* Fourth, it must contend with the indirect effects (which could be negative or positive) of the transition on the public finances via wider economic outcomes.

Of these four fiscal risks, the OBR, remarkably, only analyses the first three in detail, ignoring close assessment of the fourth risk.

The credibility of the assessment of these matters is further undermined by the fact that it is all but exclusively reliant on the Climate Change Committee (CCC) for its estimates on policy costs and technology deployment rates, though reference is also made to equally optimistic economic growth scenarios from the Bank of England (summarised in 3.26, which shows a complete return to trend after the pandemic by 2023-2024, and an economy in 2050 almost 1.6 times larger than it is at present).

It is bad enough that this blinkered optimism undermines confidence in the OBR’s projections of direct fiscal costs to government, but the danger of mistakes concerning indirect effects is of even greater magnitude and suggests that the OBR has neglected the main risks it has identified as relevant, failing to discharge its statutory duties.

The fragility and opacity of the Climate Change Committee’s assumptions, for example concerning the costs of offshore wind, are well known. The OBR did not take into account the likelihood that the “indirect effect” it has identified as a fiscal risk is significantly negative and that the Net Zero costs could be much higher than its already startling £1.4 trillion cost estimate.

It did not consider the risk that far from seeing steady upwards growth, the UK economy might stagnate or even contract as scarce resources were transferred on a large scale into low productivity energy sources (wind, solar) and high cost conversion devices (heat pumps, electric/hydrogen Vehicles), thus increasing production costs, eroding UK competitiveness and reducing fiscal receipts from income and corporation tax.

That the OBR did not exercise this elementary caution is inexplicable. All the data required to start the alarm bells ringing can be found in its own pages. Table 3.1 in the study, for example, describes the three CCC Net Zero scenarios, which are implicitly presented as the Pessimistic (“Headwinds”) Optimistic (“Tailwinds”) and Middle ground (“Balanced”) pathways.

But a glance at the table shows that even “Headwinds” is highly optimistic, projecting 75% of electricity from renewables, Electric Vehicles as forming 100% of sales in 2035, and over 70% of households using hydrogen for heating.

The “Balanced” and “Tailwinds” scenarios are still more extreme, the latter projecting 90% renewable electricity, a 50% reduction in meat and dairy consumption, the planting of 70,000 hectares a year by 2035, and a 15% per cent reduction in flying.

Transformational change on this scale is obviously an extremely high-risk undertaking, with physical, economic, and political dangers. But the OBR does not consider any alternative to the CCC’s assumption that this will undoubtedly be economically beneficial and politically acceptable to the United Kingdom.

The scale of this gamble can be clearly seen in the OBR’s use of the CCC’s predictions for the net cost by sector of reaching Net Zero via the “Balanced” pathway:
 
 

Net cost by sector of reaching net zero in the CCC’s balanced pathway. Figure 3.12 in the OBR, Fiscal Risk Report 2021, p. 107.
 
The black line on the chart represents the total net cost to the economy expected by the CCC, and starts to fall by 2027, delivering a major saving from 2040 onwards.

But that net saving is critically dependent on reductions in the cost of transport in spite of a shift to electricity and hydrogen. The OBR reports that these technologies will deliver “operating savings” of £30 billion a year in 2050 (p. 108), justifying this claim by reporting that “over the next decade, battery prices are projected to fall rapidly”, with “running costs” becoming cheaper than petrol and diesel as early as 2025.

The cause of this incredible fall in running costs must be attributed primarily to the assumption of low cost renewable electricity (see p. 119), but also to the imposition of a carbon tax on fossil transport fuels. The OBR assumes that consumers will quietly accept a carbon tax of £101 per tonne of carbon dioxide in 2026, roughly double the Social Cost of Carbon, and five times the UK Emission Trading Scheme (UKETS) price, rising to over £180 a tonne in 2050.

In fact, most of the projected saving is due not to a decline in battery costs but to these dramatic assumptions about cheap electricity and the imposition of carbon taxation, a point that can be clearly seen in the OBR’s own chart of the detailed effect, drawn once again from the Climate Change Committee:


Surface Transport: Whole Economy Net Costs. Figure 3.14 in OBR, Fiscal Risk Report (July 2021), 110. Source: CCC balanced net zero pathway.
 
Note that the annual investment costs (capex) on cars and vans hardly falls at all over the period 2025 to 2050 and is predicted to be rising at the end of that period. The net cost reduction predicted in the black line is being delivered by “operating savings”, in other words low-cost renewable electricity and hydrogen.

It is no exaggeration to say that everything in both the CCC’s and the OBR’s cost assessment depends on their optimistic assumption that the cost of renewable electricity will drop significantly. Given that sensitivity, the OBR should at the very least have considered the possibility that the reductions in renewable electricity costs, claimed to be likely in the mid 2020s, would not materialise. A number of analysts have been warning that in the light of empirical data in company reports this downbeat scenario is more likely than not.[1]

Caution on the underlying trends in capital cost and operating cost for offshore wind are by no means unknown to the financial markets. No one will be surprised that the Climate Change Committee has simply ignored these concerns in its zeal to make the case for Net Zero, but the OBR, with its statutory duties towards the public finances, has no excuse for failing to assess these significant policy risks which have been known for some time now.

Indeed, this latest Fiscal Risks Report confirms general concerns that the topic of climate change has induced a general institutional failure of responsibility in the British government. There is a growing tendency to unquestioningly copy and paste optimistic assessments about policy costs and risks from one report to another.

The taxpayers who pay the salaries of these civil servants will look in vain for independent critical thinking, for the operation of the checks and balances which should prevent group-think and systemic policy error.

There is a real possibility, and we would say a high likelihood, that the Climate Change Committee is mistaken about the costs of the Net Zero transition, and that indirect economic effects, correctly identified but not adequately examined by the OBR, will be severely negative for the economy as a whole and the public finances, with stuttering economic activity and stagnant or even falling tax receipts.

One might even say that the absence of cool-headed and credible analysis within government is now itself becoming a fiscal risk factor of significance. International financial analysts and investors will undoubtedly see the OBR’s excessive optimism for what it is, a political exercise, a policy delivery boost, not the unbiased and comprehensive risk analysis and sanity-check that one expects from a competent administration.

Over-optimism and the absence of rigorous internal scrutiny can only undermine the credibility of the British state, with poisonous implications for the cost of government borrowing and for the prospects for inward investment. Britain is beginning to look like a text-book example of a failing planned economy.

 
[1] For empirical data and analysis of offshore wind energy costs see

Offshore wind strike prices: Behind the headlines
 
Wind Power Economics – Rhetoric and Reality
 
Costs, Performance and Investment Returns for Wind Power Presentation
 
Offshore wind cost predictions and the cost of outcomes
 

Wednesday 7 July 2021

COAL PLANTS TO INCREASE - CHINA, INDIA, INDONESIA, JAPAN AND VIETNAM TO BUILD 600 MORE

Any reasonable person might ask - what is the point of the UK impoverishing its inhabitants in the face of the massive rejection of its CO2 reduction policy by all the nations mentioned? 


 Asia's Great Reset: Asian nations to build more than 600 new coal power plants

AFP, 30 June 2021

China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam are planning to build more than 600 coal plants, think-tank Carbon Tracker said.
 
Five Asian countries are responsible for 80 percent of new coal power stations planned worldwide, with the projects threatening goals to fight the climate crisis, a report warned Wednesday.

The stations will be able to generate a total of 300 gigawatts of energy — equivalent to around the entire electricity generating capacity of Japan.
 
The projects are being pursued despite the availability of cheaper renewables, and they threaten efforts to meet the Paris climate deal goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the study said.
 
“These last bastions of coal power are swimming against the tide, when renewables offer a cheaper solution that supports global climate targets,” said Catharina Hillenbrand Von Der Neyen, Carbon Tracker’s head of research.
 
“Investors should steer clear of new coal projects.”
 
Experts see phasing out coal, which produces greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, as key in battling a climate crisis whose impacts — ranging from species extinction to unliveable heat — are expected to accelerate markedly.
 
But many countries in the Asia-Pacific region, long reliant on the fossil fuel to power their booming economies, have been slow to act, even as Europe and the United States accelerate their transitions to cleaner energy.
 
Asia-Pacific consumed over three-quarters of all coal used globally in 2019, according to BP’s statistical review of world energy.

Full story
 
see also - 
The truth about Asian energy demand in the next 30 years

Friday 2 July 2021

BBC REMOVES ALL SENSE OF IMPARTIALITY ON CLIMATE CHANGE

 Take a look at this article on the BBC website - BBC Bitesize edits page to remove list of climate change 'benefits' - BBC News

It explains that the BBC has decided to amend its education website because of pressure from climate change activists by removing a list of potential benefits from a small rise in temperatures. How pathetic is that? Obviously the original facts were checked and agreed, so why do they now remove them? Clearly it is due to pressure. What should the public make of this? They will realise that this is a political decision which has nothing to do with actual science. It may lead some people to question the impartiality of the BBC in its whole approach to this subject.

The public aren't fools. They know perfectly well that there are some benefits in some parts of the world to a slight warming of the planet, and clearly the BBC agreed with that too. But if children were allowed to be told this, then they might not be frightened enough to want to give up fossil fuels with all the massive costs and cuts to their life-styles.

UPDATE

This story has now been published in the Daily Mail which lists the many benefits that have now been removed by the BBC.

1. Warmer temperatures and increased CO2 levels leading to more vigorous plant growth.

2. some animals and plants would benefit and flourish.

3. New shipping routes, such as the Nortwest passage would become available.

4. More resources, for example oil, would become available in places such as Siberia as ice melts.

5. Energy consumption decreasing due to a warmer climate.

6. Longer growing season leading to higher yields in farming areas.

7. Frozen regions, such as Canada and Siberia, could be farmed to grow crops.

8. New tourist destinations becoming available.

9. Warmer temperatures could lead to healthier outdoor lifestyles.