In October 2008, Parliament passed the Climate Change Act requiring the UK Government to ensure that by 2050 ‘the net UK carbon account’ was reduced to a level at least 80% lower than that of 1990; ‘carbon account’ refers to CO2 and ‘other targeted greenhouse gas emissions’. Only five MPs voted against it. Then in 2019, by secondary legislation and without serious debate, Parliament increased the 80% reduction requirement to 100% – thereby creating the Net Zero policy.i
Unfortunately, it’s a policy that’s unachievable, potentially disastrous and in any case pointless. And that’s true whether or not humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to increased global temperatures.
1. It’s unachievable.
A modern, advanced economy depends on fossil fuels; something that’s unlikely to change for a long time.ii Examples fall into two categories: (i) vehicles and machines such as those used in agriculture, mining, mineral processing, building, heavy transportation, commercial shipping, commercial aviation, the military and emergency services and (ii) products such as nitrogen fertilisers, cement and concrete, primary steel, plastics, insecticides, pharmaceuticals, anaesthetics, lubricants, solvents, paints, adhesives, insulation, tyres and asphalt. All the above require either the combustion of fossil fuels or are made from oil derivatives: easily deployable, commercially viable alternatives have yet to be developed.iii
Although wind is the most effective source of renewable electricity in the U.K. – because of its latitude, solar power contributes only a small percentage of the UK’s electricity – it has significant problems: (i) the substantial and increasing costs of building, operating and maintaining the huge numbers of turbines needed for Net Zero; (ii) the complex engineering and cost challenges of establishing a stable, reliable, comprehensive non-fossil fuel grid by 2030 as planned by the Government; (iii) the vast scale of what’s involved (a multitude of enormous wind turbines, immense amounts of space iv and large quantities of increasingly unavailable and expensive raw materials); and (iv) the intermittency of renewable energy (see 2 below).v This means that the UK may be unable to generate sufficient electricity by 2030 for current needs let alone for the mandated EVs (electric vehicles) and heat pumps and for the energy requirements of industry and of the huge new data centres being developed to support the rapid growth of AI (artificial intelligence).
In any case, the UK doesn’t have enough skilled technical managers, electrical, heating and other engineers, electricians, plumbers, welders, mechanics and other skilled tradespeople required to do the multitude of tasks essential to achieve Net Zero – a problem worsened by the Government’s plans for massively increased house building.vi
2. It would be socially and economically disastrous.
The Government aims for 100% renewable electricity by 2030 but has yet to publish a fully costed engineering plan for the provision of comprehensive grid-scale back-up when there’s little or no wind or sun; a problem that’s complicated by the imminent retirement of elderly nuclear and fossil fuel power plants. The Government has indicated that back-up may be provided by new gas-fired power plants vii and is also considering ‘green’ hydrogen. But it has yet to publish any detail about its plans for either. The former would not of course be a ‘clean’ solution and it seems the Government’s answer is to fit the power plants with carbon capture and underground storage (CCS) systems. But both CCS and green hydrogen are very expensive, controversial and commercially unproven at scale.viii This issue is desperately important: without full back-up, electricity blackouts would be inevitable – potentially ruining many businesses and causing dreadful problems for millions of people, including serious health consequences threatening everyone and in particular the poor and vulnerable.ix
Net Zero’s major problem however is its overall cost and the impact of that on the economy. Because there’s no coherent plan for the project’s delivery, little attention has been given to overall cost; but with several trillion pounds seeming likely to be a correct estimate it would almost certainly be unaffordable.x The borrowing and taxes required for costs at this scale could destroy Britain’s credit standing and put an impossible burden on millions of households and businesses. It could quite possibly mean that the UK would face economic collapse.
But Net Zero is already causing one serious economic problem: because of renewable subsidies, carbon taxes, grid balancing costs and capacity market costs, the UK has the highest industrial and domestic electricity prices in the developed world.xi The additional costs referred to elsewhere in this essay – for example the costs of establishing a comprehensive non-fossil grid and of providing gas-fired power plants fitted with CCS as back-up – can only make this worse. Unless urgent remedial action is taken, the government is most unlikely to be able to achieve its principal mission of increased economic growth.
Net Zero would have two other dire consequences:
(i) As China essentially controls the supply of key materials (for example, lithium, cobalt, aluminium, processed graphite, nickel, copper and so-called rare earths) without which renewables cannot be manufactured, the UK would greatly increase its already damaging dependence on it, putting its energy and overall national security at most serious risk.xii It would also mean that, while impoverishing Britain, Net Zero would be enriching China.xiii
(ii) The vast mining and mineral processing operations required for renewables are already causing appalling environmental damage and dreadful human suffering throughout the world, affecting in particular fragile, unspoilt ecosystems and many of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people; the continued pursuit of Net Zero would make all this far worse.xiv
3. In any case it’s pointless.
For two reasons:
(i) It’s absurd to regard the closure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting plants in the UK and their ‘export’ mainly to SE Asian countries (especially China), commonly with poor environmental regulation and often powered by coal-fired electricity – thereby increasing global emissions – as a positive step towards Net Zero. Yet efforts to ‘decarbonise’ the UK mean that’s what’s happening: it’s why we no longer produce many key chemicals and, by closing our few remaining blast furnaces, will soon be unable to produce commercially viable primary steel (see endnote iii).xv
(ii) Most major non-Western countries – the source of over 70% of GHG emissions and home to 84% of humanity – don’t regard emission reduction as a priority and, either exempt (by international agreement) from or ignoring any obligation to reduce their emissions, are focused instead on economic and social development, poverty eradication and energy security.xvi As a result, global emissions are increasing (by 62% since 1990) and are set to continue to increase for the foreseeable future. As the UK is the source of just 0.72% of global emissions any further emission reduction it may achieve would essentially have no impact on the global position.xvii
In other words, Net Zero means the UK is legally obliged to pursue an unachievable, potentially disastrous and pointless policy – a policy that could result in Britain’s economic destruction.
Robin Guenier October 2024
Guenier is a retired, writer, speaker and business consultant. He has a degree in law from Oxford, is qualified as a barrister and for twenty years was chief executive of various high-tech companies, including the Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency reporting to the UK Cabinet Office. A Freeman of the City of London, he was Executive Director of Taskforce 2000, founder chair of the medical online research company MedixGlobal and a regular contributor to TV and radio.
End notes:
i http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/27/part/1/crossheading/the-target-for-2050
ii See Vaclav Smil’s important book, How the World Really Works: https://time.com/6175734/reliance-on-fossil-fuels/
iii Regarding steel for example see the penultimate paragraph of this article: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/the-blast-furnace-800-years-of-technology.
iv See Andrews & Jelley, “Energy Science”, 3rd ed., Oxford, page 16: http://tiny.cc/4jhezz
v For a view of wind power’s many problems, see this: https://watt-logic.com/2023/06/14/wind-farm-costs/ This is also relevant: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/debunking-cheap-renewables-myth
vi A detailed Government report: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65855506fc07f3000d8d46bd/Employer_skills_survey_2022_research_report.pdf See also pages 10 and 11 of the Royal Academy of Engineering report (Note 6 below).
vii See this report by the Royal Academy of Engineering: https://nepc.raeng.org.uk/media/uoqclnri/electricity-decarbonisation-report.pdf (Go to section 2.4.3 on page 22.) This interesting report contains a lot of valuable information.
viii This International Institute for Sustainable Development report on CCS is useful: https://www.iisd.org/articles/insight/unpacking-carbon-capture-storage-technology
And re hydrogen see this: https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-2-14-when-you-crunch-the-numbers-green-hydrogen-is-a-non-starter and this: https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-10-18-the-defr-follies-cost-of-hydrogen-storage
ix This article shows how more renewables could result in blackouts: http://tiny.cc/lnhezz
x The National Grid (now the National Energy System Operator (NESO)) has said net zero will cost £3 trillion: https://www.current-news.co.uk/reaching-net-zero-to-cost-3bn-says-national-grid-eso/. And in this presentation Michael Kelly, Emeritus Professor of Technology at Cambridge, shows how the cost would amount to several trillion pounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkImqOxMqvU
xi The facts, an explanation of why Net Zero is responsible and a proposed solution are cogently set out here: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/uk-electricity-prices-highest-in-world.
xii https://www.dw.com/en/the-eus-risky-dependency-on-critical-chinese-metals/a-61462687
xiii Discussed here: https://dailysceptic.org/2024/07/24/net-zero-is-impoverishing-the-west-and-enriching-china/
xiv See this for example: http://tiny.cc/3lhezz. Arguably however the most compelling and harrowing evidence is found in Siddharth Kara’s book Cobalt Red – about the horrors of cobalt mining in the Congo: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250284297/cobaltred
xv A current example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70zxjldqnxo
xvi This essay shows how developing countries have taken control of climate negotiations: https://ipccreport.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/the-west-vs-the-rest-2.1.1.pdf (Nothing that’s happened since 2020 changes the conclusion: for example see the ‘Dubai Stocktake’ agreed at COP28 in 2023 of which item 38 unambiguously confirms developing countries’ exemption from any emission reduction obligation.)
xvii This comprehensive analysis, based on an EU Commission database, provides – re global greenhouse gas (GHG) and CO2 emissions – detailed information by country from 1990 to 2023: https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2024?vis=ghgtot#emissions_table
Climate Scepticism 
I realise it’s exceptionally early to publish yet another update to this essay but, in view of some comments I exchanged on an article recently published by The Conversation, I thought it should be amended: see in particular the last two sentences of the first paragraph of item 1. This turned out to be a little more complex than expected and it proved easier to publish a new update. I’ve taken the opportunity to make a few other minor changes.
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It’s not pointless for only two reasons, it’s pointless for three – the third – the climate just ain’t changing.
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Max: I don’t think anyone who understands these matters believes that the climate isn’t changing – it’s been doing so for billions of years.
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Oh no, now Ben’s come out as a conspiracy theorist!
https://x.com/clim8resistance/status/1846118871029231675
The Telegraph opinion article tells us nothing that we don’t already know, i.e. that Mad Miliband’s push for Net Zero is going to wreck the British countryside.
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Come on Jaime, Ben’s comment was tongue in cheek. As he knows better than anyone the plan is far from flawless.
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I think not Robin, if you read the further comments below that tweet. Ben is sincere in his opinion.
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I don’t do X so cannot access the comments. But is he really saying that the Net Zero plan is flawless?
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Yes Robin, he’s saying it is flawless in respect of its objective: to immiserate and control the populace by destroying democratic oversight of energy policy.
A reply to Ben’s tweet:
Ben’s reply to that:
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I agree with Ben that the Net Zero plan will cause the immiseration of the populace and the destruction of democratic processes. The former is inevitable given for example the vast costs that the plan is loading onto our economy – there are many other examples. And the latter, e.g. bypassing normal planning procedures, is the only way these fanatics believe they’ll be able to implement their plan to save the planet and thereby benefit everyone in the long run – and they’re probably right about that. Does that make me a conspiracy theorist? I don’t think so.
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And the Settled Science – which lies at the very foundation of Net Zero policies – is falling apart. No wonder the knives are out for Elon and his X platform (not that I can get much traction there, even now).
https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/bumper-two-post-edition-on-the-unsettled
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Robin, obviously if you agree partly with what Ben says, that doesn’t make you a conspiracy theorist, but if you agree with all of what Ben says then I’m afraid that does make you a conspiracy theorist!
The point I am making here is that an increasing number of well regarded sceptic voices do appear to be becoming conspiracist theorists recently. Of course, that does not mean that there is a conspiracy theory per se which lies at the heart of the Green agenda, because as we sceptics are only too aware, a consensus of opinion does not constitute a fact.
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As I’ve said many times before, a conspiracy is a secret plan that’s intended to do something harmful. The Net Zero plan does not qualify: it’s not secret (far from it) and, although we know it will do harm, its perpetrators foolishly don’t understand that (indeed they’re sure it will do short-term good by reducing energy costs – see my recent exchange with Jit on ‘The Lies Have It’) and, in any case, they ‘know’ it will do good for the planet in the long term.
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Robin,
I’m afraid we are all repeating ourselves here.
Jaime is quite correct in highlighting that there are many respected sceptic voices that have pointed out that the transition to carbon-free energy generation has been ostensibly sold as a means of tackling an environmental crisis and yet it also happens to be an ideal expedient for the pursuit of an ideologically driven deindustrialisation project. Therefore, success and failure can be judged not only in terms of the management of the crisis but also in terms of the furtherance of ideology. As Darwall put it with respect to Energiewende:
So I think that Ben was perfectly clear when he said:
Second guessing the true motives of an individual is a bit of a mug’s game, but I think it is fair to say that anyone who might be motivated by an ideologically driven desire to cause harm to his country’s industrialise base, whilst at the same time telling the world his only desire is to manage an environmental crisis, would be conspiring to hide a harm. This would particularly be the case if he were also claiming that his environmental actions will deliver industrial growth when he knew it not to be the truth. Is Milliband such a person? I’ve no idea, but I see no good reason to rule out the possibility. After all, anyone who would be attempting such a ruse couldn’t help but come across as the idiot that Miliband seems to be.
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John:
‘I’m afraid we are all repeating ourselves here.’
We are and I see no purpose in continuing to do so – except to say that you’ve made your point well and I still disagree with it. Let’s leave it at that.
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Agreed.
I think we can agree that we should stop trying to persuade each other but we should expect and accept that both parties will continue to call things as they see them. And that is perfectly fine.
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‘And that is perfectly fine.‘
It is – thanks John.
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Robin, John,
I was not disagreeing and arguing with Robin as to whether the Green agenda was conspiracy or cock up, I was merely pointing out that certain respected sceptical voices are now of the opinion that the Green agenda is motivated not by science or concern for the environment, but by the desire to deindustrialise Western nations and exert undemocratic political control over the populations of Western nations. Robin attempted to argue that this was not what Ben was saying, but he definitely is saying exactly that. Rupert Darwall is saying that. Many others are now saying it. It would be wrong, and indeed counterproductive not to acknowledge this, given our shared goal is ultimately to neuter Net Zero policies and avoid the worst of the destruction which they will certainly inflict upon society, the economy and the environment.
As John points out, if it is the case that the Green agenda is one of Western deindustrialisation, then it has been deliberately concealed for many years because Net Zero has definitely been sold to us almost exclusively as ‘following the science’ in order to save the planet and human civilisation. That qualifies it as a conspiracy. Furthermore, we need not concern ourselves with the motivations of individuals operating within the vast spreading tentacles of the Green Blob, because almost certainly they are numerous and varied, and almost certainly there exist many deluded End Times fanatics pushing Net Zero policies, as well as many incompetent, unthinking, brain-dead morons just following orders and/or following the Science.
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Jaime: I intend to follow John’s excellent suggestion. Therefore I will not respond to your latest comment.
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Jaime,
It would be wrong, and indeed counterproductive not to acknowledge this…
That’s my position as well. However, not everyone appears to agree regarding the implications, and there appears to be little prospect of gaining such agreement from everyone. It looks like we are going to have to accept a plurality of views. Nonetheless, I shall continue to factor in such considerations, as I am sure shall you. It’s all good.
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Changing the subject slightly, the mood music on the continent seems to be changing towards a bit more common sense at the very moment that our new government is digging ever deeper into the madness:
“BMW chief says EU combustion engine ban will shrink car industry
Oliver Zipse tells Paris motor show 2035 cutoff point for CO2-emitting cars is ‘no longer realistic’”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/15/bmw-chief-eu-combustion-engine-ban-car-industry
The EU’s plans to ban the manufacture of traditional combustion engines from 2035 will shrink the industry, BMW’s chief executive has warned as the German car industry battles with increased competition from China in the electric vehicle sector.
In a comment that will alarm Brussels, Oliver Zipse told the Paris motor show the 2035 cutoff point for CO2-emitting cars was “no longer realistic”.
The ban “could also threaten the European automotive industry in its heart,” Zipse said. The measures will “with today’s assumptions, lead to a massive shrinking of the industry as a whole”....
...Carmakers including BMW, VW and Renault, as well as the Italian government, have called for the CO2 targets to be loosened or delayed.
On Monday Carlos Tavares, the chief executive of the Fiat, Citroën and Vauxhall owner Stellantis, said proposed tariffs on Chinese cars would speed up plant closures in Europe, as they would push Beijing to move manufacturing to the continent in direct competition with European brands.
Tavares said a decision would be made on the future of its UK plants “in the next few weeks”, amid a row over government electric vehicle quotas. Stellantis said in June that it could be forced to close its Vauxhall plants at Ellesmere Port and Luton if government rules were not relaxed.…
...Efforts by BMW to push back against green targets will set alarm bells ringing in Brussels, which thought it had seen off the German car industry in 2023 when they were at loggerheads over the planned 2035 phase-out of CO2-emitting cars.
Under the rules, secondhand petrol and diesel cars can be sold after this date. But after the row last year, Germany squeezed a further compromise out of Brussels, which will now also allow new combustion engine cars to be sold beyond the deadline if they use efuels.
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The line has been that Net Zero is necessary, and the costs will be trivial, or better still, it is the “growth opportunity of the 21st century,” & that the UK will become – what is they said? – a green superpower? Something vacuous like that anyway. Here is a page from the contents of the Net Zero review – anyone remember that? Barely 18 months have passed. A different age.
This was, and remains, “obviously” wrong. To conclude otherwise, as Skidmore and his flying monkeys did: what does that mean, exactly? Nefariousness, stupidity, or naivety? I have never believed it was the first, because I have faith in people. My resolve on that score is beginning to crack. I feel bad about that, but there you are: I can’t help it.
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I think it’s fair to say that some are motivated by greed and personal profit; some support net zero because they do seek to undermine the west; many (most?) naively believe that it’s necessary and achievable without causing harm. Whatever the motivation, however, the agenda is – as Robin says in his evolving article – unachievable, disastrous and pointless. They have to be stopped. That’s what I care about. It’s why I’m here.
I know that we here can’t stop it, but there is a growing groundswell of opposition, which will grow more quickly as the populations feels the impacts of the agenda – whether that’s via their locale being destroyed as this authoritarian government decrees that their rights must be overridden “for the greater good” or whether it’s via much more expensive energy, job losses and blackouts. We must remain focussed on pointing out each and every issue as it arises, every bit of economy with the truth on the part of those in power, and so on.
I’m afraid – interesting though it is – debating the motivation of those who would destroy our economy and our beautiful wild places amounts to debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Education, and countering the misinformation suggesting that net zero is necessary, achievable and beneficial, should be our aims, in my humble submission.
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Thank you Jit. Well said – I agree with it all.
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Wait a minute – it was Mark not Jit who wrote the comment with which I agreed so fulsomely. Apologies to you both.
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Understanding someone’s motives may well assist when trying to change their mind, I think!
[The alternative being to hope that they will be replaced by people who think more like we do. Or am I wrong?]
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Jit: it may. But understanding someone’s motives – even one’s own – is exceptionally difficult. Usually impossible.
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I have to admit that I am pleased that my earlier comments have sparked some renewed debate around this whole vexed subject of motivation and hidden agendas.
I would like to reiterate the following: yes, it is almost impossible to establish the motivation of individual actors within the framework of the Green edifice. There is almost certainly a plurality of motivations and drivers encompassing greed, career ambition, ideological obsession, madness, moral conviction, and pure malign intent. We should not try to discern individual motivation but we should seek to answer the following: Did the current obsession with carbon emissions reductions evolve from a genuine concern for the environment based upon genuine science, or was it planned from the outset as an assault upon industry and humanity, using science and environmentalism to justify such an assault?
Ben believes it was. The Club of Rome statements from decades ago suggest that it was. I agree. If this is the case, then in my opinion it very much influences how we should attempt to counter climate alarmism and Net Zero. At the very least, it should inform our thinking when we are attempting to counter global warming dogma and climate mitigation policy.
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From the FT this morning:
UK power stations burnt wood from old forest areas, Drax emails show
Internal review acknowledges pellets ‘highly likely’ to have come from ecologically-important areas in Canada
Unfortunately it’s paywalled but it clearly confirms a well-publicised scandal. For example from a BBC report in 2022:
And this detailed report (February 2024):
Logging what’s left
How Drax’s pellet mills are sourcing logs from British Columbia’s rarest Old Growth forests
Its conclusion:
And from the Telegraph (March 2024):
Why Britain is burning North American forests to keep the lights on
Drax faces fresh scrutiny amid plans to ramp up the use of wood-fired power stations
Some extracts:
And this:
Drax profits surge 66% as new report finds company still burning rare wood
Results come the day after the BBC published a report that finds the company is still burning wood from rare forests in North America.
An extract:
As Ember has also said:
That the UK taxpayer continues to pay enormous subsidies to this business surely makes no sense.
Links:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63089348
https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Drax-in-BC-report.pdf
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/01/britain-burning-north-american-forests-drax-power-station/
https://www.power-technology.com/news/drax-profits-surge-66-but-still-burning-rare-forest-wood/?cf-view
https://ember-climate.org/press-releases/the-uks-largest-single-source-of-co2-emissions-is-a-wood-burning-power-station/
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Robin, I’ll copy your comment under The Beast of Selby.
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Jaime,
You may have sparked a debate on this occasion but it was shortlived, I have to say. We have to accept that at least two of the four currently active members of the Cliscep group have declared their disinterest in further discussion, maintaining that our views are either incorrect or irrelevant. If we wish to debate the matter any further then it looks like we will have to find a more receptive forum.
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It is possible, and useful, to oppose Net Zero without knowing its proponents’ motivations. Personally I think knowing those motivations could be of great use for the opposers.
Nevertheless, I understand the reluctance to give air to conspiracy theories when they are not necessary to undermine the Net Zero project. Sceptics have been painted as conspiracy-thinkers for a long time, with all the baggage that comes with. So the risk there is of undermining our credibility as critics.
I would suggest a new thread for conspiracy theories. Even if true, we will have a hard time convincing anyone of that fact.
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Jaime,
Make that three out of the four.
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?
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LOL. No need to bicker guys. If people don’t want to entertain ‘conspiracy theories’ (many of which have had a rather nasty habit of becoming conspiracy facts), then that is their choice. As Jit says, some are reluctant to do so because they feel their credibility may be undermined. It may indeed be undermined in the short term. It may be boosted in the slightly longer term. To my mind, it is far more important to remain true to yourself and your inner instincts than to present a respectable ‘opposition’. It is also important not to lose credibility with (at least some of) your peers by stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the winds of change. And the winds they are a-changing. And the answer is blowin’ in the wind, but it’s not the answer Mad Miliband is looking for I suspect.
I know I can be irritating by keep bringing up this issue of motivation and I know some people regard it as irrelevant and want to shut the conversation down. John and I could, as John suggests, go elsewhere for a more productive debate, but right here seems as good a place as any to be irritating!
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Jit: you said you ‘think knowing those motivations could be of great use for the opposers‘. I agree. The difficulty however is that motivation is elusive and establishing it with absolute certainty pretty well impossible. As I said yesterday, that even includes one’s own motivation.
I’ve just finished reading a novel that centres on that very topic: ‘Gabriel’s Moon‘ by William Boyd – one of my favourite authors. Recommended.
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To be clear , I don’t seek to close down this discussion. I am just less clear that it will achieve anything.
Net zero won’t die because it’s established that some at least of the people behind it are malign in their intent. Opposition will reach critical mass when people are sick of it damaging, if not destroying, their lives, the economy and the environment.
It seems to me that net zero stands on two legs. First, we have to do it to “save the planet”. Second, it will make us better off (or, in the alternative, we will be worse off if we do nothing). I am perfectly satisfied that we have demonstrated that the first leg is nonsense, but persuading the populace at large of that will be nigh on impossible given the relentless propaganda to which they are subjected daily. The second is also nonsense, and people are already starting to realise that. More and more will realise it too when the bills keep piling up. When enough people realise it, then net zero will die.
I simply think that hard reality, rather than theories as to what motivates the zealots, is what will end the nonsense.
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Mark,
Mad Ed is backing away slightly from the ‘better off’ and ‘save the planet’ arguments (probably because those two are currently on very shaky ground) and is furiously spinning the false narrative that building more ‘renewables’ will lessen our reliance upon gas supplied by tyrannical regimes and thus increase our energy security. It’s complete BS of course, but that’s the current spin.
No single issue will probably bring down the Net Zero edifice; not the science, not the cost, not the practicality, not the evidence of crony capitalism and corruption, not the self-evident harm to the environment and wildlife. Yes, “hard reality” will interrupt their best laid plans at some point, but if “hard reality” and more and even harder reality is the principal objective of the Green agenda’s central planners, then knowing this, it should temper our expectations of what the official response might be to the rude interjection of that “hard reality” plus the inevitable cries of protest from those affected by it.
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Jaime,
Yes, it is interesting that Mr Miliband seems to be increasingly seeking to rely on a third (and much weaker) leg (energy security). Arguably that’s a sign of desperation, if he has calculated that the public isn’t much impressed with the other two.
Meanwhile, are we at last seeing some meaningful cracks?
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Maybe it’s time for this
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David Turver has published a splendid article this morning:
Investment Summit to Increase Energy Bills
Over half of the summit announcements are energy related and all will increase our energy bills through subsidies
In it he demolishes the Government’s claims about the outcome of its Investment Summit last week and shows how it will benefit big corporations and, adding to ordinary peoples’ misery, increase the country’s already disastrous electricity costs.
His conclusion:
A must read.
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Robert Jenrick has said that he will repeal the Climate Change Act and scrap carbon budgets. If he makes this a legally binding manifesto commitment then maybe, just maybe, I might be tempted to vote Tory again, especially if Trump is in the White House and has withdrawn totally from the UN Framework on Climate Change, not just the Paris Accord. If Bad Enoch is elected leader, it is unlikely she will touch CCA2008 – or reduce immigration.
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Robin, Labour is implementing the economics of ‘stakeholder capitalism’ beloved of the WEF, as also were the Conservative government, prior to throwing the election and handing over the baton to Starmer.
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Jaime: as a first step he could promise to reset the Net Zero targets. That only requires a Statutory Instrument which, aiui, is much easier to implement. It would be entirely reasonable to reset the targets to something much lower – perhaps linked to the performance of our “peer group” countries. Get that done quickly and then go to work on dismantling the CCA and all its entourage of quangos, etc.. That would get my vote.
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Mike H, ditto.
Much though I would love to see the economy-, environment- and energy-wrecking CCA repealed, the indoctrination runs so deep that the electorate probably won’t vote for that, even as the carnage it is inflicting on this country becomes ever more obvious. There are too many special interest groups and too many snouts in the trough. They will deflect and deny furiously ahead of any general election where the CCA is a major issue.
One step at a time. First water down the targets, educate the public so that they can see that this reduces the pressure on their bills and reduces the damage to the economy and the environment, then campaign on repeal at the next general election but one.
Still, it’s an encouraging development.
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Mike, Mark,
I don’t think there would be any point in ‘watering down’ Net Zero, simply because it would be so easy to re-implement Net Zero if the legislative framework (CCA2008) were left in place. Let’s just say that Jenrick repealed the Net Zero statutory instrument. The Tory party wets taking their orders from the Green Blob could subsequently easily depose him as leader and just re-institute the target. We need a root and branch reform of energy policy in this country, not a tinkering around the edges.
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Jaime, I don’t disagree with your closing sentence. The big question is how we achieve that, and maintain that achievement in a lasting way. I fear the brainwashing has been so intense that any party leader promising to repeal the CCA simply won’t see his or her party elected (sadly).
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Mark,
I fear that we have been brainwashed into fearing that the brainwashing of the masses has become so pervasive and so effective that the future they want and decide for us is inevitable and unavoidable.
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Jaime/Mike/Mark:
What Jenrick seems to have overlooked is that the Tory party is in opposition – and likely to be so for at least five years. So talk of ‘tearing up’ the CCA and scrapping carbon budgets (and of resetting CCA targets), although attractive, is not going to get us very far. What has to be prioritised now is finding a way of getting the message out to ordinary people (the 2029 voters), subjected to incessant ‘green’ propaganda for so long, that Net Zero is – as David Turver showed this morning – going to hurt them. And going to hurt them a lot.
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The main plus of Jenrick talking like this is to put the issue on the table. Apart from Farage, I’m not aware of any other high-profile politician who talks of repealing/modifying the CCA (but then I don’t follow politics much).
It would be better if he – and others – were to also suggest watering down the targets. I accept that is far from the ideal solution but it has the advantage of being quick and easy to implement. If the idea is in circulation, it might start to appeal to some in government as the waters around Net Zero get increasingly stormy. It would sound very reasonable to suggest “taking our foot off the throttle”, “allowing more time for adjustments”, “not disadvantaging ourselves versus other countries”, “waiting for the economy to strengthen”, and so on. The suspension of the fuel duty escalator is a good precedent.
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Talk of repealing or watering down the CCA is not going to appeal to many people – most of whom for good reason don’t believe what Tories promise anyway. A far more practical approach for a Tory leader (don’t forget Jenrick said this as part of his pitch for Party leadership) would be to start an immediate campaign exposing the dangers and absurdities of the Government’s climate policies. That I suggest would get media and public attention – something that’s desperately needed now. Then, as the 2029 election gets nearer and with the public increasingly on their side (accentuated by the pain the policy is beginning to inflict on them), the Tories should be able to put together a manifesto commitment on energy policy that’s likely to be popular.
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I was particularly struck by Turver’s reference to corporatism here, “It is astonishing that the Labour Party, supposedly the party of working people, is actively encouraging corporatism”. For me it is no surprise at all since, historically, corporatism has often (but not always) been closely associated with fascism [Refs 1 and 2], notably in Italy and Portugal. I hope to expand upon this in due course, but I have a lot of domestics to get through first.
References:-
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I think Jaime and Robin are both correct. I have perhaps been brainwashed into thinking that the net zero/climate crisis brainwashing has left the UK public unable to work out for themselves in due course that net zero is both pointless and disastrous. It will become obvious in due course, perhaps sooner rather than later, given the speed with which Mr Miliband is pushing it.
Secondly, if the Tories pivot on net zero and start campaigning against it, then they have four to four and a half years before the next general election in which to make the case. And it’s a case which will get stronger as an accelerating net zero agenda starts to hurt more, to push up bills, to destroy jobs and to ruin the countryside.
Nil desperandum, there might be light at the end of the tunnel.
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In my view Mark the public would not believe a Tory ‘pivot’ – too many broken promises over the years. Therefore I believe their best approach would be to start a detailed campaign now demonstrating the utter foolishness of Labour’s handling of the policy. Then, as that begins to get established – reinforced by people’s practical experience – to taper that criticism into criticism of the policy itself. Unfortunately they’ve got plenty of time in which to develop such an approach.
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Robin; I fear I did not make my point very well. The realities of climate policy are going to become more visible and bite harder as time goes by, as you have often said. That will, hopefully, start to provoke concern and questioning from MPs on all sides as their constituents are affected. We are already seeing strong protests from union leaders – eg over Grangemouth – who are bound to use their considerable influence on behalf of their members. The sort of campaign you mention would highlight the issues and provide ammunition to support relaxing the targets.
Relaxing the Net Zero targets would be the easiest way for the govt to ease the pressure without all the controversy and lawfare that a move against the CCA would provoke. It could be done piecemeal and could start long before the next election. It looks to me like the best “off-ramp”, to use the jargon.
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Mike: it may turn out that pressure from constituents will be so great that the Government will relax some of the Net Zero targets. But I have my doubts: the policy is an article of faith for so many Labour and Labour-supporting activists – many of whom are benefitting financially from it. And it’s hard to imagine mad Ed supporting relaxation after all his criticism of the minor changes made by the previous administration. So he’d have to be sacked. Might that happen? Unlikely – but not impossible I suppose.
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We live in hope!
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So far, opposition is piecemeal, and signed up to the necessity of the overall project. It can be summarised as, “we recognise the need for project X, but think that our location is the wrong place for it for this list of reasons.”
The leap – that the overarching project is bonkers – has not been widely made. Opposing Net Zero will horrify a lot of people. But there is plenty of time for the shock of that to die down, and for the idea to generate plenty of elbow room. Opposition has a chance with a mainstream banner to muster under. Piecemeal, successful opposition only pushes a tentacle elsewhere.
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Mark, Ben Pile has published an article in the Daily Sceptic this morning that does little to encourage your hope. It’s about Lammy’s trip to China and the utter absurdity of the Government view that we and China have a ‘shared interest’ in the ‘global green energy transition’ and that we can ‘lead the world’ in making this transition.
Ben notes:
And:
Ben concludes:
All true. But, as we’ve been discussing above, how could we realistically make it happen?
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Robin,
My mood swings from day to day, from week to week. Sometimes I think it’s all hopeless. Today I am feeling more optimistic.
Lammy’s message in China is obviously absurd, his efforts there are so obviously bonkers, and this new Labour government is already so unpopular (quite an achievement, given how loathed the outgoing Tory government was), and Mr Miliband’s assault on our living standards, economy and environment is so egregious, that I feel the whole thing is bound to collapse sooner or later. I feel this all the more strongly, given the retreat from net zero madness that is currently ongoing in the EU.
Far from leading the world, the UK under this government is increasingly an outlier, and obviously a mad one at that.
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Paul Homewood has just provided his readers with a link to Cliscep and this article: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/10/21/the-case-against-net-zero-2/
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Most of this is a little too highbrow for me but as someone paddling in the shallow end of this debate it does seem that you miss several important points due to your ignorance or avoidance of the social media where a huge number of voters get their information. You also miss the point that it was Sunak and Hunt who thought it politically opportune to attack the UK Oil & Gas sector initially. “First they came for the O&G producers” – to mangle Niemöller.
The lies and dissembling were never challenged; they still aren’t:
https://x.com/NetZeroWatch/status/1830995939496206552
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ronsgaler, I think, with respect, that you have missed the point of the essay. It is, I believe, intended to provide a short and pithy (and logically unanswerable) critique of the madness that is net zero on the basis that it is unachievable, pointless and disastrous. Nothing more, nothing less.
Exploration of the vast and murky sea that is social media would only complicate the message. As for who to blame for the net zero nonsense, that’s for a completely separate essay, though you are certainly correct that the Tories are up to their necks in it (which makes it practically difficult for them effectively to opposed Miliband’s acceleration of the madness).
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Thanks Mark. That is indeed the intention. And your point about the Tories is well made.
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The case for Net Zero is nothing to do with Climate Change but way to bring about wealth redistribution. i.e. socialism on a global scale.
If they were honest, the climate alarmists would admit that they are not working feverishly to hold down global temperatures — they would acknowledge that they are instead consumed with the goal of holding down capitalism and establishing a global welfare state.
Have doubts? Then listen to the words of
Former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.
So what is the goal of environmental policy?
“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer. For those who want to believe that maybe Edenhofer just misspoke and doesn’t really mean that, consider that a little more than five years ago he also said that “the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.
Furthermore, another former UN Climate Envoy Christiana Figures is on record as saying:
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are s etting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution. That will not happen overnight and it will not happen at a single conference on climate change, be it COP 15, 21, 40 – you choose the number. It just does not occur like that. It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation.”
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Clive: the fact that two people – Ottmar Edenhofer and Christiana Figueres – have expressed these views does not mean that they’re also the views of the many people who state that global GHG emissions must be reduced.
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Most commentators on this thread agree that greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced, or their effect mitigated..
However, rising temperatures due to increasing levels of CO2 is a HOAX!
See: “Scientific proof that CO2 does NOT cause global warming
Click to access WJARR-2024-0884.pdf
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burlhenry:
‘Most commentators on this thread agree that greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced, or their effect mitigated..’
Not so.
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Robin, that 2 key senior UN Officials express such views is important….. I do not think they have gone off message but simply telling the truth. It is amazing that so many do buy into the “need to reduce global emissions….the science is settled…….” yet after 29 COP meetings global emissions have actually increased. You would thought the climate alarmists would have twigged that they are being used as ‘useful idiots’ to further a policy that has nothing to do with Climate Change.
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The fact that two senior UN officials once expressed such views is interesting, but hardly important. Edenhofer incidentally was hopelessly wrong in predicting that COP10 in Cancun in 2010 would actually be ‘an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated’. It wasn’t and they weren’t
I’m sorry Clive but I don’t buy your theory. Yes, emissions have increased. But the big emitters are non-Western countries such as China, India, Russia and Iran, countries that ignore climate alarmists. In contrast, Western countries, whose governments do pay attention to alarmists – indeed alarmists are commonly members of those governments – have reduced their emissions and are continuing to do so. So climate alarmists have made progress in countries where governments listen to them and none where they don’t. And no major country – Western or non-Western – has shown any serious interest in global wealth distribution. Hardly evidence that alarmists are being used as ‘useful idiots’.
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Although not in practice, Global wealth redistribution is on the agenda under the guise of Climate Reparations, an idea that has been floated and has support. I accept no major western country has signed up yet. Expect Labour to lead the way, making the UK “the world leader in Climate Reparations”, Mad Ed/Lammy have recently donated £11.6bn to Africa. Climate Reparations will be on the agenda at future COP and the climate zealots are quite content to play the long game. Of course a major block will be if Trump wins the US Presidency next month.
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Renewables are global wealth redistribution. The Green agenda is one giant money laundering machine, impoverishing national tax payers and bill payers whilst subsidies are funnelled into the hands of big overseas conglomerates investing in wind and solar and other renewable energy technologies. A lot of the companies who will profit directly from renewables in the UK are foreign; Chinese companies (and hence the Communist Chinese govt) will benefit hugely from the supply of materials for wind turbines and the manufacture of EVs and solar panels. British companies and British workers and the general populace will not benefit. That’s before we even start talking about climate reparations – and you can be damned sure that any funds dished out to Third World countries supposedly because of the damage we Brits did to their climate and weather will not reach the poverty stricken population – they will be hoovered up by NGOs and governments pretending to initiate grand ‘projects’ with our stolen money.
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Clive: that’s essentially correct – and I daresay Labour will try to ‘lead the way’. But it doesn’t mean that ‘the case for Net Zero is nothing to do with climate change’.
BTW Global wealth redistribution is on the agenda with regard to slavery – like climate reparations unlikely to get very far.
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Jaime: I agree about how China benefits from renewables – see item 2 (i) of my subject essay. And yes, any funds the UK might dish out as climate reparations are unlikely to reach the right people. But I don’t expect we will be dishing much, if any, out.
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Another excellent article from David Turver who attended the Battle of Ideas recently and challenged Green morons with, encouragingly, much applause from the audience.
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/the-chocolate-teapot-fallacy
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Jaime: thanks for the link to the David Turver piece – I was literally about to post one myself and you beat me to it! Well worth reading.
And, as I was about to advise Mark, it should help him to feel more optimistic again today. To that end, I’ll repeat Turver’s concluding paragraph:
I think he’s probably right. And that we can make a contribution.
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I suspect that attendees at the Battle of Ideas are more receptive to Turver’s arguments than is typical of the educated classes. Having chosen to attend a debate on the topic, they are showing themselves to be open to alternative opinions. This does not indicate a change in the tide generally. But at least it’s a little encouraging that such opinions are no longer forbidden (or perhaps self-censored).
Hopefully the videos of these debates will be published.
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Yes Jit, I fear you may be right. Perhaps I should temper my enthusiasm.
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One prediction implied earlier is that the UK population will gradually turn against Net Zero due to the negative effects on their own lives, principally financial but also to their local environment.
That’s a long time to wait, and even longer for it to have any impact, and to undo the damage that will already have been done. Commitments previously made still have to be paid for.
Would it be possible for a small group of economists and accountants to forecast the costs (and any benefits?) of the current Net Zero plan, using reasonable estimates without exaggeration, and to put together a ten-year evaluation of the impact on the UK population. Dividing it down to the individual household level could be a serious eye-opener for all those who have been brainwashed into acceptance of its necessity.
The revenues and profits accruing to the corporations and countries that will gain from the UK’s strategy could also be highlighted.
If well-publicised this might bring forward that moment of realisation of the appalling damage that will be inflicted on all of us, and our future generations, rather than waiting for a decade then bemoaning our situation.
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‘Would it be possible for a small group of economists and accountants to forecast the costs (and any benefits?) of the current Net Zero plan…?‘
A great idea Terry. But possible? I very much doubt it – for many reasons, the principal being the extreme difficulty (impossibility?) of recruiting sufficient truly independent economists/accountants who were prepared to put their heads above the parapet.
Does anyone else have a view on this?
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I think it’s a great idea. Isn’t Paul Homewood an accountant? Surely Net Zero Watch must have connections to people with appropriate qualifications who might be able to carry out such an exercise.
I do see a problem, though. Given that any sensible report is likely to undermine the whole net zero project profoundly, a rapid campaign will be mounted by net zero supporters to undermine any such report – the authors will be accused of bias, being in the pockets of big oil etc.
At the end of the day, the most effective solution will be to allow net zero to do its worst, at which point the public will see the damage it has caused, which should by then be undeniable. Unfortunately, a huge amount of damage will have been done by then.
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Chinks of light, rays of hope…
“Miliband faces crunch decision on speed of greenhouse gas cuts
Energy secretary prepares new pledge for big UK carbon cuts in next decade amid potential cabinet division”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/22/miliband-faces-crunch-decision-on-speed-of-greenhouse-gas-cuts
…But the Guardian understands that there are qualms among some at the top of government, who are more cautious on net zero. The Tories, since Rishi Sunak made a U-turn on climate action a year ago, have taken the line that the UK should take a back seat and let other countries forge ahead in the transition to a low-carbon economy. Both of the party’s leadership contenders, Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, have taken hostile positions on the race to net zero and would make it a main attack line as leader. Some Labour strategists fear this could be a vulnerability for the party.…
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Mark: re Terry’s suggestion I fear the only way forward may be, as you say, to allow net zero to do its worst so that the public can experience the harm being caused. I’m distressed at having to say this – and very much hope I’m wrong and that there’s a better way. Perhaps, as the Guardian piece you quoted suggested might happen, our best hope is that some senior Government members and supporters have a change of heart.
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I was interested to see a report on the BBC website about a ‘wide ranging’ interview Nick Robinson had with Kemi Badenoch. Re the environment she said:
Makes sense to me.
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Francis Menton (Manhattan Contrarian) has published a very interesting article this morning: Suddenly Energy Realism Is A Winning Political Issue. In it he demonstrates how for a long time
But, he says:
Me too!
He goes on to show how in the US election ‘push-back against insane energy transition policies has suddenly become a winning political issue’. An interesting read.
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David Frost gets it: Net Zero damages the environment and it is a socialist policy. Up until now, we have not heard this from any Conservative that I recall; mainly on account of the fact that most of them are closet socialists and as such they really don’t care much about conserving the actual environment, be that relatively untouched natural environments or the carefully managed rural environment.
This is very interesting because Frost doesn’t even mention ‘the Science’ but targets Net Zero as a full-blooded socialist ‘utopian scheme’ which, because it is a socialist policy, is therefore a ‘bad policy’. He doesn’t go the full conspiracy theorist of course and suggest that Net Zero is being implemented because it is a Soviet style control and restriction socialist policy – but words it rather more cleverly and cautiously. He also targets Net Zero as an environmentally destructive policy. So effectively, if you are a genuine conservative, then you must demonstrate some pretty strong reason why you would completely abandon your conservative principles for an extreme socialist policy which also damages on a local scale the environment it claims to be protecting globally. Of course, we all know the answer to this conundrum: there are few if any genuine conservatives in the ‘Conservative’ Party. Frost’s speech is calling them out though. So how are his colleagues going to respond? ‘But, but . . . . . the Science!’ Then we’ve got them cornered. You can rebuff them by pointing out the inadequacies of ‘The science’ or you can demolish their argument even if you accept the dodgy science because, on its own terms, UK Net Zero will not make a blind bit of difference to the global climate when the major ‘polluters’ are carrying on regardless. ‘But, but . . . . . . leadership!’ Really, so why as ‘conservatives’ are we implementing and advocating extreme socialist energy policies which are also wrecking the environment when China, India, etc. are not following our lead?
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‘You can rebuff them by pointing out the inadequacies of ‘The science’ or you can demolish their argument even if you accept the dodgy science because, on its own terms, UK Net Zero will not make a blind bit of difference to the global climate when the major ‘polluters’ are carrying on regardless.’
Well said Jaime – I wholly agree. As for ‘leadership’ – well I’ve posted a Cliscep article about that.
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I would do both Robin. Something like: ‘Here are the glaring inadequacies of The Science of the Imaginary ‘Climate Crisis’, here is the pseudoscience of extreme weather attribution, but if you wish to still believe the fabled man-made global warming scientific consensus supposedly justifying why we must act, it is a fact that this country’s emissions reductions will achieve virtually nothing, on their own terms, when the major emitters of GHGs are carrying on regardless of our sacrifice.’
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Further to the above, you say ‘we have not heard this from any Conservative that I recall‘. I agree – and that (except perhaps for Jenrick in his sad imitation of Farage) includes David Frost. Perhaps his speaking out is another encouraging sign (see my link this morning to the Menton article) that criticism of Net Zero may be en route to becoming a winning political issue.
And perhaps in the above comment I’ve overlooked Badenoch’s comment earlier this week (see my post above) when she said that she was a “net-zero sceptic” but not “a climate change sceptic”. And when she asked: “Is net-zero a solution or is it a slogan? .. I am not sure we have properly thought that through.”
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Re doing both, as you know – we’ve discussed this many times before – I think it best to show alarmists that, even if they’re right about the ‘science’, Net Zero is an absurd and disastrous policy. As the arguments for this are irrefutable, I believe it puts you in a very strong position.
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A Guardian puff piece in favour of batteries, singing the praises of US battery expansion:
“US power grid added battery equivalent of 20 nuclear reactors in past four years
Pace of growth helps maintain renewable energy when weather conditions interfere with wind and solar”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/24/power-grid-battery-capacity-growth
Personally, I found the conclusion to be extremely dispiriting:
…Of course, wind and sun droughts can last longer than the longest-duration batteries currently available, meaning they are not a panacea. A fully clean grid will also require a vast upgrade in US transmission lines – for example, to shift renewable energy swiftly across the country to where it is needed. The permitting reform to allow this is a bitterly contested issue, with many environmental groups opposed to looser regulations they say will only empower fossil fuel concerns….
…“There are a lot of changes happening but monstrous action is still needed if we are going to make this energy transition,” said Moura.
Monstrous action. I fear for nature, for our economies, for our sanity.
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“fully clean grid”
I fear for my sanity if I have to listen to this Orwellian wokespeak in defence of industrialising our landscapes and emptying our pockets in the process for much longer.
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How can batteries which can’t generate electricity be the equivalent of a nuclear power station?
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Paul Dennis,
Very good question! Unfortunately, the people who write this stuff don’t think to ask questions such as that.
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Net Zero Watch press release
London: 25 October 2024
“Government admits climate consensus is breaking down
Net Zero Watch says failure to prepare official cost estimate is culpable”
Net Zero Watch has welcomed the admission by the Government that the political consensus over decarbonisation is breaking down. Speaking in the House of Lords yesterday, the Minister of State, Lord Hunt, said:
“I sense, as the noble Lord, Lord Frost, suggested, that some of the political consensus on net zero may be breaking down.
”Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:
“The cross-party enthusiasm for Net Zero has been, and is still, immensely damaging, allowing crazy policies to go almost unscrutinised. If the days of opposition parties refusing to oppose are coming to an end, taxpayers and consumers should be grateful.”
And Net Zero Watch has called for the government to publish a full, transparent estimate of the costs of decarbonising the economy. Mr Montford said:
“It is entirely culpable that after twenty years we still have no official estimate of the cost of Net Zero. Mr Miliband needs to rectify that as a matter of urgency.”
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Good stuff from Peter Lilley. He’s getting there. Intelligent, in that he focuses on the peer-reviewed science itself with regards to the existence of a so called ‘existential climate crisis’, not the IPCC summary for policy makers. This will force the cultists to go looking for evidence of imminent extinction in the peer-reviewed scientific literature and they won’t find it, or they will find it and prove themselves to be scientifically illiterate.
Encouraging.
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A good man Peter Lilley – one of only 5 MPs who voted against the 2008 Climate Change Act. He was my MP – I discussed AGW with him several times – before the intelligent but cowardly (he agreed with me but was unable to say so publicly) Bim Afolami succeeded him.
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Anyone on X reading the replies to this Ed Miliband will be convinced, as I am, that the public mood is changing very rapidly re. the climate crisis scam and Net Zero:
Lol.
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This is most encouraging:
“Ed Miliband’s net-zero fantasies
Without a more honest climate policy, Britain will never be a clean-energy superpower.”
https://www.newstatesman.com/thestaggers/2024/10/ed-milibands-net-zero-fantasies
…Decarbonising the power sector by 2030 meanwhile – the government’s pointlessly ambitious target date – could cost up to £400bn (according to a 2023 National Audit Office report). The Labour government continually pitches the plan as part of a clean energy revolution that will bring “decent, well-paid jobs”. But until it can deliver significantly lower energy prices, too many of the jobs will be created outside Britain. The millions of tons of steel required for the new infrastructure – wind farms, carbon capture pipelines and the vast network of new pylons set to blight the countryside – will not be made in Britain, and much of the primary manufacturing will also take place overseas.
Ed Miliband’s green energy strategy is high risk – and, at worst, his plans are an act of folly that will lead to higher energy prices, job losses and, perhaps, even blackouts. Onwards to the “green” future.
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From the New Statesman! That is encouraging – well spotted Mark.
Another extract:
Worth reading in full.
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David Turver has done it again! This time with a meticulous demolition of activists’ claim that the UK subsidises fossil fuels:
Busting the Fossil Fuel Subsidy Myth
The claims of massive UK subsidies for fossil fuels are disingenuous nonsense.
Interesting and well worth reading.
One thing he may perhaps have missed: some activists would argue that not adding the cost of the impacts caused by emitting CO2 to the cost of fossil fuels somehow amounts to a subsidy. Hmm?
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Sorry Robin , I have just spotted your comment here. I have posted a link to the Turver article under Jit’s piece on fossil fuel subsidies
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No problem Mark – that’s obviously the best place for it. But I hope someone may still be interested in my closing paragraph.
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From TCW:
Can the Lake District landscape fight off Vandal Miliband?
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/lake-district-landscape-v-vandal-miliband-round-one/
A thoroughly depressing article (with some evocative photos). Two extracts:
Does Miliband really have plans to cover the Lake District with industrial turbines? Or is the author, Dave Cumberland (well named!), hoping that by writing this he will be able to head off any risk of it happening? I expect Mark may know the answer.
PS: no mention of pylons. But surely they, an inevitable concomitant of turbines, would make a bad situation far worse?
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Robin, I regret to say that it appears even national parks aren’t safe:
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And if national parks aren’t safe, areas on their periphery certainly aren’t.
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“Reeves to make Bank of England put climate change and growth on equal footing
Chancellor calls on Andrew Bailey to reinstate environment as one of key priorities”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/29/reeves-make-bank-england-take-climate-change-seriously/
Rachel Reeves is planning to make the Bank of England take climate change as seriously as growth, as the Chancellor seeks to use her maiden Budget to overhaul the economy.
In a letter to Governor Andrew Bailey on Wednesday, Ms Reeves is expected to call on Threadneedle Street to reinstate climate change as one of the Bank’s key priorities.…
…However, Ms Reeves’s move to reintroduce a remit to combat risks from climate change could prove controversial.
Lord King told The Telegraph last year that it made “absolutely no sense” to make net zero another responsibility for the Bank.
“The Bank of England can do nothing about climate change,” he said, adding that the institution should focus on interest rates and keeping prices in shops stable.
There have been other warnings, with Mr Bailey conceding that while there was no excuse for failing to tackle climate change, it was not the Bank’s job to help “the world adjust”...
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This morning (at 08:30) wind turbines are contributing only 5.7% of electricity demand and solar panels a mere 1.6%. Fortunately gas plants are contributing 56% and nuclear 12%. I wonder if mad Ed has noticed?
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Robin,
That’s a small technical detail for the boffins to resolve, not for politicians to worry about.
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Yesterday on ‘The Future is EVs’ I cited a Daily Sceptic article about how a shortage of lithium meant that EV battery sizes would have to be radically reduced: https://cliscep.com/2023/10/10/the-future-is-evs/#comment-155980
But of course the problem is not confined to EVs. For example here’s an extract from the article:
As I said yesterday, the article is worth reading in full.
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“Budget 2024 Impact on Energy
Some good news in Budget 2024, but sadly mostly bad news on energy.”
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/budget-2024-impact-on-energy
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Oops, Andrew Montford is now a conspiracy theorist too:
https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1852284362252833070
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Yes Jaime, but Wednesday’s budget looked like a deliberate attempt to wreck the country’s future. Yet I don’t think that was the intention.
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I think the farmers might disagree with you there Robin.
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Jaime: no doubt some small farmers might believe the budget was designed to wreck their future.
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Further to the above, in fact farming is a perfect example of the point I keep making: the budget may appear to be a deliberate attempt to wreck the small farm whereas in reality it’s the result of typical metropolitan ignorance about how things really work.
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Chris Morrison has published a devastating article in today’s Daily Sceptic about the impact of the budget on electricity charges:
Labour’s Budget to Put Hundreds of Pounds on Electricity Bills
He adds that none of this takes account of the inevitable costs of back-up and notes that
He concludes:
Worth reading in full.
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Hello Robin, I wonder whether you can help me, please. While I understand your words, “… typical metropolitan ignorance about how things really work”, I find it very hard to understand how a whole class of people (i.e. the metropolitans) can be so calamitously ignorant, given all the information available today (often with pretty solid supporting data) that would vigorously challenge such ignorance .
Are the metropolitans wilfully ignorant, perhaps with ulterior motives? Or are they so insulated by SPADs and an indulgent media that their head-in-the-sand behaviour seems, to them, open and progressive and outward-looking? Or have they believed their own propaganda to such an extent that there is, for them, no alternative? Whatever the answer, it seems that our politics needs a thorough shake-out in the manner of the Augean stables. In addition, systems need to be put in place such that never again can the lifeblood of the economy, the energy system, be so undermined by such foolishness i.e. whatever the motivation of the culprits/enlightened ones.
Regards, John C.
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It’s certainly not ‘typical ignorance,’ even by the standards of your soy latte-sipping metro-luvvie elite. It is, at best, catastrophic, ideologically-driven indifference to the plight of rural workers and to the absolutely crucial policy to nurture and encourage the production of high quality, inexpensive, domestically grown food. At worst, it is a globo corporatist-communist land grab and the malign interference with domestic food production.
Oh, and Pol Pot Belly is a conspiracy theorist too. After all, he should know malign targeting of the economy when he sees it, having authorised the spaffing of £400bn on useless lockdowns and other Covid measures, supported by fraudulent science and data and government scaremongering propaganda.
https://x.com/BorisJohnson/status/1852437322744393894
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John C / Jaime:
I know several such people – senior lawyers and academics – who don’t really understand how things really work in the practical world. They’re good company, highly intelligent and cultured – I like them. But, unlike mine, their whole life – from home, school, university to senior professional achievement – has not involved the sort of direct experience that impacts on most people. OK I was always in fairly senior positions, but they involved making hard choices, negotiating tough contracts and for example lying awake worrying if I was going to be able meet the payroll at the end of the month – with the families of about 300 employees directly affected. These people are not – as Jaime seems to think – exhibiting ideologically-driven indifference or practicing malign interference. It’s quite simply, with guaranteed state- provided salaries and pensions, that they truly don’t have the hard direct personal experience that would enable them to understand what life is like for most people.
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“CCC Demands Uneconomic DEEP Cuts to Emissions
The Climate Change Committee is demanding we cut 81% of emissions by 2035, just as new figures show insulation payback times in centuries.”
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/ccc-demands-uneconomic-deep-cuts-to-emissions
…We can see that the Climate Change Committee has got its head well and truly stuck in the sand, unable to see the economic and social carnage being imposed upon us by its own policies. Yet, they want to double down and impose even more damaging measures in the coming decade.
It is alarming that different arms of Government and policymakers are disjointed, with neither the CCC nor NESO aware that the insulation measures being proposed make no economic sense at all. We discussed earlier that we are not on track to deliver the renewables capacity required to meet the existing targets to 2030 or 2050. We are even further away from delivering the additional 100TWh of electricity required to cover the assumed savings that will never materialise. This makes it more likely that we will suffer shortages, brown outs and blackouts.
We are already paying through the nose for our electricity; not being able to get it at any price because they have not built enough capacity will likely lead to social unrest and catastrophic economic decline. This is even more proof, if any were required, that the Government’s Net Zero plans simply do not add up.
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John C: the Spectator ‘coffee house’ has just published a magnificent article by David Starkey titled ‘How Kemi Badenoch’s Tories can rebuild Britain‘. With regard to our exchange yesterday I recommend that if possible you read it. Here’s a very relevant extract:
I have grave doubts about the ability of Badenoch’s Tories to seize that opportunity. I hope I’m wrong.
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Sub-heading from the FT website (paywalled):
World’s largest transformer maker warns of supply crunch
Sounds like more evidence for Robin’s theme on the lack of resources for Net Zero.
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Robin, twice thank you:-
(1) For the link to the Starkey article.
(2) For your very concerning comment, “These people are not – as Jaime seems to think – exhibiting ideologically-driven indifference or practicing malign interference. It’s quite simply, with guaranteed state- provided salaries and pensions, that they truly don’t have the hard direct personal experience that would enable them to understand what life is like for most people.”
Taken at face value you are painting a picture of many of our fellow citizens who live in their own ivory tower but who are totally unaware of the limitations of their vision. And yet these people in their positions of privilege (and power) seem to make no effort to look beyond their limited horizon. Surely this is smugness and selfishness writ large, or perhaps it is in effect (as Jaime suggests) malign indifference – I ask myself how could it be other than the latter.
Do they not feel some responsibility to those lesser mortals who live outside their own hallowed halls? Perhaps not.
Don’t the rest of us have a responsibility to (i) try and shake them out of their ignorance and (ii) make sure that those that follow in their elitist footsteps are better prepared to take on the demands of privileged office? It is easy for me to pose these questions but much more difficult to answer them.
In short, Robin, thank you for painting this picture of how you see these elites. It is a pretty bleak vista that you have sketched. And it makes me fear what further damage they will inflict (blob by blob by blob) upon us before the next general election throws (some of) them out of office. Regards, John C.
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Thank you John.
A personal note: many years ago (I’m very old) after over 30 years in the private sector (20 of them as CEO of high-tech manufacturing companies), I was appointed as interim CEO of a government agency reporting to the Cabinet Office Minister (de facto to the Permanent Secretary). I had the temporary rank of Deputy Secretary so interacted with senior civil servants. What struck me about them – highly educated, cultivated people – was that, whereas in my previous life almost every action and decision was taken with an eye to the bottom line, that hardly applied at all in the public sector: they knew that in the final analysis (re personal income or public expenditure) the money would always be there. As Starkey says, the numbers of such people have multiplied and, I would add, they’ve become increasing sympathetic with left wing dogma: they truly believe that current policies – perhaps uncomfortable in the short term – are for the best in the long term. So, they’re not smug or selfish nor are they indifferent (malign or otherwise) to the plight of small farmers, they’ve simply never had the opportunity to acquire the means of understanding the difficulties they’re facing.
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We seem to be stuck in a low wind speed period at the moment , both BBC and MET forecasting light winds right out to 16 Nov and possibly beyond . At the moment wind and solar are 6.3% of total, how much financial support do we hand out to turbines not working for the next 2 weeks. Not a single turbine turning round us including Braes of Doune, 2 groups in the Ochils and the new group over toward Comrie.
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James, according to the Telegraph, the malaise has set in semi-permanently. It has been obvious to a disinterested and informed observer for years that we in the UK are on the road to penury.
“Britain importing record amounts of electricity from Europe”
Telegraph link, with magic wall.
What tosh.
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Well spotted James – that’s most interesting. Thanks.
Currently wind is contributing only 4% to our electricity demand and gas 57%. And – in support of Jit’s comment – interconnectors are contributing 15%. I wonder if Mad Ed has noticed.
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Robin, an unorthodox use of Cliscep on my part. I think you have tried to email me, but I am having problems with emails just now. I fear it will be a few days before I can respond.
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Jit,
If DESNZ really say that we only import electricity when prices are cheap, then that is an outrageous lie. The opposite is often true.
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Mark, I think it is a way of mangling sense to lie without lying. They seem to be referring to times when electricity costs are high, and maybe even sky high, and that the local offer to supply electricity has a higher price than the offer from the mainland.
In such a circumstance, imported leccy is indeed cheaper. It’s just that both options may be extortionate.
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Hello Robin, thank you for your further exposition of the attitudes of many of those senior civil servants with whom you have interacted. I was struck by your comment, “So, they’re not smug or selfish nor are they indifferent (malign or otherwise) to the plight of small farmers, they’ve simply never had the opportunity to acquire the means of understanding the difficulties they’re facing.”
The more I read the words quoted above, the more they worry me. [I hasten to say that I am making absolutely no criticism of you, Robin. On the contrary. You have called it as you have experienced it, and I am grateful for you putting that into words.] What worries me, and has from the outset, is that these are the behaviours and attitudes of senior staffers that we are discussing; and we are finding them wanting (in several ways). These attitudes and behaviours would be objectionable in junior staff, but in senior staff!? Surely we have the right to expect much better.
Seniority brings responsibilities as well as its privileges. And I would expect these people to know that, and thus to do something proactive to overcome their ignorance. Sitting blithely on their derrières should not be acceptable – and they should know that it is unacceptable …
By contrast, one of the earliest things that my father learnt when he entered OCTU during WWII was the first three rules of man management, namely “Look After Your Men. Look After Your Men. Look After Your Men.” The same attitude should apply today – or we should be told why not.
To me the attitude of these senior staffers (in both the Civil Service and the Uniparty) smacks of casual indifference bordering on contempt; I find that shocking. But then I, too, am old. Best regards, John C.
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John:
I found it seriously worrying at the time and I continue to do so today. But I have nonetheless a degree of understanding of, even sympathy with, their position. If you come from a well-educated, middle class background (as I did and as most of these civil servants did), understanding so-called ‘ordinary’ people’s attitudes has to be acquired. And that requires opportunity and time. Few of them have had either. Simple slogans such as that your father was taught at OCTU cannot overcome that. I was lucky (although I didn’t think so at the time): for about eighteen months during my National Service and before going up to Oxford I was a Corporal section commander in the infantry on active service. I learned a lot.
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A failure to understand how things work underpins the establishment, I am afraid.
Look at the budget and the hasty noises about rowing back employers’ national insurance for GPs who employ staff. I am confident that the government and its advisers were blissfully unaware that it would be an issue.
I have a university friend, a very intelligent postgraduate, who has spent his life in academia. Recently he was bemoaning the massive house building programme that is blighting the town where he lives. When I and others pointed out that massive net immigration means a rapidly increasing population which implies a need for house building on a large scale, he was perplexed. All this has passed him by.
He thinks that Tory-leaning newspapers are the establishment. It never occurs to him that these days he is part of the establishment.
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To develop that point a little further, I don’t believe that most people in the establishment are stupid or malign (though there may be exceptions), but I fear that many of them are profoundly ignorant. Ignorant as to how the world works, ignorant of the Law of Unintended Consequences, ignorant of the problems that face many ordinary people, ignorant of reality. That’s why they make a mess of pretty much everything they touch, energy policy and net zero being among the most obvious examples.
To add insult to injury, because many of them know that they are clever, they are arrogantly convinced that those who disagree with them must be stupid (or malign).
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John Cullen – your comment sums up my feelings. I agree Robin has had interactions with these people & his observations & conclusions are extremely helpful for understanding the mindset.
Fully agree when you say – “smacks of casual indifference bordering on contempt; I find that shocking”.
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Well even the Telegraph is now leaning heavily towards conspiracy not cockup re. the budget and Labour policies in general:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/inheritance/labour-lied-farmers-and-will-reap-what-sown/
It’s becoming increasingly impossible to look at the behaviour of this government (or the previous one for that matter), in sum, and conclude that they are just a bunch of incompetents who don’t understand how things work, because they have never had to graft in the real world. They are malign, calculating and ideologically driven, notwithstanding the fact that they might also be ignorant and stupid, but not so stupid and ignorant that they do not grasp the real consequences of their policy agenda – which they lied through the teeth about, because they knew for sure that if they had revealed their true intentions to the electorate before July 4th, then they would not have been elected.
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Jaime: ‘even the Telegraph‘ ……?
That article is about socialism not climate. It’s hardly surprising that the Telegraph is opposed to socialism.
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That’s a somewhat lazy response from you Robin. Firstly, the article does indeed talk about climate policy as I quoted above:
Those industries have been penalised because of [socialist] climate policies. Also, with regard to Labour’s quite obvious Marxist attack on farmers, the article points out that this might also be a method of advancing climate policy:
Large corporations might also use the acquired land as carbon offset by planting trees – ‘rewilding’ as the climate cultists euphemistically refer to it. It is no coincidence that the farming industry is being targeted across many different countries, in a coordinated fashion, often with the specific stated intention of ‘protecting the climate’. The climate zealots have farming firmly in their sights – and Marxist/socialist land grab/economic policies are the way they are choosing to attack the food producing industry and the people who work within it. So yes, the Torygraph is opposed to Labour socialism (though often not to Tory socialism, as has been obvious over the last 14 years), but Labour’s socialism is inextricably entwined with Labour’s climate policy and the overarching UN Agenda 2030 ‘sustainability’ agenda.
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Yes Jaime it mentions climate policy just as it mentions inheritance tax policy. But it’s about socialism and what it (the Telegraph) believes is the malignancy of socialism. And that’s an issue that’s bedevilled world politics since the beginning of the last century. It’s a huge and most important topic. But – I suggest – beyond the scope of a website that’s about climate policy.
Of course I agree that climate policy can be particularly attractive to socialists as it can be used to support some socialist objectives. But that doesn’t mean that climate policy is, as you seem to think, a malignant conspiracy designed to punish ordinary people and destroy Western society.
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Mark, if I was looking for a one-liner to sum up our current predicament then your “A failure to understand how things work underpins the establishment” would be a strong contender.
However, I might quibble and propose adding the word “apparent” before “failure” in order to cover the possibility of wilful ignorance i.e. conspiracy rather than cock-up, but that is an issue I wish to expand on later today. Regards, John C.
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A pity about your quibble John – until you added that, I thought I was going to agree with you.
I look forward to seeing how you expand on it.
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This is interesting. At present, 3:45pm – i.e. just at the start of the evening rush hour – wind is contributing only 4% to our electricity demand (solar 1%) and gas 67%. But here’s the critical thing: interconnectors are contributing only 4%. I suspect that might be because there’s not much wind elsewhere in Europe. This doesn’t bode well.
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I wish to expand upon the moral nature of the matters in question, particularly the drive for Net Zero that is a large scale (but incomplete) rejection of fossil fuels in favour of electric power which, in ideal conditions, will be driven by the so-called but misnamed “renewables”. In essence this is a major (or even revolutionary) shift from the fossil fuel power that has animated the UK economy for 300 years. That is the scale of the change envisaged!
Those ‘revolutionaries’ who are driving this unprecedented societal upheaval have – or should have – the same duty of care as those of us engaged in lesser projects, namely by undertaking due diligence, thorough and competent cost-benefit analysis, contingency/back-up plans etc. I would expect senior civil servants and senior politicians involved in this undertaking to have all this under their belts long before UK society was thrown over the Net Zero EROEI cliff. For me to advance such ideas is, surely, not unreasonable; these skills should (if they are possessed by compassionate and competent people) be their stock-in-trade. However, it seems that the necessary precautions have been but inadequately undertaken, if at all. How can this be?
Robin [of whom I make no criticism – I do not intend to shoot the messenger] has characterised such people as well/highly educated and cultivated. I would expect such people to have at least a broad grasp of recent history (or even general knowledge) of some of humanity’s calamities such as the authoritarianism of communism and fascism. Is it therefore too much to expect them to have what, in Arendt’s view, Eichmann lacked, namely “ordinary understanding of how the world looked from inside other people’s minds.” [Ref. 1].
Notice that Arendt is calling for ordinary rather than extraordinary understanding. Is that unreasonable of her? I do not feel so, especially for society’s top people (including the Civil Service’s First Division) who are determining the future direction of the country.
I am not making a moral equivalence between the behaviour of Eichmann (who was deeply involved in the Holocaust) and the behaviour of today’s enablers of Net Zero who currently, at worst, are lengthening the queues at our food banks, making energy incredibly expensive, and destroying the competitivity of our industry. However, to me, the same (very limited) mental processes seem to be at play in both cases. Arendt, through the concept of ‘superfluousness’, shows how a political system can arise where “human beings become quickly and simply expendable.” [Ref. 1]. Such expendability is, of course, entirely avoidable … but only if we and our leaders have due consideration for others.
‘Light-touch regulation’ led to worldwide meltdown of financial markets in the late “noughties”. The crash showed the power of Moral Hazard, i.e. “the presence of incentives for individuals or institutions to act in ways that incur costs that they do not have to bear.” [Ref. 2]. Taxpayers bailed out the banks back then. It seems that today our leaders have still not learnt the lesson of Moral Hazard and, through a latter-day ‘light-touch regulation’, are once again pushing the populace into the abyss, but this time it is the technical, economic and financial abyss that is Net Zero.
However, with due consideration for the world beyond the ‘green blob’, such a catastrophe is, I believe, entirely avoidable. Am I wrong? Am I unreasonable?
References
Regards, John C.
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Robin; looking here: https://grid.iamkate.com/ it looks as if the interconnectors were doing a lot more than 4%. The “transfers” graphic shows the record for the past day.
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John C: thank you for a most interesting post. A few observations:
You say you would expect senior civil servants involved in the Net Zero project to have under their belts the normal precautions that those of us engaged in lesser projects take for granted – that the appropriate skills would be part of their stock-in-trade. You ask how it could be that, regarding this vast and ‘revolutionary’ project, this seems not be the case. You say that our leaders seem not to have learnt the lesson of Moral Hazard.
Your expectation is of course wholly reasonable and your surprise that these people do not have the necessary skills and have not learned the lessons of past failures is completely understandable.
But none of this surprises me. In 1996 I was recruited, at the request of Michael Hezeltine, to take interim charge of the CCTA, the Government’s Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency. As I’ve already said, I was astonished at how the attitudes and instincts of senior civil servants were wholly different from those taken for granted in the private sector – attitudes and instincts that were at the heart of why so many public projects failed. I won’t expand any more on that now, except to say that my experience then tells me that little is likely to have changed over the years.
One item of evidence. Shortly after the end of my temporary employment in government I was involved (this time on a voluntary basis) with a major new project: the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT). I was chair of the hugely experienced healthcare committee of WCIT, the IT livery company. We thought we could assist the project by providing constructive comment. We had meetings with a succession of health ministers and public servants, provided detailed papers for those running the project, submitted evidence to select committees … etc. But no one really listened. All the inadequacies that you find so surprising now re Net Zero were present rhen. And of course the project (described as the largest civil IT project in Europe) was an abject failure. Here are two references that you might find interesting:
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmhealth/422/422we58.htm
https://www.digitalhealth.net/2007/06/letter-to-the-pm/
My depressing conclusion is that our senior public servants have never had the skills etc. that you very reasonably expect them to have. This will impact on Net Zero just as it impacted to NPfIT and on other major government projects.
Best wishes – R
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MikeH: I also used iamkate.com. At 3:45 this afternoon it showed interconnectors contributing 4%. As you see, that’s increased now to 9.6%.
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Mike, Robin,
It gets even better (or worse). Remember all the fanfare with the recent opening of the Viking Interconnector – “one of the world’s longest”? It was just a mile or so from where I lived in Lincolnshire. Well, it would seem that in our greatest hour of need, when we could do with all the electricity we can get whilst our creaking gas powered stations are working flat out to make up for the loss of generation from our shiny new ‘renewables,’ the Viking interconnector is actually exporting 2% of our electricity!
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Well well – sign of the times? I and all my neighbours have just experienced a 40 minute total power cut – all domestic power + street lights. Nothing worked.
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Jaime: according to Andrew Montford there is no wind anywhere in Europe at the moment: https://i.ibb.co/XYDDbf1/Screenshot-2024-11-04-at-18-56-56-Andrew-Montford-on-X-The-Dunkelflaute-that-is-afflicting-the-UK-at.png
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John at 4 p.m.: part of the issue is that the opposition to these schemes has not been able to gather any leverage. The key reason is that moral reasoning is far more powerful than pragmatism. We all know who is on the side of the angels, and it isn’t those of us asking for a hint of a cost-benefit analysis. Any mainstream opposition has been cowed into acquiescence, great idiots have rowed in behind the destructive schemes to improve their moral standing, and the rump of the opposition is fragmented and voiceless.
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PS. I hope you had some candles in Robin! I have told people I know to be prepared for power cuts, but have told them it’s only a 1% chance this winter. Maybe I should up the odds. (People generally look at me rather oddly when I make such a suggestion, as if I had warned them against driving on country roads late at night in case they are abducted by aliens. Too few of us remember the good ol’ days of long spells with no juice. At least in those days, we had the means to restart the grid.)
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I keep advising people to buy fork handles, but they look at me like I’m crazy!
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John Cullen & Robin,
The one thing you both seem to agree on is “senior civil servants”.
Robin ends his comment – “My depressing conclusion is that our senior public servants have never had the skills etc. that you very reasonably expect them to have. This will impact on Net Zero just as it impacted to NPfIT and on other major government projects.”
I admit to not knowing how the gov v civil servants works, but seems to me the MSM only go after MP’s when things go wrong. Seems “senior civil servants” never answer to anybody.
Can anyone here name a “senior civil servant” ?
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I can name a former senior civil servant: Sue Gray. Enough said?
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This is interesting. At present, 8:00am – i.e. morning rush hour – wind is contributing only 4% to our electricity demand (solar 0%) and gas 68%. But here’s the critical thing: interconnectors are contributing only 1% – and that’s because all (except France at 4% and Norway 3%) are negative. Extraordinary.
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Jeremy Pocklington CB is the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).
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Mr Pocklington seems to have spent much of his time as a civil servant working in or around the Treasury, so one might have hoped that he would have something to say about the eye-watering sums that net zero is costing.
His Wikipedia page suggests he is a keen hill-walker, so one might hope that he appreciates nature and deprecates the industrialisation of our wild places. The difficulty is that he is presumably not allowed to express such personal opinions about nature and its violation by net zero. On the other hand, surely it’s his duty to point out that it’s absurdly expensive and bound to fail?
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Now (8:15) interconnectors are up at 9.9% – only Ireland negative. Wind still 3.8% and solar 0.6%. (Previous numbers rounded)
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Headline in FT:
UK cabinet split over allowing a third runway at Heathrow
Several ministers, including Ed Miliband, are opposed to the airport’s expansion
Mad Ed’s position hardly a surprise.
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The story of interconnectors during a significant Europe-wide Dunkelflaute:
The back and forth shuffling of an ever diminishing supply of electricity in an increasingly desperate attempt to keep the lights on across a continent which bought into the insane dream of powering its economies and societies with weather dependent ‘clean renewables’.
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This will please Robin. Net Zero Grid 2030 is not going to happen and the Telegraph explains in detail all the reasons why it’s not going to happen:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/11/05/millions-more-switch-off-ed-miliband-net-zero-targets/
They’re not going to quadruple demand side reduction and flexibility by 2030 unless they make smart meters compulsory now. Even if switching off appliances is ‘voluntary’ (doubtful), you need smart meters to communicate the ‘signal’ (via flexible half hourly tariffs) to ‘encourage’ users to switch off.
And the lie of Fintan Slye’s “backbone of home grown [‘clean’] energy” is now achingly apparent, with zero solar generation and wind contributing only 3-4%. So even if we quadruple renewable energy generation in the next 5 years (impossible), solar will still be contributing nowt and wind will only be contributing 12-16%. Mad Miliband’s dream is stuffed. It’s a dead parrot, but we’re still going to need fork handles.
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Robin (6.07pm yesterday), thank you for expanding upon your experiences with senior Civil Servants. I find it exasperating to read of such haughty aloofness as you describe in these elites; it is totally unacceptable. The more you describe them, the less I think I understand their ways. Competent project planning, management, and completion is not, after all, rocket science! Well, not for the highly educated and cultivated people as you characterise them to be.
Since you have worked with them and I have not, I wonder whether you could estimate, please, from your experience, what the senior Civil Service might consider (i) to be its raison(s) d’être, (ii) who, if anyone, it serves, (iii) whether it has a moral compass and, if so, in which direction it is pointing, and (iv) whether it to would deign to have what Eichmann lacked, namely “ordinary understanding of how the world looked from inside other people’s minds.” I am particularly interested in this latter point because, based upon your descriptions to date, the Civil Service seems to have all the empathy of a surly automaton.
Robin, in posing these questions I am asking only for your opinions; I am not asking you to speak for the Civil Service. But it would be really useful to have an insight into the senor Civil Service’s esprit de corps, albeit as inferred by an outsider such as yourself.
Many thanks. Regards, John C.
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Jaime, thank you painting this latest picture of the whole barking mad enterprise that is grid “decarbonisation”. Not only is it hugely expensive, drawing in huge quantities of materials and other resources, but it fails by its own criteria: (i) it is not green or renewable as shown by the EROEI parameter and by the hectares of despoiled land, and (ii) we already have some of the most expensive and hence impoverishing electricity prices in the world – bring back a bit of gas price volatility!
The project is a monumental waste of time, money and effort that will make other fiascos like the Groundnuts Scheme seem like small beer. And it is brought to us by a “Labour” government following hot on the heels of a “Conservative” government. And for what? So that Ed can puff up his chest and crow that we are the Saudi Arabia of infinitely renewable ‘green’ stupidity? Regards, John C.
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…Around 80pc of the targeted power savings are to come from convincing consumers to charge electric cars… at less busy hours…
Who would have thought that net zero targets (such as replacing ICE vehicles with EVs) for the country’s energy system as a whole would cause problems for a decarbonised grid? It requires only a moment’s thought to appreciate that this would always be a serious issue, yet it seems to be beyond many, if not all, of the people at DESNZ.
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Jaime (and John C): I think may agree that this lovely article by Ivor Williams in TCW puts it rather better than that albeit interesting and damning Telegraph article:
Mad Ed will be wasting our Net Zero efforts till the cows come home
No point in quoting any of it – you need to read it all: nothing we don’t know but beautifully put.
PS: wind now down to a miserable 2.9% but interconnectors back to normal at 11.4%.
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Another reason why Net Zero will fail:
Mining Industry Needs $2.1 Trillion Dollars in New Investment by 2050 to Meet Net-Zero Demand for Raw Materials, Finds BloombergNEF in New Report
https://about.bnef.com/blog/mining-industry-needs-2-1-trillion-dollars-in-new-investment-by-2050-to-meet-net-zero-demand-for-raw-materials-finds-bloombergnef-in-new-report/?tactic=925520&pchash=
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John C (10:30 this morning.) I fear you may have misunderstood me: I didn’t find these people either haughty or aloof. In fact many of them were friendly, interesting and approachable. The problem – as Mark put it so well two days ago – was (and I assume still is) that ‘A failure to understand how things work underpins the establishment‘.
I think I’ve now said enough on this topic.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/05/clean-power-2030-labour-neso-report-ed-miliband
This would be funny if its implications weren’t so serious.
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No Mark it’s not even remotely funny: it’s both ridiculous and dangerous.
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Robin, I had meant haughty and aloof in relation to ordinary people – sorry if I misled you.
Over recent postings you had painted a picture of a dysfunctional Civil Service (at least from the public’s perspective) and I had hoped to draw you out as to your understanding of that dysfunctionality. I think understanding that dysfunctionality might illuminate some of the difference between you and Jaime i.e. regarding the extent to which (major actors in) our political system may be either benign or malign. Regards, John C.
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I’m sorry John, I don’t regard them as either benign or malign – just unaware of how things work.
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Paul Homewood ridicules Mad Ed’s praise for the NESO report to which Mark refers above:
Miliband Lies About NESO Report
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/11/05/miliband-lies-about-neso-report/#comments
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Evening rush hour: wind contributing 3.6% and solar 0.1%. Interconnectors down to 5.9% – when it really matters.
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Robin, if the senior Civil Service were made up of very young children then I feel most people could forgive them blundering around because they do not yet know how the world works. However, they are adults and not young children; you have described them as highly intelligent and cultivated. I would expect adults, even those with lesser qualities, to have the good manners and courtesy, if they do not know how things work, to proceed with very great caution and advise their ministers accordingly.
So while I can easily accept that, in their ignorance, these Civil Servants have broken no laws, they surely deserve severe censure if and when they behave recklessly (as they seem to be doing in the case of Net Zero). And if they have not even broken any Civil Service rules as they blunder about then that suggests to me that the rules (and the training for the UK’s crème de la crème) need tightening immediately.
So, for me, ‘neutral’ is not a fair description of their behaviour. I am currently leaning firmly away from ‘benign’ towards ‘malign’. Or am I being too harsh? Regards, John C.
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John C: as I discovered all those years ago, most civil servants were simply unaware of how things really work. And they were unaware that they were unaware. I believe it’s probable that that condition prevails today. To put it another way, they’re unaware that they don’t really understand how things work in the practical world. As Mark put it ‘A failure to understand how things work underpins the establishment’. I fail to see how it’s possible to describe that as malignant, thereby implying that they’re in some way evil.
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Hello Robin, these are sentient adults who are responsible for their actions and who also happen to be involved in the nation’s most consequential decision making processes. Even if it is not written into the Civil Service code, it behoves them (the crème de la crème) to look outside the door and see, as best they can, how the world works before meddling with it in an incompetent and irresponsible way. Not to do so is, in my view, a moral dereliction of duty. For most of the population, they are neither use nor ornament (except perhaps around Whitehall).
In military terms they have abandoned their post and gone MIA without a shot having been fired. Absolutely useless, in my view. Or, perhaps, worse than useless given the on-going damage to the economy. In moral terms, culpably useless?
Anyway, to lighten the tone, I began to wonder what the senior Civil Service theme tune should be (assuming they do not have one already, from “Yes, Minister!”?). My mind went back to the 1960s when my parents and I liked this song from the Seekers, “A World of Our Own”:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=661fedTSGW0
It includes the line (at 2:04), “We’ll build a world of our own that no-one else can share”. Seems apt.
Regards, John C.
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John C: an interesting perspective. Thanks.
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A few months back David Turver investigated the qualifications and background of the top few layers in DESNZ. It does not make for happy reading:
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/desnz-net-zero-competence?publication_id=1285567&post_id=146814424&isFreemail=true&r=219jpi&triedRedirect=true
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Thanks Mark, here’s Turver’s concluding paragraph:
That would seem to be a wholly accurate assessment.
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Mark / Robin, yes, Turver’s words have been ringing in my ears since I first read them. Is that an acceptable situation which he describes? Is not the whole DESNZ situation completely unacceptable? We need technically competent people at the helm if we are to avoid the worst of the coming storm which, if left unchecked, is likely to be the worst in peacetime in living memory.
Although the current situation is entirely a civil affair, it reminds me of the run up to the necessary changing of the guard that occurred in 1940. When will our Chamberlain go? It can’t be soon enough for me. Regards, John C.
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John: the biggest difference between now and 1940 is that there’s there’s no Churchill equivalent today.
Farage? No, I don’t think so.
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From Jaime’s comment above –
“Meanwhile, wind farm developers said the Government would need to urgently support a string of new factories to build cables, blades, foundations and towers needed for legions of new turbines.
“Urgent action” was needed to overhaul the planning system, digitise key systems, overhaul markets and establish key supply chains, the report said.”
What a mess/disaster, reminds me of the “the impossible dream” – https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=to+dream+the+impossible+dream+youtube&mid=E5094FD87515BF9CBD18E5094FD87515BF9CBD18&FORM=VIRE
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Speaking of the Impossible Dream (a shameless plug follows):
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Mark – thanks for the link, not shameless by any means. Must have been on hols at the time & missed it 😦
Partial quote from your post Page 37: –
“HM Treasury has published guidance aimed at redressing the tendency for project appraisers to be overly optimistic, by adjusting estimates of costs and benefits using data from previous or similar projects. Establishing an overall delivery plan is an opportunity for DESNZ to test the resilience of its approach, challenge any potential optimism bias, and identify alternative pathways to deploy if its current approach proves unfeasible.”
Well I suppose they can now say “we had no data from previous or similar projects” but we are optimistic that it’s feasible.
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“Fintan Slye Outfoxes Mad Miliband on Clean Power by 2030
Net Zero Grid by 2030 only achievable if Miliband believes six impossible things before breakfast.”
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/fintan-slye-outfoxes-mad-miliband-clean-power-2030
The announcement would have us believe:
Spending £44-48bn per year, or £264-290bn by 2030 is achievable This is over 4X the average rate from 2020-2024.
Their plan is cheaper because gas prices will be above OBR estimates and carbon prices will rise nearly four-fold by 2030.
That residential demand can be cut by 20% and energy rationing, aka demand flexibility, will rise nearly five-fold by 2030.
The rate of offshore wind delivery can be increased by a factor of four, solar by 7X and onshore wind by 5X to 2030 compared to what has been delivered in the past five years.
We can install twice as many miles of transmission cables by 2030 than were built in the last ten years.
One of our aging gas-cooled nuclear reactors can be extended beyond 2028 and the first Hinkley Point C reactor comes online on time in 2030.…
Conclusions
It certainly looks like NESO have pulled a fast one and given a credulous Miliband a plan that requires us to believe six impossible things before breakfast. Fintan Slye has outfoxed Mad Miliband, who will now use this report to rush headlong towards a decarbonised grid by 2030.
Or maybe Slye has just followed orders, because NESO is not independent. It is controlled by none other than the Secretary of State for Energy and Net Zero, one Ed Miliband. Miliband has the power to hire and fire directors, so it could be that Slye is just in fear of his job.…
…Miliband will eventually pay a heavy political price and the rest of us will pay the economic price through lost jobs, higher bills and energy rationing.
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7:45: wind 9.7%, solar 0.1%, gas 67.0% – and interconnectors minus 1.8%.
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“Ed Miliband’s like a mad prophet in a sandwich board, but his net-zero zealotry means boiling a kettle may become a luxury”
Link to Andrew Montford’s piece in the Mail.
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Today’s FT:
Trump victory seen as blow to climate action ahead of UN summit
World’s most important climate negotiations undermined by anticipated US policy shift
Oh dear – what a pity.
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Robin; wrt to generation figures, I’m keeping an eye on the Past Week tally for wind. It is now below 4 GW and looks likely to fall further as this “dunkelflaute” continues. The implications for decisions on back-up generation and storage are obvious – and massive – as all here know.
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It’s unachievable ….. in the sense that nobody commissioned the Wright brothers to achieve what they achieved. If it happens, good. If it doesn’t happen, it’s better not to set any time limits.
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The meltdown of the climate cultists is already epic. Here’s Caroline Lucas:
https://x.com/CarolineLucas/status/1854085683255627965
I just advised her not to waste candles because she will need them for when the lights go out because of Mad Ed’s Net Zero policies, and then she really will be cursing the darkness.
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Different challenges probably require different leadership qualities and styles. So has the UK got the best senior Civil Service team in place for the Net Zero challenge, I wonder.
Greater seniority usually (but not always) attracts greater responsibility. In most of the military and industrial environments I have worked in, the qualities that leaders were required to have included intelligence, vigour, drive, resourcefulness, initiative, and an ability to adapt to new situations. Qualities less sought included lack of an enquiring mind, pro-passivity, and being set in one’s ways.
I infer from what Robin has said – and I hope he will correct me if I am wrong – that the senior Civil Servants that he was acquainted with conformed more closely to the latter set of qualities than to the former. If I am correct then I ask myself whether this is the best that the UK can do when confronting and, I hope, ultimately vanquishing the multifaceted Net Zero challenge.
From what Robin has said these Civil Servants are good people in many ways. However, they seem to need a good shake up to get them performing more effectively for the country, irrespective of who their political masters may be. Am I wrong? Regards, John C.
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John C:
As David Turver put it so eloquently:
‘We have the blind leading the blind, advised by clueless cronies who do not have the faintest idea about energy, engineering or the commercial world. They simply don’t know what they don’t know and are totally ill-equipped to challenge the tendentious twaddle put before them.‘
So yes, if they’re to perform effectively, they would need ‘a good shake up’ – provided that includes substantial replacement of the least effective with people who do understand how the real world works. But there’s a massive obstacle: they’ve been under performing for at least fifty years and, unless someone in power recognises that there’s a problem (and no-one does at present), it’s not going to be fixed.
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A thoughtful article from the ever-reliable Douglas Fraser. If only more BBC journalists were like him:
“Can Labour meet its clean energy targets?”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gxe10dnp1o
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Paul Homewood has just published an excellent piece in the Daily Sceptic:
Ed Miliband’s Plan for Zero Carbon Electricity by 2030 is a Damning Indictment of the Whole Net Zero Agenda
Regarding NESO’s recent report to Mad Ed, he notes their recommendation that, because of the need for a secure system, ‘most of today’s gas plants remain on the system out to 2030 and beyond’.
Paul notes that this will be extremely expensive – and merely end up duplicating what we already have …
He is of course spot on. Worth reading in full.
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From Net Zero Watch yesterday (I’m still catching up, having just returned from holiday):
London: 5 November 2024£1300 annual household bill for Net Zero grid
The National Energy System Operator’s report to Ed Miliband, published today, indicates the scale of the cost burden that public will face as the result of the Secretary of State’s ambitious plans for a Net Zero grid by 2030.
The report suggests that the annual investment cost alone exceeds £40 billion, or £1300 per household. Worse still, campaigning organisation Net Zero Watch says that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Its director Andrew Montford said:
And in a bombshell revelation, the report also indicates that pursuing a Net Zero grid by 2030 is a mistake. Even when global warming harms are taken into account, the costs of the project exceed the benefits.
This is shown by the report’s Figure 20, reproduced below, which compares two pathways to Net Zero to a counterfactual, in which no further action is taken. All of the estimates include a figure for the carbon price, representing the harms caused by global warming.[1] Reduction of these harms is the benefit of Net Zero, and the NESO paper therefore represents a cost-benefit analysis of the project.
But despite the underlying assumptions being greatly biased in favour of Net Zero,[2] the Counterfactual pathway is the lowest cost option.
Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:
Notes for editors
[1] NESO uses a carbon price of £147/t, which is much higher than typical estimates of the cost of the harm done by global warming – the so-called social cost of carbon (SCC). The US government figure for the SCC is around £40/t. The UK government has no official estimate for the SCC, but uses a “target-consistent” carbon price =- in other words, the carbon price necessary to deliver the Net Zero target. This therefore presupposes that Net Zero is a rational step, rather than being the question at issue.
[2] As well as the unrealistic carbon price already noted, NESO uses DESNZ’s predictions of the cost of renewables, which have been widely criticised by experts as being unrealistic, and which have already been falsified. https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1846488022373552413
[3] https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-papers/a-cost-benefit-analysis-of-net-zero
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Jaime – thanks for the Caroline Lucas X link. She must be pleased with all the supportive comments below (sarc).
Like this – “Candles are made from paraffin wax…. Paraffin wax is a petroleum wax that comes from petroleum, coal, or oil shale. I thought you were a green MP?????”
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Mark – from your BBC by Douglas Fraser –
“”A key challenge will be making sure all deliver simultaneously, in full and at maximum pace, in a way that does not overheat supply chains, is sustainable and sets Great Britain on the right path beyond 2030.”
And to do this, it says we’ll have to “prioritise pace over perfection”.”
It almost sounds like “Grand Designs” bad builds prog. Built it quick & look at the mess.
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Insufficient Curiosity Everywhere?
Robin, another day and another long-running British scandal deep in the Establishment rises to a crescendo – it is too early to speak of its resolution. And the mots du jour seem to be “insufficient curiosity” among the powers that be.
I wonder (following your Nov. 6th, 4.26pm comment) whether “insufficient curiosity” in modern management methods characterises the UK’s senior civil servants. I also wonder whether “insufficient curiosity” regarding cost-benefit analysis amongst parliamentarians got us into the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Net Zero economic suicide.
I also wonder whether “insufficient curiosity” or wilful blindness is currently afflicting government ministers which keeps them in Baku promising more CO2 cuts while leaving the rest of us deep in the mire of Net Zero madness.
The UK’s Establishment seems, in very large part, increasingly unfit for democratic purposes – but very well suited to feathering its own nest. Regards, John C.
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I have above been very critical of the (senior) Civil Service in the UK. However, it seems that matters may be much worse than I thought. If Andrew Montford of Net Zero Watch is correct in his claim (https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/deception-renewables-costs) then the civil servants of “[DESNZ] have – in my view quite deliberately – deceived the public, understating the cost of wind power by 50% … Once the capital and operating cost “errors” are corrected, the scale of the deception will be seen to be much greater.” If true then this, to me, sounds horrendous, as though the department has been captured by vested interests.
Whatever happened to respect for the Nolan Principles (https://www.good-governance.org.uk/publications/insights/the-nolan-principles) of public life? i.e. of working selflessly and solely in the public interest, with integrity, with objectivity, with honesty, etc.
Regards, John C.
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