All they needed was unlimited money and it would have worked…
From the BBC:
Labour’s shadow energy minister Tom Greatrex said: “Today’s move highlights the dead hand of the Treasury in scuppering moves towards a greener energy mix.
…
“Without those guarantees the government’s commitment to energy, the environment and green jobs will be increasingly viewed as all talk, no action.”
Dr Dixon of WWF Scotland said the news was “massively disappointing”.
He said: “If technical and economic hurdles can be overcome CCS has the potential to help reduce emissions at thousands of coal power stations around the world.
“However, almost four years after launching its funding competition, plans for CCS in the UK have descended into farce.”
Juliet Swann, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: “The UK government failing to support the application to its necessary extent from the outset is not just an indication of their hypocrisy over climate change, but also shows how little interest they have in investing in Scotland.”
Full story at the BBC
24% of my gas bill is for “government environmental policy”.
Probably electricity is the same.
As for:
“Yes that is a very odd statement. Britain has at least 900 years of coal resources and unquantified shale gas. So will Mr Huhne also reject those strategic energy resources on technical grounds”
The answer is “yes”, he will reject them on any grounds he can have others think of….cheap, plentiful energy is not what any politician wants in the UK.
That would take peoples minds off the FACT that we are ruled by a three-party system of unrelenting expenses thieves who have no idea about anything.
The recession and the energy crisis are keeping them from the fate they deserve, it is only because people are thinking about how to live, that they are still living.
650 crooks occupy the house of commons.
AND they keep telling us we must stop living beyond our means, on one hand we must “spend in the shops”, and on the other hand we “must pay the credit cards and loans off”
Not only are they crooks, but they are stupid crooks.
As long as “global warming” (AKA climate change: Climate disruption) can stagger along they are ok…..when people finally figure out that they have been taken for fools to bolster a political elite then they are in trouble.
Hopefully very soon.
We may end-up sequestering the CO2 in the house of commons.
No amount of money spent – wisely or not – is too great in this endeavor of promoting green technologies over dirty hydrocarbons. Why? Well, we’re saving the planet and humanity – or so says Gore et al.
Simply put, though, the hemorrhaging of cash intentionally drives up the delivery cost (and disposal cost in Longannet’s case) of the dirty hydrocarbons, allowing the inherently more expensive green (yet ostensibly Nature friendly) technologies to seem appealing – cost wise anyways (technology be damned). As heavily-regulated entities, utilities are both forced by regulation and compelled by subsidies to participate in the green technology silliness. However, the regulators know full well (because they approve the assessment of surcharges and control the disbursement of grants) that the cost is borne overwhelmingly by the ratepayer and taxpayer (a/k/a you and I), respectively.
Longannet is yet one more example of the green and noble socialists remaining co-dependent on the dirty and greedy capitalists in a bizarre yet symbiotic relationship. In other words, “We are the 99% – except when the swell-ness of sustainability beckons and we become the 1% eco-elites.” The only other instance in which I’ve witnessed such rampant, unabashed, intellectually-driven ignorance has been within the political correctness movement – another wonderfully successful chapter in the deliberate social manipulation of humanity on a global scale.
So unlimited money is the reason??
All they need is just one Unicorn that can crap out gold bricks.
Shouldn’t be that hard to find.
Copenhagen, 2009, Charlie’s Bar.
Discussion with a geologist working for an oil outfit. They love the idea of cheap (free?) co2. And very unlikely that it will stay put. Good idea to put a molecule (one carbon, two oxygen atoms) out of commission?
Was sidetracked with issue of Gore and his “millions of degrees” remark. (He thought that Gore was “one of the good guys.”) No longer the case.
Proposal:
Mr Huhne and Mr Fox to Afghanistan outpost, on their own. They could send us a postcard. We could decide not to read it. Better to send the Taliban a thank you note.
Sorry, but Huhne, Fox, Cameron, Clegg, Obama, Holdren and all the rest give me nausea. All respect for the people fighting and dying in Afghanistan. Utter contempt for these political pygmies.
The sooner The Huhnatic gets booted out, the better. Come on, CPS, it’s high time to finger him – good and proper!
If technical and economic hurdles can be overcome, my bicycle can fly — with a pig in the passenger seat. Staying dry even in the rain. And warm.
The utterly delusional character of these silly folks becomes more obvious by the day.
Smokey says:
October 19, 2011 at 2:52 pm
“Don’t worry, UK, the U.S. has committed U.S. taxpayers to bail you out:
http://dailybail.com/home/holy-bailout-federal-reserve-now-backstopping-75-trillion-of.html
This is actually very serious business because of leverage. International investment banking looks great when times are good. Then when times are bad it wipes out the domestic bank that owns it. The US government should never have let the domestic banks engage in international banking.
Now the domestic banks are trying to shift the risk to the FDIC. Unfortunately this could bankrupt the US financial system overnight if the EU defaults. If you think 10% unemployment is bad, think again. Without credit most business cannot operate. Bankruptcy wipes out the small businessman and depression follows. The only survivors are the big guys who mop up the crumbs for pennies on the dollar, hoping that one day the good times will return.
“Britain has at least 900 years of coal resources and unquantified shale gas.”
Not if the EU and UK government has anything to do with it. Coal runs out in 2015 according to the EU, and you must shut down your power stations.
Leave coal in the ground? Is it not known to the Greens that coal leaches toxic hydrocarbons into the surrounding (non-coal) earth, slowly poisoning wells and contaminational all groundwater? It is full of evil chemicals and heavy metals!
We have to get rid of it! Make them dig it up and BURN it to prevent water contamination of the Oglalla Aquifer! It is pure poison and surely we have a responsiblity to Mother Earth get rid of this waste, this evil underlay that threatens the very existence of a drinkable water supply.
Declare all coal deposits a threat to humanity. Pound the drums! Call the people to arms! Bring shovels and picks!
We have to clean up these hydrocarbon-laced filthy deposits before they CATCH FIRE! You know, coal is combustible and it is just lying there! Sometimes it catches on fire all by itself! Whole countries could go up in an uncontrolled conflagration of coal! We must dig it up and pump it into the sea, or perhaps dump it all in a deep ocean trench. We just gots to do something and it is going to be expensive, but we have to do it for the children! Think of the children! Do you want your children living in a land that has contaminated earth right under their houses, off-gassing evil methane and oily, sticky substances leaving behind God-knows-how-high concentrations of contaminated carbon?
Slowly but surely, day by day, you are being poisoned by underground COAL! We all gots to do something…..
/over-sarc
“If there was a completely unlimited resource then we may have been able to surmount the technical problems at Longannet,” Mr. Huhne said.
It amazes me how someone like Mr. Huhne can enunciate so clearly, with their tongue that far in their cheek??!!
On noes! No CCS? Oh my heart it doth bleed. And what does the BBC do? Does it consult an honest to goodness scientist? No. It immediately runs to rabid AGW activist organisations WWF and FoE for doom quotes. Just like a fly to excrement…
If there were an infinite resource, then we would have money to burn instead of gas, and that would put it back to square 1. Tis a futile gesture however, pumping gas underground, and expecting it to stay there.
Before you know it, if the gas was down there, someone would pipe it back up and sell it.
“If there was a completely unlimited resource…”
There was, but then global warming shrunk it.
Disko Troop says:
October 19, 2011 at 2:07 pm
But, the brain cell will not let them go so far as to admit it..
Much as a housefly cannot escape from something approaching from two sides simultaneously. Kind of like walking and chewing gum a the same time. The pols cant sh*t and wind thier watch.
“If technical and economic hurdles can be overcome (enter appropriate ‘green’ technology) has the potential to help reduce emissions at thousands of coal power stations around the world.”
Can someone pay me $1 for every arts major green freak who thinks a technological breakthrough is just a press release away? It all seems so easy. Reversing (perceived) climate change…more efficient PV panels…electric cars everywhere…no more third world countries…Just a few “technical and economic hurdles” to overcome; specifically we don’t have the knowledge and without the knowledge, no amount of money thrown at the project will make any difference. Clowns!
Putting the climate debate, and thus need for mitigation aside, there are few if any scientific agencies out there, government or otherwise, who model carbon mitigation as being cheaper without CCS. IEA, IPCC, EU, EPRI, US DoE, Stern, Garnaut, Natural Resources Canada, China NDRC, WRI, RITE…the list goes on. Furthermore, there are few if any technical challenges, only regulatory challenges. In comparison to the ‘technical problems’ at Longannet, Statoil has been running a commercially viable 160km subsea CO2 pipeline for several years at Snohvit. By referencing technical challenges Huhne has diverted attention away from the fact that the only thing holding back Longannet is money, not science. Granted, CCS is more expensive than coal without it because CCS does cost money, and without any regulatory drivers it is a poor investment; just like wind, just like solar, just like anything but dirty coal. So go ahead and celebrate the demise of CCS in the UK because its unpopular to spend the money on the technology, but unless the government decides to abandon carbon mitigation entirely, prepare to pay even more money for less results with renewables.
The UK and indeed the EU as a whole is in deep financial trouble caused in large part by its insane fixation on the eco green CAGW fraud. Massively damaging red tape and rules and regulations, the insane and completely useless jihad against a harmless trace gas known as CO2. Future historians will wonder at the nature of the CAGW nightmare and how with Europe collapsing the MSM failed to highlight the root causes of the economic collapse.
At some point there will be an inquiry into the cost of the CAGW fraud and what part it played in the collapse of the West as the supreme economic and industrial bloc. The MSM has not even started to investigate the reasons behind the collapse, who made the mistakes and who got rich off the back of the fraud of the modern age. The question that is not being asked is this, ‘how much has the CAGW fraud actually cost the West in real terms, in terms of GDP and by how much has the CAGW fraud affected growth?
At what point will these questions be asked and who will ask them? What is certain is that the political are 100% responsible for the imposition of the CAGW fraud backed up by a stooge MSM who have spread the green nightmare.
Wouldn’t unlimited money be worthless? GK
Steve from Rockwood says:
“At least the BBC was honest enough to call it a scheme.”
BennetT,
“Or does “scheme” have a more positive definition in the UK than here in the US?”
—————————————————————————
In Britain a “scheme” can be positive or negative or neutral – in other words synonymous with “plan” rather than “plot”.
However, if someone is “scheming” (verb or adjective) or a “schemer”, it is invariably negative.
And no, it doesn’t make much sense but just seems to have evolved that way.
A billion dollars for 1/10,000 of a degree?
I did some number crunching on this issue since in Alberta, Canada, they still want to spend about a billion dollars on one carbon capture project. At the present time, humans emit about 90 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every DAY. I DO NOT believe this to be the case, however let us assume there will be the IPCC average number of 3.000 degrees C increase in temperature due to our emissions if we do nothing. So if a billion dollars is spent to capture 1 million tons a YEAR, this amounts to a fraction of 1 in 32,850. So if nothing is done, let us assume the temperature will presumably go up 3.0000 degrees C, but if a billion dollars is spent, the temperature would go up by 2.9999 degrees. Or to put in another way, if we take the temperature of 10,000 cities now and then again in 100 years from now, 9,999 cities will have the same temperature and one city will be 1 degree C colder if a billion dollars is spent.
From the UK’s Martin Lewes, a very popular a financial wizard…
Solar panels are popping up everywhere but we’ve heard strong industry rumours (no gurantees) the rules may soon change, slashing the potential gain for newbies.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/latesttip/#solar
It was only a matter of time.
Yes. It means “project” — e.g., “the ground-nut scheme.” They’d have called their A-bomb project “The Manhattan Scheme.”
ferd berple says:
October 19, 2011 at 7:03 pm
“Britain has at least 900 years of coal resources and unquantified shale gas.”
“Not if the EU and UK government has anything to do with it. Coal runs out in 2015 according to the EU, and you must shut down your power stations.”
This is the same EU that has not had it’s accounts signed off by the auditors for 16 years due to “irregularities”. The same EU that brought in the euro and is spending our money to stop it’s inevitable demise. The same EU that insists we buy petrol in litres, food in grams and prosecutes anyone who does not comply. The same EU that forced us to uphold the Human Rights Act so rapists, murderers and career criminals cannot be deported.
People in the UK are heartily sick of the EU and the sooner we leave the better.
Ferd, I am pleased that someone on the other side of the Atlantic sees through EU propaganda, I just wish our government would.
You know what I would like to see? How about one of these plant managers or some gutsy politician call the bluff of the eco-zealots and say something like this:
Mac the Knife says:
October 19, 2011 at 7:37 pm
It amazes me how someone like Mr. Huhne can enunciate so clearly, with their tongue that far in their cheek??!!
Or his head up his …