The fatcat ecocrats exposed: Web of ‘green’ politicians, tycoons and power brokers who help each other benefit from billions raised on your bills
- Four of nine-person Climate Change Committee, official watchdog that dictates green energy policy, are, or were until recently, being paid by firms that benefit from committee decisions
Other industries would stand accused of damning conflicts of interest but when it comes to global warming, anything goes…
The Mail on Sunday today reveals the extraordinary web of political and financial interests creating dozens of eco-millionaires from green levies on household energy bills.
A three-month investigation shows that some of the most outspoken campaigners who demand that consumers pay the colossal price of shifting to renewable energy are also getting rich from their efforts.
Enquiries by this newspaper have revealed:
- Four of the nine-person Climate Change Committee, the official watchdog that dictates green energy policy, are, or were until very recently, being paid by firms that benefit from committee decisions.
- A new breed of lucrative green investment funds, which were set up to expand windfarm energy, are in practice a means of taking green levies paid by hard-pressed consumers and handing them to City investors and financiers.
- £3.8 billion of taxpayers’ money funds the new Green Investment Bank, set up by the Department of Business and Skills. One of its biggest deals involved energy giant SSE selling windfarms to one of the new green funds, Greencoat Wind. The Green Investment Bank’s chairman, Lord Smith of Kelvin, is also chairman of SSE. The bank says it ‘provided expertise’ to enable BIS to take a £50 million stake in Greencoat, which helped fund the SSE sale.
- The same bank’s chief executive, Shaun Kingsbury, is one of the UK’s highest-paid public sector employees. His £325,000 salary is more than twice the Prime Minister’s.
- Firms lobbying for renewables can virtually guarantee access to key Government policy-makers, because they are staffed by former very senior officials – a striking example of Whitehall’s ‘revolving door’.
Among the most astonishing features exposed by our investigation is the way in which vehement advocates for radical policies designed to curb global warming are making huge sums of money from their work. Here are some of the key figures among the new breed of fat-cat Ecocrats…
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Find a cash flow and plug in, supposedly said by Al Capone, seems to fit so many green schemes.
Inwardly we all know that the real solution is. The image of an irate crowd unable to bear the suffering of energy poverty turning their offices to warehouses comes to mind. Intellectual debate and political pressure have their limits.
Good to see the BBC has taken this up with alacrity /sarc.
Bit of a dichotomy for them, a chance to hammer the Tories but at the cost of demeaning their favourite “settled” meme.
As David Rose reported “Lord Oxburgh has undeclared directorships/advisory roles in green companies”.
Is this the same Lord Oxburgh who cleared the University of East Anglia (UEA – CRU) from scientific malpractice in the climategate scandal!
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/apr/14/oxburgh-uea-cleared-malpractice
some call it the revolving door, i call it crony capitalism:
13 Dec: NYT: Eric Lipton: New Obama Adviser Brings Corporate Ties
The defense contractor Northrop Grumman gave money to the left-leaning Center for American Progress, founded by John D. Podesta, as the nonprofit group at times bemoaned what it called the harmful impact of major reductions in Pentagon spending…
Pacific Gas and Electric sent in a donation as Mr. Podesta championed government incentives to promote solar energy and other renewable sources that the California company buys more of than nearly any other utility.
The pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly was also a donor because of what it said was the Center for American Progress’s advocacy for patients’ rights — and just as the debate heated up in Washington over potential cuts to the Medicare program that covers Lilly’s most profitable drugs…
But Mr. Podesta, who was paid $220,000 last year by the center and who last served as a registered lobbyist in 2006, also arrives at the White House after serving on the corporate boards of at least two companies with ties to the clean-energy industry, Equilibrium Capital of Portland, Ore., and Joule of Bedford, Mass. The future of both companies depends in part on environmental policies set by the government and heavily promoted by the White House…
Even before the White House officially confirmed his appointment, officials said that Mr. Podesta would not participate in the debate over the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline connecting Canada to the Gulf Coast. Mr. Podesta, with the support of clean energy groups, has been a steadfast opponent of the plan.
Joule, a company that has tried but failed to win federal grants to help turn its experimental carbon dioxide-to-ethanol concept into a commercial scale project, is betting its future on its ability to deliver alternatives to fossil fuel…
In his new role, expected to last perhaps a year, Mr. Podesta will work on issues including health care and climate change, which have been major issues at the Center for American Progress as well…
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/us/politics/new-obama-adviser-brings-corporate-ties.html?_r=0
Jan 2011: Reuters: Joule Elects Former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta to Board of Directors
We are thrilled to welcome John to the team, given his extensive experience within the US government and internationally as well,” said Bill Sims, President and CEO of Joule. “As a leading expert in technology policy and a known advocate for clean energy, John is an ideal champion for Joule, and we look forward to leveraging his insights as we progress towards international deployment.” …
“There is no question that clean energy innovation and adoption are among the top economic and security priorities for our nation, and it’s critical that we focus on breakthrough technologies, particularly for liquid fuels, that can sometimes fall through the legislative cracks,” said Mr. Podesta. “I have seen and heard many proposals by renewable energy companies, and can unequivocally say that Joule has a technology and a system unlike any other, with industrial viability and a clear path to market within the next several years. It’s an honor to join the board of a big-thinking category creator like Joule.”…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/18/idUS165340+18-Jan-2011+BW20110118
This is the total corruption of British politics. Freeloaders like Lord Deben and his best mate Yeo, who has lost the support of his constituent members so cannot stant for re-election as an MP, getting paid by both camps in the climate debate.
We will see the same thing with HS2, another multi-billion pound squander of taxpayer monies.
Where there is money to fiddle then corruption follows close behind.
The Sunday Mail has the 2nd largest circulation in the UK at 1.7 million. The main drama green paper the Guardian has the 2nd smallest circulation and it’s Sunday equivalents The Observer/ Independent have about 300.000 between them. The web sites have a similar ratio. It may not cause any instant revolutions in the UK but the grumbling ground swell is beginning to be heard. Politicians are choosing positions for the election in early 2015 and the newspapers have shown in the past that they can heavily influence elections. Anyone who writes off articles such as this as unimportant is seriously going against the past evidence. Rather like a sculptor chipping away at the granite, what appears over the next year will guide the electorate. The second largest circulation paper in the UK will test the water and The Sun, a Murdock rag will jump in when it sees the winning post in the distance. All power to David Rose. Accuracy and truth don’t matter one bit. If they did there would have been no CAGW scare in the first place.
the MSM will carry or refer to any NYT story when it suits an agenda, but no media picked up the Podesta story & none has so far picked up the David Rose/Mail story, & i doubt they ever will. any talk of corruption regarding CAGW is pretty much taboo, or confined to niche finance media. the public may get confused and switch off over the scientific debate, but they have no trouble understanding financial corruption, espcially when it involves politicians & their associates.
Nothing new here.
Ed Miliband’s Climate Change legislation which created the committee was drafted by a Greenp.ss minion (someone else may know if she was already known to Ed’s environmental lawyer wife) who has since been elevated to the House of Lords.
The committee itself was never going to include anything other than the drafter’s fellow travellers – jobs for the boys (and girls). No room at this inn for even the most balanced scepticism, far less for a Devil’s Advocate to question the claimed miracles, whether the amazing influence of man or the efficacy of the antidotes.
Because it has been drawn from this pool, all committee members, both from academia and industry, have always had their snouts deep in the trough of anti-carbon grants and subsidies. The Act gives these people the power to dictate government carbon management policies, so it’s no surprise that the turkeys have voted themselves extra rations and an even deeper trough. No matter how discredited the “science” behind Carbon Scientology, they are never going to vote for Christmas and abolish themselves as not fit for purpose.
The only caveat I have about the article is its treatment of SSE. It may be getting its share of the UK government’s “green” energy scams – what energy business can afford to turn down such opportunities, especially when taking part earns other credits (a knighthood here, a sinecure on a fancy committee there), while failing to do so enthusiastically (think clapping in North Korea!) can mean your card is marked when you look for support for other projects. But SSE makes a significant contribution to keeping the UK’s lights on, thanks to its coal-fired generating capacity. It has invested heavily to keep these on line, and would no doubt be doing more of the same if the carbon price floor hadn’t been invented to drive these units to closure before 2020.
dp says:
December 14, 2013 at 8:51 pm
If it weren’t for thousands of Brits dying each year because of high energy costs initiated by these crooked bastards this story would put a smile on my face. The monies they’ve received should be reclaimed and used to protect those survivors still exposed by the worst energy policies on the planet.
People outside the UK (and even some inside) may not be aware how many people are dying of cold in energy poverty in UK. Literally thousands each winter month, in March 2013 5000 (yes five thousand) people died of cold in ‘first world’ UK. Due to energy policies geared to enrich the politicians rather than provide energy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/elderhealth/9959856/Its-the-cold-not-global-warming-that-we-should-be-worried-about.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9078273/Hypothermia-deaths-double-over-five-years.html
Margaret Hardman says:
December 14, 2013 at 10:55 pm
Tim, they won’t. It’s meaningless to most people. You might think it’s important but the Mail’s core readership won’t care. Look at their website to see what the Mail really thinks. Not blaming the messenger, but in the world of Littlejohn, huff and puff today, then move on.
People are starting to care Margaret – you may not – but they do when their grandparents are the ones in energy poverty. Not only that but the decisions on energy generation made by the UK politicians guided by their wallets, has even been flagged by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) as now affecting family budgets of the middle class (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25330582 ). The public are starting to get upset that their household costs are being increased to pay for subsidies to green ‘schemes’ that seem to be vehicles to pass money to politicians, their families, friends or supporters. This upset will increase if as the power companies are warning there could be power cuts this winter or next due to lack of power generation capacity. The pressure is starting to have some effect Tim Yeo started trying to be less obvious http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25330582 about things but nevertheless his local Conservative party have now deselected him so he will not be standing as a Conservative MP in the next election.
More importantly many of them have been cleared of having any conflict of interest – probably the most damning indictment of our current parliamentary system in the UK.
The UN IPCC is the greatest threat to democracy we have faced since the darkest days of the 2nd world war and of the communist era. As many have observed and are aware AGW is the UN approach to creating a global government – but that cannot be elected and will depend on the input and lobbying of ‘representative groups’. The truth is this all goes far wider than the green lobbies, and the fear campaign to indoctrinate children in schools to have unswerving belief in AGW. It is the loss or survival of democracy as we know it, or in some cases think we know it.
I’m going to digress for a moment to try and explain to our cousins across the pond (who I have the greatest affection for after living in Texas some years ago) why a Watergate type scandal over people who appear to be green troughers making legislation, as some have suggested may happen, is definitely not going to make it to the surface in the UK.
Do a google search and have a look at reports on Dr. David Kelley who was a whistleblower over reports of WMD in Iraq and the curious circumstances surrounding his apparent suicide. See how the inquiry into the lead up to the Iraq war and whether of not Blair misled Parliament is completely stalled after some years and now seems unlikely to ever see the light of day. (Blair seems t be blocking release of papers). They will give you a slight inkling of the problems that exist in our political circles.
Every elected representative has to swear an oath before a magistrate that they will honestly and faithfully serve HM the Queen and the (best interests) of the people who elected them before they can take office. At the same time each of them who represents a political party is required by the party to undertake to abide by the policy decisions of their party – and that applies regardless of the interests of the Queen or their electorate or their own views. I’ve always believed that to be a fundamental contradiction and an immediate breach of the office-taking oath. But that is the British political establishment and how it works …….
For those in the USA who don’t understand how the UK is now governed – we are now effectively a province of the EU but with infinitely less powers than a state legislature in the USA. Britain is now always referred to as a ‘Member State’ as the status of being a ‘Nation State’ no longer exists in the eyes of the EU.
Circa 85 – 90% of our legislation is now dictated to us by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels ( the EU) with No Democratic input or accountability. The European parliament , which is elected, does Not make legislation, all it can do is delay or occasionally manage to halt the Eurocrats edicts. ( As an aside given that Obama determinedly wants Britain to remain governed by the EU . I wonder how many of you in the USA would be happy with a situation where the people you elect are unable to make laws for you but only able to implement laws issued by an unelected pan-american body?).
To go full circle and to understand the form of a global government created on the back of AGW you should look at the EU, how it is structured and how anti-democratic it is. Read some of the euro-sceptic analysis of it. I believe that that EU is a dry-run for UN plans to create an unelected, anti-democratic global government. As the Eurocrats have repeatedly made clear – you can’t trust the electorate to make the ‘right’ decisions ……. A bit like climate activists ….and the green lobbies.
Apologies for the length.
As a result of that British politicians now have very few responsibilities or areas they can make laws over – pretty much restricted nowadays to education, health service and crime and policing within EU frameworks – which means they have little to occupy their minds and time other than to rubber- stamp EU diktats into UK law and consider how best to ensure thei own financial success in life.
Democracy is thrown away whilst pretending to the electorate that it still exists and has meaningful effect.
It is fascinating that the only defense of the actions of these corrupt insiders is that no one will care.
How much was it that “deniers” are supposed to be paid by “Big Fossil Fuels”?
Shall look forward to this article getting high exposure on all BBC news bulletins this week.
Come on then Margaret, tell us what facts David Rose has got wrong. I’d love to know.
Thermageddonists such as yourself love to scream about “fossil fuel funded deni*rs”, but then tell us that green troughing “doesn’t matter”. In my book, that smacks of double standards.
Greenies on the take. Who’d a thunk it?
Old England-Daniel Hannan’s new book Inventing Freedom makes the point well on the uniqueness of the Anglosphere. The UK is losing what is precious to EU bureaucrats. In the US it is occurring via regional compacts surrounding our metro areas, but it is mostly out of sight.
This entire process from regional equity to green energy cronyism and digital learning cronyism are all examples of deliberately fostering the nexus between politically directed capital [either taxes or new public debt] and politically connected individuals and institutions. These conflicts of interest are deliberately cultivated so that decision-makers are on the financial ride of their lives with no genuine risk to their own capital and upside courtesy of the taxpayers.
It all ties together under what the OECD and the new economics foundation are calling The Great Transition. I have written about it after downloading all of the troubling documents developed over last decade. But I have also taken the phrase back to Kenneth Boulding’s 1962 book of the same name. What we are dealing with is using Cronyism to push us all towards global redistribution with an oligarchy that believes it gets to plan and direct going forward.
It cannot work as planned, and the sooner the disparate pieces like Regionalism and Smart Cities and education and CAGW are all widely acknowledged as being part of a broader political scheme, the safer we and our futures will be. At its core the only science that is really being pursued is psychology and sociology and political science. Which is why we keep hearing about the consensus as if this was an anthropology experiment.
There is more from David Rose here
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2523758/MPs-Lords-lobbyists-advise-Ministers-eco-policies–cash-in.html
published late 14 December.
“The great green con: MPs, Lords and lobbyists who advise Ministers on eco policies… then cash in
Tim Yeo, chairman of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, has received well over £400,000 from green energy firms since 2009
Maf Smith, deputy chief executive of lobby Renewable UK, previously worked at Department of Energy and Climate Change on changes to renewable subsidies enshrined in Energy Bill”
Worth reading the whole article.
Margaret Hardman says: December 15, 2013 at 1:21 am
Who would you want treating you for a stomach ulcer? Someone who had proved, despite the consensus, that it was caused by H. pylori or the followers of that consensus who assured you it was caused by ‘stress’?
See, we can all play that game but it makes no difference to the facts exposed by David Rose.
The “Save The Planet” crowd is dirty? Nawww….
Old England says: As an aside given that Obama determinedly wants Britain to remain governed by the EU . I wonder how many of you in the USA would be happy with a situation where the people you elect are unable to make laws for you but only able to implement laws issued by an unelected pan-american body?
========================
We have a similar situation with the increase in ‘executive orders’ by the American President that effectively implement ‘laws’ without the input of the American Congress or the ‘check’ of the American Courts. It’s dictatorship in all but name.
It’s very brave of you to risk a defamation suit by posting that headline.
Mr Cameron should be made to explain these ‘coincidental’ links.
I’m really shocked at the extent of the hubris displayed when companies openly tell investors that 50-60% of the companies revenue stream is from taxpayer subsidies and that the prospect of increased dividend and returns are based on the Government driving up energy prices.
“TRIG said its income was ‘stable’ because of Government policies: tariffs and levies will account for a staggering 63 per cent of its revenue. Longer-term, the prospectus added, investors will also benefit from the rocketing price of electricity, which it thinks will rise by 60 per cent over the next 20 years.”
“According to Barclays, investors could expect an extremely attractive annual 9.1 per cent rate of return, even after paying all fees. This was because ‘half of revenue comes from largely fixed index-linked Government incentives’ – in other words, levies added to bills.”
I’m having trouble dealing with the underlying idea that Government ‘incentives’ (meaning subsidies to make an otherwise unprofitable industry profitable – VERY profitable it would appear) are going to continue essentially forever. This really looks to me like a kind of ponzi scheme, surely the people investing in this understand that the subsidies can’t reasonably be expected to continue forever and, when they stop, their ‘investment’ will be worthless?
Margaret Hardman says:
December 14, 2013 at 8:47 pm
‘…. No, have nothing substantive to say …’
No, you never do. Get back under the bridge.
I can’t find an estimate of how much global warming reduction created by the UK’s green energy revolution and how many pounds/degree the average consumer pays. I can find all kinds of warm, fuzzy save the earth links, but I can’t find any of the green energy supporters taking credit for any actual (or calculated) global temperature reductions. Since they do not, their polices are very likely producing miniscule results.