UK Manufacturers Sound The Alarm Over Rising Energy Costs
Britain will struggle to “keep the lights on” unless the Government changes its green energy policies, the former environment secretary will warn this week. Owen Paterson will say that the Government’s plan to slash carbon emissions and rely more heavily on wind farms and other renewable energy sources is fatally flawed. He will argue that the 2008 Climate Change Act, which ties Britain into stringent targets to reduce the use of fossil fuels, should be suspended until other countries agree to take similar measures. If they refuse, the legislation should be scrapped altogether, he will say. Mr Paterson will deliver the lecture at the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank set up by Lord Lawson of Blaby, a climate-change sceptic and former chancellor in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet. –Christopher Hope, The Sunday Telegraph, 12 October 2013
It is safe to predict that no speech made by a British politician this week will be more surprising or significant than that to be delivered by Owen Paterson, a senior Conservative, who was sacked from the Cabinet last July for being too good at his job. –Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 12 October 2014
The high cost of energy could drive companies out of the UK, according to the EEF, the manufacturers’ organisation. The EEF claims that the projected 50 per cent rise in electricity prices by 2020 would harm British manufacturing. The warning follows research from the EEF which shows that rising energy costs would lead to a quarter of manufacturers considering investment overseas. —Yorkshire Post, 13 October 2014
The very idea that an advanced economy such as ours faces an energy crisis within the next few years should attract the most urgent attention of our political leaders. Yet we appear to be drifting into a situation of great seriousness because they are all wedded to unrealistic decarbonisation targets that none seems willing to revisit. Owen Paterson has begun a debate that cannot be shut down simply because it raises some difficult political questions. If this is not gripped now, then the next government, of whatever stripe, will need to explain to the country why they could have prevented the lights going out, but didn’t. –Editorial, The Sunday Telegraph, 12 October 2014
EU leaders face difficult negotiations to agree a package of climate change targets for 2030 at an end-of-October summit, with coal-reliant Poland leading objections, sources said on Friday. “The European Council will agree on the 2030 climate and energy policy framework for the European Union,” said the draft prepared for the bloc’s 28 member state leaders. But the question of “burden sharing” is central to actually closing a deal, a European source said, with sharp differences between those dependent on fossil fuels, such as Poland, compared with France and Britain which favour nuclear, and Germany which is looking towards renewables. Poland’s new prime minister, Ewa Kopacz, said earlier this month that her coal-reliant country would not rule out vetoing the high carbon cuts. —AFP, 10 October 2014
Forget QE, surely the precipitous oil price decline in the last couple of weeks will finally give the down-trodden European economy the big boost it needs. After three years of prices north of $100 a barrel, surely a big cut in Europe’s energy bill will provide a stimulus effect that Mario Draghi could only dream of? I’m afraid not. Why? Europe is overwhelmed by taxation, subsidy, over-capacity and green incentivisation plans that have conspired to make hydrocarbons a dirty and expensive source of energy. –Steve Sedgwick, City A.M., 7 October 2014
h/t to Benny Peiser and The GWPF
You can lie to the people about AGW and even the temperature but you can’t lie about fuel prices and access to energy when people are dying. I’ve read several predictions that the Northern Hemisphere is in for a brutally cold winter. France, Germany, and the UK have sold their souls to the green devil and are about to pay the price.
Not only that, there’s been more generating plants shut down than can now support a cold winter on the east coast of the US.
This could be a disaster in the making.
The CCA is a prime example of minority interest Westminster activists having way too much power in decision making that affects the majority by causing serious financial waste.
The Act alone is terrible, with commitments both unnecessary and unworkable. The fact that the majority of the Commons voted to go far and beyond anything that anyone else in Europe was willing to do, to make some kind of point in what is nothing more than a political dick measuring contest, without any consideration of the consequential damage based on little thought or consultation, and the fact that European governments shook their head in dismay at our pointless policy ‘lead’, is frankly reprehensible.
If this was any other policy, the relevant MPs would have been fired and shamed long ago for the damage it has done to the national infrastructure, the money it has wasted, and the lives it has cost. Political careers have been destroyed, and MPs imprisoned on the basis of far lesser errors.
Personally, i’d like to see us take a page out of the Indian government’s book and ban the likes of Greenpeace as a threat to the stability of the national economy. At least they understand there is a little bit more to them and their agenda than simply saving Whales.
When I wonder will we see the public declaration by a UK politician (of any party) that the idea that human – generated CO2 will cause a planetary disaster is absurd?
All we see for example are trivial variations in temperature and sea level – and the oceans are not turning to acid!
The IPCC was formed in 1988, and since that date nothing much has happened that can’t be attributed to the Earth going about its normal business. So who’s going to suggest scrapping the IPCC?
“So who’s going to suggest scrapping the IPCC?” The UN will never agree to letting anything go that gives them even a hint of control/power. The only way to neutralize them is to stop funding. The US is THE major contributor to the UN and I don’t know of any vote that lets the people control UN funding and the UN seems to be a sacred cow to the politicians. After all….who wouldn’t agree that the world needs to get along? Only a vote/mandate by the people will change anything.
And Germany continues to back down on “renewable” energy as the suicidal march back to the stone age slowly reverses its course:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/10/14/germany-desertec-idUKL6N0S535V20141014