From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
SEPTEMBER 20, 2021
By Paul Homewood
The GWPF calls for suspension of climate policies:
The GWPF has consistently warned that Britain’s unilateral climate policies under both Labour and Conservative administrations were creating an insecure and expensive energy sector that would ultimately fail due to consumer costs and collapsing security of supply.
These warnings are now fully vindicated. Over-reliance on renewables and interconnectors and a failure to maintain a diverse portfolio of energy supply and electricity generation has resulted in a fragile, weather-dependent British system that is critically vulnerable to pan-European low wind conditions, interconnector failure, and high regional gas prices.
Income support subsidies to renewable energy investors currently total about £10 billion a year, and are still rising, while grid management costs have increased six-fold (to just under £2 billion a year) since the early 2000s when renewables were first introduced in significant quantities.
In spite of this large and growing cost burden, renewables do not protect the consumer effectively against fluctuations in gas prices, since wind and solar are both critically reliant on gas to guarantee security of supply. The UK’s apparent diversity of supply is an illusion.
The current energy cost and supply crisis is the result of decades of ill-considered climate policy which has prioritised costly emissions reductions technologies while neglecting the consumer interest, security of supply and macro-economic impact.
The severity of the current crisis merits emergency measures, not only to protect consumers and the economy, but also to avoid the crisis from turning into social disaster as winter approaches.
The GWPF is calling on the Government to:
1. Suspend all green levies on energy bills, funding subsidies temporarily out of taxation, but acting firmly to cancel these subsidies in the near term.
2. Cancel constraint payments, and compel wind and solar generators to pay for their own balancing costs, thus incentivising them to self-dispatch only when economic.
3. Remove all fiscal and other disincentives to oil and gas exploration, including shale gas, to increase domestic production levels.
4. Suspend carbon taxation on coal and gas generation in order to provide consumer relief and ensure security of supply.
5. Re-open recently closed gas storage facilities and support new storage projects.
6. Suspend all further policy initiatives directed towards the Net Zero target, including the Carbon Budgets, the heat pump targets, and the overly ambitious timetable for the ban on petrol and diesel engines, until the UK energy sector has been stabilised.
7. Facilitate the acceleration of building and deploying Small Modular Reactors for both electricity and heat.
Dr Benny Peiser, GWPF director, said:
Britain’s boasts of low carbon leadership are collapsing in humiliation. Our foolish and badly engineered green policies show the world that we have nothing to offer, except a grim warning. The Prime Minister should cancel COP26 and focus on saving Britain from a deepening energy crisis.”
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under both Labour and Conservative administrations
Britain does not have “administrations” , it has governments, eg. “a Conservative government.”
In general the civil service ( bureaucracy ) remains in place. Just the ministers change with a new government.
Watch “Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister” for a fun, but all too true look at how that works.
The calm still windless and sunless air is full of the sound of chickens coming home to roost…
…Except Mr Fox has been in the hen house again…
Better start gathering firewood now before it becomes the next hot commodity or gets taxed. If you can’t find any, high rise cladding will do.
They have already come for the firewood. On May day this year it became illegal to sell unseasoned firewood (water content above 20%) in quantities normal for domestic use in England. They also banned house coal. The briquette price has risen by a quarter, and the only change is that it has now been certified to be smokeless under the “ready to burn” scheme. The formulation remains the same. The original briquettes (same as the new ones, but without the paperwork) remain available in Scotland and Wales.
Why can’t they do this via Zoom or similar? We’d all love to go on junket but really, in this day and age, what’s wrong with internet based conferences?
I think I read somewhere that there will be 30000 delegates! Think of the carbon footprint! Bloody hypocrites!
Peter
30,000 is the anticipated number of attendees. Only around 4000 are actually involved in the negotiations. So yes hypocrites indeed!
If only! I constantly write to my two local Tory MPs telling them exactly this, all backed up by evidence, that green policies are suicide and that climate change, such as there is, is beneficial.
They never listen!
No worries, under Cameron they catalogued every diesel generator in the country in case blackouts.
PR China invented a new way to please the COPs: stop the 20 coal plants it is building ABROAD. Pakistan for one is not happy: https://www.dawn.com/news/1647826/chinas-no-to-coal-plants-raises-questions-about-50bn-investment
From The Spectator:
How the Tories have fuelled Britain’s energy crisis
Britain is caught in an energy crisis of the government’s own making. It is true that gas prices have spiked all over the world – but we’re suffering more than most. Energy suppliers are going out of business, thanks to the government’s price cap. Even fertiliser companies are going bust, with serious knock-on effects for the food industry: the British Meat Processors Association says shortages could hit within a fortnight.
The trigger for this crisis has been the sudden surge in demand for gas as the global economy recovers from the Covid lockdowns. Gas prices have doubled in the United States, for example. In Britain, however, prices are five times higher. Why? Because America exploited fracking technology and capitalised on its huge inland gas reserves. Britain passed up the fracking opportunity, and we’re living with the consequences.
While the government is right to phase out the burning of coal, it is also running down our gas infrastructure without providing a viable alternative. Every country has gas reserves in the event of widespread shortages. France has 14 weeks’ worth, Germany has eight weeks, Italy has 11 weeks, while Britain has just four days. That is virtually no buffer at all when a supply crisis strikes.
Britain presents itself as a great example to other nations when it comes to handling energy policy and tackling climate change. Indeed, Boris Johnson has spent this week in New York asking why so few countries have followed Britain in making a legally binding commitment to hit net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The polite answer is that countries also have a duty to secure affordable energy for their citizens. When the COP26 summit convenes in Glasgow in a few weeks’ time, Britain could be in the middle of an energy crisis. The UK government might have to bail out almost-bankrupt fossil-fuel companies in a desperate attempt to keep the lights on. That would hardly be a great advertisement to the world.
Much as the government would love to be able to deliver secure energy supplies and low prices in tandem with zero carbon emissions, the technology simply does not yet exist to make it possible. Of course it is right to try to reduce emissions to zero if we can. However, energy security and economic growth should be the first priorities. As things stand, they are treated as an afterthought. We have caught a glimpse of the results this week. The Prime Minister has high hopes for the COP26 summit but he should be prepared for other countries to see, in his energy policy, an example of what not to do.
Frankly I think it’s going to take more than just Britain having that supply failing and the EU is likely to follow. At some point the peasants will really revolt and a bit of common sense will .emerge because there is no alternative. If only there was a Thatcher out there now.