The Energy Crisis Commission is Just Another Green Blob Front

From THE DAILY SCEPTIC

by Ben Pile

Another day, another green report. This time, in response to rising energy prices, a report has been published by something calling itself the Energy Crisis Commission. But the report flies in the face of sound economics when it tries to address the hardships faced by millions of individuals and businesses due to shy-high energy prices by calling for “a clear strategy for shifting away from fossil fuels, particularly gas”. Well, guess what: that’s because the “Commission” is just another bog-standard Green Blob front! Who could have guessed?

“A new report out today from the Energy Crisis Commission shows energy experts are backing the Labour Government’s mission for Clean Power by 2030”, tweeted Ed Milliband. Well, of course they do. For when one visits the Commission’s website, it is soon revealed that, “The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit [ECIU] is providing the secretariat for the Commission.” The ECIU is a well-connected but dysfunctional fake civil society organisation, which is wholly funded by green philanthropic outfits the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and the adjacent Meliore Foundation.

I feel that I write a lot about organisations that are wholly or mostly funded by the ECF, and it often feels that this is repetitive. But that is because most organisations active in the climate domain in the U.K. are funded by the ECF directly, or by one of the half dozen or so of the ECF’s grantor philanthropic foundations. The ECF is opaque about its sources of cash and its grantees, but it appears to be a green money-go-round – the Guardian would call it “dark money” – that puts distance between financial interests and corporate lobbying outfits styled as “civil society organisations”. What is remarkable is how many organisations that are seemingly distinct and “independent” are in fact operated under the strategic direction of their funders, whom they share accommodation with. The ECIU and the ECF are at the same “SE1 1LB” address of a virtual serviced offices – their footprints as entities being as vaporous as their output.

These aren’t real organisations; they are ghosts summoned by the will of money and ideology in some nebulous physical form to do their malign work before fading away. Green organisations – ECF grantees – have long campaigned for higher energy prices, and long attempted to distort the public discussion about how and why prices are going up, despite their false promises that renewables will be cheaper.

And so it is that the commission explains: “We consider this crisis to have started in August/September 2021, when gas prices started to rise, however the key tipping point for record prices was in February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine.” And I feel I am repeating myself, again, when I point out that the commission’s lazy analysis is false.

Energy traders had told me long before the Summer of 2021 that unusual price movements were signalling very high future prices. By Autumn 2021, European natural gas spot prices had reached nearly €100/MWh, way above the historical average of about €18. The immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion prompted a small spike to about €119, followed by a summer spike up to €240, which is when the ECF-funded Carbon Brief (also located at the phantom “SE1 1LB”) produced its “wind power is nine times cheaper than gas” claim. That is to say that the most significant rise occurs before the outbreak of war. This is shown more clearly when prices are viewed on a chart with a logarithmic axis, which better shows relative growth than a chart with a linear vertical axis.

In the 22 months between the slump in demand in May 2020, to the month following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, EU natural gas prices rose a staggering 2,753% – approximately 16% per month. Over the next five months to the August 2022 peak, the price rose a further 68%, at approximately equivalent to 11% per month. The evidence might just as well be made to show the converse of the commission’s claim: that the invasion in fact caused gas prices to collapse. The opposite conclusion is only obtained by misreading the linear chart, which appears to show a peak in the months following the invasion – a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. The far more significant features of the price signal occurred before the event – though Russian reduction of supply and EU sanctions following the invasion undoubtedly tightened supply and pushed prices up further.

The price then fell precipitously over the months to May 2023. Speculation may have driven some of this volatility, but the biggest elephant in the room causing the big splash of high prices in 2022 was lockdowns, or more precisely recovery from lockdowns, including the extraordinary money-printing that had financed economic torpor. Gas production capacity had been slashed during this period, and recovery put pressures on supplies. Russia is largely a scapegoat for the catastrophic impact of Western climate and Covid policy failures.

A Green Blob outfit paying Potemkin commissions to write sympathetic reports about the problem of energy price rises strikes me as analogous to a drug cartel financing rehab centres. One only need to imagine the complaints from the Green Blob if it had turned out to be a “commission” funded by gas companies which found that the solution to energy price rises was to invest more in gas production. But the difference is that increasing gas production would at least close the gap between supply and demand, and therefore lower price. Histrionics from greens typically frame the problem of “interested parties” putting partial advice into the public sphere. But high prices benefit producers, whereas lower prices serve consumers. Ironically, greens and oil tycoons share interests here.

So, who are these commissioners who lack any grasp of basic economics, claiming to speak for the poor? Two of the panel, former MP David Laws and Dhara Vyas, hail from Energy U.K. – the industry lobbying outfit that the new Chief Executive of the Climate Change Committee, Emma Pinchbeck has recently slithered from. Blob. Louise Hellem is Chief Economist at the Remain-fanatic, pro-lockdown Confederation of British Industry. Blob. Professor of Energy Policy at UCL, Jim Watson boasts many roles in advising Parliament, governments and intergovernmental agencies on energy security and emissions reduction among other things. Blob. These people have produced precisely the report you would expect them to. But they were joined by Gillian Cooper,  Executive Director of Partnerships and Advocacy at Citizens Advice, and Adam Scorer, Chief Executive at National Energy Action (NEA), the “national charity working to end fuel poverty”. These are organisations who we would expect to put the interests of their clients before lofty agendas.

Not so, apparently. “We must pursue the twin aims of clean heat and warm homes in lockstep,” said Scorer on X. And once again, this virtue signalling arrives with no evidence of having been tested by basic arithmetic. Despite NEA being supported by countless energy companies, charities and local and national governments, U.K. domestic energy prices have tripled thanks to green policies – and foreign and Covid policies, too – without comment from NEA.

It would seem that the British Establishment, of which Citizens Advice and NEA are a part, is as good as the ECF at spawning off-the-shelf blob-fronts, populated by individuals who are naturally happier occupying such positions than challenging the Establishment they are part of. Millions of people are facing cold and rising bills this winter, and the “Citizens Advice” to Government is apparently to close down more oil and gas fields and create more weather-dependent renewables without regard for reality.

“Successive governments had the chance to lower the U.K.’s dependence on fossil fuels and avoid some of the worst of these impacts,” says the report. But that is simply false Green Blob mythology. As has been explained in previous posts, retrofitting houses with insulation and other energy efficiency measures capable of significantly reducing energy usage are simply not cost-effective from the consumer’s point of view. Even at today’s high energy prices, they would never “pay for themselves” in any reasonable time frame. And there are simply no technologies that could provide so-called “clean heat” to consumers at grid scale in the event of a dark and windless day or week. The commission is basing its claims on fantasies.

And what of the hapless consumer? He is ensnared by the phantom institutions that represent the green ideology-addled British Establishment rather than his own interests while being fed the story of that Russia is to blame for his predicament. The U.K. could be producing its own gas and exporting plenty too, and an independent commission of energy experts could be pointing this out. But that possibility has been ruled inadmissible by the flood of phantom ‘civil society’ organisations that surround Westminster. The phantom “Commission”, convened by that swarm of spectres, adds to the chorus. At some point the public is going to discover for itself that U.K. energy and climate policy is far worse than any climate change, and that its interests have been harmed more by the British establishment than by Russia. That experience is likely to be very painful.