GWPF Newsletter: 48,000 Brits Dead After Worst Winter In 42 Years

Cost Of Green Subsidies Rises To £11.3 Billion

In this newsletter:

1) 48,000 Brits Dead After Worst Winter In 42 Years
Hayley Coyle, Daily Star, 7 April 2018
 
2) Harry Wilkinson: Energy Prices Must Fall To Cut Deaths In The Cold
The Conservative Woman, 9 March 2018 

 
3) UK Energy Poverty: Cost Of Green Subsidies Rises To £11.3 Billion
Paul Homewood, Not A Lot Of People Know That, 7 April 2018 
 
4) Solar Farms Receive More Cash From Green Subsidies Than Selling The Energy They Produce
Colin Fernandez, Daily Mail, 9 April 2018 
 
5) Christopher Booker: The UK Will Spend Trillions To Reduce C02 Emissions While The Real Offenders Do Little
The Sunday Telegraph, 8 April 2018 
 
6) John Constable: Coal And Oil Prevented US Blackouts This Winter
GWPF Energy, 8 April 2018 

Full details:

1) 48,000 Brits Dead After Worst Winter In 42 Years
Hayley Coyle, Daily Star, 7 April 2018

The UK is being hit by its worst winter death toll in 42 years. It is estimated that 20,275 Brits more than average died between December and March.

An additional 2,000 deaths more than average were expected due to cold conditions between March 23 and 31, this winter’s average death rates show.

Campaigners have called the deaths a “national tragedy” as cold weather victims fatalities could be prevented – especially in the elderly.

According to the Office of National Statistics, one in 10 cold weather deaths are among under-65s, one in 10 among 65-75s and eight in 10 among over-75s.

The Department of Health also said cold conditions worsen winter killers including flu, chest diseases, heart attacks, strokes and dementia.

It means this winter is set to total at least 48,000 deaths due to cold weather – which works out at an average of one death every three and a half minutes.

National Federation of Occupational Pensioners chief executive Malcolm Booth said:

“It’s shocking and disturbing that winter’s excess deaths look like exceeding 40,000.“It’s a national tragedy, with so many families affected.

“Many who die are senior citizens. The elderly should make sure they eat hot meals, dress warmly and, if unable to heat your whole home, heat one room spend your time there.”

Department of Health chief medical officer Professor Dame Sally Davies, said:

“Cold-related deaths represent the biggest weather-related source of mortality.

“There are too many avoidable deaths each winter, primarily due to heart and lung conditions from cold temperatures.”

Full post

Study: Cold kills 20 times more people than heat

Cold weather is 20 times as deadly as hot weather, and it's not the extreme low or high temperatures that cause the most deaths, according to a study published in 2015. The study — published in the British journal The Lancet — analyzed data on more than 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and 2012. Of those, 5.4 million deaths were related to cold, while 311,000 were related to heat.
2) Harry Wilkinson: Energy Prices Must Fall To Cut Deaths In The Cold
The Conservative Woman, 9 March 2018 

A dwindling gas supply, sheep stuck in the ice, billions of pounds in lost growth, blocked roads, and I didn’t receive my copy of The Spectator! The ‘Beast from the East’ has taken its toll on all of us. These severe occurrences bear witness to the true danger and savagery of the cold.

This was not the script in the era of climate hype and alarm; we have been told not to expect snowy winters ever again in Britain, and that even Alpine skiing resorts may become snow-free. As the reality of natural climatic variation became apparent, the tune changed. Now we are told ‘the snow outside is what global warming looks like’. For Guardianistas, weather of any kind is further evidence of alarming climate change.

Regardless of motivation, it’s time to start caring a lot more about the cold.

More sinister than these major, but temporary disturbances, is the impact cold weather has on health. Globally, twenty times as many people die from the cold than from the heat. This is exactly the case in Britain, where cold-related mortality accounts for 61 deaths per 100,000, one of the highest rates in Europe. This compares with only three deaths per 100,000 for heat-related mortality.

Human beings just don’t like the cold, and we are willing to pay to avoid it. In the United States, a Stanford study found 2.5 deg C of warming would lower deaths by 40,000 annually and, using willingness to pay as a measure of preference, that workers would be prepared to give up between $30billion and $100billion annually in wages for a 2.5 deg C rise in temperature.

Here in Britain, winter excess deaths had been falling over the past century, but in the past decade that progress has stalled. The trend could even go into reverse as bills increase to support unreliable renewable technologies.

The temperature of centrally heated homes has also been falling, suggesting that the rising cost of energy is preventing people heating their homes adequately. This is all the more surprising given that improvements in insulation should have resulted in warmer homes, not colder.

The reality behind these facts is mould, damp and respiratory illness for many of our most vulnerable citizens. Relieving their suffering must be a priority for any government. At the moment we are going in the wrong direction. By 2020, thanks to climate policies, households will be paying a 30 per cent premium on the price of electricity.

Full post
 
3) UK Energy Poverty: Cost Of Green Subsidies Rises To £11.3 Billion
Paul Homewood, Not A Lot Of People Know That, 7 April 2018 

The Office for Budget Responsibility has just published the Spring Statement. It’s  Economic & Fiscal Outlook reveals that the cost of Environmental Levies this year will be £11.3bn, a rise of £2.0bn over the last financial year.



In addition, we can add £1.9bn for Climate Change Levy receipts, though this is actually tax revenue, unlike the levies, which are essentially subsidies for renewable energy.

The increase of £2.0bn represents a rise in average electricity bills of about 5%, and Environmental Levies now account for about a quarter of bills. This excludes CCL receipts and other costs such as building new transmission lines to cater for renewable energy. [...]

There seems to be a conspiracy of silence about these costs, with an almost total reluctance to mention it amongst our political class, media (with a couple of honourable exceptions) and climate lobbyists.

This is very strange, given the considerable controversy which surrounds the cost of things like the Overseas Aid Budget and HS2, which are of a similar scale. Not to mention the well publicised shortage of funds for the NHS, Social Care, Defence, Police etc etc.

Full post
 
4) Solar Farms Receive More Cash From Green Subsidies Than Selling The Energy They Produce
Colin Fernandez, Daily Mail, 9 April 2018 

Britain's biggest solar farms receive more cash from green subsidies than from selling the electricity they produce, figures reveal.

Energy producers were encouraged to start solar farms with generous handouts funded by a ‘green levy’ on taxpayers’ bills.

But many of them now make the majority of their cash from the subsidy – instead of the electricity they produce.

Solar panels at Kencot Hill solar farm in Lechlade, England. Britain's biggest solar farms receive more cash from green subsidies than from selling the electricity they produce
The total subsidy provided to all generators of solar electricity last year is estimated to be about £1.2billion.

This was part of the £5.6billion subsidy paid to green energy producers, which critics say inflates household energy bills.

Figures from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) following a Freedom of Information request show ten of the biggest solar farms in the country pocketed more than £2.5million each in eco-subsidy last year.

The payouts were offered to help increase the amount of ‘green’ energy produced in the UK.

The solar subsidy is responsible for around £15 a year on a household power bill.

However the system – which guarantees the handouts for 15 or 20 years – has been overly generous.

Treasury officials have stopped new deals being made with solar farms in a bid to stop haemorrhaging huge amounts of cash.

But farms with existing deals are guaranteed generous handouts until the end of their contracts.

Full story
 
5) Christopher Booker: The UK Will Spend Trillions To Reduce C02 Emissions While The Real Offenders Do Little
The Sunday Telegraph, 8 April 2018 

There could be no better example of how those in the grip of groupthink tend to float ever further off into make-believe than a recent article by Claire Perry, our new Minister of State for Energy. She was celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Climate Change Act, the one which committed Britain, uniquely in the world, to an 80 per cent cut in our CO2 emissions by 2050 (once described by Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former joint chief of staff as a “monstrous act of self-harm”).

Perry boasted that this “ground-breaking Act has been absolutely instrumental in advancing climate action globally over the past decade”, and is now inspiring other nations “to follow in our footsteps”. She went on to say that “trillions of pounds of private sector capital... will be needed to be deployed if we are to meet our binding targets”.

Has Perry ever looked at the figures to see how far the rest of the world has, in fact, been following in our footsteps? It is true that in the past decade the UK, according to the latest BP Statistical Review of World Energy, has cut its emissions by 28 per cent, mainly by closing down the coal-fired power stations that until 2015 still supplied 30 per cent of our electricity, so we now contribute barely one per cent to the global total.

But China, the world’s largest emitter, contributing 27 per cent of the total, has in the same period increased its emissions by 24 per cent, and plans by 2030 to have doubled them. India, the third largest emitter, has increased them by 54 per cent and plans to have tripled them. So our energy minister thinks we should continue to set an example to the world by spending “trillions” on meeting a target that could only be achieved by closing down virtually all our economy, while the rest of the world takes not the blindest notice.

As a measure of her financial acumen, we learn from Wikipedia that Perry once told BBC listeners that the “national deficit” and our “national debt” are the same thing. What makes this truly terrifying is not just that Perry is now running our energy policy, but that the rest of our MPs are so equally lost in the same make-believe that not one will point out she is away with the fairies.
 
6) John Constable: Coal And Oil Prevented US Blackouts This Winter
GWPF Energy, 8 April 2018 
Dr John Constable: GWPF Energy Editor

New data and analysis from the US government shows that during the recent Bomb Cyclone storm of late December 2017 and early January this year, the electricity system of the eastern half of the country avoided blackouts only because of increased output from conventional sources, particularly coal and, incredibly enough, oil. The performance of renewables was disappointing. The warning for Europe is loud and clear.

From the 27^thof December 2017 to the 8^thof January 2018, the eastern half of the United States was severely affected by a major winter storm, referred to as a Bomb Cyclone .

The high winds and low temperatures resulted in a substantial increase in consumer demand for energy, putting the electricity system, in particular, under major additional pressure. The system succeeded in meeting this demand, but the way it did so, through increased use of conventional energy, and in spite of mediocre to poor performance from renewables, has raised serious questions about the country’s ability to withstand similar shocks in the future, when much conventional capacity, mostly coal, will have retired without replacement.

The story is told in detail in a new study by the US government’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). The NETL authors provide a detailed analysis of the performance of the electricity sector during the cyclone, covering six Independent System Operator (ISO) areas:
 

• ISO New England (ISO-NE)
• New York ISO (NYISO)
• PJM Interconnection (the largest of the ISOs, covering all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tenessee, Virigina, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia)
• Midcontinent ISO (MISO)
• Southwest Power Pool (SPP)
• Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).

The following map, not included in the study, shows the extent of the geography:


Figure 1: North American Regional Transmission Organizations. Source: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

The additional daily average demand for electricity over these areas, in the period 1 December to 26 December, just priorto the storm, was 6.3 TWh per day. During the storm, from the 27^thof December to the 8^thof January, daily load rose by just under 20% to 7.5 TWh per day, giving an additional daily load of about 1.2 TWh due to the storm (see Table 1–15 (p. 19). To put that in scale, average total daily transmission system load in the UK over December and January this winter has never exceeded 1 TWh per day. Even for a generation network as vast as that of the US, this incremental load was very large indeed.

In order to meet this additional requirement for electrical energy, conventional power stations had to increase their output. Coal rose by 63%, natural gas fuelled generators by 20%, nuclear by 5.3%, and various kinds of oil and, critically, duel fuel generators by 26%.

Renewables did not increase their output, with wind generation during the storm period actually falling by 12% as compared to the pre-storm period, thus contributing to the problems faced by the conventional sector.

Full post

The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.