GWPF Newsletter: Mad Climate Policies Are Plunging Europe’s Car Industry Into Crisis

Europe’s Car Industry Faces New Emissions Scandal As CO2 Figures Don't Stack Up

In this newsletter:

1) Mad Climate Policies Are Plunging Europe’s Car Industry Into Crisis
Alex Brummer, Daily Mail, 3 June 2019
 
2) Climate Hysteria Threatens Europe's Car Industry
Financial Times, 16 April 2019

 
3) Europe’s Car Industry Faces New Emissions Scandal As CO2 Figures Don't Stack Up
Automobile Management Online, 6 June 2019
 
4) Australia Faces Energy Crisis As Manufacturers Threaten To Exit Green Madness
The Wall Street Journal, 6 June 2019
 
5) The Truth About ‘Cheap’ Solar Power: Panel Installations Fall By 94% After UK Govt Cuts Subsidies
The Guardian, 5 June 2019
 
6) EU May Not Meet 2020 Renewables Target
EU Observer, 7 June 2019
 
7) Andrew Montford: Chill Wind Of Reality Blows Through The Green Power Lobby
The Conservative Woman, 6 June 2019
 
8) White House May Demand That Federal Scientists Accept Critical Scrutiny
E&E News, 6 June 2019
 
9) Gautam Kalghatgi: Is There An ‘Existential Crisis’ And A ‘Climate Emergency’ & Can The World Be ‘Carbon Neutral’ By 2030?
Global Warming Policy Forum, 6 June 2019

Full details:

1) Mad Climate Policies Are Plunging Europe’s Car Industry Into Crisis
Alex Brummer, Daily Mail, 3 June 2019

The drive to become more energy-efficient amid concerns over climate change, and the rush to develop mass market electric cars, are key factors in the crisis of Europe’s car industry. Germany’s once all-powerful industry is struggling to make cars compliant with eco-rules and output has plummeted.


The drive to become more energy-efficient amid concerns over climate change, and the rush to develop mass market electric cars, are key factors behind the proposed merger of Fiat Chrysler with Renault.

The deal, which will create the third-largest force in global motor manufacturing behind Toyota and VW, is the direct result of a dramatic decline in demand for diesel cars, which are considered serious polluters.

The fallout for Nissan will be closely watched in Britain given the importance of its Sunderland plant, one of the most efficient motor manufacturers in Europe.

Concern about damage to the Earth’s environment, combined with public outrage over the Dieselgate scandal when the German firm Volkswagen was exposed for cheating on fuel emission figures, led Renault and Fiat into each other’s arms.

Whereas the Blair-Brown government, to curb [CO2 emissions], made huge efforts to persuade motorists to use diesel, subsequent governments advised about its dangers and then Environment Secretary Michael Gove said Britain’s roads must be cleared of all diesel and petrol vehicles by 2040. …

Car firms everywhere are being forced to accelerate the transition from fossil-fuel internal combustion engines to hybrids (half-electric, half-petrol), fully electric cars and engines fuelled by hydrogen.

The result is much pain. Jaguar Land Rover suffered a record loss of £3.6bn (R58.3bn) last year, having invested too much in diesel cars.

Volkswagen, the world’s second-largest car company, is hurting from the £26bn (R421bn), and rising, bill for cheating on its emissions figures. Former executives face criminal charges in the US.

It and other German manufacturers have struggled to meet the tougher EU rules on emissions from exhausts.

Germany’s once all-powerful industry is struggling to make cars compliant with eco-rules and output has plummeted.

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2) Climate Hysteria Threatens Europe's Car Industry
Financial Times, 16 April 2019

Industry struggles to meet strict emission targets with potential penalties of €30bn

Forget the global trade war, declining sales or even Brexit — the sternest challenge facing Europe’s car industry comes from the exhaust pipes of its vehicles.

Strict new carbon dioxide emissions targets will be phased in next year across the EU, with the threat of punitive fines for those who fail to comply.

Yet the industry, broadly, is not ready.

“It’s going to be a hell of a job,” Carlos Tavares, the chief executive of Peugeot owner PSA, said last month. “But we are going to meet them, whatever it takes.”

Under the rules, carmakers must cut their average fleet emissions to less than 95 grammes of CO2 per kilometre by 2021.

They face a €95 fine for every gramme of CO2 that exceeds the target — multiplied by the number of cars sold that year.

“We are talking about a potential €30bn penalty for the industry,” Volkswagen chief executive Herbert Diess warned investors at the company’s annual capital markets day.

Yet emissions are heading the wrong way….

All this has left the industry in a bind.

Arndt Ellinghorst, lead auto analyst at Evercore ISI, described the CO2 challenge as the “biggest structural headwind” facing the sector — even more potentially damaging than trade wars with China, US tariffs, diesel bans and Brexit.

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VW Warning: EU Climate Policies “Threaten The Very Existence” Of Germany’s Car Industry
GWPF & Spiegel Online, 18 October 2018

Stricter CO2 emission limits imposed by the EU are pushing Europe’s car industry to the “brink of collapse,” Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess has warned.

Diess lamented that the EU’s campaign against conventional petrol cars was “threatening the very existence” of Germany’s car industry.

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3) Europe’s Car Industry Faces New Emissions Scandal As CO2 Figures Don't Stack Up
Automobile Management Online, 6 June 2019

The automotive industry could be facing a new 'petrolgate' emissions scandal as Emissions Analytics uncovers discrepancies in new petrol car CO2 figures.

Following the fallout of of 'dieselgate', which led to a considerable decline in sales of diesel vehicles across Europe, experts believe the same emissions cheating techniques may be being used on petrol vehicles.

Results from the latest WLTP-certified vehicles show that average CO2 emissions for petrol cars are falling, but real-world testing carried out by Emissions Analytics paints a different picture.

“While our real-world test results for diesel cars are in line with WLTP data, indicating that manufacturers have got their house in order over diesel, the same cannot be said for petrol,” explained Nick Molden, CEO of Emissions Analytics.

Full story
 
4) Australia Faces Energy Crisis As Manufacturers Threaten To Exit Green Madness
The Wall Street Journal, 6 June 2019

Australia is experiencing an energy crisis so severe that the country, one of the world’s biggest exporters of liquefied natural gas, is considering imports to shore up supplies for manufacturers and avoid possible blackouts.

The country’s commitments to sell LNG overseas as well as the shuttering of aging coal-fired plants have made it a struggle for electricity producers at times of peak demand. Some of Australia’s manufacturers have threatened to move production overseas to escape a costly and unreliable energy supply.

Sydney, Melbourne and other cities on the country’s eastern coast have experienced occasional blackouts, hitting everything from health clinics to schools.

Analysts predict a widening shortfall of LNG, raising concern manufacturers won’t have enough power to run food-processing factories or chemical plants.

Full story
 
5) The Truth About ‘Cheap’ Solar Power: Panel Installations Fall By 94% After UK Govt Cuts Subsidies
The Guardian, 5 June 2019

The Labour party has accused the government of “actively dismantling” the UK’s solar power industry after new installations by households collapsed by 94% last month.



Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, used prime minister’s questions to challenge the government’s record on climate action after scrapping subsidies for domestic solar panels from April.

Standing in for Jeremy Corbyn, Long-Bailey said solar power had the potential to cut household bills and carbon emissions while creating thousands of jobs.

“But the government, for some reason, appears to be determined to kill it off, while continuing to cheerlead for fracking,” she said.

The opposition said data showed the scrapping of home panel subsidies from April caused new solar power capacity to fall from 79MW in March to only 5MW last month.

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6) Oh Dear: EU May Not Meet 2020 Renewables Target
EU Observer, 7 June 2019

“Slowdown in shifting towards renewable electricity implies that we might not meet the EU 2020 target,” George Pufan, in charge of a new report by the EU Court of Auditors, warned on Thursday. Although wind and solar power recorded strong growth since 2005, there has been a slowdown since 2014, with half of EU member states now facing a significant challenge in meeting their 2020 renewables target.

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7) Andrew Montford: Chill Wind Of Reality Blows Through The Green Power Lobby
The Conservative Woman, 6 June 2019

IN recent weeks, some observers of the energy scene have been wondering if the long honeymoon of the renewables industry might finally have come to an end. EU renewables capacity additions have been falling for years, and have now declined to less than half of their 2010 peak. Meanwhile, a wave of insolvencies is sweeping the wind industry as a result of the sharp scaling back of subsidies.

This is all very different to a couple of years ago when the wind industry and newspapers started shouting, in unison, that a new era of offshore wind was on the way. Costs, we were led to believe, were falling precipitously. They would halve in coming years, or so we were told. While a few spoilsports pointed out that there was almost certainly less to these announcements than met the eye, and wondered how exactly these alleged cost savings were to be achieved, the hype continued unabated.

Now the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has poured further cold water on the idea of rapid cost reductions offshore. While couched in the usual over-optimistic terms, its annual report on renewable energy costs around the world confirms that the contrarians were right. 

That’s not to say that it is all bad news. Solar prices have continued to fall, although most obviously for concentrating solar power, a technology that is mostly used in deserts, and is therefore of little relevance to the UK. The era of rapid cost reductions for the solar panels we use in this country now appears to be largely over, and IRENA sees no significant falls after 2019.

And even if further cost reductions could be produced out of nowhere, the fact remains that solar power is so demanding of space that the technology is simply impractical for us. Unfortunately, it’s the same story for onshore wind. IRENA reckons that cost reductions have now mostly reached their limits. And being just as land-hungry as solar power, it is equally impractical.

All this means that many environmentalists have pinned their hopes on offshore wind. There’s plenty of space out at sea, there are no neighbours to object, and the industry is saying that prices are going to drop through the floor.

Unfortunately, though, IRENA’s report shoots down this idea too, observing that far from falling, prices of electricity from offshore windfarms have been steady for the last few years. Indeed it is predicting a sharp cost increase for windfarms commissioned this year and only a gradual decline thereafter. The electricity produced will therefore remain far, far more expensive than that derived from fossil fuels, and unreliable to boot.

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8) White House May Demand That Federal Scientists Accept Critical Scrutiny
E&E News, 6 June 2019

The Trump administration is weighing its “red team, blue team” climate debate options.


The Trump administration is weighing its “red team, blue team” climate debate options. Pictured is President Trump as he attended a D-Day commemoration yesterday in Portsmouth, England. Avalon.red/Newscom

A White House plan to debate the accuracy of climate science has hit a snag: Mainstream scientists are unlikely to participate.

Without a credible team of researchers who accept established climate science, the idea would fall flat, according to two people involved in the discussions. To get around that challenge, top officials planning the “red team” debate have floated the idea of requiring scientists at NASA or NOAA to participate, the sources said.

Another idea would be to require the National Academy of Sciences to review and respond to the work of the team in charge of highlighting uncertainties in the research that underlies the National Climate Assessment. While the sources said the exercise could debut in the coming weeks, they also cautioned that the current state of discussions is fluid.

The effort’s newest iteration is more modest than earlier proposals. Will Happer, a director on the National Security Council, had envisioned creating a rapid response team to upend the conclusions of government reports on climate change. Initial discussions considered using an executive order to create a “Presidential Committee on Climate Security.”

It appears that those have been sidelined after facing pressure from within the administration, according to sources.

Among the plan’s critics are deputy chief of staff Chris Liddell; Kevin Hassett, the outgoing chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers; Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council; and Kelvin Droegemeier, the president’s science adviser. Happer has been consulting with researchers and think tank analysts about his plan. He has conducted at least two briefings with Trump about his views of climate science, the sources said.

Happer has also briefed Jared Kushner, who is supportive of the plan, according to sources. Another White House official who has gotten behind the idea is Brooke Rollins, who served as an assistant to Trump in the Office of American Innovation and was the former head of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which has a history of questioning climate science.

The scaled-back goal of the current plan is to provide a back-and-forth examination of climate science in which researchers who question mainstream conclusions about warming would perform equivalently with scientists representing the vast majority of experts who accept that human activity is raising temperatures. The exercise could produce a series of white papers from both sides, essentially establishing a formal record of climate contrarianism.

The papers could act as a “correction” or addendum to the National Climate Assessment released last year, according to one source.

Full story
 
9) Gautam Kalghatgi: Is There An ‘Existential Crisis’ And A ‘Climate Emergency’ & Can The World Be ‘Carbon Neutral’ By 2030?
Global Warming Policy Forum, 6 June 2019

Prof Gautam Kalghatgi FREng FSAE FIMechE FCI FISEES, Visiting Professor, Oxford University (Engineering Science), Imperial College (Mechanical Engineering)

There is widespread belief that unless “something is done”, the world will go through an “existential crisis” because of climate change. As a result, several initiatives calling for drastic cuts in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are gaining traction.



For instance, the Extinction Rebellion movement, which organized high-profile disruptions in central London recently, is demanding that U.K. GHG emissions should go to “net zero” by 2025. The New Green Deal (NGD) which is gaining increasing support amongst leading politicians in the U.S., is aiming to “eliminate the US’s carbon footprint by 2030 through a massive mobilization of renewable energy and energy-saving projects”. School strikes in support of drastic change in society are getting stronger. The U.K. and Scottish parliaments have passed resolutions declaring a “climate emergency”

1. The central premise appears to be that “science” says that the world is rapidly heading towards disaster and there is an “existential crisis” and a “climate emergency”. But is this true?

* All objective/empirical measures of human development (e.g., absolute poverty levels, life expectancy, share of the population that is undernourished, education…. ) have been improving consistently, particularly in poorer countries, over the past few decades.

* World food production (and per capita food consumption, productivity per acre) has been increasing consistently over the past few decades ). India has just announced another bumper year for food production.

* A related point is that ‘From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.’  So this could repair the Earth’s climate since green plants would absorb CO2.

* According to the IPCC AR5, Ch4, the UN body which assesses the evidence for and about climate change, there is little or no empirical evidence to suggest that the incidence of tropical and extra-tropical storms, floods and droughts have increased in recent decades. The more recent IPCC report (on Global Warming of 1.5 C) does not alter these conclusions but says that there is evidence now of increased incidence of warm days and nights. However, this report also projects that such extreme weather events will increase based on model projections. To me this does not sound like an “existential crisis”, certainly not by 2030. The evidence is also discussed by Roger Pielke (see also Trends in Extreme Weather Events since 1900 An Enduring Conundrum for Wise Policy Advice)

* Though there are many claims that forest fires have been increasing, empirical evidence shows that there is no global trend. Increase of forest fires in the U.S. in the recent past has causes other than climate change.

* Deaths attributed to natural disasters have declined drastically over the past century –  and    because of increased prosperity and development though the financial losses have increased for the same reason.

* There is a lot of concern about sea level rise. However, sea levels have been rising consistently for at least 150 years but there have been many reports that they are rising faster in recent years. However, there are very credible assessments of data that show that the current level of rise of 3 mm/year are not abnormal.

* Of course if there are catastrophic events like the melting of Antarctic ice, that would be a serious problem but human intervention could neither cause it nor prevent it. Anyway, how likely is this? The average annual temperature of Antarctica ranges from about −10°C on the Antarctic coast to −60°C at the highest parts of the interior.

* Incidentally, polar bear populations have been increasing or are stable apart from in a handful of locations.

* Again incidentally, I have heard many people talking about CO₂ as a pollutant or even a poison but the concentration of CO₂ in one’s nostril when one breathes out is around 40,000 ppm or 100 times that in the atmosphere; in a closed lecture room it is around 1000 ppm. So how can it be a poison? Without CO₂, no photosynthesis and no green plants.

* Interested people might also want to read The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg and Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World – And Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling et al.

So in summary, there is no empirical evidence that there is an “existential threat”. The world is a far better place in almost all countries not affected by war, compared to the past. Of course, there will be some consequences of increasing temperature because of increasing greenhouse gases but as economies grow, they will be better able to cope with these changes and for growth, you need affordable energy.

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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.