Climate Activist James Murdoch Steps Down From News Corp
In this newsletter:
1) Labor Party Splits Emerge Over Costly Green Energy Down Under
Stop These Things, 3 August 2020
2) Climate Activist James Murdoch Steps Down From News Corp
Daily Mail, 31 July 2020
3) Offshore Wind: Definitely Expensive
Andrew Montford, GWPF Energy, 31 July 2020
4) The Remarkable Claims Of Mr Anderson
Andrew Montford, GWPF Energy, 3 August 2020
Conservative Woman, 3 August 2020
Stop These Things, 3 August 2020
2) Climate Activist James Murdoch Steps Down From News Corp
Daily Mail, 31 July 2020
3) Offshore Wind: Definitely Expensive
Andrew Montford, GWPF Energy, 31 July 2020
4) The Remarkable Claims Of Mr Anderson
Andrew Montford, GWPF Energy, 3 August 2020
5) Electric Car Obsession May Catch UK Automotive ‘Sleeping At The Wheel’
Automotive Management, 31 July 2020
7) And Finally: Hans Christian Anderson's Fairy Tale For The Low-Carbon FiresideAutomotive Management, 31 July 2020
Conservative Woman, 3 August 2020
Full details:
1) Labor Party Splits Emerge Over Costly Green Energy Down Under
Stop These Things, 3 August 2020
Having lost the un-loseable Australian election in May last year, an angry rump of Labor backbenchers is keen to ditch the party’s suicidal renewable energy policies, with a view to recovering the ground they lost trying to win the sandalista vote in the inner city goat’s cheese circle.
Australia’s economic future depends, in no small part, on getting the ALP to decouple itself from the lunatic fringes of the hard-green left, and to start thinking about reliable and affordable power, of the kind that fuels industry growth and jobs.
Whatever policies are directed at recovering from the coronavirus lockdown, without reliable and affordable power Australia’s energy hungry businesses are doomed. With rocketing power prices, and an intermittent supply, mineral processors and manufacturers are terminal, and have been for years.
Politicians and academic boffins have been giving lip service to improving Australia’s “resilience” and “self-sufficiency”, resulting in the renaissance of Australian manufacturing and industry.
With Australian businesses suffering among world’s highest power prices (thanks to its obsession with intermittent wind and solar, South Australian households and businesses suffer the highest prices in the world), the rebirth of manufacturing and industry sounds like so much wishful thinking.
International supply chains may have ground to a halt and the orderly flow of goods to market disrupted, but, before too long China will regain its primacy as the world’s manufacturing powerhouse. Two factors are responsible for China’s dominance in that domain: a cheap and flexible labour supply; and a reliable and affordable power supply. The latter being generated by hundreds of coal-fired power plants, with more being added every day.
Labor MP, Joel Fitzgibbon is one of those who understands the importance of the relationship outlined above.
Joel occupies the Federal seat of Hunter – a region of NSW dominated by coal mines and coal-fired power plants. Although, he very nearly didn’t; he suffered a near death experience when workers in the mining and power industries turned on him with a vengeance. During the May 2019 election, there was a 9.5% swing away from Joel to the Nationals, a fair slice of which came by way of preferences from a One Nation candidate, Stuart Bonds who picked up 21.6% of the vote. Bonds campaigned on a platform supporting coal-mining and reliable and affordable, coal-fired power – policies a million miles away from those being peddled by the modern, so-called ‘Worker’s Party’.
At a point when the ALP is looking increasingly unelectable – thanks to its waffly leader, Anthony Albanese and an obsession with delivering interminable subsidies to chaotically intermittent wind and solar – Joel Fitzgibbon has started talking sense, much to the annoyance of the lunatic fringe within the party.
Labor Luminary Lashes Party Fundamentalists
The Australian, 27 July 2020
Joel Fitzgibbon has accused Labor’s influential internal environment lobby of putting blue-collar jobs and lower energy prices at risk – and warned them against exaggerating the number of jobs in the renewable energy sector – as the party’s split over climate and energy policy grows.
The opposition resources and agriculture spokesman said the Labor Environment Action Network’s “fundamentalist” policies were out of step with ALP values and making the party unelectable, according to leaked emails obtained by The Australian. LEAN, which invited Mr Fitzgibbon to a Wednesday forum, was founded by Labor’s home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Keneally and opposition cabinet secretary Jenny McAllister to push the party into stronger climate change action.
Mr Fitzgibbon told LEAN that Labor’s focus must be on “immediate job creation”.
“LEAN also needs to be cautious about overstating the number of job opportunities provided by capital-intensive and import-dependent renewable projects in the short to medium run,” he wrote in the Saturday email.
The forum, a town hall event held by LEAN’s Hunter branch, will hear from NSW Labor environment spokeswoman Kate Washington, Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union state secretary Steve Murphy, Grattan Institute energy director Tony Wood and Beyond Zero Emissions researcher Dominique Hes.
Mr Fitzgibbon said, given the impact of COVID-19, Labor should be focused on “building on the strengths of those industries which have performed well during the crisis. They provide the best opportunity to deliver outcomes quickly. Immediate job creation cannot be achieved with a fixation on concepts like “green steel” which are decades away,” he wrote.
The flashpoint in the party’s climate wars comes after Labor MPs. including Alex Gallacher, Glenn Sterle, Anthony Chisholm, Shayne Neumann and Raff Ciccone, backed Mr Fitzgibbon on emissions targets, raised concerns about delayed approvals for the New Acland coal mine extension and supported streamlining environmental approvals through the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act.
Mr Fitzgibbon told LEAN he would not participate in the group’s “Jobs & Steel: the Hunter’s Renewable Future” forum on Wednesday because it had “already made its position” clear on key environmental policy issues.
In the email, Mr Fitzgibbon criticised LEAN over its pre-emptive positions on environmental policies, including the Narrabri gas project and EPBC review.
“I note LEAN has accused others of pre-empting the final EPBC review report, but is guilty of doing exactly that itself,” he said.
“I also note LEAN has passed judgment on the Narrabri gas project before the IPC has completed processes and scientific analysis. This pre-emptive attack on a project which will deliver many blue-collar jobs and lower energy prices for households and industry is contrary to ideals on which Labor was formed.”
Mr Fitzgibbon is backed by Australian Workers’ Union national secretary Dan Walton, who said policy positions advocated by LEAN would be “devastating for the livelihoods of blue collar workers”.
“I think most senior Labor figures consider their advocacy as something to be treated with a fair degree of caution,” Mr Walton, who represents workers across the steel, mining, manufacturing and agriculture sectors, said.
Full story
2) Climate Activist James Murdoch Steps Down From News Corp
Daily Mail, 31 July 2020
James Murdoch has announced he is stepping down from the board of News Corp, citing editorial differences over content published by its media platforms, which include The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and News UK.
‘My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions,’ he said in a statement on Friday.
James, 47, the younger son of Australian-born media mogul and News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch, had been on the board of directors since 2013.
He did not go into detail about his differences with the media company however, James, who is the more liberal member of the Murdoch family, has been publicly critical of its news platforms in the past.
In his resignation letter, James cited ‘disagreements over certain editorial content’ as the reason for his departure
Most recently in January, James and his wife Kathryn spoke out against the family business for promoting climate change ‘denials’ during the Australian bushfire crisis.
The pair released a statement saying they were ‘disappointed’ by the coverage of the fires by Fox News and other News Corporation outlets.
‘Kathryn and James’s views on climate are well established and their frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage of the topic is also well known.
‘They are particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary,’ their statement read.
The ‘denials’ were in reference to allegations that arson and not climate change were to blame for the destructive wildfires.
His comments were perceived as ‘unprecedented’ and sparked speculation of a feud within the family since he had rarely spoken publicly about his role in the business.
James is known as the more liberal Murdoch brother, while older brother Lachlan’s views seem to be more aligned with those of his conservative father.
Full story
3) Offshore Wind: Definitely Expensive
Andrew Montford, GWPF Energy, 31 July 2020
“Cheap” offshore wind power is an illusion
Back in 2017, there was great excitement among environmentalists and the media, when it was announced that two offshore windfarms had bid remarkably low prices into the government’s Contracts for Difference auction, offering to supply electricity to the grid for around half the price that had been seen in earlier auctions.
How had this remarkable change in the economics of offshore wind power been achieved? Nobody really knew for sure, although eco-minded correspondents in the mainstream media were insistent that the change was real.
In a paper published shortly afterwards, Gordon Hughes et al. pointed out that there was little evidence that costs of offshore windfarms were falling at all. Indeed, they were generally rising, as developers moved into deeper waters in search of more reliable wind speeds.
Even discounting factors like this, like-for-like costs seemed to be only falling slightly. There was absolutely no sign of revolutionary change. Defenders of the green orthodoxy argued that the Hughes analysis was backwards looking, and couldn’t take into account technological advances (although they never said clearly what these were).
In contrast, Hughes’ theory, outlined in a later paper, is that the low CfD bids are in essence a gamble on future electricity prices. He thinks that the developers are hoping that electricity prices will be so high by the time the windfarms come on stream in 2022 that they will be able to walk away from their CfDs and take the market price instead. There would be only small contactual penalties for doing so. Hughes et al. have continued to argue that the cost of offshore wind power remains very high to this day.
Recently, some more hard evidence appeared showing that Hughes is correct. One of the low-bidding windfarms published its latest financial accounts, and these allow us to get a feel for whether the cost reductions are real. Moray East is a 100-turbine, 950MW behemoth that is currently under development off the Scottish coast. The developers have said that it will cost £2.6 billion to build, although this figure comes with caveats. It almost certainly doesn’t include the offshore transmission assets that the company has to build and the sell back to the grid. Moreover, announced costs for windfarms are invariably understated. Hughes thinks that the ultimate cost will be somewhere around £3.8 billion. If the windfarm is to make a profit at around £60/MWh, its costs need to be less than half that level (on an optimistic assumption about how much electricity it will generate) and more realistically a third of it.
As at the year end (31 December 2019), Moray East was still in the early phases of development. The foundations were not quite complete, and the transmission assets were under construction, but far from finished. Ducting for some of the cables had been completed. How much would we expect the company to have spent thus far? I used the cost breakdown analysis published here to work out percentage of total cost represented by each of the main components. I then applied these, and a guesstimate of how complete each component was, together with Hughes’ £3.8 billion total come up with an expectation. The answer: just over £1 billion.
And the actual spend so far? £1.2 billion.
It seems almost unarguable therefore that this is a £3.8 billion windfarm, not a £1.9 million one (which is what it would have to be to be profitable under the CfD, even making the most generous assumptions about the capacity factor that it might achieve).
It could be argued that my guesstimates are wildly wrong, but think about it in another way. To make a profit at £60/MWh, Moray East’s capital cost must be well below £1.9 billion. The only way it can do this is to complete the rest of the capital works – including the turbines themselves – for £0.7 billion. This isn’t going to happen.
Electricity is either going to become very, very expensive, or certain investors in the offshore wind business are going to lose their shirts.
4) The Remarkable Claims Of Mr Anderson
Andrew Montford, GWPF Energy, 3 August 2020
Scottish Power boss’s claims are refuted by his own company’s data.
In an article in the Guardian over the weekend, the boss of Scottish Power, one Keith Anderson, is quoted on the subject on the effects of a vast expansion of the Contracts for Difference scheme, under which uneconomic electricity generators bid for preferential access to the grid:
"Keith Anderson, Scottish Power’s chief executive, said there was “minimal risk” to household energy bills because the cost of sea-based turbines is so low the projects may even help to make Britain’s energy cheaper."
As I pointed out in a post over the weekend, the cost of building an offshore windfarm doesn’t seem to be falling much, if at all, so Anderson’s claim is a startling one.
It’s even more startling when you take a look at Scottish Power’s flagship offshore windfarm, East Anglia One, currently nearing completion in the North Sea. This has a reported cost of £2.5 billion, which would make it, at £3.5m/MW, just as expensive as any other comparable windfarm in the North Sea. Its latest accounts show that it had clocked up spending of £1.9 billion by last Christmas, suggesting that construction work is on budget.
That being the case, it will probably generate electricity at a cost of around £110/MWh. It will sell it on under its Contract for Difference at a price of around £140/MWh, around £100/MWh more than the “reference price”. In other words, you are having to pay £140 for electricity that is only worth £40. Over the lifetime of the windfarm, this subsidy will be worth well over £4 billion to Scottish Power.
So when he says the cost of offshore wind is “low”, Mr Anderson is refuted by his own company’s data. He should be ashamed of himself.
7) And Finally: Hans Christian Anderson's Fairy Tale For The Low-Carbon Fireside
Conservative Woman, 3 August 2020
ONCE upon a time, not so long ago, in an island you might have visited, there was a Kingdom that was very ordinary in all sorts of ways, being not very wet and not very dry, and not very big and not very small, and so on, and it was ruled by a Government that was even more ordinary in all sorts of ways, which we won’t go into because it’s boring as well as embarrassing.
Indeed, all this ordinariness was very depressing to the Government, who had once been Almost Quite Special, briefly and really by accident because one day while digging the garden it found some buried treasure and got stupendously rich. But the money hadn’t lasted very long, and everyone else in the world had found buried treasure too, so now the Kingdom and its Government were back to being ordinary.
But the Government had really liked being Special and it wanted to be special again so it could show off when all the Governments got together for a feast and a chat about how stupid and silly ordinary people were and how they needed be governed and generally made to pull up their socks.
So the Government of this Kingdom said all sorts of encouraging things about the country’s best days lying ahead, and sunlit uplands, and accelerating growth, and levelling up, and how they could be the envy of the world, if they weren’t already, and very special again. But the peasants and the tradespeople of the Kingdom just weren’t that interested in being special, and in fact they rather liked being ordinary, provided they were left alone, which was very frustrating for the Government, who said sternly that they lacked Ambition.
So one day, after trying practically every possible way to make the Kingdom and the Government look special, like adding up numbers and counting money, at which it was really quite good but not Head-Shoulders-Above-Every-One-Else-Special, and playing football, at which it was intermittently talented but not outstanding, and singing and dancing, at which it was occasionally nearly as entertaining as it thought it was, and telling stories, at which it was within an inch of being Really Special, and making stuff, at which it was not too bad but unfortunately nowhere near as good as it once had been, the Government sat on its throne in the castle and sighed a deep sigh: ‘Oh deary me!’ said the Government, ‘how are we going to be Really Special, so that I can hold my head up at the next Inter-Governmental Boasting Tournament?’
And the Government gave a great long wheezing, whistling, groaning sigh, like all the air coming out of a pig’s bladder. ‘Oooh’, said the Government, sitting up suddenly on its throne, ‘That gives me an idea. Let’s show all the other governments how special we are by ridding the Kingdom of the wicked dragon called CO2, who is definitely breathing fire and making us all very hot, and must be around here somewhere though I can’t see him or smell him. I don’t believe that anyone else has thought of that before.’
So the Government blew its own trumpet, which it was always doing actually, and told the assembled masses that the time had come to banish the Wicked CO2 for being wicked and breathing fire and making everybody hot. ‘Ooh,’ said the government’s courtiers, jumping up and down and clapping their soft white hands in excitement, ‘that would be a great idea, particularly if we are paid to help.’ ‘Hmmm,’ said the courtiers’ courtiers, stroking their hairy chins, ‘that would be a super idea, particularly if we are paid to help.’
The peasants and tradespeople weren’t quite as keen, partly because the Wicked CO2 had never been much of a nuisance, and partly because they had a shrewd suspicion that if someone had to get out of bed very early to do the banishing of CO2 it would be them, as usual, but mostly because they were so busy trying to put dinner on the table and buy shoes for their children while also paying their taxes, which were quite high, that they didn’t listen as carefully as they should have done to what the Government was talking about.
So when the Government asked the peasants and tradespeople for their opinions, which it sometimes did because governments like to have someone else to blame when things go wrong, the peasants and tradespeople found it all boring beyond belief, and since they wanted a quiet life and not to be bothered every five minutes, they said that banishing the Wicked CO2 would be all right so long as the government didn’t make it any harder to put dinner on the table and shoes on their children’s feet, and taxes didn’t rise.
Full fairy tale
Stop These Things, 3 August 2020
Having lost the un-loseable Australian election in May last year, an angry rump of Labor backbenchers is keen to ditch the party’s suicidal renewable energy policies, with a view to recovering the ground they lost trying to win the sandalista vote in the inner city goat’s cheese circle.
Australia’s economic future depends, in no small part, on getting the ALP to decouple itself from the lunatic fringes of the hard-green left, and to start thinking about reliable and affordable power, of the kind that fuels industry growth and jobs.
Whatever policies are directed at recovering from the coronavirus lockdown, without reliable and affordable power Australia’s energy hungry businesses are doomed. With rocketing power prices, and an intermittent supply, mineral processors and manufacturers are terminal, and have been for years.
Politicians and academic boffins have been giving lip service to improving Australia’s “resilience” and “self-sufficiency”, resulting in the renaissance of Australian manufacturing and industry.
With Australian businesses suffering among world’s highest power prices (thanks to its obsession with intermittent wind and solar, South Australian households and businesses suffer the highest prices in the world), the rebirth of manufacturing and industry sounds like so much wishful thinking.
International supply chains may have ground to a halt and the orderly flow of goods to market disrupted, but, before too long China will regain its primacy as the world’s manufacturing powerhouse. Two factors are responsible for China’s dominance in that domain: a cheap and flexible labour supply; and a reliable and affordable power supply. The latter being generated by hundreds of coal-fired power plants, with more being added every day.
Labor MP, Joel Fitzgibbon is one of those who understands the importance of the relationship outlined above.
Joel occupies the Federal seat of Hunter – a region of NSW dominated by coal mines and coal-fired power plants. Although, he very nearly didn’t; he suffered a near death experience when workers in the mining and power industries turned on him with a vengeance. During the May 2019 election, there was a 9.5% swing away from Joel to the Nationals, a fair slice of which came by way of preferences from a One Nation candidate, Stuart Bonds who picked up 21.6% of the vote. Bonds campaigned on a platform supporting coal-mining and reliable and affordable, coal-fired power – policies a million miles away from those being peddled by the modern, so-called ‘Worker’s Party’.
At a point when the ALP is looking increasingly unelectable – thanks to its waffly leader, Anthony Albanese and an obsession with delivering interminable subsidies to chaotically intermittent wind and solar – Joel Fitzgibbon has started talking sense, much to the annoyance of the lunatic fringe within the party.
Labor Luminary Lashes Party Fundamentalists
The Australian, 27 July 2020
Joel Fitzgibbon has accused Labor’s influential internal environment lobby of putting blue-collar jobs and lower energy prices at risk – and warned them against exaggerating the number of jobs in the renewable energy sector – as the party’s split over climate and energy policy grows.
The opposition resources and agriculture spokesman said the Labor Environment Action Network’s “fundamentalist” policies were out of step with ALP values and making the party unelectable, according to leaked emails obtained by The Australian. LEAN, which invited Mr Fitzgibbon to a Wednesday forum, was founded by Labor’s home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Keneally and opposition cabinet secretary Jenny McAllister to push the party into stronger climate change action.
Mr Fitzgibbon told LEAN that Labor’s focus must be on “immediate job creation”.
“LEAN also needs to be cautious about overstating the number of job opportunities provided by capital-intensive and import-dependent renewable projects in the short to medium run,” he wrote in the Saturday email.
The forum, a town hall event held by LEAN’s Hunter branch, will hear from NSW Labor environment spokeswoman Kate Washington, Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union state secretary Steve Murphy, Grattan Institute energy director Tony Wood and Beyond Zero Emissions researcher Dominique Hes.
Mr Fitzgibbon said, given the impact of COVID-19, Labor should be focused on “building on the strengths of those industries which have performed well during the crisis. They provide the best opportunity to deliver outcomes quickly. Immediate job creation cannot be achieved with a fixation on concepts like “green steel” which are decades away,” he wrote.
The flashpoint in the party’s climate wars comes after Labor MPs. including Alex Gallacher, Glenn Sterle, Anthony Chisholm, Shayne Neumann and Raff Ciccone, backed Mr Fitzgibbon on emissions targets, raised concerns about delayed approvals for the New Acland coal mine extension and supported streamlining environmental approvals through the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act.
Mr Fitzgibbon told LEAN he would not participate in the group’s “Jobs & Steel: the Hunter’s Renewable Future” forum on Wednesday because it had “already made its position” clear on key environmental policy issues.
In the email, Mr Fitzgibbon criticised LEAN over its pre-emptive positions on environmental policies, including the Narrabri gas project and EPBC review.
“I note LEAN has accused others of pre-empting the final EPBC review report, but is guilty of doing exactly that itself,” he said.
“I also note LEAN has passed judgment on the Narrabri gas project before the IPC has completed processes and scientific analysis. This pre-emptive attack on a project which will deliver many blue-collar jobs and lower energy prices for households and industry is contrary to ideals on which Labor was formed.”
Mr Fitzgibbon is backed by Australian Workers’ Union national secretary Dan Walton, who said policy positions advocated by LEAN would be “devastating for the livelihoods of blue collar workers”.
“I think most senior Labor figures consider their advocacy as something to be treated with a fair degree of caution,” Mr Walton, who represents workers across the steel, mining, manufacturing and agriculture sectors, said.
Full story
2) Climate Activist James Murdoch Steps Down From News Corp
Daily Mail, 31 July 2020
James Murdoch has announced he is stepping down from the board of News Corp, citing editorial differences over content published by its media platforms, which include The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and News UK.
‘My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions,’ he said in a statement on Friday.
James, 47, the younger son of Australian-born media mogul and News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch, had been on the board of directors since 2013.
He did not go into detail about his differences with the media company however, James, who is the more liberal member of the Murdoch family, has been publicly critical of its news platforms in the past.
In his resignation letter, James cited ‘disagreements over certain editorial content’ as the reason for his departure
Most recently in January, James and his wife Kathryn spoke out against the family business for promoting climate change ‘denials’ during the Australian bushfire crisis.
The pair released a statement saying they were ‘disappointed’ by the coverage of the fires by Fox News and other News Corporation outlets.
‘Kathryn and James’s views on climate are well established and their frustration with some of the News Corp and Fox coverage of the topic is also well known.
‘They are particularly disappointed with the ongoing denial among the news outlets in Australia given obvious evidence to the contrary,’ their statement read.
The ‘denials’ were in reference to allegations that arson and not climate change were to blame for the destructive wildfires.
His comments were perceived as ‘unprecedented’ and sparked speculation of a feud within the family since he had rarely spoken publicly about his role in the business.
James is known as the more liberal Murdoch brother, while older brother Lachlan’s views seem to be more aligned with those of his conservative father.
Full story
3) Offshore Wind: Definitely Expensive
Andrew Montford, GWPF Energy, 31 July 2020
“Cheap” offshore wind power is an illusion
Back in 2017, there was great excitement among environmentalists and the media, when it was announced that two offshore windfarms had bid remarkably low prices into the government’s Contracts for Difference auction, offering to supply electricity to the grid for around half the price that had been seen in earlier auctions.
How had this remarkable change in the economics of offshore wind power been achieved? Nobody really knew for sure, although eco-minded correspondents in the mainstream media were insistent that the change was real.
In a paper published shortly afterwards, Gordon Hughes et al. pointed out that there was little evidence that costs of offshore windfarms were falling at all. Indeed, they were generally rising, as developers moved into deeper waters in search of more reliable wind speeds.
Even discounting factors like this, like-for-like costs seemed to be only falling slightly. There was absolutely no sign of revolutionary change. Defenders of the green orthodoxy argued that the Hughes analysis was backwards looking, and couldn’t take into account technological advances (although they never said clearly what these were).
In contrast, Hughes’ theory, outlined in a later paper, is that the low CfD bids are in essence a gamble on future electricity prices. He thinks that the developers are hoping that electricity prices will be so high by the time the windfarms come on stream in 2022 that they will be able to walk away from their CfDs and take the market price instead. There would be only small contactual penalties for doing so. Hughes et al. have continued to argue that the cost of offshore wind power remains very high to this day.
Recently, some more hard evidence appeared showing that Hughes is correct. One of the low-bidding windfarms published its latest financial accounts, and these allow us to get a feel for whether the cost reductions are real. Moray East is a 100-turbine, 950MW behemoth that is currently under development off the Scottish coast. The developers have said that it will cost £2.6 billion to build, although this figure comes with caveats. It almost certainly doesn’t include the offshore transmission assets that the company has to build and the sell back to the grid. Moreover, announced costs for windfarms are invariably understated. Hughes thinks that the ultimate cost will be somewhere around £3.8 billion. If the windfarm is to make a profit at around £60/MWh, its costs need to be less than half that level (on an optimistic assumption about how much electricity it will generate) and more realistically a third of it.
As at the year end (31 December 2019), Moray East was still in the early phases of development. The foundations were not quite complete, and the transmission assets were under construction, but far from finished. Ducting for some of the cables had been completed. How much would we expect the company to have spent thus far? I used the cost breakdown analysis published here to work out percentage of total cost represented by each of the main components. I then applied these, and a guesstimate of how complete each component was, together with Hughes’ £3.8 billion total come up with an expectation. The answer: just over £1 billion.
And the actual spend so far? £1.2 billion.
It seems almost unarguable therefore that this is a £3.8 billion windfarm, not a £1.9 million one (which is what it would have to be to be profitable under the CfD, even making the most generous assumptions about the capacity factor that it might achieve).
It could be argued that my guesstimates are wildly wrong, but think about it in another way. To make a profit at £60/MWh, Moray East’s capital cost must be well below £1.9 billion. The only way it can do this is to complete the rest of the capital works – including the turbines themselves – for £0.7 billion. This isn’t going to happen.
Electricity is either going to become very, very expensive, or certain investors in the offshore wind business are going to lose their shirts.
4) The Remarkable Claims Of Mr Anderson
Andrew Montford, GWPF Energy, 3 August 2020
Scottish Power boss’s claims are refuted by his own company’s data.
In an article in the Guardian over the weekend, the boss of Scottish Power, one Keith Anderson, is quoted on the subject on the effects of a vast expansion of the Contracts for Difference scheme, under which uneconomic electricity generators bid for preferential access to the grid:
"Keith Anderson, Scottish Power’s chief executive, said there was “minimal risk” to household energy bills because the cost of sea-based turbines is so low the projects may even help to make Britain’s energy cheaper."
As I pointed out in a post over the weekend, the cost of building an offshore windfarm doesn’t seem to be falling much, if at all, so Anderson’s claim is a startling one.
It’s even more startling when you take a look at Scottish Power’s flagship offshore windfarm, East Anglia One, currently nearing completion in the North Sea. This has a reported cost of £2.5 billion, which would make it, at £3.5m/MW, just as expensive as any other comparable windfarm in the North Sea. Its latest accounts show that it had clocked up spending of £1.9 billion by last Christmas, suggesting that construction work is on budget.
That being the case, it will probably generate electricity at a cost of around £110/MWh. It will sell it on under its Contract for Difference at a price of around £140/MWh, around £100/MWh more than the “reference price”. In other words, you are having to pay £140 for electricity that is only worth £40. Over the lifetime of the windfarm, this subsidy will be worth well over £4 billion to Scottish Power.
So when he says the cost of offshore wind is “low”, Mr Anderson is refuted by his own company’s data. He should be ashamed of himself.
5) Electric Car Obsession May Catch UK Automotive ‘Sleeping At The Wheel’
Automotive Management, 31 July 2020
Cambria Automobiles chief executive Mark Lavery has urged his car retail colleagues to lobby Government over an all-out push to Electric Vehicles (EV) which risks catching UK automotive “sleeping at the wheel”.
Lavery said that there was still time to prevent Government making a decision which would see an all-out ban on internal combustion engine (ICE) and hybrid vehicles as early as 2032, risking both the environment and “thousands” of industry jobs.
The Office for Low Emission Vehicles’ (OLEV) consultation over the proposals ends at midnight tonight (July 31), having been extended from an initial May deadline, and Lavery insisted that it was “not too late” to change what appeared to be a set course.
His comments came as the National Franchised Dealers Association (NFDA) today called for hybrids to be excluded from any initial ban on new vehicles sales, and a phased approach be taken towards a zero emission sales target of 2040.
“At the moment, as an industry, we are sleeping at the wheel as the environmental lobbying groups dictate an all-out push for EVs at the exclusion of any other solution,” Lavery told AM in an interview this morning.
“The millions of tonnes of Cobalt that are being pulled out the ground in Africa, the Amnesty International investigation into child slavery in those mining processes, the fact that the Cobalt is shipped to China to be processed and turned into batteries in a coal-powered economy only to be shipped to developed Western countries so we can have zero tailpipe emissions in our towns and cities… All that seems to be overlooked in the pursuit of this one solution.”
EVs ‘not the only solution’
Lavery argued that 35g/km of permanent CO2 is embedded into the emissions of a pure electric vehicles as a result of the battery production, giving the pure electric car only a small emissions advantage over the latest versions of modern turbo-diesel engines.
Pure EVs contain between 10 to 12kg of Cobalt on average, he said, compared to a far lesser amount for zero emissions-capable hybrid vehicles.
Lavery believes that Government must include hybrids and the use of cleaner synthetic fuels in a more gradual shift towards an all-out ban on vehicles which don’t offer zero emissions.
Hydrogen must also attract greater consideration in plans for the future, he added.
“Holistically, pure EVs are worse for the environment than many other solutions and yet the course appears to have been set,” he said.
Economic risks
Lavery met with former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the MP for Chingford and Woodford Green, at the AM100 group’s Grange Jaguar Land Rover at Woodford to voice his concerns about Government’s policy towards EV adoption.
In its letter to MPs across the country – sent by general managers across the group’s businesses – Cambria also claimed that “thousands” of automotive industry jobs would be lost if Government pursues a rapid all-out shift to pure EVs.
It said: “If we prohibit the sale of hybrid vehicles we will lose thousands and thousands of jobs from our automotive industry manufacturer’s and supply chain like Jaguar Land Rover, Aston Martin, McLaren, Rolls Royce, Bentley and at the same time arguably damaging the planet further because pure electric is not the only solution.
“Electric propulsion systems are only part of the solution. Hybrid, petrol and diesel propulsion systems are making dramatic improvements and where people were previously not plugging in their vehicles because of the inefficiency that would only allow the vehicle to travel 10 miles on pure electric travel, we are now in a position where most hybrids can do at least 30 miles on electric only charge.
“This covers most people’s daily commute and is already changing behaviours with far more people plugging in the more efficient power units.”
As well as the environmental and economic risks posed by a shift to EVs at the exclusion of ICE and hybrid vehicles, Lavery said that he feared for the future of social mobility.
He said: “The simple fact is that fast-tracking this kind of technology also prices a lot of people out of the market.”
Full post
Automotive Management, 31 July 2020
Cambria Automobiles chief executive Mark Lavery has urged his car retail colleagues to lobby Government over an all-out push to Electric Vehicles (EV) which risks catching UK automotive “sleeping at the wheel”.
Lavery said that there was still time to prevent Government making a decision which would see an all-out ban on internal combustion engine (ICE) and hybrid vehicles as early as 2032, risking both the environment and “thousands” of industry jobs.
The Office for Low Emission Vehicles’ (OLEV) consultation over the proposals ends at midnight tonight (July 31), having been extended from an initial May deadline, and Lavery insisted that it was “not too late” to change what appeared to be a set course.
His comments came as the National Franchised Dealers Association (NFDA) today called for hybrids to be excluded from any initial ban on new vehicles sales, and a phased approach be taken towards a zero emission sales target of 2040.
“At the moment, as an industry, we are sleeping at the wheel as the environmental lobbying groups dictate an all-out push for EVs at the exclusion of any other solution,” Lavery told AM in an interview this morning.
“The millions of tonnes of Cobalt that are being pulled out the ground in Africa, the Amnesty International investigation into child slavery in those mining processes, the fact that the Cobalt is shipped to China to be processed and turned into batteries in a coal-powered economy only to be shipped to developed Western countries so we can have zero tailpipe emissions in our towns and cities… All that seems to be overlooked in the pursuit of this one solution.”
EVs ‘not the only solution’
Lavery argued that 35g/km of permanent CO2 is embedded into the emissions of a pure electric vehicles as a result of the battery production, giving the pure electric car only a small emissions advantage over the latest versions of modern turbo-diesel engines.
Pure EVs contain between 10 to 12kg of Cobalt on average, he said, compared to a far lesser amount for zero emissions-capable hybrid vehicles.
Lavery believes that Government must include hybrids and the use of cleaner synthetic fuels in a more gradual shift towards an all-out ban on vehicles which don’t offer zero emissions.
Hydrogen must also attract greater consideration in plans for the future, he added.
“Holistically, pure EVs are worse for the environment than many other solutions and yet the course appears to have been set,” he said.
Economic risks
Lavery met with former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the MP for Chingford and Woodford Green, at the AM100 group’s Grange Jaguar Land Rover at Woodford to voice his concerns about Government’s policy towards EV adoption.
In its letter to MPs across the country – sent by general managers across the group’s businesses – Cambria also claimed that “thousands” of automotive industry jobs would be lost if Government pursues a rapid all-out shift to pure EVs.
It said: “If we prohibit the sale of hybrid vehicles we will lose thousands and thousands of jobs from our automotive industry manufacturer’s and supply chain like Jaguar Land Rover, Aston Martin, McLaren, Rolls Royce, Bentley and at the same time arguably damaging the planet further because pure electric is not the only solution.
“Electric propulsion systems are only part of the solution. Hybrid, petrol and diesel propulsion systems are making dramatic improvements and where people were previously not plugging in their vehicles because of the inefficiency that would only allow the vehicle to travel 10 miles on pure electric travel, we are now in a position where most hybrids can do at least 30 miles on electric only charge.
“This covers most people’s daily commute and is already changing behaviours with far more people plugging in the more efficient power units.”
As well as the environmental and economic risks posed by a shift to EVs at the exclusion of ICE and hybrid vehicles, Lavery said that he feared for the future of social mobility.
He said: “The simple fact is that fast-tracking this kind of technology also prices a lot of people out of the market.”
Full post
6) Tilak Doshi: The Dirty Secrets Of “Clean” Electric Vehicles
Forbes, 2 August 2020
The determination not to know or to look away when the facts assail our beliefs is an enduring frailty of human nature. The tendency towards group think and confirmation bias, and the will to affirm the “scientific consensus” and marginalize sceptics, are rife in considerations by the so-called experts committed to advocating their favorite cause. In the case of EVs, the dirty truths of “clean energy” should seem apparent to all but, alas, there are none so blind as those who will not see.
The widespread view that fossil fuels are “dirty” and renewables such as wind and solar energy and electric vehicles are “clean” has become a fixture of mainstream media and policy assumptions across the political spectrum in developed countries, perhaps with the exception of the Trump-led US administration. Indeed the ultimate question we are led to believe is how quickly can enlightened Western governments, led by an alleged scientific consensus, “decarbonize” with clean energy in a race to save the world from impending climate catastrophe.
The ‘net zero by 2050’ mantra, calling for carbon emissions to be completely mitigated within three decades, is now the clarion call by governments and intergovernmental agencies around the developed world, ranging from several EU member states and the UK, to the International Energy Agency and the International Monetary Fund.
Mining out of sight, out of mind
Let’s start with Elon Musk’s Tesla, the darling of the smart set. In an astonishing achievement for a company that posted its fourth consecutive quarterly profit for the first time ever last month, Tesla is now the world’s most valuable automotive company. Demand for EVs is set to soar, as government policies subsidize the purchase of EVs to replace the internal combustion engine of gasoline and diesel-driven cars and as owning a “clean” and “green” car becomes a moral testament to many a virtue-signaling customer.
Yet, if one looks under the hood of “clean energy” battery-driven EVs, the dirt found would surprise most. The most important component in the EV is the lithium-ion rechargeable battery which relies on critical mineral commodities such as cobalt, graphite, lithium, and manganese. Tracing the source of these minerals, in what is called “full-cycle economics”, it becomes apparent that EVs create a trail of dirt from the mining and processing of minerals upstream.
A recent United Nations report warns that the raw materials used in electric car batteries are highly concentrated in a small number of countries where environmental and labour regulations are weak or non-existent. Thus, battery production for EVs is driving a boom in small-scale or “artisanal” cobalt production in the Democratic Republic of Congo which supplies two thirds of global output of the mineral. These artisanal mines, which account for up to a quarter of the country’s production, have been found to be dangerous and employ child labour.
Mindful of what the image of children scrabbling for hand-dug minerals in Africa can do to high tech’s clean and green image, most tech and auto companies using cobalt and other toxic heavy metals avoid direct sourcing from mines. Tesla Inc. struck a deal last month with Swiss-based Glencore Plc to buy as much as 6,000 tons of cobalt annually from the latter’s Congolese mines. While Tesla has said it aims to remove reputational risks associated with sourcing minerals from countries such as the DRC where corruption is rampant, Glencore assures buyers that no hand-dug cobalt is treated at its mechanized mines.
There are 7.2 million battery EVs or about 1% of the total vehicle fleet today. To get an idea of the scale of mining for raw materials involved in replacing the world’s gasoline and diesel-fueled cars with EVs, we can take the example of the UK as provided by Michael Kelly, the Emeritus Prince Philip Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge. According to Professor Kelly, if we replace all of the UK vehicle fleet with EVs, assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation batteries, we would need the following materials: about twice the annual global production of cobalt; three quarters of the world’s production lithium carbonate; nearly the entire world production of neodymium; and more than half the world’s production of copper in 2018.
And this is just for the UK. Professor Kelly estimates that if we want the whole world to be transported by electric vehicles, the vast increases in the supply of the raw materials listed above would go far beyond known reserves. The environmental and social impact of vastly-expanded mining for these materials — some of which are highly toxic when mined, transported and processed – in countries afflicted by corruption and poor human rights records can only be imagined. The clean and green image of EVs stands in stark contrast to the realities of manufacturing batteries.
Zero Emissions and All That
Proponents of EVs might counter by saying that despite these evident environmental and social problems associated with mining in many third world countries, the case remains that EVs help reduce carbon dioxide emissions associated with the internal combustion engines run on gasoline and diesel fuels. According to the reigning climate change narrative, it is after all carbon dioxide emissions that are threatening environmental catastrophe on a global scale. For the sake of saving the world, the climate crusaders of the richer nations might be willing to ignore the local pollution and human rights violations involved in mining for minerals and rare earths in Africa, China, Latin America and elsewhere.
While one might question the inherent inequity in imposing such a trade-off, the supposed advantages of EVs in emitting lower carbon emissions are overstated according to a peer-reviewed life-cycle study comparing conventional and electric vehicles. To begin with, about half the lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions from an electric car come from the energy used to produce the car, especially in the mining and processing of raw materials needed for the battery. This compares unfavorably with the manufacture of a gasoline-powered car which accounts for 17% of the car’s lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions. When a new EV appears in the show-room, it has already caused 30,000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emission. The equivalent amount for manufacturing a conventional car is 14,000 pounds.
Full post
Forbes, 2 August 2020
The determination not to know or to look away when the facts assail our beliefs is an enduring frailty of human nature. The tendency towards group think and confirmation bias, and the will to affirm the “scientific consensus” and marginalize sceptics, are rife in considerations by the so-called experts committed to advocating their favorite cause. In the case of EVs, the dirty truths of “clean energy” should seem apparent to all but, alas, there are none so blind as those who will not see.
The widespread view that fossil fuels are “dirty” and renewables such as wind and solar energy and electric vehicles are “clean” has become a fixture of mainstream media and policy assumptions across the political spectrum in developed countries, perhaps with the exception of the Trump-led US administration. Indeed the ultimate question we are led to believe is how quickly can enlightened Western governments, led by an alleged scientific consensus, “decarbonize” with clean energy in a race to save the world from impending climate catastrophe.
The ‘net zero by 2050’ mantra, calling for carbon emissions to be completely mitigated within three decades, is now the clarion call by governments and intergovernmental agencies around the developed world, ranging from several EU member states and the UK, to the International Energy Agency and the International Monetary Fund.
Mining out of sight, out of mind
Let’s start with Elon Musk’s Tesla, the darling of the smart set. In an astonishing achievement for a company that posted its fourth consecutive quarterly profit for the first time ever last month, Tesla is now the world’s most valuable automotive company. Demand for EVs is set to soar, as government policies subsidize the purchase of EVs to replace the internal combustion engine of gasoline and diesel-driven cars and as owning a “clean” and “green” car becomes a moral testament to many a virtue-signaling customer.
Yet, if one looks under the hood of “clean energy” battery-driven EVs, the dirt found would surprise most. The most important component in the EV is the lithium-ion rechargeable battery which relies on critical mineral commodities such as cobalt, graphite, lithium, and manganese. Tracing the source of these minerals, in what is called “full-cycle economics”, it becomes apparent that EVs create a trail of dirt from the mining and processing of minerals upstream.
A recent United Nations report warns that the raw materials used in electric car batteries are highly concentrated in a small number of countries where environmental and labour regulations are weak or non-existent. Thus, battery production for EVs is driving a boom in small-scale or “artisanal” cobalt production in the Democratic Republic of Congo which supplies two thirds of global output of the mineral. These artisanal mines, which account for up to a quarter of the country’s production, have been found to be dangerous and employ child labour.
Mindful of what the image of children scrabbling for hand-dug minerals in Africa can do to high tech’s clean and green image, most tech and auto companies using cobalt and other toxic heavy metals avoid direct sourcing from mines. Tesla Inc. struck a deal last month with Swiss-based Glencore Plc to buy as much as 6,000 tons of cobalt annually from the latter’s Congolese mines. While Tesla has said it aims to remove reputational risks associated with sourcing minerals from countries such as the DRC where corruption is rampant, Glencore assures buyers that no hand-dug cobalt is treated at its mechanized mines.
There are 7.2 million battery EVs or about 1% of the total vehicle fleet today. To get an idea of the scale of mining for raw materials involved in replacing the world’s gasoline and diesel-fueled cars with EVs, we can take the example of the UK as provided by Michael Kelly, the Emeritus Prince Philip Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge. According to Professor Kelly, if we replace all of the UK vehicle fleet with EVs, assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation batteries, we would need the following materials: about twice the annual global production of cobalt; three quarters of the world’s production lithium carbonate; nearly the entire world production of neodymium; and more than half the world’s production of copper in 2018.
And this is just for the UK. Professor Kelly estimates that if we want the whole world to be transported by electric vehicles, the vast increases in the supply of the raw materials listed above would go far beyond known reserves. The environmental and social impact of vastly-expanded mining for these materials — some of which are highly toxic when mined, transported and processed – in countries afflicted by corruption and poor human rights records can only be imagined. The clean and green image of EVs stands in stark contrast to the realities of manufacturing batteries.
Zero Emissions and All That
Proponents of EVs might counter by saying that despite these evident environmental and social problems associated with mining in many third world countries, the case remains that EVs help reduce carbon dioxide emissions associated with the internal combustion engines run on gasoline and diesel fuels. According to the reigning climate change narrative, it is after all carbon dioxide emissions that are threatening environmental catastrophe on a global scale. For the sake of saving the world, the climate crusaders of the richer nations might be willing to ignore the local pollution and human rights violations involved in mining for minerals and rare earths in Africa, China, Latin America and elsewhere.
While one might question the inherent inequity in imposing such a trade-off, the supposed advantages of EVs in emitting lower carbon emissions are overstated according to a peer-reviewed life-cycle study comparing conventional and electric vehicles. To begin with, about half the lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions from an electric car come from the energy used to produce the car, especially in the mining and processing of raw materials needed for the battery. This compares unfavorably with the manufacture of a gasoline-powered car which accounts for 17% of the car’s lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions. When a new EV appears in the show-room, it has already caused 30,000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emission. The equivalent amount for manufacturing a conventional car is 14,000 pounds.
Full post
7) And Finally: Hans Christian Anderson's Fairy Tale For The Low-Carbon Fireside
Conservative Woman, 3 August 2020
ONCE upon a time, not so long ago, in an island you might have visited, there was a Kingdom that was very ordinary in all sorts of ways, being not very wet and not very dry, and not very big and not very small, and so on, and it was ruled by a Government that was even more ordinary in all sorts of ways, which we won’t go into because it’s boring as well as embarrassing.
Indeed, all this ordinariness was very depressing to the Government, who had once been Almost Quite Special, briefly and really by accident because one day while digging the garden it found some buried treasure and got stupendously rich. But the money hadn’t lasted very long, and everyone else in the world had found buried treasure too, so now the Kingdom and its Government were back to being ordinary.
But the Government had really liked being Special and it wanted to be special again so it could show off when all the Governments got together for a feast and a chat about how stupid and silly ordinary people were and how they needed be governed and generally made to pull up their socks.
So the Government of this Kingdom said all sorts of encouraging things about the country’s best days lying ahead, and sunlit uplands, and accelerating growth, and levelling up, and how they could be the envy of the world, if they weren’t already, and very special again. But the peasants and the tradespeople of the Kingdom just weren’t that interested in being special, and in fact they rather liked being ordinary, provided they were left alone, which was very frustrating for the Government, who said sternly that they lacked Ambition.
So one day, after trying practically every possible way to make the Kingdom and the Government look special, like adding up numbers and counting money, at which it was really quite good but not Head-Shoulders-Above-Every-One-Else-Special, and playing football, at which it was intermittently talented but not outstanding, and singing and dancing, at which it was occasionally nearly as entertaining as it thought it was, and telling stories, at which it was within an inch of being Really Special, and making stuff, at which it was not too bad but unfortunately nowhere near as good as it once had been, the Government sat on its throne in the castle and sighed a deep sigh: ‘Oh deary me!’ said the Government, ‘how are we going to be Really Special, so that I can hold my head up at the next Inter-Governmental Boasting Tournament?’
And the Government gave a great long wheezing, whistling, groaning sigh, like all the air coming out of a pig’s bladder. ‘Oooh’, said the Government, sitting up suddenly on its throne, ‘That gives me an idea. Let’s show all the other governments how special we are by ridding the Kingdom of the wicked dragon called CO2, who is definitely breathing fire and making us all very hot, and must be around here somewhere though I can’t see him or smell him. I don’t believe that anyone else has thought of that before.’
So the Government blew its own trumpet, which it was always doing actually, and told the assembled masses that the time had come to banish the Wicked CO2 for being wicked and breathing fire and making everybody hot. ‘Ooh,’ said the government’s courtiers, jumping up and down and clapping their soft white hands in excitement, ‘that would be a great idea, particularly if we are paid to help.’ ‘Hmmm,’ said the courtiers’ courtiers, stroking their hairy chins, ‘that would be a super idea, particularly if we are paid to help.’
The peasants and tradespeople weren’t quite as keen, partly because the Wicked CO2 had never been much of a nuisance, and partly because they had a shrewd suspicion that if someone had to get out of bed very early to do the banishing of CO2 it would be them, as usual, but mostly because they were so busy trying to put dinner on the table and buy shoes for their children while also paying their taxes, which were quite high, that they didn’t listen as carefully as they should have done to what the Government was talking about.
So when the Government asked the peasants and tradespeople for their opinions, which it sometimes did because governments like to have someone else to blame when things go wrong, the peasants and tradespeople found it all boring beyond belief, and since they wanted a quiet life and not to be bothered every five minutes, they said that banishing the Wicked CO2 would be all right so long as the government didn’t make it any harder to put dinner on the table and shoes on their children’s feet, and taxes didn’t rise.
Full fairy tale
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.
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