Boris's green jobs for China
In this newsletter:
1) Europe's Green Deal in limbo as Poland demands 'further cost analysis'
EurActiv, 20 November 2020
2) Europe’s largest employer’s association questions EU climate policy cost modelling
EurActiv, 23 November 2020
3) Germany’s climate consensus cracks as costs mount
Bloomberg, 21 November 2020
4) Germany plans ‘turbine-free zones’
EurActiv, 22 November 2020
5) Boris's green jobs for China
The Times, 23 November 2020
4) Germany plans ‘turbine-free zones’
EurActiv, 22 November 2020
5) Boris's green jobs for China
The Times, 23 November 2020
6) From Hyundai to Tesla and BMW, battery fires turn the heat on electric cars
Reuters, 19 November 2020
Reuters, 19 November 2020
7) Matt Ridley: Ten reasons why Boris’s green agenda is just plain wrong
The Sunday Telegraph, 22 November 2020
8) Michael Kelly: Boris’s green industrial revolution is doomed to fail
The Spectator, 21 November 2020
The Sunday Telegraph, 22 November 2020
8) Michael Kelly: Boris’s green industrial revolution is doomed to fail
The Spectator, 21 November 2020
9) Neil Collins: This green fantasy will bankrupt us
Neil Collins XXX, 21 November 2020
Neil Collins XXX, 21 November 2020
Full details:
1) Europe's Green Deal in limbo as Poland demands 'further cost analysis'
EurActiv, 20 November 2020
Further analysis into the impact of tougher climate goals on EU member states is needed before Poland can sign up to the European Commission’s proposed 55% greenhouse gas reduction target for 2030, a senior Polish minister has said.
EurActiv, 20 November 2020
Further analysis into the impact of tougher climate goals on EU member states is needed before Poland can sign up to the European Commission’s proposed 55% greenhouse gas reduction target for 2030, a senior Polish minister has said.
“In light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impact, the Commission proposal on the 2030 target, as well as its effects on the member states, requires in-depth analysis,” said Michał Kurtyka, Poland’s Minister of Climate and Environment.
“We are lacking this information as we do not know what an increased target means for member states, for regions and for sectors,” he added in a video address opening a EURACTIV debate on Tuesday (17 November).
The European Commission has proposed a 55% emissions reduction target by 2030, branding climate action and the European Green Deal as the EU’s “new growth strategy”. The European Parliament, for its part, voted for a 60% emissions reduction target.
The European Council, the body bringing together the EU’s 27 heads of states and government, held a first discussion on the 2030 climate plan during a summit in October.
But EU leaders delayed their decision until December after several Eastern countries, led by Poland, refused to sign up and pushed for summit conclusions inviting the Commission to “conduct in-depth consultations with member states” to assess their specific national situations.
EU leaders on Thursday (15 October) said they will decide on a more stringent climate target for 2030 at a summit in December, leaving more time to forge a united European response to climate change.
Poland digs in heels
One month after the October summit, little progress has been made, with Poland still digging in its heels on the EU’s proposed 2030 climate plan.
“We do not want to enforce radical changes without the full view of the consequences,” Kurtyka insisted, saying EU countries have different energy systems and national circumstances that need to be taken into account.
“A fair distribution of costs and benefits” must be ensured in the transition, Kurtyka stressed, saying the EU’s “credibility in the implementation of climate policy” was at stake as Europe goes through an unprecedented economic recession caused by the COVID-19 crisis.
Full story
2) Europe’s largest employer’s association questions EU climate policy cost modelling
EurActiv, 23 November 2020
Europe’s largest employer’s association, BusinessEurope, has questioned “the value and credibility” of the economic analysis underpinning the EU’s proposed climate target plan for 2030, triggering an immediate backlash from pro-climate corporate groups.
“We are lacking this information as we do not know what an increased target means for member states, for regions and for sectors,” he added in a video address opening a EURACTIV debate on Tuesday (17 November).
The European Commission has proposed a 55% emissions reduction target by 2030, branding climate action and the European Green Deal as the EU’s “new growth strategy”. The European Parliament, for its part, voted for a 60% emissions reduction target.
The European Council, the body bringing together the EU’s 27 heads of states and government, held a first discussion on the 2030 climate plan during a summit in October.
But EU leaders delayed their decision until December after several Eastern countries, led by Poland, refused to sign up and pushed for summit conclusions inviting the Commission to “conduct in-depth consultations with member states” to assess their specific national situations.
EU leaders on Thursday (15 October) said they will decide on a more stringent climate target for 2030 at a summit in December, leaving more time to forge a united European response to climate change.
Poland digs in heels
One month after the October summit, little progress has been made, with Poland still digging in its heels on the EU’s proposed 2030 climate plan.
“We do not want to enforce radical changes without the full view of the consequences,” Kurtyka insisted, saying EU countries have different energy systems and national circumstances that need to be taken into account.
“A fair distribution of costs and benefits” must be ensured in the transition, Kurtyka stressed, saying the EU’s “credibility in the implementation of climate policy” was at stake as Europe goes through an unprecedented economic recession caused by the COVID-19 crisis.
Full story
2) Europe’s largest employer’s association questions EU climate policy cost modelling
EurActiv, 23 November 2020
Europe’s largest employer’s association, BusinessEurope, has questioned “the value and credibility” of the economic analysis underpinning the EU’s proposed climate target plan for 2030, triggering an immediate backlash from pro-climate corporate groups.
The European Commission was over-optimistic when analysing the costs and benefits of raising the EU’s 2030 climate goals, BusinessEurope argues in a document criticising the EU executive’s climate policy.
The document questions Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s assertion that tougher climate policies are the bloc’s new “growth strategy”, saying there are too many uncertainties in the Commission’s own impact assessment to make such a claim.
“Every core scenario” in the cost-benefit analysis accompanying the Commission’s 2030 climate target plan, “is conducted with pre-COVID-19 data and does not take (the pandemic’s) economic impacts into account,” the group argues.
“The sensitivity analysis is based on the assumption of a quick recovery, but what if the expected economic recovery takes longer than anticipated?” BusinessEurope asks. It points to the International Energy Agency’s latest world energy outlook, which explores the scenario of delayed recovery, finding that by 2030, the global economy is nearly 10% smaller than in a fast recovery scenario.
Moreover, models used in the analysis “have not been developed or discussed in any detail” and were not open for public scrutiny, BusinessEurope points out, saying this “weakens the value and credibility of the presented results for an informed decision making.”
“In our view, there needs to be a broader approach when implementing Europe’s recovery plan and to focus much more on how to turn the Green Deal into a real growth driver.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced plans on Wednesday (16 September) to target a 55% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 as part of a broader European Green Deal programme aimed at reaching “climate neutrality” by mid-century.
BusinessEurope’s comments triggered immediate reactions from pro-climate corporations, which stepped forward in defence of the European Green Deal and denounced an attack on the EU’s climate policies.
Full story
3) Germany’s climate consensus cracks as costs mount
The document questions Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s assertion that tougher climate policies are the bloc’s new “growth strategy”, saying there are too many uncertainties in the Commission’s own impact assessment to make such a claim.
“Every core scenario” in the cost-benefit analysis accompanying the Commission’s 2030 climate target plan, “is conducted with pre-COVID-19 data and does not take (the pandemic’s) economic impacts into account,” the group argues.
“The sensitivity analysis is based on the assumption of a quick recovery, but what if the expected economic recovery takes longer than anticipated?” BusinessEurope asks. It points to the International Energy Agency’s latest world energy outlook, which explores the scenario of delayed recovery, finding that by 2030, the global economy is nearly 10% smaller than in a fast recovery scenario.
Moreover, models used in the analysis “have not been developed or discussed in any detail” and were not open for public scrutiny, BusinessEurope points out, saying this “weakens the value and credibility of the presented results for an informed decision making.”
“In our view, there needs to be a broader approach when implementing Europe’s recovery plan and to focus much more on how to turn the Green Deal into a real growth driver.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced plans on Wednesday (16 September) to target a 55% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 as part of a broader European Green Deal programme aimed at reaching “climate neutrality” by mid-century.
BusinessEurope’s comments triggered immediate reactions from pro-climate corporations, which stepped forward in defence of the European Green Deal and denounced an attack on the EU’s climate policies.
Full story
3) Germany’s climate consensus cracks as costs mount
Bloomberg, 21 November 2020
Fretting over costs, Merkel’s Christian Democrats and her Economy and Energy Minister are unwilling to increase renewable energy targets, creating an impasse for the climate bill due to be passed next week.
Germany is revamping expansion plans for wind and solar power over the coming decade, exposing differences within the government over just how much is needed to meet Europe’s carbon reduction goals.
A bill now in parliament aims to set new targets and financial support for clean power to accommodate Europe’s plan to bump up carbon emission cuts to 55% by 2030. Lawmakers from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition are divided over the targets’ scope, with Social Democrats backing energy think tanks and utilities calling for a much faster build out of renewables than earmarked in the bill.
Led by Environment Minister Svenja Schulze, critics of the bill said the EU’s carbon reduction target entails Germany cutting pollution 65% by 2030, not by 55% as set out in the legislation. The higher target is the result of EU burden-sharing rules linked to the size of member states’ economies.
Fretting over costs, Merkel’s Christian Democrats and her Economy and Energy Minister Peter Altmaier are unwilling to increase green power targets, creating an impasse for the bill due to be passed next week, and an unresolved fight over how wind and solar will grow this decade.
Germany isn’t alone among the EU-27 to struggle with digesting the implications of the sweeping climate plans. EU leaders may delay a decision on the carbon targets slated for Dec. 10-11 amid divisions, a report said Thursday.
Full story
see also: Angela Merkel caves in after her MP's climate rebellion
4) Germany plans ‘turbine-free zones’
EurActiv, 22 November 2020
Proposals to introduce a minimum distance of 1,000 metres between wind turbines and buildings have attracted fierce criticism from the German environment ministry, which said the draft new rules would derail the country’s plan to boost renewable energy by 2030.
The regulations, planned by the ministry of economic affairs headed by Peter Altmaier (CDU), would reduce the nationwide potential for wind energy by 20% to 50%, according to the German Environment Agency.
“Germany could clearly miss the target of producing 65% of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030” if the 1,000 metre rule was applied, the agency warned on Wednesday (20 November).
And the figure could even reach 70% to 90% in some regions. Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein would be particularly affected.
Currently, 0.9% of Germany’s total land area is approved for the placement of wind turbines, even if only half of the land is being used. In theory, 81 gigawatts of wind energy could be installed using that land, which is more than enough to reach the 65% renewable energy target by 2030.
But if the minimum distance between wind turbines and homes is determined at 1,000 metres, a much smaller increase of 43 to 63 gigawatts would be possible.
Full story
Fretting over costs, Merkel’s Christian Democrats and her Economy and Energy Minister are unwilling to increase renewable energy targets, creating an impasse for the climate bill due to be passed next week.
Germany is revamping expansion plans for wind and solar power over the coming decade, exposing differences within the government over just how much is needed to meet Europe’s carbon reduction goals.
A bill now in parliament aims to set new targets and financial support for clean power to accommodate Europe’s plan to bump up carbon emission cuts to 55% by 2030. Lawmakers from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition are divided over the targets’ scope, with Social Democrats backing energy think tanks and utilities calling for a much faster build out of renewables than earmarked in the bill.
Led by Environment Minister Svenja Schulze, critics of the bill said the EU’s carbon reduction target entails Germany cutting pollution 65% by 2030, not by 55% as set out in the legislation. The higher target is the result of EU burden-sharing rules linked to the size of member states’ economies.
Fretting over costs, Merkel’s Christian Democrats and her Economy and Energy Minister Peter Altmaier are unwilling to increase green power targets, creating an impasse for the bill due to be passed next week, and an unresolved fight over how wind and solar will grow this decade.
Germany isn’t alone among the EU-27 to struggle with digesting the implications of the sweeping climate plans. EU leaders may delay a decision on the carbon targets slated for Dec. 10-11 amid divisions, a report said Thursday.
Full story
see also: Angela Merkel caves in after her MP's climate rebellion
4) Germany plans ‘turbine-free zones’
EurActiv, 22 November 2020
Proposals to introduce a minimum distance of 1,000 metres between wind turbines and buildings have attracted fierce criticism from the German environment ministry, which said the draft new rules would derail the country’s plan to boost renewable energy by 2030.
The regulations, planned by the ministry of economic affairs headed by Peter Altmaier (CDU), would reduce the nationwide potential for wind energy by 20% to 50%, according to the German Environment Agency.
“Germany could clearly miss the target of producing 65% of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030” if the 1,000 metre rule was applied, the agency warned on Wednesday (20 November).
And the figure could even reach 70% to 90% in some regions. Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein would be particularly affected.
Currently, 0.9% of Germany’s total land area is approved for the placement of wind turbines, even if only half of the land is being used. In theory, 81 gigawatts of wind energy could be installed using that land, which is more than enough to reach the 65% renewable energy target by 2030.
But if the minimum distance between wind turbines and homes is determined at 1,000 metres, a much smaller increase of 43 to 63 gigawatts would be possible.
Full story
5) Boris's green jobs for China
The Times, 23 November 2020
The Times, 23 November 2020
Britain is forecast to miss out on more than half of the £50 billion investment in building offshore wind farms in its waters this decade, with the majority of orders for turbines and other equipment expected to go to factories and suppliers overseas.
A commitment to quadruple UK offshore wind capacity by 2030 was one of the key policy proposals outlined by Boris Johnson in his ten-point plan last week to cut emissions and create jobs. However, government figures predict that only about £20 billion of the investment will go to Britain.
Energy companies are expected to need to invest about £50 billion building new wind farms to hit the 2030 target. Although Britain has two blade factories, in Hull and on the Isle of Wight, many blades and most other big turbine parts are made abroad. Only 29 per cent of the capital investment in recent projects has been in the UK.
The government is aiming to boost this figure and has committed to invest £160 million in ports and manufacturing infrastructure, but the business department told The Times that the UK share of capital expenditure was expected to reach only 50 per cent by 2030 and that “the majority of the increase in UK content is likely to occur after 2025”.
The admission comes despite claims in the ten-point plan that it would “enable the delivery of 60 per cent UK content in offshore wind projects”. This higher figure relates to the “lifetime” UK content of projects starting in 2030 and relies on British companies doing most of the operations and maintenance work over subsequent decades.
Full story
A commitment to quadruple UK offshore wind capacity by 2030 was one of the key policy proposals outlined by Boris Johnson in his ten-point plan last week to cut emissions and create jobs. However, government figures predict that only about £20 billion of the investment will go to Britain.
Energy companies are expected to need to invest about £50 billion building new wind farms to hit the 2030 target. Although Britain has two blade factories, in Hull and on the Isle of Wight, many blades and most other big turbine parts are made abroad. Only 29 per cent of the capital investment in recent projects has been in the UK.
The government is aiming to boost this figure and has committed to invest £160 million in ports and manufacturing infrastructure, but the business department told The Times that the UK share of capital expenditure was expected to reach only 50 per cent by 2030 and that “the majority of the increase in UK content is likely to occur after 2025”.
The admission comes despite claims in the ten-point plan that it would “enable the delivery of 60 per cent UK content in offshore wind projects”. This higher figure relates to the “lifetime” UK content of projects starting in 2030 and relies on British companies doing most of the operations and maintenance work over subsequent decades.
Full story
6) From Hyundai to Tesla and BMW, battery fires turn the heat on electric cars
Reuters, 19 November 2020
Electric vehicles (EVs), benefiting globally from a push for tighter emissions controls, are facing challenges after a global string of fires from overheating batteries.
Here are some vehicle recalls and investigations facing major EV makers worldwide.
HYUNDAI MOTOR
After 16 Kona EVs caught fire in Korea, Canada and Europe over two years, Hyundai Motor Co is expanding a recall to cover at least 74,000 of its top-selling EVs in South Korea, the United States, Europe and Canada to update its battery management system.
About 23,000 Kona EVs in South Korea have completed the software upgrade, with 800 of them found to have battery defects requiring replacement of affected modules, according to the office of lawmaker Jang Kyung-tae, which was briefed by South Korea's transport ministry.
Hyundai, in a filing to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in October, blamed "internal damage to certain cells of the lithium-ion battery increasing the risk of an electrical short circuit."
The battery maker, LG Chem Ltd denied any cell defects, saying a joint investigation was under way.
GENERAL MOTORS
General Motors Co said last week it was recalling nearly 69,000 Chevrolet Bolt EVs worldwide that pose a fire risk after five reported fires and two minor injuries. Affected vehicles will get battery software updates, limiting charges to 90% of capacity.
In October, NHTSA opened a probe after reviewing reports of three Bolt EVs catching fire under the rear seat while parked. The probe covers 77,842 Bolt EVs from the 2017 through 2020 model years.
Full story
Reuters, 19 November 2020
Electric vehicles (EVs), benefiting globally from a push for tighter emissions controls, are facing challenges after a global string of fires from overheating batteries.
Here are some vehicle recalls and investigations facing major EV makers worldwide.
HYUNDAI MOTOR
After 16 Kona EVs caught fire in Korea, Canada and Europe over two years, Hyundai Motor Co is expanding a recall to cover at least 74,000 of its top-selling EVs in South Korea, the United States, Europe and Canada to update its battery management system.
About 23,000 Kona EVs in South Korea have completed the software upgrade, with 800 of them found to have battery defects requiring replacement of affected modules, according to the office of lawmaker Jang Kyung-tae, which was briefed by South Korea's transport ministry.
Hyundai, in a filing to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in October, blamed "internal damage to certain cells of the lithium-ion battery increasing the risk of an electrical short circuit."
The battery maker, LG Chem Ltd denied any cell defects, saying a joint investigation was under way.
GENERAL MOTORS
General Motors Co said last week it was recalling nearly 69,000 Chevrolet Bolt EVs worldwide that pose a fire risk after five reported fires and two minor injuries. Affected vehicles will get battery software updates, limiting charges to 90% of capacity.
In October, NHTSA opened a probe after reviewing reports of three Bolt EVs catching fire under the rear seat while parked. The probe covers 77,842 Bolt EVs from the 2017 through 2020 model years.
Full story
7) Matt Ridley: Ten reasons why Boris’s green agenda is just plain wrong
The Sunday Telegraph, 22 November 2020
Our fearless leader has descended from the mountain with a 10-commandment plan for a green industrial revolution. At a cost of £12 billion, he will have all Britons driving electric cars powered by North Sea wind turbines and giving up their gas boilers to heat their homes with ground-source heat pumps. He will invent zero-emission planes and ships. This vast enterprise will create 250,000 jobs. I am a loyal supporter of the prime minister, but this Ed Miliband policy makes no sense any way you look at it. Here are 10 reasons why.
First, if it’s jobs we are after then spending £48,000 per job is a lot. Cheaper, as Lord Lawson put it, to create the same employment erecting a statue of Boris in every town. Anyway, it’s backwards: it’s not jobs in the generating of energy that count but jobs that use it. Providing cheap, reliable energy enables the private sector to create jobs for free as far as the taxpayer is concerned.
Second, he misreads how innovation works, a topic on which I’ve just written a book. Innovation will create marvellous, unexpected things in the next 10 years. But if you could summon up innovations to order in any sector you want, such as electric planes and cheap ways of making hydrogen, just by spending money, then the promises of my childhood would have come true: routine space travel, personal jetpacks and flying cars. Instead, we flew in 747s for more than 50 years.
Third, he is hugely underestimating the cost. The wind industry claims that its cost is coming down. But the accounts of wind energy companies show that both capital and operating expenditures of offshore wind farms continue to rise, as Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University and John Aldersey-Williams of Aberdeen Busines School have found. Wind firms sign contracts to deliver cheap electricity, but the penalties for walking away from those contracts, demanding higher prices from a desperate grid in the future, are minimal and their investors know it. Britain already has among the highest electricity prices for business in Europe because of the £10 billion a year that electricity-bill payers spend on subsidising the rich capitalists who own wind farms; raising them further will kill a lot more than 250,000 jobs.
Fourth, these policies will not significantly reduce the nation’s emissions, let alone the world’s. It takes a lot more emissions to make an electric car than a petrol one because of the battery. This is usually made in China. If the battery lasts for 100,000 miles – which is optimistic – and the electricity with which it is recharged is made partly with gas, then there is only a small saving in emissions over the lifetime of the car, according to Gautam Kalghatgi of Oxford University.
Fifth, the plan will make the electricity supply less reliable. Already this autumn there have been power-cut near misses and there was a bad blackout in 2019. Costly diesel generators came to our rescue, but keeping the grid stable is getting harder, and in both Australia and California, blackouts have become more common because of reliance on renewables. Smart meters that drain your electric car’s battery to help keep other people’s lights on may help. But if you think that will be popular, Boris, good luck, and wait till the lights go out or the cost of heating your home goes through the roof.
Sixth, Mr Johnson is depending on impractical technologies. Ground-source heat pumps can work, though they deliver low-grade heat and can’t cope on a freezing night. Air source heat pumps have not proved so far to be nearly as efficient as promised. They need electricity, make a noise and take up outside space that is not there in a terrace of houses. Forcing us to use compact fluorescent light bulbs, when LEDs were coming, proved a costly mistake.
Seventh, hydrogen is not an energy source; it first has to be made, using energy, then stored and transported. Making it from natural gas is expensive and generates emissions, but making it with electricity is vastly more expensive. Its minuscule molecules can slip through almost any kind of hole, so the natural gas pipe network is not suitable. Leaks will happen at hydrogen fuelling stations, as one did in Norway in June last year, resulting in a massive explosion.
Eighth, this industrial revolution is anything but green. To generate all our electricity from wind in the North Sea, taking into account the increased demand for electricity for heat pumps, electric cars and hydrogen manufacture, would require a wall of turbines 20 miles wide stretching from Thanet to John O’Groats, says Andrew Montford of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. The effect on migratory birds would be terrible.
Ninth, nobody is following Britain’s example. China has announced that its use of fossil fuels will not even peak till 2030. China has more coal-fired power now under development than the entire coal power capacity of the United States. It will use coal to make the turbines and cars and batteries we use, laughing all the way to the bank. The world still generates 93% of its energy from CO2-emitting combustion (coal, oil, gas and wood) and just 1.4% from wind and solar.
Tenth, while climate change is a real issue and must be tackled, Extinction Rebellion is simply wrong about the urgency. If it’s extinction they worry about, let’s tackle invasive alien species, responsible for most extinctions. By contrast, there is no confirmed extinction of a species due to climate change. Nor has global warming resulted in more or fiercer storms or droughts. The extremists’ claims otherwise simply ignore the scientific evidence. Emissions have so far increased crop yields and made all ecosystems greener.
Full post (£)
8) Michael Kelly: Boris’s green industrial revolution is doomed to fail
The Spectator, 21 November 2020
Boris Johnson’s ‘green industrial revolution’, which was announced this week, looks doomed from the outset.
From our heating to how we transport food, the proposals would mean a complete overhaul in the way we live. Yet barely a word has been said about the immense practical difficulties involved in Johnson’s ten-point plan for Britain to go carbon neutral by 2050. Make no mistake, it will be close to impossible to achieve – and even trying could prove catastrophic...
Nowhere is the flaw in the government’s plan more clearly exposed than in the announcement that sales of new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars will be banned by 2030. There are more than 38.9 million cars, vans and lorries on our roads today. We would likely need to build over ten million charging points – amounting to thousands a day between now and 2030 – to totally switch over to electric vehicles. Is this really realistic?
In August 2019, there were power cuts across Britain after a series of failures led to electricity outages. The move towards electric vehicles and domestic heating based around electric heat pumps is going to increase demand and reliance upon the electricity grid. Yet there was little detail on the wholescale upgrade to supply that will be required if Boris’s plan is to work smoothly.
Johnson’s green revolution would mean that we would need to completely upgrade electric wiring in our homes, streets, substations, and transmission lines. To meet demand would require enormously costly upgrades to local electricity grids, which we would all ultimately pay for through higher energy bills. If this really is part of the plan, then the government must be honest about who is to foot the bill.
We also won’t have to wait for long to see other massive infrastructure problems confronting us. Many people don’t have the luxury of a driveway where they can charge their vehicles; four in ten cars today are parked on the road. So how, when, and where are these cars going to be charged? And what would electric vehicles mean for the haulage industry? Electric trucks will need to be charged for 24 hours, resulting in less time on the road, unless there is a huge infrastructure for battery swapping.
Then there is the problem with the nature of the batteries electric vehicles use. How will we manufacture the gargantuan number required, for the UK, as well as the rest of the world, which is supposed to follow our lead? To build, maintain and dispose of these batteries on the scale required for an electric fleet of UK vehicles would mean the world’s supply of lithium, cobalt and nickel would need to increase overnight. Who will ensure the correct number of batteries are available? And what happens if they are not? You won’t hear it from Extinction Rebellion, but the mining of cobalt often has a high human cost: children as young as six are among those already risking their lives in the Congo to ensure that supply can keep up with demand.
Full post & comments
The Sunday Telegraph, 22 November 2020
Our fearless leader has descended from the mountain with a 10-commandment plan for a green industrial revolution. At a cost of £12 billion, he will have all Britons driving electric cars powered by North Sea wind turbines and giving up their gas boilers to heat their homes with ground-source heat pumps. He will invent zero-emission planes and ships. This vast enterprise will create 250,000 jobs. I am a loyal supporter of the prime minister, but this Ed Miliband policy makes no sense any way you look at it. Here are 10 reasons why.
First, if it’s jobs we are after then spending £48,000 per job is a lot. Cheaper, as Lord Lawson put it, to create the same employment erecting a statue of Boris in every town. Anyway, it’s backwards: it’s not jobs in the generating of energy that count but jobs that use it. Providing cheap, reliable energy enables the private sector to create jobs for free as far as the taxpayer is concerned.
Second, he misreads how innovation works, a topic on which I’ve just written a book. Innovation will create marvellous, unexpected things in the next 10 years. But if you could summon up innovations to order in any sector you want, such as electric planes and cheap ways of making hydrogen, just by spending money, then the promises of my childhood would have come true: routine space travel, personal jetpacks and flying cars. Instead, we flew in 747s for more than 50 years.
Third, he is hugely underestimating the cost. The wind industry claims that its cost is coming down. But the accounts of wind energy companies show that both capital and operating expenditures of offshore wind farms continue to rise, as Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University and John Aldersey-Williams of Aberdeen Busines School have found. Wind firms sign contracts to deliver cheap electricity, but the penalties for walking away from those contracts, demanding higher prices from a desperate grid in the future, are minimal and their investors know it. Britain already has among the highest electricity prices for business in Europe because of the £10 billion a year that electricity-bill payers spend on subsidising the rich capitalists who own wind farms; raising them further will kill a lot more than 250,000 jobs.
Fourth, these policies will not significantly reduce the nation’s emissions, let alone the world’s. It takes a lot more emissions to make an electric car than a petrol one because of the battery. This is usually made in China. If the battery lasts for 100,000 miles – which is optimistic – and the electricity with which it is recharged is made partly with gas, then there is only a small saving in emissions over the lifetime of the car, according to Gautam Kalghatgi of Oxford University.
Fifth, the plan will make the electricity supply less reliable. Already this autumn there have been power-cut near misses and there was a bad blackout in 2019. Costly diesel generators came to our rescue, but keeping the grid stable is getting harder, and in both Australia and California, blackouts have become more common because of reliance on renewables. Smart meters that drain your electric car’s battery to help keep other people’s lights on may help. But if you think that will be popular, Boris, good luck, and wait till the lights go out or the cost of heating your home goes through the roof.
Sixth, Mr Johnson is depending on impractical technologies. Ground-source heat pumps can work, though they deliver low-grade heat and can’t cope on a freezing night. Air source heat pumps have not proved so far to be nearly as efficient as promised. They need electricity, make a noise and take up outside space that is not there in a terrace of houses. Forcing us to use compact fluorescent light bulbs, when LEDs were coming, proved a costly mistake.
Seventh, hydrogen is not an energy source; it first has to be made, using energy, then stored and transported. Making it from natural gas is expensive and generates emissions, but making it with electricity is vastly more expensive. Its minuscule molecules can slip through almost any kind of hole, so the natural gas pipe network is not suitable. Leaks will happen at hydrogen fuelling stations, as one did in Norway in June last year, resulting in a massive explosion.
Eighth, this industrial revolution is anything but green. To generate all our electricity from wind in the North Sea, taking into account the increased demand for electricity for heat pumps, electric cars and hydrogen manufacture, would require a wall of turbines 20 miles wide stretching from Thanet to John O’Groats, says Andrew Montford of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. The effect on migratory birds would be terrible.
Ninth, nobody is following Britain’s example. China has announced that its use of fossil fuels will not even peak till 2030. China has more coal-fired power now under development than the entire coal power capacity of the United States. It will use coal to make the turbines and cars and batteries we use, laughing all the way to the bank. The world still generates 93% of its energy from CO2-emitting combustion (coal, oil, gas and wood) and just 1.4% from wind and solar.
Tenth, while climate change is a real issue and must be tackled, Extinction Rebellion is simply wrong about the urgency. If it’s extinction they worry about, let’s tackle invasive alien species, responsible for most extinctions. By contrast, there is no confirmed extinction of a species due to climate change. Nor has global warming resulted in more or fiercer storms or droughts. The extremists’ claims otherwise simply ignore the scientific evidence. Emissions have so far increased crop yields and made all ecosystems greener.
Full post (£)
8) Michael Kelly: Boris’s green industrial revolution is doomed to fail
The Spectator, 21 November 2020
Boris Johnson’s ‘green industrial revolution’, which was announced this week, looks doomed from the outset.
From our heating to how we transport food, the proposals would mean a complete overhaul in the way we live. Yet barely a word has been said about the immense practical difficulties involved in Johnson’s ten-point plan for Britain to go carbon neutral by 2050. Make no mistake, it will be close to impossible to achieve – and even trying could prove catastrophic...
Nowhere is the flaw in the government’s plan more clearly exposed than in the announcement that sales of new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars will be banned by 2030. There are more than 38.9 million cars, vans and lorries on our roads today. We would likely need to build over ten million charging points – amounting to thousands a day between now and 2030 – to totally switch over to electric vehicles. Is this really realistic?
In August 2019, there were power cuts across Britain after a series of failures led to electricity outages. The move towards electric vehicles and domestic heating based around electric heat pumps is going to increase demand and reliance upon the electricity grid. Yet there was little detail on the wholescale upgrade to supply that will be required if Boris’s plan is to work smoothly.
Johnson’s green revolution would mean that we would need to completely upgrade electric wiring in our homes, streets, substations, and transmission lines. To meet demand would require enormously costly upgrades to local electricity grids, which we would all ultimately pay for through higher energy bills. If this really is part of the plan, then the government must be honest about who is to foot the bill.
We also won’t have to wait for long to see other massive infrastructure problems confronting us. Many people don’t have the luxury of a driveway where they can charge their vehicles; four in ten cars today are parked on the road. So how, when, and where are these cars going to be charged? And what would electric vehicles mean for the haulage industry? Electric trucks will need to be charged for 24 hours, resulting in less time on the road, unless there is a huge infrastructure for battery swapping.
Then there is the problem with the nature of the batteries electric vehicles use. How will we manufacture the gargantuan number required, for the UK, as well as the rest of the world, which is supposed to follow our lead? To build, maintain and dispose of these batteries on the scale required for an electric fleet of UK vehicles would mean the world’s supply of lithium, cobalt and nickel would need to increase overnight. Who will ensure the correct number of batteries are available? And what happens if they are not? You won’t hear it from Extinction Rebellion, but the mining of cobalt often has a high human cost: children as young as six are among those already risking their lives in the Congo to ensure that supply can keep up with demand.
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9) Neil Collins: This green fantasy will bankrupt us
Neil Collins XXX, 21 November 2020
It’s 2050. You wake in your cosy, insulated house, turn on the windfarm-powered lights, cook up a breakfast coffee on the hydrogen stove before jumping into your electric car. You whizz silently along roads with air as fresh as a mountain stream past happy e-bikers and carbon-neutral schools to your heat-pump powered office.
So, viewed from Britain in 2020, can you spot the odd one out? Here’s a clue: the e-bikers get no subsidy. Everything else on this list loses money, and needs state support on a massive scale to get even halfway to the nirvana glimpsed by the prime minister this week. Today’s subsidy, of course, is tomorrow’s tax rise.
Home insulation? £2bn is barely enough to get some sort of programme started. The disruption from insulating your home will be enough to discourage us from taking up this offer, almost regardless of the accompanying bribe. As we saw with double glazing and solar panels, the cowboy installers and fraudsters will be the principal beneficiaries.
WIndfarms? The easier sites are already filled up, driving development further offshore to have any chance of quadrupling today’s contribution. The bulk of new contracts are going to overseas manufacturers, while evidence of catastrophic damage to seabirds is growing, and nobody knows the long-term cost of maintaining this hi-tech engineering in a hostile environment.
Hydrogen home cooking? Hydrogen is much harder to handle than natural gas, and a compulsory conversion programme – the only practical way to exploit the existing pipework – would meet stiff resistance. Besides, like electricity, hydrogen is not a fuel but an energy transmission mechanism. Making it from actual fuel is like trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
Heat pumps? The capital cost typically runs into tens of thousands of pounds per dwelling, even where your garden is big enough to take one. They are also likely to be rather more expensive to maintain than your ‘fridge.
As for the electric car, despite subsidies of thousands of pounds per vehicle, with promises to spend billions more on sockets to charge them, motorists remain suspicious. After all, it is only a few short years since we were being urged to buy a diesel car, to make each barrel of oil go further.
Now diesel is officially an evil producer of particulates that kill children.
Reconfiguring the electricity grid for electric vehicles will cost much more than the £2.5bn allocated in the government’s plan. Then there is the £40bn a year raised from fuel duties which will disappear if electricity takes over. It is almost a rounding error in the context of the hundreds of billions which the UK is going to waste with this week’s fashionable projects. They may indeed create thousands of jobs, but then so would digging large holes and filling them in again. Jobs that destroy wealth rather than creating it make us all poorer.
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Neil Collins XXX, 21 November 2020
It’s 2050. You wake in your cosy, insulated house, turn on the windfarm-powered lights, cook up a breakfast coffee on the hydrogen stove before jumping into your electric car. You whizz silently along roads with air as fresh as a mountain stream past happy e-bikers and carbon-neutral schools to your heat-pump powered office.
So, viewed from Britain in 2020, can you spot the odd one out? Here’s a clue: the e-bikers get no subsidy. Everything else on this list loses money, and needs state support on a massive scale to get even halfway to the nirvana glimpsed by the prime minister this week. Today’s subsidy, of course, is tomorrow’s tax rise.
Home insulation? £2bn is barely enough to get some sort of programme started. The disruption from insulating your home will be enough to discourage us from taking up this offer, almost regardless of the accompanying bribe. As we saw with double glazing and solar panels, the cowboy installers and fraudsters will be the principal beneficiaries.
WIndfarms? The easier sites are already filled up, driving development further offshore to have any chance of quadrupling today’s contribution. The bulk of new contracts are going to overseas manufacturers, while evidence of catastrophic damage to seabirds is growing, and nobody knows the long-term cost of maintaining this hi-tech engineering in a hostile environment.
Hydrogen home cooking? Hydrogen is much harder to handle than natural gas, and a compulsory conversion programme – the only practical way to exploit the existing pipework – would meet stiff resistance. Besides, like electricity, hydrogen is not a fuel but an energy transmission mechanism. Making it from actual fuel is like trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
Heat pumps? The capital cost typically runs into tens of thousands of pounds per dwelling, even where your garden is big enough to take one. They are also likely to be rather more expensive to maintain than your ‘fridge.
As for the electric car, despite subsidies of thousands of pounds per vehicle, with promises to spend billions more on sockets to charge them, motorists remain suspicious. After all, it is only a few short years since we were being urged to buy a diesel car, to make each barrel of oil go further.
Now diesel is officially an evil producer of particulates that kill children.
Reconfiguring the electricity grid for electric vehicles will cost much more than the £2.5bn allocated in the government’s plan. Then there is the £40bn a year raised from fuel duties which will disappear if electricity takes over. It is almost a rounding error in the context of the hundreds of billions which the UK is going to waste with this week’s fashionable projects. They may indeed create thousands of jobs, but then so would digging large holes and filling them in again. Jobs that destroy wealth rather than creating it make us all poorer.
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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.
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