GWPF Newsletter: US climate pledges on shaky ground as Biden’s climate agenda is bogged down in divided Congress

 

China is the real winner of Western climate politics

In this newsletter:

1) US climate pledges on shaky ground as Biden’s climate agenda is bogged down in divided Congress
Financial Times, 17 June 2021
 
2) On the brink of darkness: Texas faces risk of power blackouts on Wednesday
Bloomberg, 16 June 2021

3) 'Outrageous.' Texas grid scare reignites blackout concerns
E&E News, 15 June 2021
 
4) The California and Texas Greenouts
Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 17 June 2021

5) Victor Joecks: Heat waves show limits and dangers of relying on green energy
Las Vegas Review Journal, 15 June 2021
 
6) Greg Sheridan: China is the real winner of Western climate politics
The Australian, 17 June 2021
  
7) Western climate policies could hand power and profits back to OPEC
Foreign Policy, 16 June 2021
  
GB News scrutinises the cost of Net Zero
Global Warming Policy Forum, 17 June 2021

8) Rishi Sunak’s waffle exposed the flaw in Boris’s green agenda
Patrick O'Flynn, The Spectator, 17 June 2021

9) ‘Sick of the woke agenda’: UK gets conservative news alternative
Sky News Australia, 17 June 2021

Full details:

1) US climate pledges on shaky ground as Biden’s climate agenda is bogged down in divided Congress
Financial Times, 17 June 2021
 
Democrats look unlikely to pass ambitious climate legislation with the support of Republicans given the 50-50 party split in the Senate and rules requiring at least 60 votes to move most important bills.
 
President Joe Biden arrives back in the US this week after a foreign tour with a recurring theme: fighting climate change.

But he returns to a Washington where his own party feels increasing anxiety that his administration’s climate agenda will fall short at home.

Bipartisan talks over Biden’s infrastructure proposals — which would spend billions on crumbling roads, bridges and tunnels, as well as record sums on clean energy — are flagging. While Republicans and moderate Democrats try to scale down the package, progressives warn they will withhold support if climate provisions are stripped out. 

“If there is no climate, there is no deal,” Jeff Merkley, a Democratic senator from Oregon, said this week. “When the ship sails on infrastructure, energy infrastructure cannot be left on the docks.”

Democratic party leaders are now exploring another path to enact Biden’s climate plan. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, on Wednesday met his members on the budget committee to find ways to fund greener electricity, zero-carbon vehicles and manufacturing and farming that keeps many climate goals intact.

While potentially more viable, the strategy could also weaken Biden’s climate policies. Legislation would be shoehorned into the Senate’s budget reconciliation process — a special procedure that enables Democrats to use their slim majority but constrains the scope of what can pass.

Biden has pledged for the US to cut emissions by at least 50 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030. He is aiming for carbon-free electricity by 2035 — a target that would mean none generated by burning coal or natural gas unless their emissions can be captured.

These lofty climate policies were a centrepiece of Biden’s diplomacy on his first international trip. He told G7 leaders in Cornwall that global warming is “the existential problem facing humanity”, and helped launch a $2bn fund for countries to shift away from coal.

In Washington, however, Democrats look unlikely to pass ambitious climate legislation with the support of Republicans given the 50-50 party split in the Senate and rules requiring at least 60 votes to move most important bills.

Full story (£)
 
2) On the brink of darkness: Texas faces risk of power blackouts on Wednesday
Bloomberg, 16 June 2021

Texas squeezed by on Tuesday with just enough electricity to keep the lights on. On Wednesday, it will face the prospect of blackouts all over again.
 
Temperatures are expected to reach 37 degrees Celsius in Houston as a heat wave that’s expected to drag on through the end of the week blankets the western half of the US. The extreme weather is testing Texas's power grid just four months after a freak winter storm blacked out millions of people across the state and left more than 150 people dead.

Another hot day is expected today, with locations all across North & Central TX expected to warm into the mid to upper 90s this afternoon. 
The searing weather marks the first heat-related stress tests of the year for U.S. electricity grids as a historic drought grips the western half of the nation. It comes nearly one year after California witnessed its own rolling blackouts during a heat wave last summer.

The Texas grid operator said Tuesday afternoon local time that its system remained stable despite crushing demand. It reported having about 3.4 gigawatts of power reserves, representing a extra-supply margin of about 10%. Spare capacity had grown to nearly 8 gigawatts early Wednesday morning as temperatures dropped.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said it would call the first stage of a grid emergency should reserves fall below 2.3 gigawatts and would start rolling blackouts if they fell below 1 gigawatt.
 
Full story 

3) 'Outrageous.' Texas grid scare reignites blackout concerns
E&E News, 15 June 2021
  
Texas' main grid operator requested conservation during a scorching heat wave yesterday, spurring calls for electricity reform and rejuvenating political fights over renewables months after devastating blackouts.
 
The tight grid conditions resulted from an unexpected amount of generation outages and strong demand, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Temperatures were in the upper 90s or higher in much of Texas.
 
More than 9,000 of 12,178 megawatts of generation outages as of 2:30 p.m. local time came from thermal units such as natural gas, coal and nuclear, ERCOT said. About 3,600 MW would be a typical amount of thermal outages on a hot summer day.
 
Reaction to the latest Texas grid drama lit up Twitter even as ERCOT avoided rotating outages, with everyone from the Department of Energy's loan office director, Jigar Shah, to the conservative American Energy Alliance offering an opinion. Energy and environmental advocates issued statements with continued concerns about Texas electricity. The tight conditions came after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) declared earlier this month that state lawmakers had made all necessary grid changes after a February storm hampered the grid for days.
 
"Summer doesn't even start for another week, yet ERCOT is already worried about having enough juice to keep the lights and air conditioners on across the state," Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas, said in a statement. "It's outrageous that after February's deadly and disheartening blackout we still haven't taken the necessary steps to build a cleaner, more reliable electric grid."
 
Full story
 
4) The California and Texas Greenouts
Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 17 June 2021

Renewables show again that they aren’t reliable to power the grid.

Electric grid operators in Texas and California are again urging residents to conserve power amid a sweltering heat wave to avoid blackouts. Keeping your thermostat at 78 degrees during the summer may be the green new normal.
 
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Ercot) warned this week that a large number of unexpected power plant outages combined with surging demand is straining the grid. Meantime, California’s Independent System Operator forecast that electricity demand might exceed supply several days this week. For residents in both states, this must feel like deja vu.

Last August Californians experienced rolling blackouts amid a heat wave that engulfed the Southwest. California generates half of its electricity from solar during summer afternoons, but it didn’t have enough power in the evenings when the sun faded. It also relies heavily on imports, but other states didn’t have power to spare.
 
Now the problem is reoccurring while a severe drought also limits hydropower. In a few years the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant is scheduled to retire. The plant provides nearly 10% of the state’s power and backs up intermittent renewables. But green groups want the grid to run completely on solar, wind and batteries. Blackouts could soon become as common as wildfires.
 
Californians who have moved to Texas are discovering that electric power is as green and flaky there too. Texas has drawn scores of wind developers cashing in on the federal renewable electricity production tax credit, which pays them for each unit of power they generate regardless of whether it’s needed.
 
In March, wind made up a larger share of Texas’s power generation than gas. Ercot expects wind capacity could increase by more than a third this year. Nuclear and fossil fuel-powered plants are struggling to compete with wind, which can make money even when wholesale prices go negative. Many have shut down or are skimping on maintenance.
 
Millions of Texans lost power in February amid an Arctic blast that froze power plant equipment including wind turbines. Climate activists blamed fossil-fuel plants for not rescuing the state though they supplied power that more than compensated for the ebbing wind power. Texas was also berated for not “weatherizing” power plants to operate in frigid conditions.
 
But heat waves are common in Texas. So what’s the excuse now? Ercot says unexpected power plant outages eliminated 12,000 megawatts of capacity—enough to power about two million homes—about 80% of which was coal, nuclear or gas.
 
Yet according to Energy Information Administration data (see the nearby chart), wind energy plunged by two-thirds since late last week while gas-power generation has increased by more than half. Coal and nuclear have held steady. In sum, some gas plants had problems, but most were operating as expected but still couldn’t compensate for the huge reduction in wind power.
 
A big problem is that subsidies and mandates have spurred an over-development of renewables, which has resulted in gas plants operating at lower levels or even idle much of the time. Keeping standby units in top condition is hugely expensive. So when plants are required to run all out to meet surging demand or back up renewables, problems crop up—as they did this week.
 
This is the fossil-fuel-free future that folks in the other 48 states have to look foward to under Democratic climate plans. Pro survival tip: Buy a diesel generator—while you still can.
 
5) Victor Joecks: Heat waves show limits and dangers of relying on green energy
Las Vegas Review Journal, 15 June 2021
 
Despite decades of technological progress, heat waves now come with a question: Will there be enough power for everyone?
 
Las Vegas is having a brutal heat wave this week. The forecast for Wednesday is a high of 115 degrees before dropping to “just” 113 degrees on Thursday and Friday. Meteorologists are warning people to take precautions. Prolonged exposure to heat this intense can be deadly.
Weeks like this are a reminder that air conditioning is what enables a robust city to thrive in the middle of a desert. A/C, like many other modern conveniences, requires electricity.

Power is so ubiquitous that it’s easy to take for granted. But it should be obvious that reliable sources of power are foundational to modern society.
With surprising frequency, however, it’s no longer certain that electricity will be there when you need it most. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas is begging people to conserve power this week. Peak demand is likely to hit a record high. Rolling blackouts are possible.

Fortunately, Nevadans don’t seem to be facing the possibility of blackouts this week. But last August, NV Energy asked its customers to conserve electricity during a heat wave. That same month, California had rolling blackouts, taking power away from hundreds of thousands of people.
 
Why is this happening?
 
There are two ways to answer this question. One is to examine each situation individually. Usually, a series of unfortunate events produces demand that outstrips supply. For instance, Texas’ current problems include an early heat wave, a large number of power plants offline for repairs and wind energy producing less than is usually available. Texas also has its own electrical grid, whereas other states are interconnected.
 
But blazing temperatures aren’t new. The record highs for June 16 and 17 were set during a heat wave in 1940. If you zoom out, you can see a larger trend.

Over the past several years, there has been a shift from coal and natural gas power plants to “green” energy such as solar panels and windmills.
 
That has happened in Nevada and California, but also in Texas, which generated the most wind energy of any state in 2020. The problem is that solar and wind energy sources can’t be cycled up like a natural gas plant to produce more energy when demand peaks. In fact, they might produce less energy when demand is highest.

Those three states have a renewable portfolio standard that requires a certain amount of renewable energy. In Nevada, the goal is 50 percent by 2030. In 2019, around 28 percent of its power came from renewable sources.

Absent a breakthrough in battery technology or a move away from an increasing dependence on unreliable power sources, the threat of blackouts is only going to increase.
 
6) Greg Sheridan: China is the real winner of Western climate politics
The Australian, 17 June 2021
 
The future of global greenhouse gas emissions will not be determined by G7 countries but by developing countries, which have shown almost no interest in imposing any cost on their development to meet climate targets. 
 
The G7 meeting was a genuine success for Scott Morrison and for the West generally. As Boris Johnson says, “the West is back”. However, there was also a good deal of make-believe, fantasy fairyland about the G7. The only leader who spoke with any realism on climate change was Morrison himself. Seeking emissions reductions through technology is the only possible path to a useful outcome.
 
The G7’s goal is zero net emissions by 2050. The term “net zero” itself is a kind of magic conjuring term. If you have human life you will have emissions. Modern life means a lot of emissions. The only way you can get to a fictional net zero – a modern equivalent of the alchemist’s ambition to transform lead into gold – is by offsetting all emissions, yes all emissions, with matching reductions. For every tonne of greenhouse gas you emit, you must take one out of the atmosphere. So far the only way you do this is by transforming formerly agricultural land to tree planting. But the world still has to eat, so you pretty soon run out of agricultural land.
 
The unreality of much of the G7 palaver on this comes in much earlier. The Chinese are right when they say small groups of nations can no longer dictate what happens in the world. The Western commentariat still seems to think that the world consists of New York, Los Angeles, London and Paris.

But here are some facts. China alone accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than the whole of the G7. The broad structure of emissions growth and decline is that rich nations’ emissions are stable or declining, those in developing nations are rising. The US’s emissions have declined 15 per cent since 2005. Australia’s by 19 per cent.
 
According to UN and World Resources Institute figures, between 2005 and 2018 China’s emissions increased by more than 70 per cent, India’s by just under 70 per cent, Indonesia’s by nearly 40 per cent. This pattern applies across the developing world.
 
The future of global greenhouse gas emissions will not be determined by G7 countries but by developing countries, which have shown almost no interest in imposing any cost on their development to meet climate targets. As a country develops it urbanises, uses a lot of steel and concrete, seeks the cheapest energy for manufacturing, mechanises agriculture. All this means massive rises in greenhouse gas emissions.
 
Let me illustrate how G7, Davos-man style make-believe works. Last week The Economist magazine ran an editorial which said, in part: “... countries accounting for over 70 per cent of world GDP and greenhouse gases now have targets for net zero emissions, typically by 2050”.
 
This sentence, while not containing an outright falsehood, is nonetheless profoundly misleading in a way that is wholly representative of the make-believe of this debate. To get to this figure The Economist has to include China, which accounts for just under 30 per cent of global greenhouse emissions. Beijing has, indeed, nominated a target date for zero net emissions. And that target is 2060, nearly 40 years away. In the meantime, China has said it will reach peak emissions by 2030, nearly a decade away.
 
And if Beijing doesn’t meet either or both of these targets, who will sue it, and before what court? So what is it doing right now? As Morrison repeatedly points out, and he’s the only national leader who ever does, it’s vastly more important what a nation does than what it says. Certainly Beijing has installed a lot of renewable energy. But consider these following China statistics which I take from a recent article in Yale Environment 360. China’s carbon emissions increased by 4 per cent in the second half of 2020 (notwithstanding Covid), just as they increased in 2018 and 2019.

In 2019, just under 60 per cent of China’s total energy came from coal. I remember being sharply reproved by fellow panellist, the splendid Annabel Crabb, the last time I was on the ABC’s Insiders for saying that coal was continuing to boom. No, she said, she had statements from Western mining executives saying coal was on the way out. But politically correct statements are infinitely less important than facts.

So what are the facts? In 2020, China brought 38.4 gigawatts of new coal-fired power into operation. As the Yale article points out, this is three times as much as came into operation anywhere else. Although the Yale article doesn’t mention this, India, Indonesia and many other developing nations also have extensive plans for new coal-fired power stations. China’s new coal-fired power last year was more than twice Australia’s entire coal-fired power.

As the Yale article spells out, Beijing has 247 gigawatts of coal power in planning or development. That’s more than the entire American coal fleet and some six times Germany’s total coal capacity today. Chinese provinces last year approved 47 gigawatts of new coal-fired power projects.

In China’s current five-year plan, the total of all non-fossil fuel power, including all the renewables plus its sizeable nuclear sector, will grow to just 20 per cent of the national power total. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that China’s main economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, had limited the scope of the ever elusive national carbon trading system, which has still not gone into operation, though we have been hearing about it for years and years on ABC climate programs as though it were an established and fully operating system.

Most of the Western media so desperately wants the dominant climate narrative – especially the bit where the West is the villain – to be true that they simply do not interrogate the facts. The pro-renewables REN21 policy network reported this week that the share of fossil fuels in the global energy mix is about the same today as it was a decade ago.

How can this possibly be so if the whole world has been moving on climate change, as we are so often told, and only we Australians have been lagging wickedly behind? The problem is the world has not been moving much and we have certainly not been lagging behind. Most movement that has occurred is simply that heavy industry has been transferred from rich nations to developing nations where it takes place under more lax environmental regulation and thereby produces more greenhouse emissions.

Morrison has to say and do enough that we don’t become subject to some ridiculous European carbon tariff, but at the same time don’t bankrupt ourselves. Meanwhile, China will develop its economy, and its military, free of these restraints. Let’s at least face reality.
 
7) Western climate policies could hand power and profits back to OPEC
Foreign Policy, 16 June 2021
 
The Western rush to replace oil has Gulf producers laughing all the way to the bank.
 
By Ellen R. Wald, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center and president of Transversal Consulting, and Jonathan H. Ferziger, a Jerusalem-based nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former Middle East correspondent for Bloomberg News.
 
While U.S. President Joe Biden preaches a net-zero emissions goal for 2050 to slow global warming, and activist shareholders force Exxon Mobil Corp. to embrace solar and wind power, Saudi Arabia sees a bright future for what it knows how to do best: pumping oil.
 
Let others indulge their fantasies that alternative fuels can nullify the need for new investment in petroleum supplies, said Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman. Asked about a report by the International Energy Agency that made such a recommendation, the 61-year-old royal was ready with a snappy comeback. “I believe it is a sequel to the La La Land movie,” he said at the online OPEC+ press conference on June 1. “Why should I take it seriously?”
 
Prince Abdulaziz, who brings his message to Wall Street this week at the JP Morgan/Robin Hood investors conference, is not alone in warning that the pressure to shift away from fossil fuels is getting ahead of itself. While U.S. and European oil majors and other energy companies are busy selling off assets to comply with decarbonization mandates, global demand for fossil fuels continues to rise—especially in China and India, the world’s most populous countries. This leaves national oil companies such as Saudi Aramco with the opportunity to reclaim market power, earn vast profits, and shift the center of oil and gas production back to OPEC.
 
It also points to the potential for a new energy crisis in the West. In the United State, the shale revolution’s boom days appear to be in the rear-view mirror. Fracking companies, such as Devon Energy and Occidental Petroleum, are now more concerned with paying down debt than drilling new wells. They are fearful of shelling out cash to expand now that the Biden administration has frozen permits for new wells on federal land. As a result, the United States is back to being a net importer of petroleum, including crude oil and petroleum products such as gasoline, after finally becoming a net exporter in 2020. Oil and gasoline prices are almost at six-year highs.

As soon as he took office in January, Biden made reducing fossil fuel use a banner priority, creating a cabinet position for former Secretary of State John Kerry as climate envoy and pledging to pursue the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, a target also set by nearly 60 other nations.
The results would be disastrous, heralding a return to an era when Gulf monarchs controlled the oil market and soaring oil prices plunged economies into deep recession.
 
Institutional investors are paying attention. In late January, the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, formally warned the companies it invests in that they would need to disclose their own long-term net-zero strategies. The IEA report said that if the global campaign is to meet its zero-emissions timeline, then investment in new oil and gas production must be halted. At the same time, however, the report predicts demand for carbon-based fuels will expand for the next two decades.
 
Prince Abdulaziz’s mocking of the report was echoed by Igor Sechin, the CEO of Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil producer. Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 5, Sechin said the world “runs the risk of facing an acute deficit of oil and gas” if investment in production is cut. He warned against focusing primarily on alternative energy sources.
 
State-owned oil companies in OPEC+ countries may be the only ones that can resist the pressure to wind down fossil fuel production. A small activist hedge fund, Engine No. 1, managed to unseat three board members of ExxonMobil because the activists felt the oil major hadn’t sufficiently adjusted its corporate strategy to climate change.
 
Similar pressures led French oil company Total to rebrand itself under the new name TotalEnergies and pledge to devote 20 percent of its current annual investment budget to renewable energy sources. A Dutch court, meanwhile, ruled that Royal Dutch Shell will have to reduce its carbon emissions by 45 percent from 2019 levels by 2030. Total, Shell, and BP are all reorganizing their assets to drop less profitable fossil fuel projects and add renewables.

National oil companies like Saudi Aramco and the United Arab Emirates’ Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, known as Adnoc, are relatively isolated from these pressures. Even Biden sending Kerry to Abu Dhabi on his first trip abroad couldn’t prevent the princes of petroleum from snickering. OPEC producers are also particularly well positioned to profit from Western retrenchment in fossil fuels. In fact, their strategy is to invest primarily in their traditional core business of producing oil and gas while using some capital to invest in just enough clean and renewable projects—promoting concepts like “green hydrogen” and “blue ammonia”—that they can tout their energy-transition credentials to the public. [...]

The reality is that oil and gas will be a major part of the world’s energy mix for decades to come if Western economies hope to maintain their standard of living—and if the developing world is to finally escape widespread energy poverty. Acting as though the world can prosper without fossil fuels will disadvantage those countries, companies, and populations that have adopted the strictest policies. Net-zero by 2050 is a worthy goal, but it risks leaving Western economies and the developing world at the mercy of autocratic oil producers who laugh at their aggressive efforts to put the brakes on fossil fuel emissions.
 
Full post

GB News scrutinises the cost of Net Zero
Global Warming Policy Forum, 17 June 2021
 
As UK news media reported about new claims that climate policies are increasing the risk of catastrophic blackouts, Britain new broadcaster GB News scrutinised some of the costs and policies behind the Government's Net Zero agenda.

 

In the run-up to Andrew Neil's interview with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, GB News interviewed Andrew Montford and Matt Ridley on Net Zero, blackout risks and climate-related issues.
 
The responses by viewers to the astronomical costs of Net Zero was a clear indication that most Britons have no idea what costs and damages they are facing (see last link below).
 
It is hoped that the editors will realise that there is a huge appetite for a broader spectrum of views, and that their viewers are extremely keen to listen to critical voices that are simply ignored or banned by Britain's other TV channels.
 
Here are the various links to yesterday's GB News interviews:
 
Andrew Neil challenges Rishi Sunak on Net Zero costs
https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1405286563035025411
 
Interview with Andrew Montford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFS3s71w3aI&t=186s
 
Interview with Matt Ridley
https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1405410292071342083
 
Viewers' comments on the cost of Net Zero
 https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1405425403892731906 
 
8) Rishi Sunak’s waffle exposed the flaw in Boris’s green agenda
Patrick O'Flynn, The Spectator, 17 June 2021

Who pays? It is one of the most important questions in politics, especially when it comes to the sort of expensive zeitgeisty ideas that governments love to take a reputational ride on.
 
When Margaret Thatcher was Tory leader, she tried to exempt her party from this charge of vulnerability to fashionable notions that come with eye-watering price tags attached, once observing: 

'The Labour party scheme their schemes, the Liberal party dream their dreams, but we have work to do.'

Nobody who has followed the career of Boris Johnson at all closely would seek to exempt him. Indeed, 'schemes and dreams' appear to be what make him tick.

So it is a sign of the baleful groupthink afflicting our political broadcasters that so little effort has been put into pressing ministers on how they propose to fund the Government’s most expensive dream of all: the commitment to deliver net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Presumably, the imperative for reducing emissions to zero is such a fixture of the woke political playbook that even asking how much it will all cost – and who will pay – is judged to be a heresy. Up until now the parameters of debate around this policy have been largely focused on why it isn’t being delivered even sooner.

But all that changed on Wednesday evening when Andrew Neil decided to subject Chancellor Rishi Sunak to a full internal examination on the very question of who pays on his show on GB News.
 
And the exchanges with Sunak were highly illuminating. 

The Chancellor tried to get away with a pat answer, saying that we will all pay because the government doesn’t have any money of its own. Then he tried to talk down an estimate of £1 trillion – that’s a thousand billion pounds or half of a full year’s UK GDP – given by Philip Hammond when he was chancellor. But he would not give a figure of his own.

The cost of technologically-driven environmental measures tended to fall over time, said Sunak, citing the example of offshore wind farms and electric vehicles. 

Looking just at the cost while ignoring the economic opportunities created was also wrong because it constituted only examining 'one side of the ledger', he added. And the costs would be spread over a very long period anyway because 'this is a multi-generational project'. On this last point, this doesn't appear to be correct, given that the Government’s target is to get three-quarters of the way to net zero by 2035.

Sunak's high-altitude waffle was never going to suffice against such a merciless interrogator as Mr Neil, who swiftly pinned the Chancellor down on the most electorally perilous detail of the policy: the inevitability of having to rip out household gas boilers and replace them with heat pumps at an estimated £10,000 a pop. 

Scale that up on the basis of 25 million boilers being replaced nationwide and you get a bill of £250 billion just for this aspect of the race to net zero.

'I’m just trying to find out on behalf of our viewers who is going to pay this ten thousand quid bill which your government will tell people to do,' Neil told the Chancellor.

And that was when even someone as quick on his feet as Sunak was cornered.'“We haven’t…yet,' he weakly replied. 

'That’s the plan,' retorted Mr Neil. 'Well, you are speculating on what might be the plan,' said Sunak.

So the Chancellor of the Exchequer will not publicly commit to what every leading expert says is a pre-condition for achieving net zero on the Government’s published timetable. Clearly that is because he senses, rightly, that ordering people to remove working gas boilers and install heat pumps at enormous cost may turn into the most unpopular Tory policy since the poll tax. And he doesn’t want his own name attached to it.
 
9) ‘Sick of the woke agenda’: UK gets conservative news alternative
Sky News Australia, 17 June 2021

GB News presenter Nana Akua says GB News has only been on air for four days but is already “striking a chord” with the British community in offering a conservative news alternative.

 

Former editor and BBC presenter Andrew Neil opened GB News, which is already beating its competitors when it comes to ratings.
 
“We’ve got a bigger audience now than Sky News UK, and it’s just day four,” she told Sky News host Andrew Bolt.
 
“It’s fantastic, we’re loving getting our narrative out there as well.”
 
Full interview

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.