In this newsletter:
1) Opec chief tells climate negotiators to get real and ‘look at the big picture’
Bloomberg, 13 February 2023 2) Europe's spend on energy crisis nears 800 billion euros
Reuters, 13 February 2023
3) UK-Norway gas pipelines face threat as Russia vows 'punishment' for Nord Stream leaks
Daily Express, 11 February 2023
4) Voters are ‘sick to death’ of Net Zero, says deputy Conservative Party chairman
The Daily Telegraph, 10 February 2023
5) UK energy minister faces Tory mutiny over new green tax plans
The Sunday Telegraph, 12 February 2023
6) Green Britain: 'Energy costs are simply a pub killer'
Financial Times, 13 February 2023
7) Lord Stern: We need higher taxes to achieve Net Zero
BBC News, 12 February 2023
8) Tony Abbott: Cut emissions, but not at the expense of jobs and our cost of living
The Australian, 11 February 2023
Bloomberg, 13 February 2023
Reuters, 13 February 2023
3) UK-Norway gas pipelines face threat as Russia vows 'punishment' for Nord Stream leaks
Daily Express, 11 February 2023
4) Voters are ‘sick to death’ of Net Zero, says deputy Conservative Party chairman
The Daily Telegraph, 10 February 2023
5) UK energy minister faces Tory mutiny over new green tax plans
The Sunday Telegraph, 12 February 2023
6) Green Britain: 'Energy costs are simply a pub killer'
Financial Times, 13 February 2023
7) Lord Stern: We need higher taxes to achieve Net Zero
BBC News, 12 February 2023
8) Tony Abbott: Cut emissions, but not at the expense of jobs and our cost of living
The Australian, 11 February 2023
9) Ross Clark: Energy security means postponing Net Zero
The Times, 10 February 2023
The Times, 10 February 2023
10) The climate crusaders are coming for electric cars too
The Wall Street Journal, 13 February 2023
The Wall Street Journal, 13 February 2023
11) And finally: Lord Deben in conflict of interest row over his green clients -- yet again
The Sunday Telegraph, 12 February 2023
The Sunday Telegraph, 12 February 2023
Full details:
1) Opec chief tells climate negotiators to get real and ‘look at the big picture’
Bloomberg, 13 February 2023
Bloomberg, 13 February 2023
OPEC’s top official urged countries to invest much more in oil to meet the world’s future energy needs and said climate policies need to be more “balanced and fair.”
“It is imperative that all parties involved in the ongoing climate negotiations pause for a moment; look at the big picture,” Haitham Al-Ghais, secretary-general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, said Sunday at an energy conference in Cairo. They must “work towards an energy transition that is orderly, inclusive and helps ensure energy security for all.”
His comments came amid a shift among some Western governments and companies regarding fossil fuels. Prices for oil, natural gas and coal surged after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February, pushing energy security to the top of the agenda for many leaders.
US President Joe Biden went off-script during his State of the Union speech last week and said: “We’re going to need oil for at least another decade.” In Europe, Shell Plc signaled it will stop accelerating spending on renewable energy, while BP Plc slowed its planned reduction of oil and gas output.
OPEC’s Al-Ghais said the oil industry had been “plagued by several years of chronic underinvestment.” It needs $500 billion of investment annually until 2045, he said.
The United Arab Emirates’ hosting of the COP28 climate summit in late 2023 will “serve as a fresh opportunity to explore inclusive, sustainable and consensus-based solutions to climate change,” said the secretary-general, who’s from OPEC member Kuwait.
Full story
2) Europe's spend on energy crisis nears 800 billion euros
Reuters, 13 February 2023
“It is imperative that all parties involved in the ongoing climate negotiations pause for a moment; look at the big picture,” Haitham Al-Ghais, secretary-general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, said Sunday at an energy conference in Cairo. They must “work towards an energy transition that is orderly, inclusive and helps ensure energy security for all.”
His comments came amid a shift among some Western governments and companies regarding fossil fuels. Prices for oil, natural gas and coal surged after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February, pushing energy security to the top of the agenda for many leaders.
US President Joe Biden went off-script during his State of the Union speech last week and said: “We’re going to need oil for at least another decade.” In Europe, Shell Plc signaled it will stop accelerating spending on renewable energy, while BP Plc slowed its planned reduction of oil and gas output.
OPEC’s Al-Ghais said the oil industry had been “plagued by several years of chronic underinvestment.” It needs $500 billion of investment annually until 2045, he said.
The United Arab Emirates’ hosting of the COP28 climate summit in late 2023 will “serve as a fresh opportunity to explore inclusive, sustainable and consensus-based solutions to climate change,” said the secretary-general, who’s from OPEC member Kuwait.
Full story
2) Europe's spend on energy crisis nears 800 billion euros
Reuters, 13 February 2023
Just wait until you see the bill for next winter ...
BRUSSELS, Feb 13 (Reuters) - European countries' bill to shield households and companies from soaring energy costs has climbed to nearly 800 billion euros, researchers said on Monday, urging countries to be more targeted in their spending to tackle the energy crisis.
European Union countries have now earmarked or allocated 681 billion euros in energy crisis speding, while Britain allocated 103 billion euros and Norway 8.1 billon euros since September 2021, according to the analysis by think-tank Bruegel.
The 792-billion-euro total compares with 706 billion euros in Bruegel's last assessment in November, as countries continue through winter to face the fallout from Russia cutting off most of its gas deliveries to Europe in 2022.
Germany topped the spending chart, allocating nearly 270 billion euros - a sum that eclipsed all other countries. Britain, Italy and France were the next highest, although each spent less than 150 billion euros. Most EU states spent a fraction of that.
Full story
3) UK-Norway gas pipelines face threat as Russia vows 'punishment' for Nord Stream leaks
Daily Express, 11 February 2023
BRUSSELS, Feb 13 (Reuters) - European countries' bill to shield households and companies from soaring energy costs has climbed to nearly 800 billion euros, researchers said on Monday, urging countries to be more targeted in their spending to tackle the energy crisis.
European Union countries have now earmarked or allocated 681 billion euros in energy crisis speding, while Britain allocated 103 billion euros and Norway 8.1 billon euros since September 2021, according to the analysis by think-tank Bruegel.
The 792-billion-euro total compares with 706 billion euros in Bruegel's last assessment in November, as countries continue through winter to face the fallout from Russia cutting off most of its gas deliveries to Europe in 2022.
Germany topped the spending chart, allocating nearly 270 billion euros - a sum that eclipsed all other countries. Britain, Italy and France were the next highest, although each spent less than 150 billion euros. Most EU states spent a fraction of that.
Full story
3) UK-Norway gas pipelines face threat as Russia vows 'punishment' for Nord Stream leaks
Daily Express, 11 February 2023
Britain's critical energy supplies could be under threat, as Russia has threatened retaliation against the West over the alleged sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline leaks.
Last year, a number of leaks were discovered in both Nord Stream 1 and 2, both of which could transport massive quantities of natural gas from Russia to Germany through undersea pipelines in the Baltic Sea. Experts believe that the leaks were most likely sabotage, with the US and Russia both blaming each other for the act. Now, Kremlin, officials have said that the world should "know the truth" about the sabotage.
They noted that those who were found responsible for the leaks should be "punished" after an investigative journalist accused US Navy divers of blowing up the pipelines with explosives.
In a blog post, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh cited an unidentified source, which was dismissed by the White House as "utterly false and complete fiction".
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov praised Mr Hersh's post, saying the story deserved more attention.
He told reporters: "The world must find out the truth about who carried out this act of sabotage. This is a very dangerous precedent: if someone did it once, they can do it again anywhere in the world."
Full story
4) Voters are ‘sick to death’ of Net Zero, says deputy Conservative Party chairman
The Daily Telegraph, 10 February 2023
Lee Anderson said that people do not want to be ‘dictated to by the do-gooders’ CREDIT: Jeff Gilbert for The Telegraph
Lee Anderson, the new deputy Conservative chairman, has said voters are “sick to death” of hearing about net zero.
The MP for Ashfield added that the poorest in society were paying the highest price for efforts to bring down emissions, in remarks made before his appointment on Tuesday.
Mr Anderson also attacked film stars and students who flew out to attend the annual Cop climate summits, which he labelled as “nonsense”.
Speaking to the Car26 pressure group, which is campaigning for a referendum on net zero, Mr Anderson said: “People are sick to death of being dictated to by the do-gooders, and by people like me, about this net zero journey.
“Now I’m not a [climate] denier, I think we’ve got to leave our planet in a better condition than we found it in – look after your rivers, your seas, your oceans and stuff like that. But that said, it is unfair on the poorest in society, because they’re paying the price.”
Mr Anderson insisted that the policy of reaching zero emissions by 2050, which was included in the 2019 Tory manifesto, was “not a vote winner” and that it “never comes up” when speaking to his constituents about their concerns.
Full story
5) UK energy minister faces Tory mutiny over new green tax plans
The Sunday Telegraph, 12 February 2023
The extra green levy, which under Government plans would be added onto energy bills from 2025 to fund the production of low-carbon hydrogen, has been met with anger amid concerns households will be paying for energy that they never use.
It would be the first piece of legislation passed by Rishi Sunak's new energy department, but Mr Shapps has been warned that the levy, which critics have branded as another tax, would stoke inflation, going against one of the Prime Minister's five key priorities announced last month.
Former Business Secretary Jacob Rees Mogg said he tried to block the levies when he was the minister in charge of the bill under Liz Truss.
"Let's not beat around the bush, these levies are taxes and tax is already too high," he told the Telegraph. "Putting more taxes will make the UK more inefficient.
“Energy is already expensive enough," he added. "The Government should try to help people get cheaper energy, not more expensive energy. There is no justification for further levies on bills."
Mr Rees-Mogg said the row over the funding exposed the risks of having a standalone net zero department, after it was hived off from the business department in Rishi Sunak’s recent reshuffle.
“When I was in the department for business, energy and industrial strategy, there was some countervailing pressure from the business side to say is this economic?” he said. “But if they are just net zero zealots this is unlikely to be very economic.”
Full story
6) Green Britain: 'Energy costs are simply a pub killer'
Financial Times, 13 February 2023
Last year, a number of leaks were discovered in both Nord Stream 1 and 2, both of which could transport massive quantities of natural gas from Russia to Germany through undersea pipelines in the Baltic Sea. Experts believe that the leaks were most likely sabotage, with the US and Russia both blaming each other for the act. Now, Kremlin, officials have said that the world should "know the truth" about the sabotage.
They noted that those who were found responsible for the leaks should be "punished" after an investigative journalist accused US Navy divers of blowing up the pipelines with explosives.
In a blog post, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh cited an unidentified source, which was dismissed by the White House as "utterly false and complete fiction".
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov praised Mr Hersh's post, saying the story deserved more attention.
He told reporters: "The world must find out the truth about who carried out this act of sabotage. This is a very dangerous precedent: if someone did it once, they can do it again anywhere in the world."
The Russian mouthpiece called for "an open international investigation of this unprecedented attack on international critical infrastructure", adding: "It is impossible to leave this without uncovering those responsible and punishing them."
Russia has repeatedly accused the West of sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines, as last October, Moscow's Ministry of Defence accused Royal Navy personnel of blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines, an assertion that London said was false.
Following this accusation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that Russia is considering what "further steps" should be taken, raising fears that the UK's energy could now be at risk.
Given these threats, experts fear that Russia could use "retaliate" by targeting Western undersea pipelines and cables, which could be devastating for the UK's energy security, the country relies on exports from Norway for 60 percent of its gas.
Full story
4) Voters are ‘sick to death’ of Net Zero, says deputy Conservative Party chairman
The Daily Telegraph, 10 February 2023
Lee Anderson said that people do not want to be ‘dictated to by the do-gooders’ CREDIT: Jeff Gilbert for The Telegraph
Lee Anderson, the new deputy Conservative chairman, has said voters are “sick to death” of hearing about net zero.
The MP for Ashfield added that the poorest in society were paying the highest price for efforts to bring down emissions, in remarks made before his appointment on Tuesday.
Mr Anderson also attacked film stars and students who flew out to attend the annual Cop climate summits, which he labelled as “nonsense”.
Speaking to the Car26 pressure group, which is campaigning for a referendum on net zero, Mr Anderson said: “People are sick to death of being dictated to by the do-gooders, and by people like me, about this net zero journey.
“Now I’m not a [climate] denier, I think we’ve got to leave our planet in a better condition than we found it in – look after your rivers, your seas, your oceans and stuff like that. But that said, it is unfair on the poorest in society, because they’re paying the price.”
Mr Anderson insisted that the policy of reaching zero emissions by 2050, which was included in the 2019 Tory manifesto, was “not a vote winner” and that it “never comes up” when speaking to his constituents about their concerns.
Full story
5) UK energy minister faces Tory mutiny over new green tax plans
The Sunday Telegraph, 12 February 2023
The extra green levy, which under Government plans would be added onto energy bills from 2025 to fund the production of low-carbon hydrogen, has been met with anger amid concerns households will be paying for energy that they never use.
It would be the first piece of legislation passed by Rishi Sunak's new energy department, but Mr Shapps has been warned that the levy, which critics have branded as another tax, would stoke inflation, going against one of the Prime Minister's five key priorities announced last month.
Former Business Secretary Jacob Rees Mogg said he tried to block the levies when he was the minister in charge of the bill under Liz Truss.
"Let's not beat around the bush, these levies are taxes and tax is already too high," he told the Telegraph. "Putting more taxes will make the UK more inefficient.
“Energy is already expensive enough," he added. "The Government should try to help people get cheaper energy, not more expensive energy. There is no justification for further levies on bills."
Mr Rees-Mogg said the row over the funding exposed the risks of having a standalone net zero department, after it was hived off from the business department in Rishi Sunak’s recent reshuffle.
“When I was in the department for business, energy and industrial strategy, there was some countervailing pressure from the business side to say is this economic?” he said. “But if they are just net zero zealots this is unlikely to be very economic.”
Full story
6) Green Britain: 'Energy costs are simply a pub killer'
Financial Times, 13 February 2023
Some 512 companies went out of business in 2022, up 56 per cent from the previous year when pandemic-related business support stopped a wave of insolvencies, according to an analysis of Insolvency Service data by accountancy firm UHY Hacker Young.
The number of closures was close to the peak of 551 recorded in 2013. The total number of licensed venues in the UK has fallen by 15 per cent over the past decade with the annual bankruptcy rate averaging 466.
Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality, an industry body, warned the damage to the hospitality industry would look “much starker” after the government’s £18bn energy support package for business “tapers away” from the end of March.
The sector has been struggling with a combination of high energy, labour and food and drink wholesale costs, which has been partially offset by the state intervention to cap the cost of gas and electricity.
The government will extend the scheme for another year from April but is slashing the level of support it gives to businesses and put the total cost of the revised package at £5.5bn. Companies facing particularly high bills will receive a unit discount of £6.97 per MWh for gas and £19.61 per MWh for electricity under the replacement scheme.
“This scale of insolvencies is unfortunately reflective of the enormous challenges facing hospitality,” added Nicholls, pointing to the impact of widespread strike action on demand and the pressure of repaying pandemic loans on top of the effect of high inflation.
J D Wetherspoon said last month that like-for-like sales in the 12 weeks to January 22 were still 2 per cent down on pre-pandemic sales in the same period in 2019. The pub chain increased prices by 7.5 per cent this year to offset cost rises.
“Energy costs are simply a pub killer,” said Steven Alton, chief executive of the British Institute of Innkeeping, which represents independent pubs. He estimated that up to half of venues were suffering because they were locked into fixed-term energy contracts as prices peaked last autumn in “a grossly unfair and uncompetitive [energy] market”.
Full story
7) Lord Stern: We need higher taxes to achieve Net Zero
BBC News, 12 February 2023
The UK has made good progress towards achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 but getting there may need higher taxes.
That's according to leading economist Lord Nicholas Stern, who says both public and private investment in new technologies is needed.
The UK is also being urged to follow the US in stimulating green technology by a former boss of oil giant BP.
But the government said the UK is "leading the way" on climate change.
Lord Stern told the BBC: "We must have growth and we must drive down emissions, and it's investment in the new technologies that's going to get us there."
He added: "I'm not arguing for delaying investment in health and education. We have to pursue those at the same time.
"If we have to tax a little bit more, so be it. If we have to borrow a bit more for the really tremendous investments, then we should do that."
His words come as the country grapples with a cost of living crisis and the UK is facing the highest taxes relative to income since the Second World War.
The government is also under pressure, from some quarters, to cut taxes.
However, Lord Stern says more public investment could help jobs and the environment.
Full story
That's according to leading economist Lord Nicholas Stern, who says both public and private investment in new technologies is needed.
The UK is also being urged to follow the US in stimulating green technology by a former boss of oil giant BP.
But the government said the UK is "leading the way" on climate change.
Lord Stern told the BBC: "We must have growth and we must drive down emissions, and it's investment in the new technologies that's going to get us there."
He added: "I'm not arguing for delaying investment in health and education. We have to pursue those at the same time.
"If we have to tax a little bit more, so be it. If we have to borrow a bit more for the really tremendous investments, then we should do that."
His words come as the country grapples with a cost of living crisis and the UK is facing the highest taxes relative to income since the Second World War.
The government is also under pressure, from some quarters, to cut taxes.
However, Lord Stern says more public investment could help jobs and the environment.
Full story
8) Tony Abbott: Cut emissions, but not at the expense of jobs and our cost of living
The Australian, 11 February 2023
As prime minister, I regularly affirmed that climate does change, mankind does make a contribution, and we should do whatever we reasonably can to reduce our emissions.
I’d normally add, though, that there was little point reducing emissions in ways that drove up our cost of living or just sent our emissions offshore as industrial jobs relocated to places that were less environmentally scrupulous. Because there’s little point dealing with a speculative long-term problem in ways that make short-term practical ones much worse.
It is undeniable that climate changes. It’s the cause that’s uncertain. The ice ages are good examples of a world where the climate was radically different. The Roman and Medieval warm periods, when crops could grow in Greenland, and the mini-ice age of the 1600s, when there were regular ice fairs on the Thames, are more recent examples of climate change; that was, incidentally, independent of any man-made influence. And all other things being equal, the laws of physics mean that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (such as the industrialisation-driven rise from about 300 parts per million to about 400ppm that has taken place in the past century) should tend to warm the planet.
Perhaps this has been the key factor in the average warming of up to 1C that most scientists think has happened across that time (despite some rewriting of the temperature records). Certainly, it seems to be the consensus of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change that man-made carbon dioxide is the principal culprit, even though dissident scientists such as Richard Lindzen and Judith Curry think the atmosphere is such a complex mechanism that it’s impossible to be certain, and that other factors such as sun spot activity may play a much larger part.
I certainly think that all countries should take reasonable, proportionate and prudent steps to reduce emissions. The big question is: how much should a country such as Australia be prepared to pay to reduce our emissions given that other countries, such as China and India, will not reduce theirs in preference to strengthening their economies and that nothing Australia does on its own, with our paltry 1.3 per cent of global emissions, will make any appreciable difference.
As prime minister, I agreed that Australia should take a 26 to 28 per cent cut in emissions by 2030 to the 2015 Paris climate conference, based on official advice that this could be achieved without extra government spending, additional costs in the economy, or changes to existing policy.
At that stage, the federal government was spending about $1bn a year through a tender process to fund emissions-reducing activity such as tree planting, soil improvement and better technology (all of which made sense on other grounds too) that was obtaining credible reductions at the cost of about $15 a tonne.
While the previous Coalition government was routinely demonised as “climate-denying”, largely because I had abolished the carbon tax, which was socialism masquerading as environmentalism, as of last year Australia under the Coalition had already cut its emissions by 20 per cent from 2005 levels – compared with just 9 per cent by Canada and just 5 per cent by climate darling New Zealand.
The Coalition’s commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 – but through technology, not taxes – wasn’t enough to satisfy the climate emergency doomsters who always sought affirmations of faith in the coming climate apocalypse, ignoring the fact the commitment to net zero by a country such as New Zealand relied on excluding emissions from agriculture.
For years now, any discussion of climate policy has been poisoned by fearmongering over supposedly unique catastrophic weather, such as that creating last year’s NSW floods. While last year’s flooding in and around Lismore genuinely was unprecedented, it’s not really surprising that records do sometimes get broken.
On the Hawkesbury, where flood records at Windsor go back to 1799, the four floods of 2020-22 were matched by the five floods of 1860-61; the previous 28-year flood-free period between 1992 and 2020 was more than matched by the flood-free period between 1819 and 1857; and none of the recent floods exceeded 14m (which has been previously exceeded on nine occasions, including three since the completion of Warragamba Dam in 1960). At 13.9m, last year’s flood peak was almost 50 per cent below the all-time peak of 19.7m attained in 1867, which could hardly have had anything to do with man-made climate change.
Unsurprisingly, the Albanese government cited last year’s flood to justify its policy to cut emissions by 43 per cent by 2030, and to cut fossil-fuelled power from more than 60 per cent to under 10 per cent of the electricity grid within eight years. To achieve this, as the Energy Minister has recently admitted, requires the building of 40 large wind turbines every month, the installation of 22,000 solar panels every day and the construction of 28,000km of transmission lines between now and 2030 – all of which will have to be paid for via people’s power bills or taxes. And while (if it’s achieved) this would deliver the renewable power the government seeks, it won’t guarantee the reliable power the economy requires, especially if all the coal-fired power closes in the meantime, as is likely.
By requiring Australia’s 215 biggest emitters (many of which are also big employers) to cut their emissions by 5 per cent each year, or to buy abatement at the cost of up to $75 a tonne, the government is likely further to deindustrialise Australia. And by taking the view that all new fossil-fuel projects pose unacceptable climate risks, the government will gradually kill the coal and gas exports that currently earn more than $200bn a year in national income and deliver the tens of billions in royalty revenue needed to sustain programs such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Driven by its emissions obsession, the government is gambling the country’s entire electricity-dependent way of life on the rapid development of green hydrogen, even though the International Energy Agency, under the most climate-optimistic of its three scenarios, expects this to be providing less than 2 per cent of global electricity by 2050.
Back in 2017, addressing a Global Warming Policy Foundation event (a speech that’s available at tonyabbott.com.au), I said the “only rational choice is to put jobs and standard of living first; to get emissions down but only as a far as we can without putting prices up. After two decades’ experience of the very modest reality of climate change but the increasingly dire consequences of the policy to deal with it, anything else would be a dereliction of duty as well as a political death wish.”
Although the Albanese government got lucky when the Coalition essentially “me-too-ed” its climate policy at last year’s election, very soon climate wishful thinking will start to crash against the reality of blackouts, not being able to make things here, and even more expensive electricity.
Tony Abbott was recently appointed to the board of trustees of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
9) Ross Clark: Energy security means postponing Net Zero
The Times, 10 February 2023
I’d normally add, though, that there was little point reducing emissions in ways that drove up our cost of living or just sent our emissions offshore as industrial jobs relocated to places that were less environmentally scrupulous. Because there’s little point dealing with a speculative long-term problem in ways that make short-term practical ones much worse.
It is undeniable that climate changes. It’s the cause that’s uncertain. The ice ages are good examples of a world where the climate was radically different. The Roman and Medieval warm periods, when crops could grow in Greenland, and the mini-ice age of the 1600s, when there were regular ice fairs on the Thames, are more recent examples of climate change; that was, incidentally, independent of any man-made influence. And all other things being equal, the laws of physics mean that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (such as the industrialisation-driven rise from about 300 parts per million to about 400ppm that has taken place in the past century) should tend to warm the planet.
Perhaps this has been the key factor in the average warming of up to 1C that most scientists think has happened across that time (despite some rewriting of the temperature records). Certainly, it seems to be the consensus of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change that man-made carbon dioxide is the principal culprit, even though dissident scientists such as Richard Lindzen and Judith Curry think the atmosphere is such a complex mechanism that it’s impossible to be certain, and that other factors such as sun spot activity may play a much larger part.
I certainly think that all countries should take reasonable, proportionate and prudent steps to reduce emissions. The big question is: how much should a country such as Australia be prepared to pay to reduce our emissions given that other countries, such as China and India, will not reduce theirs in preference to strengthening their economies and that nothing Australia does on its own, with our paltry 1.3 per cent of global emissions, will make any appreciable difference.
As prime minister, I agreed that Australia should take a 26 to 28 per cent cut in emissions by 2030 to the 2015 Paris climate conference, based on official advice that this could be achieved without extra government spending, additional costs in the economy, or changes to existing policy.
At that stage, the federal government was spending about $1bn a year through a tender process to fund emissions-reducing activity such as tree planting, soil improvement and better technology (all of which made sense on other grounds too) that was obtaining credible reductions at the cost of about $15 a tonne.
While the previous Coalition government was routinely demonised as “climate-denying”, largely because I had abolished the carbon tax, which was socialism masquerading as environmentalism, as of last year Australia under the Coalition had already cut its emissions by 20 per cent from 2005 levels – compared with just 9 per cent by Canada and just 5 per cent by climate darling New Zealand.
The Coalition’s commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 – but through technology, not taxes – wasn’t enough to satisfy the climate emergency doomsters who always sought affirmations of faith in the coming climate apocalypse, ignoring the fact the commitment to net zero by a country such as New Zealand relied on excluding emissions from agriculture.
For years now, any discussion of climate policy has been poisoned by fearmongering over supposedly unique catastrophic weather, such as that creating last year’s NSW floods. While last year’s flooding in and around Lismore genuinely was unprecedented, it’s not really surprising that records do sometimes get broken.
On the Hawkesbury, where flood records at Windsor go back to 1799, the four floods of 2020-22 were matched by the five floods of 1860-61; the previous 28-year flood-free period between 1992 and 2020 was more than matched by the flood-free period between 1819 and 1857; and none of the recent floods exceeded 14m (which has been previously exceeded on nine occasions, including three since the completion of Warragamba Dam in 1960). At 13.9m, last year’s flood peak was almost 50 per cent below the all-time peak of 19.7m attained in 1867, which could hardly have had anything to do with man-made climate change.
Unsurprisingly, the Albanese government cited last year’s flood to justify its policy to cut emissions by 43 per cent by 2030, and to cut fossil-fuelled power from more than 60 per cent to under 10 per cent of the electricity grid within eight years. To achieve this, as the Energy Minister has recently admitted, requires the building of 40 large wind turbines every month, the installation of 22,000 solar panels every day and the construction of 28,000km of transmission lines between now and 2030 – all of which will have to be paid for via people’s power bills or taxes. And while (if it’s achieved) this would deliver the renewable power the government seeks, it won’t guarantee the reliable power the economy requires, especially if all the coal-fired power closes in the meantime, as is likely.
By requiring Australia’s 215 biggest emitters (many of which are also big employers) to cut their emissions by 5 per cent each year, or to buy abatement at the cost of up to $75 a tonne, the government is likely further to deindustrialise Australia. And by taking the view that all new fossil-fuel projects pose unacceptable climate risks, the government will gradually kill the coal and gas exports that currently earn more than $200bn a year in national income and deliver the tens of billions in royalty revenue needed to sustain programs such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Driven by its emissions obsession, the government is gambling the country’s entire electricity-dependent way of life on the rapid development of green hydrogen, even though the International Energy Agency, under the most climate-optimistic of its three scenarios, expects this to be providing less than 2 per cent of global electricity by 2050.
Back in 2017, addressing a Global Warming Policy Foundation event (a speech that’s available at tonyabbott.com.au), I said the “only rational choice is to put jobs and standard of living first; to get emissions down but only as a far as we can without putting prices up. After two decades’ experience of the very modest reality of climate change but the increasingly dire consequences of the policy to deal with it, anything else would be a dereliction of duty as well as a political death wish.”
Although the Albanese government got lucky when the Coalition essentially “me-too-ed” its climate policy at last year’s election, very soon climate wishful thinking will start to crash against the reality of blackouts, not being able to make things here, and even more expensive electricity.
Tony Abbott was recently appointed to the board of trustees of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
9) Ross Clark: Energy security means postponing Net Zero
The Times, 10 February 2023
Sticking to an arbitrary emissions deadline blinds us to the fact that a grid based mostly on wind and solar is not viable
Aside from creating extra work for the businesses that make headed notepaper for Whitehall ministries, there is something to be said for creating a Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. By combining two policy objectives that are in many ways in stark opposition to each other, it will force the government to address the conflict between them.
It is a conceit held by many people in the green-energy business that Britain, along with the rest of Europe, has suffered since the invasion of Ukraine because we have not gone far and fast enough in dumping fossil fuels for renewable energy. Were Britain entirely powered by wind and sun, goes the argument, Vladimir Putin could do nothing to put our lights out.
You need to be somewhat blinkered, though, to believe that our self-imposed, legally binding target to reach net zero emissions by 2050 has really taken us closer to the happy state of energy security. Several times this winter, National Grid has had to warn of a potential shortage of power — on the last occasion it was handing bungs to consumers to persuade them to turn off their ovens and dishwashers for a couple of hours.
This did not happen due to a shortage of gas but because of a shortage of wind and sun.
For years, government has blindly pursued its net zero target by sanctioning more and more wind and solar farms without properly addressing the problem of intermittency. We already have, in theory, enough installed wind and solar plants to provide for Britain’s average power consumption of 37 gigawatts. On a good day, they manage over half. But on a bad day — such as we had last December — that falls below 2 per cent.
At the moment, we cope with this by turning gas plants on and off — not the most efficient way to use them, though it does at least keep the lights on. But the government has given us no idea of what happens after 2035 when, in accordance with its net zero strategy, all fossil fuels will be removed from the grid. Sunless, windless days can go on for weeks, yet we have energy storage capacity to meet less than an hour’s average electricity demand.
Aside from a smattering of small battery installations, there has been no investment in energy storage since a series of pumped-storage reservoirs were completed between the 1960s and 1980s. There is a good reason for this: it is fantastically expensive to store energy — the cost of storing it in lithium batteries is about six times the cost of generating the energy from wind in the first place.
While renewables struggle on sunless and windless days, oil and gas continue to supply the bulk of Britain’s energy needs, in spite of Putin. We had an enormous spike in the price of wholesale gas last summer but that has subsided thanks, in large part, to investment in European facilities for receiving liquefied natural gas from the United States and Qatar.
Much of the US supply comes from shale gas, an industry we could have had in Britain had the government not discouraged it and then placed an outright moratorium on it in 2019. Government was happy to see Britain’s own fossil fuel production wither on the grounds that it was a doomed twilight industry. The folly of that thinking has contributed to our lack of energy security now.
Even if we did manage to solve the storage problem, we would hardly achieve self-reliance for energy. Building wind and solar plants requires large amounts of steel, much of which is coming from South Asia. The decline in the UK steel industry has quite a lot to do with high energy prices, as carbon levies pile huge costs on energy-intensive industries. The net zero target gives the government a perverse incentive to drive heavy industry abroad because the target refers only to “territorial” emissions physically spewed out in Britain — it excludes emissions elsewhere in the world in the cause of producing goods and services for UK consumers.
If we are to seek energy security it would help enormously if the net zero target were to be relaxed, and reduced from a legal obligation to an aspiration, like China’s net zero target. That would allow us to address the complex issues of greenhouse gas emissions without having a gun to our heads. But if watering down net zero is above Grant Shapps’s pay grade, is there anything he can do to at least try to reconcile the two objectives contained in his new title?
It ought to be obvious that a grid based mostly on wind and solar is not viable. If we are going to turn to renewables, we need a more reliable mix of them. Tidal energy is one obvious solution. There was, indeed, a proposal for a Severn Estuary barrage and, when that was dropped, a smaller scheme in Swansea Bay. But both foundered on the grounds of cost — and thanks to objections from the very powerful bird lobby, which complained that areas of estuarine mud would be lost. [...]
At some point over the next 27 years we are almost certainly going to be facing a choice: do we want affordable, reliable energy — or do we want to hit an arbitrary net zero target? I only hope that we will have a government that chooses the former over the latter.
Not Zero: How an Irrational Target Will Impoverish You, Help China (and Won’t Even Save the Planet) by Ross Clark is published by Forum Press
Full post
Aside from creating extra work for the businesses that make headed notepaper for Whitehall ministries, there is something to be said for creating a Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. By combining two policy objectives that are in many ways in stark opposition to each other, it will force the government to address the conflict between them.
It is a conceit held by many people in the green-energy business that Britain, along with the rest of Europe, has suffered since the invasion of Ukraine because we have not gone far and fast enough in dumping fossil fuels for renewable energy. Were Britain entirely powered by wind and sun, goes the argument, Vladimir Putin could do nothing to put our lights out.
You need to be somewhat blinkered, though, to believe that our self-imposed, legally binding target to reach net zero emissions by 2050 has really taken us closer to the happy state of energy security. Several times this winter, National Grid has had to warn of a potential shortage of power — on the last occasion it was handing bungs to consumers to persuade them to turn off their ovens and dishwashers for a couple of hours.
This did not happen due to a shortage of gas but because of a shortage of wind and sun.
For years, government has blindly pursued its net zero target by sanctioning more and more wind and solar farms without properly addressing the problem of intermittency. We already have, in theory, enough installed wind and solar plants to provide for Britain’s average power consumption of 37 gigawatts. On a good day, they manage over half. But on a bad day — such as we had last December — that falls below 2 per cent.
At the moment, we cope with this by turning gas plants on and off — not the most efficient way to use them, though it does at least keep the lights on. But the government has given us no idea of what happens after 2035 when, in accordance with its net zero strategy, all fossil fuels will be removed from the grid. Sunless, windless days can go on for weeks, yet we have energy storage capacity to meet less than an hour’s average electricity demand.
Aside from a smattering of small battery installations, there has been no investment in energy storage since a series of pumped-storage reservoirs were completed between the 1960s and 1980s. There is a good reason for this: it is fantastically expensive to store energy — the cost of storing it in lithium batteries is about six times the cost of generating the energy from wind in the first place.
While renewables struggle on sunless and windless days, oil and gas continue to supply the bulk of Britain’s energy needs, in spite of Putin. We had an enormous spike in the price of wholesale gas last summer but that has subsided thanks, in large part, to investment in European facilities for receiving liquefied natural gas from the United States and Qatar.
Much of the US supply comes from shale gas, an industry we could have had in Britain had the government not discouraged it and then placed an outright moratorium on it in 2019. Government was happy to see Britain’s own fossil fuel production wither on the grounds that it was a doomed twilight industry. The folly of that thinking has contributed to our lack of energy security now.
Even if we did manage to solve the storage problem, we would hardly achieve self-reliance for energy. Building wind and solar plants requires large amounts of steel, much of which is coming from South Asia. The decline in the UK steel industry has quite a lot to do with high energy prices, as carbon levies pile huge costs on energy-intensive industries. The net zero target gives the government a perverse incentive to drive heavy industry abroad because the target refers only to “territorial” emissions physically spewed out in Britain — it excludes emissions elsewhere in the world in the cause of producing goods and services for UK consumers.
If we are to seek energy security it would help enormously if the net zero target were to be relaxed, and reduced from a legal obligation to an aspiration, like China’s net zero target. That would allow us to address the complex issues of greenhouse gas emissions without having a gun to our heads. But if watering down net zero is above Grant Shapps’s pay grade, is there anything he can do to at least try to reconcile the two objectives contained in his new title?
It ought to be obvious that a grid based mostly on wind and solar is not viable. If we are going to turn to renewables, we need a more reliable mix of them. Tidal energy is one obvious solution. There was, indeed, a proposal for a Severn Estuary barrage and, when that was dropped, a smaller scheme in Swansea Bay. But both foundered on the grounds of cost — and thanks to objections from the very powerful bird lobby, which complained that areas of estuarine mud would be lost. [...]
At some point over the next 27 years we are almost certainly going to be facing a choice: do we want affordable, reliable energy — or do we want to hit an arbitrary net zero target? I only hope that we will have a government that chooses the former over the latter.
Not Zero: How an Irrational Target Will Impoverish You, Help China (and Won’t Even Save the Planet) by Ross Clark is published by Forum Press
Full post
10) The climate crusaders are coming for electric cars too
The Wall Street Journal, 13 February 2023
The Wall Street Journal, 13 February 2023
Progressives’ ultimate goal is to reduce consumption—and living standards—because they believe humans are a menace to the Earth.
Replacing all gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles won’t be enough to prevent the world from overheating. So people will have to give up their cars. That’s the alarming conclusion of a new report from the University of California, Davis and “a network of academics and policy experts” called the Climate and Community Project.
The report offers an honest look at the vast personal, environmental and economic sacrifices needed to meet the left’s net-zero climate goals. Progressives’ dirty little secret is that everyone will have to make do with much less—fewer cars, smaller houses and yards, and a significantly lower standard of living.
Problem No. 1: Electric-vehicle batteries require loads of minerals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel, which must be extracted from the ground like fossil fuels. “If today’s demand for EVs is projected to 2050, the lithium requirements of the US EV market alone would require triple the amount of lithium currently produced for the entire global market,” the report notes.
Unlike fossil fuels, these minerals are mostly found in undeveloped areas that have abundant natural fauna and are often inhabited by indigenous people. “Large-scale mining entails social and environmental harm, in many cases irreversibly damaging landscapes without the consent of affected communities,” the report says. Mining can be done safely, but in poor countries it often isn’t.
Problem No. 2: Mining requires huge amounts of energy and water, and the process of refining minerals requires even more. According to the report, mining accounts for 4% to 7% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Auto makers have made a priority of manufacturing electric pick-up trucks and SUVs because drivers like them, but they require much bigger batteries and more minerals.
More mining to make more EVs will increase CO2 emissions. It will also destroy tropical forests and deserts that currently suck CO2 out of the atmosphere, the report says.
Problem No. 3: “Producing EVs and building and maintaining roads, highways, and parking lots are energy- and emissions-intensive processes with high levels of embodied carbon,” the report says. “Electrification of the US transportation system will massively increase the demand for electricity while the transition to a decarbonized electricity grid is still underway.”
The report concludes that the auto sector’s “current dominant strategy,” which involves replacing gasoline-powered vehicles with EVs without decreasing car ownership and use, “is likely incompatible” with climate activists’ goal to keep the planet from warming by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial times. Instead, the report recommends government policies that promote walking, cycling and mass transit.
Governments, the report says, could reduce “financial subsidies for private vehicles,” such as on-street and free parking. They could also impose charges on pickup trucks and SUVs (including electric ones) and build more bike lanes. Urbanites who suspect the expansion of bike lanes in their cities is intended to force people to stop driving aren’t wrong.
But what about suburbanites who need cars to get around? Reducing “car dependency” will require “densifying low-density suburbs while allowing more people to live in existing high-density urban spaces,” the report says. Translation: Force more people to live in shoe-box apartments in cities by making suburbs denser and less appealing.
All this may sound crazy, but it isn’t a fringe view on the left. A Natural Resources Defense Council report last year on lithium mining also concluded that the government needs “to reduce long-term dependency on single-passenger vehicles.” The Inflation Reduction Act included billions of dollars to promote bicycling and so-called livable neighborhoods.
California’s Democratic Legislature last year even passed a bill creating a $1,000 tax credit (originally proposed at $7,500) for households that don’t own cars. “We can invest in the future by providing financial incentives for Californians to transition from vehicles to more sustainable options,” state Sen. Anthony Portantino said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill, citing its budget cost, but he said he supported “approaches to incentivize a transition from vehicles to more sustainable transportation.” Eliminating cars—not only gasoline-powered ones—is the left’s ultimate goal. This is why progressives have mobilized against nearly every mineral mining project in the U.S.
Full post
Replacing all gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles won’t be enough to prevent the world from overheating. So people will have to give up their cars. That’s the alarming conclusion of a new report from the University of California, Davis and “a network of academics and policy experts” called the Climate and Community Project.
The report offers an honest look at the vast personal, environmental and economic sacrifices needed to meet the left’s net-zero climate goals. Progressives’ dirty little secret is that everyone will have to make do with much less—fewer cars, smaller houses and yards, and a significantly lower standard of living.
Problem No. 1: Electric-vehicle batteries require loads of minerals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel, which must be extracted from the ground like fossil fuels. “If today’s demand for EVs is projected to 2050, the lithium requirements of the US EV market alone would require triple the amount of lithium currently produced for the entire global market,” the report notes.
Unlike fossil fuels, these minerals are mostly found in undeveloped areas that have abundant natural fauna and are often inhabited by indigenous people. “Large-scale mining entails social and environmental harm, in many cases irreversibly damaging landscapes without the consent of affected communities,” the report says. Mining can be done safely, but in poor countries it often isn’t.
Problem No. 2: Mining requires huge amounts of energy and water, and the process of refining minerals requires even more. According to the report, mining accounts for 4% to 7% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Auto makers have made a priority of manufacturing electric pick-up trucks and SUVs because drivers like them, but they require much bigger batteries and more minerals.
More mining to make more EVs will increase CO2 emissions. It will also destroy tropical forests and deserts that currently suck CO2 out of the atmosphere, the report says.
Problem No. 3: “Producing EVs and building and maintaining roads, highways, and parking lots are energy- and emissions-intensive processes with high levels of embodied carbon,” the report says. “Electrification of the US transportation system will massively increase the demand for electricity while the transition to a decarbonized electricity grid is still underway.”
The report concludes that the auto sector’s “current dominant strategy,” which involves replacing gasoline-powered vehicles with EVs without decreasing car ownership and use, “is likely incompatible” with climate activists’ goal to keep the planet from warming by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial times. Instead, the report recommends government policies that promote walking, cycling and mass transit.
Governments, the report says, could reduce “financial subsidies for private vehicles,” such as on-street and free parking. They could also impose charges on pickup trucks and SUVs (including electric ones) and build more bike lanes. Urbanites who suspect the expansion of bike lanes in their cities is intended to force people to stop driving aren’t wrong.
But what about suburbanites who need cars to get around? Reducing “car dependency” will require “densifying low-density suburbs while allowing more people to live in existing high-density urban spaces,” the report says. Translation: Force more people to live in shoe-box apartments in cities by making suburbs denser and less appealing.
All this may sound crazy, but it isn’t a fringe view on the left. A Natural Resources Defense Council report last year on lithium mining also concluded that the government needs “to reduce long-term dependency on single-passenger vehicles.” The Inflation Reduction Act included billions of dollars to promote bicycling and so-called livable neighborhoods.
California’s Democratic Legislature last year even passed a bill creating a $1,000 tax credit (originally proposed at $7,500) for households that don’t own cars. “We can invest in the future by providing financial incentives for Californians to transition from vehicles to more sustainable options,” state Sen. Anthony Portantino said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill, citing its budget cost, but he said he supported “approaches to incentivize a transition from vehicles to more sustainable transportation.” Eliminating cars—not only gasoline-powered ones—is the left’s ultimate goal. This is why progressives have mobilized against nearly every mineral mining project in the U.S.
Full post
11) And finally: Lord Deben in conflict of interest row over his green clients -- yet again
The Sunday Telegraph, 12 February 2023
The Sunday Telegraph, 12 February 2023
One of the Government’s leading Net Zero advisers is facing questions over whether he correctly declared his interests after it emerged that his company advised a firm specialising in clean energy projects.
Lord Deben, who chairs the climate change committee (CCC), is also the chairman of a consultancy that has worked with an investment firm responsible for financing “environmental infrastructure markets”.
The CCC is a statutory body advising the Government on greenhouse gas emissions targets. In 2019, it recommended that ministers adopt a target for Net Zero greenhouse gases by 2050.
Lord Deben founded and chairs Sancroft, which bills itself as an “international sustainability consultancy”.
Last month, Sancroft posted an online job advertisement for a “sustainability/ESG (environmental, social and governance) senior analyst or analyst”. The job advert listed a number of “recent clients” of Sancroft, including a company called Sustainable Development Capital.
According to Sustainable Development Capital LLP’s website, it is a “specialist investment firm” with a “proven track record of financing and developing clean energy, energy efficiency and decentralised energy infrastructure projects”, including in the UK.
“SDCL was launched to facilitate investment into environmental infrastructure markets,” the site says. “It has always focused on investing in projects that are good for the environment, good for people and commercially sustainable. Indeed, it has always said that ‘if it is not commercial, it is not sustainable’”.
However, Sancroft’s role advising the firm is not listed in Lord Deben’s House of Lords register of interest. This register does include other clients of Sancroft, noting that the firm has been “asked by Bain & Company (management consultants) to work with them in advising the Qatari government on their sustainability programme”.
It also notes that Sancroft has advised “Greencoat Capital Ltd on sustainability”. The company, now known as Schroders Greencoat, is a “specialist manager dedicated to the renewable energy infrastructure sector”.
There is also no reference to Sustainable Development Capital in the CCC’s latest register of interests for the 2022-23 financial year, although the register once again mentions the fact that Sancroft has worked with Greencoat Capital.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Graham Stringer, a Labour MP who sits on the Commons science and technology select committee, said Lord Deben should urgently make sure he had correctly registered his interests.
He said: “Politicians, particularly Lords, have got a bad name at the moment, and people who don’t declare their interests are undermining trust in politics.”
Marcus Fysh, a Conservative MP, said: “It’s important to be transparent about these matters. I think it’s a risk that there is the perception of a bias if this stuff is not declared.”
Mr Stringer claimed Lord Deben had “proved resistant about declaring his interests at different bodies” in the past.
Full story
Lord Deben, who chairs the climate change committee (CCC), is also the chairman of a consultancy that has worked with an investment firm responsible for financing “environmental infrastructure markets”.
The CCC is a statutory body advising the Government on greenhouse gas emissions targets. In 2019, it recommended that ministers adopt a target for Net Zero greenhouse gases by 2050.
Lord Deben founded and chairs Sancroft, which bills itself as an “international sustainability consultancy”.
Last month, Sancroft posted an online job advertisement for a “sustainability/ESG (environmental, social and governance) senior analyst or analyst”. The job advert listed a number of “recent clients” of Sancroft, including a company called Sustainable Development Capital.
According to Sustainable Development Capital LLP’s website, it is a “specialist investment firm” with a “proven track record of financing and developing clean energy, energy efficiency and decentralised energy infrastructure projects”, including in the UK.
“SDCL was launched to facilitate investment into environmental infrastructure markets,” the site says. “It has always focused on investing in projects that are good for the environment, good for people and commercially sustainable. Indeed, it has always said that ‘if it is not commercial, it is not sustainable’”.
However, Sancroft’s role advising the firm is not listed in Lord Deben’s House of Lords register of interest. This register does include other clients of Sancroft, noting that the firm has been “asked by Bain & Company (management consultants) to work with them in advising the Qatari government on their sustainability programme”.
It also notes that Sancroft has advised “Greencoat Capital Ltd on sustainability”. The company, now known as Schroders Greencoat, is a “specialist manager dedicated to the renewable energy infrastructure sector”.
There is also no reference to Sustainable Development Capital in the CCC’s latest register of interests for the 2022-23 financial year, although the register once again mentions the fact that Sancroft has worked with Greencoat Capital.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Graham Stringer, a Labour MP who sits on the Commons science and technology select committee, said Lord Deben should urgently make sure he had correctly registered his interests.
He said: “Politicians, particularly Lords, have got a bad name at the moment, and people who don’t declare their interests are undermining trust in politics.”
Marcus Fysh, a Conservative MP, said: “It’s important to be transparent about these matters. I think it’s a risk that there is the perception of a bias if this stuff is not declared.”
Mr Stringer claimed Lord Deben had “proved resistant about declaring his interests at different bodies” in the past.
Full story
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