In this newsletter:
1) Elon Musk: Climate alarm is exaggerated, we should not demonise oil and gas
Reuters, 17 December 2023
2) Divided public means Net Zero risks becoming ‘wedge issue’, UK poll suggests
The Independent, 18 December 2023
3) Wind farms ‘are destroying rural communities’
The Times, 18 December 2023
4) Basel 3 ‘Endgame’ will upend climate finance, banks warn
Bloomberg, 17 December 2023
5) Reality check: Coal, oil and gas dominate Australian energy investment
Financial Review, 18 December 2023
6) US fracking boom boost global oil supply and haunts OPEC yet again
Bloomberg, 17 December 2023
7) Robert Lyman: The COP28 charade
Net Zero Watch, 18 December 2023
8) Tony Abbott: Climate action can't come at the expense of humanity
National Post, 15 December 2023
9) And finally: Emergency in China as temperatures hit lowest levels ever
Hindustan Times, 17 December 2023
Full details:
1) Elon Musk: Climate alarm is exaggerated, we should not demonise oil and gas
Reuters, 17 December 2023
Billionaire Elon Musk on Saturday (Dec 16) said that oil and gas should not be demonised and that it was extremely critical to reduce carbon emissions to preserve the planet.
While speaking at a right-wing political gathering organised by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy party, Musk said, "I don't think we should demonise oil and gas, I think we should say look that is obviously necessary in the short term and the medium term too, and although it takes several decades to become sustainable, so I think if we just, without getting too worried about it, seek to have a sustainable energy future, gradually, then that's what will happen."
"Climate change alarm is exaggerated in the short term," he further added.
Musk said that it was important that industries began reducing billions of the carbon they take from Earth and releasing it into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.
"We should not demonise oil and gas in the medium term," he said.
Full story
2) Winning: Divided public means Net Zero risks becoming ‘wedge issue’, UK poll suggests
The Independent, 18 December 2023
The public is split on whether the Prime Minister was right to row back on key net zero commitments.
Action on climate change could become a “wedge issue” at the next election – despite four in 10 saying they back stronger action on net zero, a new poll has suggested.
Some 41% of people told a poll carried out by Ipsos UK for King’s College London that they would vote for a party promising strong action on climate, but 33% said they would support one promising to slow down efforts against global warming.
The figures, published on Monday, come as the UK heads into an election year at which climate change and net zero could play a significant role.
Professor Bobby Duffy, director of KCL’s Policy Institute, said: “The public’s top priorities going into an election year are the typical core concerns of the NHS and economy – but this doesn’t mean climate change won’t play a key role.
“Nearly half the population think it’s one of the most important issues facing the country and, perhaps more importantly in the context of an election campaign, there are very strong views on either side – it has the potential to be an important wedge issue.
“Four in 10 say they’d be more likely to vote for party taking strong action, but a third say they’d be more likely to vote for a party that slows down on climate action.
“This presents a risk of divides being emphasised and encouraged during the campaign on an issue where we need people to come together, and, as the public recognise, where backtracking presents a risk to the UK’s international reputation.”
The poll comes three months after Rishi Sunak watered down a number of net zero policies, claiming they were unaffordable and risked alienating public opinion.
Full story
3) Wind farms ‘are destroying rural communities’
The Times, 18 December 2023
Wind farms are “turbocharging” rural depopulation in parts of Scotland and having a devastating effect on local communities, campaigners have claimed.
Activists fighting what they describe as the “21st-century clearances” say rural homes are “collateral damage” in the advance of the developments, which they complain are being waved through by the Scottish government regardless of the cost to local communities.
Scotland Against Spin (SAS) claims this has led to properties being taken out of the national housing stock in areas where there is already a chronic shortage and caused unimaginable stress for the residents affected.
Its concerns are shared by the Scottish Conservative MSP Oliver Mundell, who said: “There is no doubt large-scale onshore wind farms are turbocharging rural depopulation in our upland valleys and destroying communities, denying local families a home.
“Developers are increasingly gaming the planning system and encouraging those with properties in close proximity to turbine sites to sell up and shut up.
“When they own the properties, they don’t have to provide noise estimates or planning evaluations for the houses in question and simply mothball them or rent them out to their own contractors.”
The Dumfriesshire MSP added: “I have repeatedly raised concerns about this damaging practice both at local inquiries and also in Holyrood but the Scottish government turns a blind eye and just nods these projects through.”
SAS says developers buy up homes to silence those objecting to wind farms on their doorstep and include non-disclosure orders as part of the deal.
Full story
4) Basel 3 ‘Endgame’ will upend climate finance, banks warn
Bloomberg, 17 December 2023
Wall Street’s biggest banks are warning that existing assumptions around much-needed green finance will no longer hold if the US goes ahead with stricter capital requirements.
The Basel 3 Endgame, as the planned rules have been dubbed, marks the final implementation stage in the US of regulations created after the financial crisis of 2008. Banks will need to set aside more capital, which will make it costlier for them to provide finance. Proposed in July by a group of US authorities that includes the Federal Reserve, the rules will “fundamentally alter” how banks in the world’s biggest economy approach risk, EY says.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. estimates the plan would leave it facing a 25% capital bump, which would “for sure” affect its ability to allocate funds to green projects, according to Chief Operating Officer Daniel Pinto. And Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer David Solomon says the bank’s capital requirements would “quadruple” for certain clean energy projects.
The upshot is that Wall Street will have to rethink existing climate financing structures, said John Greenwood, co-head of Americas structured finance at Goldman.
“Given all the things that commercial banks are facing in the context of Basel,” the financial structures of existing climate deals are starting to look a bit “antiquated,” Greenwood said in an interview. That’s particularly true of a climate-funding model known as blended finance, whereby deals are de-risked by the public sector in order to lure private capital. Those enticements are now going to need to take banks’ extra capital costs into account, he said.
Full story
5) Reality check: Coal, oil and gas dominate Australian energy investment
Financial Review, 18 December 2023
Coal, oil and gas developments make up the lion’s share of Australia’s $77.4 billion in committed resources projects, official figures reveal, days after the COP28 summit agreed for the first time to transition away from fossil fuels.
However, new critical minerals projects – where a final investment decision was approved – surged in the year to October 31, surpassing fossil fuels. Critical minerals are key to the global push to net zero emissions.
Oil and gas developments comprised 46.5 per cent of committed projects, while coal made up a further 5.9 per cent.
Latest figures in the Department of Industry, Resources and Sciences quarterly resources sector report card illustrate Australia’s mixed progress towards decarbonisation.
The COP28 summit of 198 countries last week backed a deal that calls for concerted global action to “transition away” from fossil fuels, bringing oil and gas into the almost 30-year-old climate treaty’s ambit for the first time.
In the summit communique, countries agreed to “contribute to” global efforts to “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net-zero by 2050 in keeping with the science”.
Australia was understood to have been a key backer of the “transition” text, which resembles the language from the Pacific Islands Forum last month.
But there are about $40 billion in coal, oil and gas projects in development in Australia that will add to global emissions for decades through scope 3 emissions. These occur when exported fossil fuels are burned by the importer and do not count towards Australia’s carbon budget.
Oil and gas developments comprised 46.5 per cent of committed projects, while coal made up a further 5.9 per cent.
Just under 10 per cent of projects in the confirmed pipeline were in the existing powerhouse iron ore sector, while a similar amount were in the emerging lithium sector.
Full story
6) US fracking boom boost global oil supply and haunts OPEC yet again
Bloomberg, 17 December 2023
OPEC’s one-time nemesis — US shale — is rearing its head just months after the sector was all but written off as a threat to the cartel’s sway over worldwide oil markets.
Drillers from the Permian Basin in West Texas to the Bakken Shale of North Dakota have ramped up oil production well beyond what analysts foresaw, pushing output to a record just as OPEC and its allies put the brakes on supplies in a bid to arrest price declines.
This time last year, US government forecasters predicted domestic production would average 12.5 million barrels a day during the current quarter. In recent days, that estimate was bumped to 13.3 million; the difference is equivalent to adding a new Venezuela to global supplies.
That growth is reverberating around the world, calling into question the OPEC+ group’s strategy of curbing supplies to prevent the potentially catastrophic price impacts of a glut. It also makes clear that the legions of companies that pump oil from US shale fields still wield enough power to bedevil the cartel’s efforts.
Full story
7) Robert Lyman: The COP28 charade
Net Zero Watch, 18 December 2023
‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’, wrote William Shakespeare. He might have been foreseeing the show recently concluded in Dubai, where over 100,000 people reportedly came to play their roles at COP 28, the 28th major climate policy summit.
The centrepiece of the gathering was discussion of the ‘stocktake’ prepared by the United Nations, an assessment of countries’ performance in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in accordance with their five-year plans (‘NDCs’). The final stocktake report served as the decision document. The world’s media declared, with almost one voice, that the conference had produced a ‘historic agreement to transition away from fossil fuels’. Professor Johan Rockström of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany declared that the decisions taken at COP 28 marked the true ‘beginning of the end of the fossil fuel-driven world economy’.
In fact, COP 28 was a spectacular failure, as measured against the goals that the UN had set for it from the beginning. It did not achieve a single one of the objectives that climate activists sought. Even more important, in spite of the voluntary commitments that various governments made during the conference (mostly aimed at domestic audiences), it is virtually certain to have little or no effect on the global trends in GHG emissions or on the climate.
The news from the stocktake was bad. The report prepared for the conference estimated that, based on current NDCs, the gap in emissions consistent with limiting warming is about 20.3 billion tonnes (Gt) to 23.9 Gt of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. That is about half the world’s current emissions. The report urged more ‘ambition’ in order to reduce GHG emissions by 43% by 2030 and a further 60% by 2035 compared with 2019 levels and to reach net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050 globally.
A new element at the conference was an increased emphasis on phasing out fossil-fuel production and use. The United Nations Environmental Programme published a report in which officials urged the conference to add a new set of targets for emissions reduction that are fuel-specific. It was anticipated that there would be a prolonged debate about whether the conference would endorse ‘phasing down’ or ‘phasing out’ fossil fuel production and about whether that reference should include the word ‘unabated’.
In fact, only intense lobbying by the European Union and the United States, along with several smaller countries, caused the conference to include in the stocktake decision document a carefully-worded reference. The reference is one of an eight-point list of things that the conference ‘called on the Parties’ voluntarily to make national efforts to do. The specific reference to fossil fuels was to ‘transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050’.
Five things are notable about this reference.
First, the statement of goals is not binding; it is not a legal commitment and there are no penalties if the Parties fail to act on it. Second, the term ‘transition away’ does not require specific cuts in either fossil fuel use or production. Third, the reference includes only fossil fuels in energy systems, not, for example, fossil fuel use as feedstocks in petrochemicals production. Fourth, the reference to a ‘just, orderly and equitable manner’ provides loopholes that will allow the developing countries to argue that the goal does not apply to them and/or that ‘orderly’ excludes hasty action. Fifth, despite its reference to ‘accelerating action’, there are no specific deadlines. In other words, the statement can be safely ignored unless countries intend to limit fossil fuel production and use anyway.
COP 27 in Egypt focused on the alleged need for more climate aid. COP 28 was expected to continue this effort. Developing countries insisted that the wealthier ones: meet the decade-long commitment to provide at least USD 100 billion per year to the Global Climate Fund to finance mitigation efforts up to 2025; agree to increase funding of climate mitigation up to USD 1.3 trillion per year from 2025 to 2030; double funding for climate adaptation, ideally to at least USD 600 billion per year; and provide large commitments for the ‘Loss and Damages’ fund to assist developing countries when they were affected by severe weather events that they attribute to climate change.
COP 28 failed to deliver on these expectations. The decision document noted that the developed countries did not provide USD100 billion in climate aid per year in 2021. It welcomed pledges made by 31 contributors for the ‘replenishment’ of the Green Climate Fund, resulting in a nominal pledge of USD 12.8 billion to date. That is USD 12.8 billion over a number of years, far from the USD 1.3 trillion per year the developing countries demanded.
It gets worse. The decision document stated that the adaptation finance needs of the developing countries are estimated at USD 215–387 billion annually up until 2030, and that about USD 4.3 trillion per year needs to be invested in clean energy up until 2030, increasing thereafter to USD 5 trillion per year up until 2050, to be able to reach net zero emissions by 2050. The significance of this statement is that without this funding the developing countries may claim that they cannot afford the enormous costs of the emissions reduction measures. As the developing countries now constitute almost 70 per cent (and rising) of global emissions, this means that the net-zero emissions goal by 2050 cannot possibly be met.
The conference did little to ‘operationalize’ the Loss and Damages Fund that was approved in principle at COP 27. The key decisions about the design of this fund will be dealt with in a committee that will report back to COP 29. The UN did elicit voluntary pledges, and the decision document welcomed the pledges made to provide USD 188 million for the Adaptation Fund (i.e. far below the USD 600 billion per year sought) and pledges for USD 792 million for Loss and Damages. These were voluntary commitments, so there was no agreement to make them obligatory.
The failure of the conference to meet the financial demands of the developing countries should have been the main story coming out of it. Instead, the media ignored it. We can expect the show to continue next year at COP 29 in Azerbaijan.
Robert Lyman is a Canadian economist and the author of Net Zero Watch’s review of Canadian climate policy.
8) Tony Abbott: Climate action can't come at the expense of humanity
National Post, 15 December 2023
The anti-fossil fuel fixation has become a Trojan horse that's sapping the West’s prosperity and security
Taking place in one of the world’s fossil-fuel hubs, a city sultanate so prodigal in its energy use that it boasts indoor ski slopes in the desert furnace, the just-concluded climate jamboree in Dubai could hardly avoid a note of climate realism.
Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, in refusing to allow the Conference of the Parties to endorse any prescriptive language about the “phase down” or “phase out” of fossil fuels, declared: “I assure you that not a single person — I’m talking about governments — believes in that.… I would like to put that challenge to all of those who … comes out publicly saying we have to (phase down.) Ask them how they are gonna do that. If they believe that this is the highest moral ground issue, fantastic. Let them do that themselves. And we will see how much they can deliver.”
Earlier, in a pre-conference exchange, the COP28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, declared: “Show me the roadmap for a phase out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.” The Emirati prince, who is also chief executive of the state-owned oil company, was in a tetchy debate with the former Irish president and United Nations climate envoy, Mary Robinson, who’d earlier observed that, “We’re in an absolute crisis that is hurting women and children more than anyone … and it’s because we have not yet committed to phasing out fossil fuel.”
The conference’s eventual call for “transitioning away from fossil fuels … in a just, orderly and equitable manner” could be called a “historic achievement” by Al Jaber precisely because it was so heavily qualified; a commitment to do nothing specific any time soon.
Leaving aside the bizarre contention that a commitment to ending coal, oil and gas power will somehow ease whatever hurts are being uniquely suffered by women and girls, and ignoring for a moment any issues with climate’s “settled science,” this exchange crystallized the tension between climate evangelism and climate realism. It’s fair enough wanting to reduce emissions, to rest as lightly as possible on the only planet we have, but to what extent should we burden economies, and change people’s lifestyles, in order to do so? This is an especially acute question for Canada, that’s one of the world’s main fossil fuel exporters, like Australia, and now with a cost of living crisis exacerbated by climate policy.
In Canada, a rapidly escalating carbon tax is already estimated to be costing families upwards of $700 a year, and is legislated to rise fast, on top of soaring expenses for housing and food. And unlike most other price rises, this one is wholly and solely the doing of the federal government. In Australia, the only time retail power prices have fallen in more than a decade was by nine per cent in 2014, when our domestic carbon tax was abolished. But other climate policies, especially the new Labor government’s 82 per cent renewable energy mandate by 2030, have contributed to driving up power prices by 20 per cent in the past year alone. And the planned closure of the country’s biggest coal-fired power station in about 18 months time, producing almost 10 per cent of Australia’s electricity, is certain to lead to widespread blackouts or power rationing.
For several decades, climate activists got away with claiming that countries could reduce emissions without any real pain-in-the-pocket because wind and solar power were virtually free. What was always glossed over was the need to “firm” intermittent, renewable power because modern life requires power 24/7, not just when the wind blows and the sun shines. Again, this was relatively easy when renewable power was under about 15 per cent of total electricity generation because hydro-electric or gas-fired “peaker” plants could scale up or down, almost instantaneously, when the wind dropped or dusk fell. But at greater levels of renewable penetration, that’s become much harder because coal-fired generation takes much longer to power up or down. The changed economics of part-time coal-fired power, plus green restrictions on new coal and gas fields, and also shareholder activist campaigns against any fossil fuel investment, mean that many countries are now on the threshold of an energy crisis. Especially since the green phobia for fossil fuels normally extends, for different reasons, to nuclear power, too.
Across much of the developed world, there’s now enough renewable energy to badly damage the reliability and affordability of power supplies; but not enough to substantially dent the world’s reliance on fossil fuels — still about 80 per of total global energy. This is the dilemma we now face. We can have the abundant affordable energy on which almost every aspect of modern life depends. Think transport, housing, heating, cooling, transactions, mobile phones and even greenhouse farming. Or we can have lower emissions.
Then there’s the quite literally astronomical cost. Even the current Australian government, that’s legislated for 82 per cent renewables by 2030, admits that this will require the installation of 20,000 new solar panels every single day, and 40 wind turbines every single month, for the next seven years, plus the construction of at least 10,000 kilometres of new transmission lines. Quite apart from the need for “firming.” This is simply not going to happen given genuine conservationist fears about the impact of onshore and offshore wind farms on bird life and whale migration, plus the desecration of farm land and national parks.
In Australia, a tri-university study headed by our former chief scientist has estimated that the cost of reaching net zero will be AU$1.5 trillion (C$1.3 trillion) by 2030 (or about 60 per cent of annual GDP) and up to AU$9 trillion by 2060. As Bjorn Lomborg has just reported, a new study puts the annual global cost of achieving net zero at between four and 18 per cent of global GDP. A recent British study by Royal Society fellow Prof. Michael Kelly puts the cost of achieving net zero for the United Kingdom at over 3 trillion pounds (C$5 trillion), or 180,000 pounds per household, with, he said, a “command economy” on a “war footing.” And even if the physics and the economics of “green hydrogen” could be made to work, the aesthetics of much of the globe carpeted and forested with solar panels and wind turbines would be a modern version of William Blake’s “satanic mills.”
Contrary to the climate zealots, the real “tipping point” is less likely to arrive when barely perceptible global warming becomes unstoppable but when fed-up electorates revolt against policies that don’t seem to be helping the climate but are badly hurting voters’ cost of living.
Full post
9) And finally: Emergency in China as temperatures hit lowest levels ever
Hindustan Times, 17 December 2023
China's president Xi Jinping called for an "all-out" emergency response to the cold snap that began at the start of the week.
Temperatures in parts of China hit their lowest levels since records began, state broadcaster said. The provinces affected included Shanxi, Hebei and Liaoning as a cold wave gripped large swathes of the country.
China's president Xi Jinping called for an "all-out" emergency response to the cold snap that began at the start of the week. Snowfall and icy roads along with heavy fog caused multiple accidents on the roads as well.
Full story
The London-based Net Zero Watch is a campaign group set up to highlight and discuss the serious implications of expensive and poorly considered climate change policies. The Net Zero Watch newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.netzerowatch.com.
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