Net Zero Watch: EU Net Zero target in doubt

 

In this newsletter:

1) EU Net Zero target in doubt as governments struggle to meet climate commitments
Euro News, 3 January 2024
  
2) Bangladesh triples its coal power output in 2023, easing shortages
Reuters, 3 January 2024

3) Fraser Myers: Why Europeans are rising up against Net Zero
Spiked, 1 January 2024
  
4) Electric car drivers face £500 hit as insurance and tax bills rise
The Daily Telegraph, 3 January 2024
  
5) America's plan to replace gas guzzlers with electric cars was doomed from the start
Business Insider, 3 January 2024
  
6) Elon Musk’s Chinese rival toppled Tesla – now it’s coming for Britain
The Daily Telegraph, 3 January 2024
  
7) Ben Pile: Reflections on 2023: The surge in Net Zero scepticism, silly climate activists and how to beat the Blob
The Daily Sceptic, 2 January 2024
  
8) Jeremy Clarkson rips apart BBC's climate agenda as he celebrates environmental victory with brilliant swipe
GB News, 2 January 2024
 
9) Cargo vessel's lithium-batteries fire highlights concerns over EV risks
BNN News, 3 January 2024

Full details:

1) EU Net Zero target in doubt as governments struggle to meet climate commitments
Euro News, 3 January 2024

 

With the European Commission expected to announce next month a radical new 2040 target for greenhouse gas emissions reduction, there are worrying signs that governments are struggling to meet existing commitments.
 
As the European Commission prepares a proposal for a 2040 climate target that could see member states pledge to cut net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to just 10% of 1990 levels, there are signs that governments are struggling to achieve more modest existing targets set for the end of this decade.
 
The groundbreaking European Climate Law commits the EU to a 55% cut by 2030 and full carbon neutrality by 2050, and requires the Commission to propose an intermediate target for 2040 in the coming months. The European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, a body created by the same legislation, concluded last summer that achieving net-zero will be impossible unless a reduction of 90-95% is achieved by 2040.
 
Since then, the EU’s new climate action commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, has committed to “defend” fixing a 90% target for 2040, going as far as promising MEPs during his confirmation hearing in October that the EU executive would “explore” the radical political option of suggesting “lifestyle changes including dietary changes” as a means of achieving it.
 
Putting a 90% target in perspective: annual net greenhouse gas output currently stands at around 32% below 1990 levels. Reaching the goal to which Hoekstra has committed would mean cutting the annual net emissions across the EU by a factor of almost seven between now and 2040.
 
Full story
 
2) Bangladesh triples its coal power output in 2023, easing shortages
Reuters, 3 January 2024
 


Bangladesh nearly tripled its coal-fired power output in 2023, a Reuters analysis of government data showed, helping it tide over the worst power shortages in over a decade and slash rising generation costs.
 
Coal rose to prominence in Bangladesh's power mix in 2023 at the expense of cleaner fuels, as the government struggled to pay for costly natural gas, furnace oil and diesel imports because of shrinking dollar reserves and a weakening currency.
 
Power generation from coal surged to a record 21 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2023, up from the 7.9 billion kWh of electricity produced from coal in 2022, an analysis of daily operational reports by the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB) showed.
 
"The share of coal is expected to increase further this year as a new unit is expected to get commissioned. Dependence on gas is expected to remain steady and use of liquid fuels will fall," a senior energy ministry official said.
 
Coal's share of the power generation fuel mix rose to 14.2% in 2023, from 8.9% in 2022, the PGCB data showed, while the share of natural gas rose to 55.2% in 2023, the first increase in four years and up from 51% in 2022.
 
However, natural gas's share last year was much lower than the average of about 66% in the ten years to 2022 as high international prices for the fuel limited its usage. Dwindling local gas reserves and LNG, mainly from Qatar, are the main gas sources for the country.
 
Full story
 
3) Fraser Myers: Why Europeans are rising up against Net Zero
Spiked, 1 January 2024

 

In 2023, punitive green policies pushed the public to breaking point.
 
In many ways, it is incredible they got away with it for so long. For the past decade or so, mainstream politicians across Europe have stopped promising to improve their voters’ living standards. Instead, they have boasted about their plans to limit them. They have extolled the virtues of a higher cost of living, deindustrialisation and restrictions on personal freedoms. And they expected most people wouldn’t mind or perhaps even notice – because all this was to be done in the name of ‘saving the planet’ from climate change. But in 2023, that elite green consensus came crashing down to Earth.
 
The growing public anger towards Net Zero has started to shake a complacent political elite. Indeed, opposition to greenism is now one of the key drivers of European populism. It has brought people out on to the streets – with farmers’ protests in the Netherlands, Ireland and, most recently, Germany. And it has inspired a number of revolts at the ballot box.
 
The Netherlands was once deemed to be a ‘sensible’ country, immune to the kind of populist uprisings that had previously rocked the rest of Europe. Yet today, it is at the forefront of the global fightback against the elites’ green designs. Dutch farmers have been in open revolt against their government for four years now. Back in the spring, hundreds of farmers defied a government ban to drive their tractors to the Hague. Tens of thousands of protesters also gathered in the Hague’s Zuiderpark, chanting ‘No farmers, no food’.
 
They were demonstrating against the Dutch government’s stringent restrictions on nitrogen emissions – just one of the many destructive policies the government has implemented to meet the EU’s climate targets. According to the government’s own forecasts, the nitrogen policy could lead to the closure of some 3,000 farms. Cattle and dairy farms will be worst affected, as cow manure is a major source of nitrogen, but farmers also need nitrogen-rich fertilisers to grow crops at scale.
 
You do not need to be a farmer to see that this green war on agriculture will have catastrophic consequences – not just for the livelihoods of those soon-to-be unemployed farmers, but also for the food supply, for people’s ability to feed ourselves. Dutch voters hit back against these irrational nitrogen restrictions in March’s provincial elections, by voting en masse for the Farmer-Citizen Movement. This upstart agrarian party won the highest share of the vote in all 12 Dutch provinces. Then, in November, hard-right firebrand and climate sceptic Geert Wilders scored a shock election victory, trouncing his nearest rival, Frans Timmermans, the architect and face of the EU’s climate policies.
 
The pursuit of punitive climate policies is upending politics beyond the Netherlands, too. In Germany, a row over heat pumps recently threatened to bring down the government, in which the Green Party is a junior coalition partner. Germany’s proposed ‘heating law’ would have banned the installation of new oil and gas boilers. Instead, electric-powered heat pumps would become mandatory, despite the fact that they cost, on average, €17,000 more to install than a regular boiler – even when government subsidies are taken into account. What’s more, this cost was to be imposed on a nation that is already reeling from a major energy crisis, where household bills are among the highest in Europe and where critical industries are closing down due to exorbitant energy costs.
 
After a fierce backlash, particularly from the right-populist AfD, the heating law was watered down significantly. Nevertheless, the ‘heat hammer’, as it was dubbed by the press, has severely wounded the government’s popularity, exposed the cracks in a weak coalition government and helped the AfD surge in the polls. Meanwhile, the Green Party, once Germany’s most popular party, now languishes in fourth place.
 
Europe’s turn against Net Zero has been impossible to ignore. Some mainstream parties have tried – cynically – to ride the tide of public anger. In the UK, the floundering Conservative Party managed to steal a rare by-election victory in Uxbridge and South Ruislip in outer London. It beat Labour, the presumptive winners, by opposing London mayor Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ charge – a punitive green tax on older vehicles. The surprise win prompted UK prime minister Rishi Sunak to roll back some of his government’s Net Zero policies and promise a more ‘pragmatic’ approach to climate change.
 
Around the same time, across the Channel, French president Emmanuel Macron called for a ‘pause’ in new environmental rules. He had already learned the hard way that the public will not put up with stringent green policies. Back in 2018 and 2019, an eco-tax on fuel sparked the year-long gilets jaunes protests – the most significant public rebellion in France since les événements of May 1968.
 
For now, these u-turns have been small and limited. Proposed taxes and bans have only been postponed or watered down. Despite some of the green-sceptical rhetoric, mainstream European parties remain committed to Net Zero, regardless of how much economic damage it is set to inflict. They will need to be reminded, again and again, whether at the ballot box or on the streets, that the green agenda is intolerable. There is, after all, no such thing as a ‘pragmatic’ or ‘pain-free’ path to Net Zero.
 
Full post
 
4) Electric car drivers face £500 hit as insurance and tax bills rise
The Daily Telegraph, 3 January 2024

 

Cost of owning EV to soar as Government struggles to meet charging point targets
 
Electric car drivers face paying £500 a year more to keep their vehicles on the road as insurance premiums shoot up and tax charges kick in.
 
The average cost to insure an electric car rose by £313 year on year in November, growing from £616 to £929 in the space of 12 months, according to price comparison site Compare the Market.
 
Meanwhile, looming car tax changes will force owners to eventually pay an extra £180 a year in vehicle excise duty (VED).
 
Zero-emission vehicles are currently exempt from VED, with the tax levied on petrol and diesel vehicles using public roads. But this will change from April 2025.
 
Electric car owners will be liable to pay the standard rate of £180 a year, in a move which the Government says will “ensure all drivers begin to pay a fairer tax contribution”.
 
New electric cars registered on or after April 1, 2025, will pay £10 in the first year, before then going onto the standard £180 rate.
 
The Treasury predicts the expansion of the tax regime will be worth an additional £515m in 2025-26, £985m in 2026-27 and almost £1.6bn in 2027-28.
 
April 2025 will also bring an end to the “expensive car supplement” exemption for electric vehicles.
 
The tax, which costs £390 annually for five years after buying a car valued at £40,000 or more, will apply to around half of all electric vehicle models at current prices.
 
Full story
 
5) America's plan to replace gas guzzlers with electric cars was doomed from the start
Business Insider, 3 January 2024
 


The sudden slowdown in electric car sales is a symptom of a much uglier problem.
  
Electric vehicles were supposed to be inevitable. Two years ago President Joe Biden climbed behind the wheel of a beefy white electric Hummer to tout his plan to make half of all new cars sold electric by 2030. The following year Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which created a bevy of incentives for drivers to buy electric and for automakers to invest in EVs. That set off a flurry of new projects: EV plants, battery-manufacturing facilities, and mining operations began popping up. By the end of 2022 the situation looked promising: More and more Americans were going electric, and soon everyone would be driving an EV, reducing emissions in the process.
 
The transition to an all-EV future seemed like a slam dunk. It would not only give the government a highly visible way to show it's fighting the climate crisis but boost the economy through new jobs and investment. But the electric-vehicle takeover has hit some serious roadblocks.
 
Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed, and analysts have suggested the country is no longer on track to hit the government's sales targets. The trickle-down effects of this decreased demand are everywhere. EVs accumulated at dealerships this fall, even as automakers cut prices to try to entice customers. Automakers have backtracked on their promised investments: Ford delayed $12 billion of its planned $15 billion investment in EV manufacturing capacity, while General Motors delayed production of key EV models and scrapped a $5 billion partnership with Honda to make cheaper EVs. Even Tesla — once the superstar of EVs — announced it would delay a planned factory in Mexico. Auto execs who were once trumpeting the potential of electric cars are even publicly acknowledging that EVs aren't working.
 
Industry analysts have pointed to several reasons for the slowdown, including insufficient charging infrastructure and a lack of affordable EV options. But they're a symptom of the larger problem: America's EV plan was flawed from the start. Instead of seeing EVs as one piece of a plan for more sustainable transportation, America has focused on using EVs as a one-to-one replacement for gas guzzlers. But this one-size-fits-all solution fails to address our broader transportation problems, meaning emissions targets are likely to be missed and other transportation problems will continue to go unaddressed.
 
"The entire myth at the heart of this whole transition is that the battery car seamlessly fits right into the gas car's position," Edward Niedermeyer, the author of "Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors," told me. "It doesn't, and that's the problem."
 
Full story
 
6) Elon Musk’s Chinese rival toppled Tesla – now it’s coming for Britain
The Daily Telegraph, 3 January 2024

 

BYD's rising popularity raises fresh fears over China’s carmaking dominance
 
Mayfair’s Berkeley Street is a mecca for luxury car gazers, dotted with showrooms displaying Ferraris, Bentleys and McLarens behind giant windows. Halfway down, across the road from the Rolls Royce boutique, sits a lesser-known name.
 
Last year the Chinese car company BYD opened its own glitzy showroom on the site formerly occupied by Jaguar Land Rover. 
 
BYD’s cars cost a fraction of the others on Berkeley Street, but its presence among the world’s most desirable vehicles sends a message: it believes it can compete.
 
This week, it had the proof. BYD revealed that it had sold 526,409 electric vehicles in the last three months of 2023, overtaking Tesla and ending the Elon Musk-run company’s eight-year reign as the world’s best-selling electric vehicle manufacturer.
 
It was a milestone moment. After BYD surpassed Tesla, clips circulated online of a 2011 interview in which Musk mocked the Chinese company, chuckling dismissively when asked if they could compete (Tesla’s chief has now acknowledged them as a serious rival).
 
But as far as BYD’s billionaire founder Wang Chuanfu is concerned, it is just the start. The company, China’s dominant carmaker, is now plotting to take on the rest of the world, seeking to become one of only a handful of Chinese consumer companies to become a recognised global leader. 
 
In August, Wang said the company would help “demolish the old [Western] legends and achieve new, world-class brands”. Its aggressively priced electric vehicles are gradually appearing on British and European streets.
 
Full story
 
7) Ben Pile: Reflections on 2023: The surge in Net Zero scepticism, silly climate activists and how to beat the Blob
The Daily Sceptic, 2 January 2024
 

 
Net Zero scepticism, if not climate scepticism, has exploded, and is now a fixture of the mainstream, albeit a minor part. Former ministers and broadsheet news media began to find their voices in ’23. This is largely confined to the centre-Right, but that may be merely a consequence of the realities of power – a Labour government is going to inherit the same problems of their own making, and it will be difficult to sustain the consensus. The GMB’s interventions shows that the broad Left’s support of the Miliband set’s preferences cannot be taken for granted. However, independent media and analysts are far ahead of the mainstream, which has yet to form robust critiques of green ideology, except in extreme (e.g. XR/JSO) cases, and is still inclined to apologise for climate alarmism, and/or tinker with policy. The cross-party Westminster consensus on climate holds for now.
 
Cancellation on steroids
 
Power is doubling down on its predominant ideologies, and consolidating with unprecedented attacks against the conventions of one-time liberal democracy (RIP). Governments throughout the West have given themselves the power to impose increasingly draconian interventions to police speech, under the pretext of protecting the public from ‘online harms’. In 2023, the concepts of ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation’ fully escaped the dank confines of the Blob’s nucleus, and are now a cancer: A mutation of the principle that might-is-right. The doublespeak extends from passing off official lies as unimpeachable truth to claiming that this ‘protects’ democracy. Financial institutions have weighed in, appointing themselves as regulators of the public space, though debanking scandals have embarrassed the blobs. ESG is toppling globally, especially in the U.S., but seeking surer foundations in Europe and the U.K. Mainstream discussion has yet to properly connect ESG to authoritarianism and rising costs of living. In the U.S., new precedents are being set for using criminal and civil courts as political weapons against critics of all sizes. Blobs are keen to extend this combination of regulation and lawfare into Europe and the U.K. These are, of course, reflections of the facts of political establishments’ loss of moral authority, and the growing gulf between them and publics, forcing them to take increasingly reckless measures against their own failures.
 
The UNFCC/COP process and climate alarmism is a busted flush
 
Attempts to consolidate the climate agenda, at all levels of government, using increasingly high-pitched rhetoric are increasingly falling flat on their face. Epitomised by António Guterres’s sloganeering, such as ‘Code Red for Humanity’ and ‘Global Boiling’, the global political agenda is simply embarrassing. Geopolitics is repolarising, with the west committed to harming itself, apparently in the interests of its sworn enemy in the form of the dominant partners of BRICS nations. One time ‘developing’ nations have found their feet, and they are not going to follow the West, leaders of which have no longer any leverage over any but officials of the poorest governments. The world now has (always did) far more serious problems to contend with than can be solved through happy-clappy green idealism, advanced only by billionaire-backed green NGOs and ersatz ‘civil society’ organisations, many of which are merely ESG lobbying outfits in ‘third sector’ drag. Western politicians succeed only in signalling to the rest of the world the failures of the green agenda, and their hypocrisy and lack of competence and good faith in all matters, including the green agenda, financial regulation, rule of law, democracy and security: They will put their self interest and ideological ambitions before the basic needs and interests of their own populations. The putative achievements of COP26 are already collapsing, with global financial institutions falling out of the Bloomberg-centric ‘alliance’ (GFANZ). The most recent COP was an inconclusive mess, which drew most hostility from the green blob itself, and only served therefore to demonstrate the hopeless fracturing of the world into irreconcilable parts.
 
The world is not decarbonising
 
Global CO2 emissions reached 37.15 billion tonnes in 2022 – a slight increase over the pre-covid 2019 record of 37.04 billion tonnes. The world consumed 44,854 TWh of coal in 2022 – pretty much where it was a decade ago in 2014, though agencies such as the IEA are reporting this as a “return to record levels”. Reduced consumption in the West has been matched by growth in Asia, where consumption has tripled since 2000. Oil and gas consumption have also been flat since Covid, reflecting recent extremely high prices – which we might expect to have reduced demand more significantly – though 2022 gas consumption is down on 2021. Coal, oil and gas accounted for 26.7%, 31.6% and 23.5% of global energy demand respectively – a total of 81.8%. 14% of primary energy came from renewable sources – up from 9% in 2010, and barely more than a doubling from its historic 6% through most of the second half of the 20th Century. And those figures for renewables depend on the dodgy ‘substitution method’, which multiplies the contribution of renewables by around 2.4, in order to ‘account for’ the inefficiency of fossil fuels, but which are thus an attempt to inflate the apparent viability of green energy.
 
Full post
 
8) Jeremy Clarkson rips apart BBC's climate agenda as he celebrates environmental victory with brilliant swipe
GB News, 2 January 2024

 

Jeremy Clarkson has celebrated the discovery of over 800 new species of animal heading into 2024 amid the modern world's ongoing climate complaints.

Writing in his last column of 2023, the Clarkson's Farm host lauded the fact that more and more new species of animals are being found despite being told the population is "destroying pretty much all biodiversity on Earth".
 
Clarkson was reflecting on how he'd like to have more time in the day before he touched upon a report that said last year 815 new species of animal were recorded.
 
Celebrating how the feat is a major victory in the light of persistent eco moans, Clarkson didn't hold back.
 
He wrote of the discovery: "This flies in the face of Instagram-level, X-fed thinking.
 
"We are told by The Guardian and the BBC, on an almost daily basis, that modern living and oil have destroyed pretty much all biodiversity on Earth.

"They say humans in general, and Tories in particular, have wiped out 83 per cent of all mammals and that today just four per cent of the world’s remaining mammals are wild.

"The rest are cows, pigs, sheep, chickens and us. And yet here we are, with the entomologist John Noyes saying, 'I find new species in my back garden without really trying'," he added in The Times.
 
Full story
 
9) Cargo vessel's lithium-batteries fire highlights concerns over EV risks
BNN News, 3 January 2024
 


In a concerning turn of events, a cargo vessel, Genius Star XI, transporting electric vehicle (EV) lithium-ion batteries from Vietnam to San Diego, was engulfed in flames. This unsettling incident underscores pressing questions about the safety and feasibility of accelerated EV adoption in the United States, particularly concerning the transportation and handling of EV components.
 
The Incident and its Implications
 
The fire aboard Genius Star XI, a ship carrying nearly 2,000 tons of lithium-ion batteries, was fortunately extinguished and the vessel stabilized. However, the event raises grave concerns about the threat posed by EV battery fires, both on land and at sea. Recent incidents of factory fires in Detroit linked to EVs and an electric vehicle catching fire in Autauga County, requiring an alarming 36,000 gallons of water to douse, have further intensified these concerns.
 
The Government’s Stance and Public Concerns
 
The Biden administration is ardently subsidizing EVs to promote their use, despite trepidation from auto workers and dealerships. These subsidies come in the wake of reports of EV fires occurring spontaneously, during accidents, and even while parked. These fires not only present unique challenges to firefighters but also release toxic gases, adding to the overall environmental impact of EV production.
 
Addressing the Risks
 
There is a growing need for effective safety measures and stringent regulations for transporting lithium-ion-based cargo. Emphasis is put on maintaining the batteries at a low state of charge to prevent thermal runaway. A study by the FAA revealed that batteries with a state of charge of 30 or less were significantly less prone to thermal runaway issues than those charged at 70 and higher. However, the incident aboard Genius Star XI proves that there is still a long way to go in ensuring the safe transportation and handling of EV components.
 
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.