Net Zero Watch: Apple pulls the plug & kills its electric car

 

In this newsletter:

1) Apple kills its electric car after 10 years development
The New York Times, 27 February 2024
 
2) Mercedes Benz ditches plan to sell only EVs by 2030
Business Insider, 23 February 2024

3) How EVs became such a massive disappointment
CNN, 26 February 2024
 
4) Toyota will change automotive forever: its hydrogen combustion engine will retire EVs
La Grada, 26 February 2024
 
5) The EU’s Green Deal is going out with a whimper
EurActiv, 28 February 2024
 
6) Nearly half of young US voters won't pay more than $10 per month to fight climate change
Daily Mail, 26 February 2024
  
7) Net Zero flop: Scheme to reduce energy bills will take 60 years to complete
The Times, 28 February 2024
  
8) Matthew Lynn: The net zero delusion has reached a new low
The Daily Telegraph, 28 February 2024
 
9) James Woudhuysen: Net Zero is a war on the working class
Spiked, 27 February 2024
  
10) Green billionaires press Hollywood to promote Armageddon climate messages in movies
The Daily Sceptic, 27 February 2024
  
11) Jeremy Warner: The dash for electric cars risks further industrial destruction in Britain and Europe
The Daily Telegraph, 27 February 2024
  
12) Tilak Doshi: The great European farmers revolt: Jilted, turning on the greens
Forbes, 26 February 2024
 
13) Rupert Darwall: Net Zero’s days are numbered
The Spectator,  23 February 2024

Full details:

1) Apple kills its electric car after 10 years development
The New York Times, 27 February 2024

 

Apple has canceled its plans to release an electric car with self-driving abilities, a secretive product that had been in the works for nearly a decade.
 
The company told employees in an internal meeting on Tuesday that it had scrapped the project and that members of the group would be shifted to different roles, including in Apple’s artificial intelligence division, according to a person briefed on the discussion, who requested anonymity because the announcement was not public.
 
As part of the restructuring, Kevin Lynch, an executive who had been involved in the car project, will report to John Giannandrea, the company’s head of artificial intelligence strategy, the person said.
 
Full story
 
2) Mercedes Benz ditches plan to sell only EVs by 2030
Business Insider, 23 February 2024

 

Mercedes-Benz is moving away from its ambitious plans for EVs by 2030.
  
The carmaker walked back that goal during an earnings call this week, however. 
 
A Q4 statement from Mercedes says EV sales in 2030 will be more like 50% of its fleet.
 
It looks like Mercedes-Benz won't live up to its goal to be all-electric by 2030.
 
In 2021, the German carmaker announced plans only to sell electric vehicles — "where market conditions allow" — by 2030. It now seems that market conditions aren't going to allow that.
  
Full story
 
3) How EVs became such a massive disappointment
CNN, 26 February 2024

 

Tesla has been slashing prices. Ford just cut the price of its Mustang Mach-E, too, plus it cut back production of its electric pickup. And General Motors is thinking about bringing back plug-in hybrids, possibly taking a step back from GM’s earlier commitment to shifting straight to pure EVs.

 
And now the EPA is considering slowing down requirements for automakers to sell more electric vehicles, dialing back what had been aggressive plans to move away from gas powered cars and SUVs.
 
To be clear: The American market for EVs is not collapsing. In the last quarter of 2023, EV sales were up 40% from the same quarter a year before, according to Cox Automotive. In fact, EV sales in the United States hit a record last year, topping 1 million for the first time.
 
But the EV market has nevertheless become a major disappointment. There is a troubling gap between expectations and reality.
 
Bloomberg New Energy Finance, for instance, had projected sales of 1.7 million plug-in vehicles in 2023, but only 1.46 million ultimately sold. (BNEF’s figures include plug-in hybrids, but the large majority are fully electric vehicles.) The trend line isn’t slanting upward as sharply as many had predicted so the industry is lowering future estimates.
 
Industry experts cite a number of reasons for this, including vehicle price, lack of charging capacity and confusing tax credit rules.
 
Full story
 
4) Toyota will change automotive forever: its hydrogen combustion engine will retire EVs
La Grada, 26 February 2024

 

The focus may be on electric vehicles (EVs) for sustainable transportation, but an under-the-radar revolution is underway using a different approach: the hydrogen combustion engine (HCE). 
 
Concerns about climate change and exhausting oil reserves have renewed interest in hydrogen as a clean and sustainable fuel source in recent decades.
 
Hydrogen’s potential to decarbonize several industries, particularly transportation, has prompted fresh research and development activities. The hydrogen combustion engine is a unique way to maximize hydrogen’s clean-burning potential.
 
Unlike FCEVs, which rely on sophisticated and expensive fuel cell technology, HCEs use existing infrastructure and technical ideas from internal combustion engines. This inherent familiarity offers HCEs a potentially more accessible and cost-effective route to hydrogen-powered vehicles.
Toyota’s hydrogen fuel cell technology
 
Toyota is a well-known supporter of the development of hydrogen fuel cell technology, having invested heavily in the field for over 30 years. The automaker sees it as an important approach for reaching carbon neutrality in a variety of industries, not just vehicles. However, one of the primary issues with hydrogen combustion engines is that they operate at significantly higher temperatures than gasoline engines.
 
This problem occurs because hydrogen has a higher flammability range than gasoline, allowing it to ignite in a broader variety of air-fuel combinations. While this can improve efficiency, it also generates extra heat, which can lead to issues such as increased nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. Furthermore, engine knock leads to decreased engine efficiency and durability.
 
Therefore, Toyota has been exploring alternative fuel options for some time, and their most recent development is a water-cooled hydrogen combustion engine. This engine is unique in how it addresses the challenges of traditional hydrogen combustion engines.
 
Toyota’s patent-pending water-cooled hydrogen engine is aimed at overcoming the hydrogen heat temperature challenge. The Japanese brand has attempted to lower the temperature of hydrogen automobiles by selectively injecting water into the combustion chambers. However, this is not your typical water injection; it is a controlled system with valves located at the heart of the action—the intake ports of each cylinder. These valves act as gatekeepers, precisely controlling the timing and volume of water entering the cylinder.
 
In addition to the water injection, the Japanese automaker must also consider its timing. This injection’s effectiveness is heavily dependent on when it is administered. The overall design also includes dual injection timing, which allows water to be supplied either when the intake valve opens or closes. This versatility is critical, as different engine operating circumstances necessitate distinct cooling solutions.
 
Full story
 
5) The EU’s Green Deal is going out with a whimper
EurActiv, 28 February 2024

 

With 99 days to go until the EU elections in June, the narrative of a vibrant Green Deal continues to fall apart.
 
Flushed with their successful defense of the watered-down nature restoration law, progressive lawmakers in the European Parliament would have you believe that the Green Deal is alive and well: a misleading narrative at best.
 
Nature Restoration Law defended – again. On Tuesday, EU lawmakers adopted the controversial Nature Restoration Law. All that remains is for EU countries to rubber-stamp the controversial act. 
 
A last-minute revolt by the centre-right EPP had put the law at risk – despite a 2023 intervention that saw it being significantly watered down – reminiscent of a poor lamb that is constantly under threat from a pack of wolves. Nathan Canas has the story. 
 
Is the Green Deal alive after all? Progressive EU lawmakers cheered their successful defense of the nature restoration law. The Greens’ leader Terry Reintke could be seen rushing into the arms of another group member in celebration. 
 
The narrative they aim to establish: Progressive parties have put a halt to the wrecking ball that the conservative EPP has taken to the EU’s Green Deal – the flagship project of the past five years.
 
They are right to say that the Green Deal has been a success for the climate. Most climate laws – even the controversial ban on new diesel and petrol car from 2035 – made it to the finish line in one piece. Europe is mostly on track to cut its 1990 level of emissions by 55% until 2030 and by 90% until 2040.
 
But with 99 days to go until the EU elections in June, the narrative of a vibrant Green Deal continues to fall apart.
 
A Green Deal hacked to pieces. Europe, and more specifically Brussels, have been wracked by farmers’ outrage and their heavy-duty vehicles clogging up urban areas. In response, European officials have taken their mallets to any environmental rules they could find.
 
“Green Deal out,” Janusz Wojciechowski, the Polish Commissioner for Agriculture, wrote in a private letter sent to a centre-right lawmaker seen by Euractiv. Maria Simon Arboleas has the full story. 
 
In an attempt to cut red tape for farmers, the European Commission is also looking to loosen environmental requirements tied to EU farming subsidies as part of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Angelo Di Mambro has the story.
 
The current main driver of the Green Deal – Slovak Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič – is very eager to metamorphosise the framework into one friendly to industry. He has been shopping a four-pillar plan around and has quickly taken language from industrialist’s Antwerp declaration on board. Nikolaus J. Kurmayer has the full story. 
 
Europe’s climate-friendly industry, like home-grown heat pump manufacturers, meanwhile, is feeling abandoned and cutting jobs amid a slump in demand. The industry blames Brussels for lacking support contrary to commitments made when gas-shortage fears were at their peak. Nikolaus J. Kurmayer has the full story.
 
Full story
 
6) Nearly half of young US voters won't pay more than $10 per month to fight climate change
Daily Mail, 26 February 2024

 

Nearly half of all young voters are not willing to pay more than $10 a month to fight climate change, despite Joe Biden claiming it's an 'existential threat' and making it the center of his re-election campaign. 
 
Less than half (45%) of the youngest crop of voters aged 18-34 would be willing to spend $10 or less per month to combat climate change, according to a recent survey by CRC Research for 85 Fund obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com.
 
And one out of five (20%) in the same age bracket responded that they would not pay anything at all, according to the poll results. 


 
The results were similar among voters aged 25-34, which may be a wake-up call for President Joe Biden who continues to call climate change the most pressing threat facing America today.
 
The findings are surprising considering younger voters site climate change as a top political issue and it is expected to be a key motivator heading into the 2024 elections. 
 
President Biden is putting climate change at the center of his re-election campaign - calling it the 'last existential threat' to a small group of donors at a California fundraiser last week. 
 
The Biden administration has worked to position itself as a champion of climate initiatives since day one - which generally appeals to younger voters. 
 
But the CRC Research poll shows that although younger voters may be passionate about the topic, they don't want to spend their own money to fix it. 
 
'Despite claims they are leading the charge on climate change, it turns out young people are actually just sheep in wolves clothing. They demand 'climate action', but demand someone else pay for it,' said Steve Milloy, a lawyer who briefly served at Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency.
 
'They disguise their rank hypocrisy by posturing as 'climate activists.' Their refusal to put their money where their mouths are just underscores how unserious they are as citizens and voters,' he told DailyMail.com
 
The CRC Research survey also found that 26 percent of 25 to 35 year old voters would not be willing to pay anything to combat climate change.
 
Full story
 
7) Net Zero flop: Scheme to reduce energy bills will take 60 years to complete
The Times, 28 February 2024

 

Ministers are reassessing the viability of a flagship scheme to reduce the energy bills of thousands of homes after figures showed that it is progressing so slowly it will take up to 60 years to complete.
 
In its first eight months of operation, the £1 billion Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS) has improved the energy efficiency of just 2,900 properties against a target of 300,000 over three years.
 
Most of these homes only had one energy efficiency measure installed while some parts of the country have seen as few as 100 homes benefit.
 
Overall it shows that the project, which is now a quarter of the way through, is meeting just 3 per cent of its target to insulate 100,000 homes a year.
 
Senior industry figures said that ministers were looking at the viability of the entire scheme amid fears that it could follow the same fate as the £1.5 billion Green Homes Grant which was scrapped just six months after its launch.
 
Full story
 
8) Matthew Lynn: The net zero delusion has reached a new low
The Daily Telegraph, 28 February 2024

 

Britain’s shift to a high-tax, regulatory state is crushing the life out of the economy
 
There will be a “toaster tax” to pay, perhaps followed by a “boiler tax”. And before long, there will surely be a car tax, on top of all the existing charges the Government imposes on any vehicle on the roads, and soon afterwards an “import tax” as well.
 
Taxes are already soaring, but they could soon go a lot higher. Despite dubious claims that the green economy is booming, the harsh reality is that it is wreaking damage. Businesses are being throttled, demand dampened, on top of which beleaguered households are being subjected to an avalanche of “green levies”.
 
At first glance, it is hard to work out how a “toaster tax” could work exactly. Will you be charged by the slice or will it be an annual amount? Will you have to report how much toast you are eating on your self-assessment form every year?
 
As it turns out, the new levy is simpler than that. Shops will be forced to accept any small electrical item for recycling, regardless of whether it was purchased from them.
 
In effect, they will have to pay for the cost of safely disposing of old toasters – not to mention all the unused air fryers everyone got for Christmas – which many will have to pass on to hard-pressed customers. It is a huge burden to impose on high street shops, many of which are already struggling to survive.
 
It does not stop there. It may have been watered down slightly, but the “boiler tax” is still looming. Plumbers who don’t install enough heat pumps – which is tricky given that no one really wants them – may face a hefty fine, and will also have little choice but to pass that on with a surcharge on each conventional heating system they install.
 
The auto manufacturers and dealers will soon face quotas to sell a set number of electric vehicles, with fines for failing to persuade enough people to buy a massively overpriced car that costs a fortune to insure and won’t get you anywhere. Those will have to be passed onto consumers as well, potentially adding several thousand pounds to the cost of a new vehicle.
 
Perhaps worst of all, we will soon face a “carbon border adjustment” which, once translated into plain English, means there could be an extra tax imposed on anything we import from a country that is judged to have lower environmental standards than we do (which, come to think of it, will be most of them).
It is what used to be known as a tariff, and like all levies on imports it will drive up the cost of everything we buy in the shops, and will hit a country dependent on trade such as the UK especially hard.
 
The list goes on and on. The net zero industry is steadily adding more and more levies that, once they are all added up, will add significantly to the overall tax burden. And where does this money go? Only yesterday, a new report claimed that green output was expanding at a rate of 9pc a year, compared with zero for the rest of the economy.
 
Apparently the production of alternative energies, heating systems, and transport networks is booming. Well, perhaps. But it is not hard to spot a flaw in this argument. If you throw enough subsidies at a sector it is not very surprising if the amount of stuff produced increases.
 
The real issue is whether all those companies are making anything that anyone wants, and whether they can survive once the subsidies are taken away, and the fines for not buying the product are removed. Until that happens, it is not “growth” in any meaningful sense of the word. It is just subsidised “make work”.
 
In reality, Britain’s shift to a high-tax, net zero, regulatory state is crushing the life out of the economy. They may not be explicit taxes in the way that income tax or VAT are. But there are an increasing number of levies that are pushed by green lobbyists and waved through by short-sighted politicians, all of which add extra costs for customers and businesses. If that does not count as a “tax” it is hard to know what does.
 
The trouble is, all of that comes at a time when taxes are already set to reach post-war highs. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has this week warned that the tax burden could reach 37.7pc of GDP by the end of the decade. If the economy was humming along with a 2.5pc-plus growth rate, as it was for much of the 1980s and 1990s, perhaps we could be more relaxed about the current predicament.
 
Full post
 
9) James Woudhuysen: Net Zero is a war on the working class
Spiked, 27 February 2024

 

We are sleepwalking towards a social and economic catastrophe.
 
It’s official. Net Zero will make us poorer. A new report finds that the British government’s climate-change policies are likely to ‘make the poor poorer, and push struggling communities further into deprivation and exclusion’.

 
Our Journey to Net Zero, by the Institute for Community Studies (ICS), shows that the transition to Net Zero will cause a rise in unemployment, as carbon-intensive industries are forcibly restructured. Food will become more expensive. And the eco-friendly changes we’ll all be forced to make, such as insulating our homes or switching to electric cars, will be extremely difficult ’for low-income households’. The ICS concludes that the poorest 40 per cent of households are at risk of falling into ‘transition poverty’.
 
As shocking as this statistic is, the report is no rant. A team of researchers from ICS, Trinity College Dublin, and the universities of Leeds and York have thoroughly reviewed the policy changes and instruments – subsidies, taxation and so on – most likely to prove effective in reducing emissions of CO2. And they have concluded that these Net Zero measures will push down living standards for a lot of people in the UK.
 
Essentially, the general effect of Net Zero is similar to that of regressive taxation. Just as a tax that is the same for everyone will most hurt those who earn the least, Net Zero policies mete out more pain to those who are least well-off. This won’t just affect the very poorest though. As the ICS warns, even ‘middle-income households that were not previously experiencing financial precarity’ might struggle.
 
The report also highlights the other depredations brought about by Net Zero. For instance, the added cost and difficulty of car travel will reduce people’s leisure opportunities.
 
The report certainly pulls no punches about the downsides of Net Zero. But it does not challenge the green transition itself. It instead calls for a ‘just’ transition to ease the socio-economic pain caused – a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.
 
Full post
 
10) Green billionaires press Hollywood to promote Armageddon climate messages in movies
The Daily Sceptic, 27 February 2024

 
Green billionaires are pouring money into discreet campaigns to persuade Hollywood writers to catastrophise the climate in future film and television scripts. 
 
One of their main vehicles is Good Energy, which tells writers that showing anger, depression, grief or other emotion in relation to the climate crisis, “can only make characters more relatable”. Los Angeles-based Good Energy is funded by numerous billionaire foundations including Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Sierra Club and the Climate Emergency Fund; the latter operation is part-funded by Aileen Getty and is one of the paymasters of the Just Stop Oil pests.
 
Good Energy aims to weave climate alarm into all types of film-making, “especially” if it is not about climate. With the support of Bloomberg, it recently published ‘Good Energy – A Playbook for Screenwriting in the Age of Climate Change’. It claims the Playbook is “now the industry’s go-to guide to incorporating climate into any storyline or genre”. As with almost all green campaigning groups, Good Energy would not exist without the support of billionaire funding. These operations seek a supra-national collectivist Net Zero solution to a claimed climate emergency. Good Energy acknowledges it would not exist without this funding, adding, “as collaborators and champions, each has provided a unique contribution for which we are endlessly grateful”.
 
Announcing the launch of the ‘Playbook’, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the tax-efficient ‘charity’ channel for distributing the wealth of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, noted that “accurate and relatable storytelling about climate impacts and solutions can grow public support and motivate decision makers”. As regular readers of the Daily Sceptic will recall, billionaire foundations are grooming populations around the world by funding a variety of press, political and academic operations. Most significant non-profit bodies seeking to stop the use of hydrocarbons are funded from these sources. Few green campaigns arise from ‘grass roots’ these days. Put to the vote, for instance, the Green Party in the U.K. loses most of its election seat deposits.
 
Since this is La La Land, Good Energy has some relevant advice for writers to normalise climate friendly actions. “Let’s reimagine what it looks like for a character to eat a plant-rich diet (Michelin Green Star restaurant, yes!), attend a protest or upcycle vintage clothes. And if your story requires a yacht, why not make it solar powered.” That last idea might appeal to super-yacht lover Leonardo DiCaprio, but private planes, the preferred method of transportation for many high-end Hollywood stars, might be a problem. Hypocrisy a problem with all this? Not according to the Playbook, which quotes climate activist Bill McKibben that “hypocrisy is the price of admission in this battle”. For plebs, gammons, fly-overs and deplorables, this of course translates as “you do what you are told and radically change your lives – we don’t give a flying flamingo”.
 
Needles so say, a mere climate crisis is not enough for über-woke luvvies. It is not separate from other critical social issues like racism, sexism, economic injustice and war. The Playbook notes that “indigenous people are the first climate scientists, and indigenous people are leading us through this climate crisis”. Climate can be a “generative lens with which to view any subject or character”, the Playbook helpfully notes. For scripted entertainment, observes Good Energy, “the emotional truth is as important as the literal truth”.
 
Good Energy was started in 2019 and its influence and services seem to be growing within the U.S. west coast film industry. Rolling Stone recently profiled the operation in an article titled ‘How Hollywood is Crafting A New Climate Change Narrative’. One of Good Energy’s “standout” projects last year was a collaboration with Scott Z Burns on the series Extrapolations for Apple TV+. This was said to be the first mainstream show centred entirely around climate. It starred Meryl Streep in eight interconnected stories over 33 years and was said to explore how the planet’s changing climate will affect family, work, faith and survival. Rolling Stone reports that the operation is “dedicated” to ensuring that within three years, 50% of contemporary TV and film acknowledges climate change.
 
Full story
 
11) Jeremy Warner: The dash for electric cars risks further industrial destruction in Britain and Europe
The Daily Telegraph, 27 February 2024
 
Far from breathing new life into the economy, the energy transition’s benefits are already passing us by
 
There is so much wrong with climate change policy as it stands that it is hard to know where to start.
 
Yet bans and deadlines are as good a place as any, for the way things are going we’ll end up with the worst of both worlds – significantly higher costs but with much of the intended industrial upside of the transition going not to the local economy but to overseas producers.
 
I’m not going to get into the rights and wrongs of the presiding cross-party commitment to net zero by 2050. Suffice it to say that the cost argument often advanced to support it has always somewhat missed the point.
 
The relatively modest investment costs of meeting the target – generally judged by economic modelling to be around 0.5pc of GDP a year in today’s money – are nothing, it is said, against the potentially catastrophic costs of doing nothing at all. Money well spent, in other words.
 
Unfortunately, the comparison only holds good in a perfect world where everyone strives for the same thing, which is very definitely not where we are.
At just 1pc of global emissions, it matters not a jot what privations Britain imposes on itself unless others do the same. If they don’t, then we’d still be faced with the costs of doing nothing.
 
But let’s for the purposes of this commentary indulge the notion that decarbonisation has reached unstoppable global momentum, and that there might therefore be some competitive economic advantage in staying ahead of the pack. Besides, investment should not as a matter of principle be seen as an economic cost, but a component of economic growth.
 
The UK government has already committed a sizable chunk of its capital spending budget to the green transition, but not nearly enough to significantly shift the dial.
 
Going green has been subjected to the same fiscal constraints as other forms of government spending; the commitment to net zero relies instead on private sector solutions.

This strategy is in turn supported by a growing mountain of regulations, deadlines and punishment beatings for those who don’t comply.

Insufficient weight and thought has been given to how the transition might be used to breathe new life and jobs into Britain’s sadly de-industrialised economy. Quite the reverse: policy seems only to invite further de-industrialisation.

Nowhere is the approach at its most perilous than in the transition to electric vehicles. Starting this year, at least 22pc of all newly manufactured cars sold in Britain are mandated to be zero emission. The proportion then ratchets up over the next six years to reach 80pc by 2030 and 100pc by 2035.

For a limited time, those who produce more than the quota can sell their surplus to those who underperform, the effect of which is to further tip the playing field in favour of EVs, particularly those producers selling only EVs and unencumbered with the legacy costs of the internal combustion engine.
 
This is great news for largely American and Chinese new entrants to the automobile market – notably Tesla and BYD – but it is pure poison for the incumbents, and threatens to leave a gaping hole in both the balance of payments and the wider economy.
 
Already, new entrants are taking around a half the global market for EVs. Legacy manufacturers are catching up, with nearly 40 new EV models slated to be launched in Europe alone this year, and relatively extensive plans for new battery plants to fuel them.
 
Even so, they’ve lost the first-mover advantage, and almost inevitably are going to end up with a smaller share of the eventual pie.
 
Given how important the auto industry is to both the UK and wider European economy – 800,000 jobs and 13 million jobs respectively, and in the latter case, nearly 10pc of total GDP – the damage to economic well-being is potentially very large. This is self-harm on a massive scale. 
 
Full post
 
12) Tilak Doshi: The great European farmers revolt: Jilted, turning on the greens
Forbes, 26 February 2024

Can European farmers reverse their ruling elites’ mantra of “net zero by 2050” and devotion to global climate leadership? Or will this just be merely a temporary stalling of the green agenda, a tactical concession by liberal politicians and Brussels-based bureaucrats to farmers’ demands for relief from ever-tightening EU environmental restrictions? Only time will tell but hope remains that the Great Farmer Revolt will bring some semblance of rationality to Europe’s climate policies.
 
Coming to a crescendo over the past few months, widespread farmers’ protests in Europe have escalated – across the width and breadth of the continent, from Sweden to Spain, Poland to Portugal — since they first started in the Netherlands Holland in October 2019. As tractors take over the streets and highways in wave after wave of protests, the farmers have paralyzed major transport arteries and besieged Berlin, Paris and Brussels.
 
More lastingly, they have changed the political landscape in key EU countries such asNetherlands.With the shock win in March by the populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), putting it ahead of the governing party in the Senate, the farmers became an important part of the equation in the country’s political future. Major gains are expected for what the legacy media calls the “far right” and “anti-Europe” parties in the upcoming European parliament elections. The farming interest has suddenly climbed to the top of the political agenda in state capitals as well as Brussels.
 
What happened?
 
Why have European farmers – until recently, the most coddled and protected part of the continent’s body politic as it emerged from the ashes of World War II — turned against their own governments and Brussels-based benefactors? Is it no more than a “tantrum of the ridiculously privileged?”, asks The Economist.
 
Europe’s Farmers Betrayed
 
The picture of the proud French farmer – half of whose income came from EU subsidies and direct payments — as the repository of a bucolic wine-and-cheese rural culture has long been a treasured part of Europe’s identity since it adopted the Common Agricultural Policy in 1962. Agriculture (including forestry and fishing) accounts for just 1.6% of GDP. Yet it absorbs a third of the EU’s total budget and costs an estimated €65 billion annually for direct payments, “agricultural market measures” and “rural development”.

CAP became a by-word for protectionism for Fortress Europe. It has often been called out as one of the more onerous burdens imposed on millions of developing country farmers. Showering subsidies and tariff protections on affluent European farmers, swelling food output and depressing world food prices is a well-documented part of the historical record.
 
Like most government policies, CAP was implemented with the best of intentions: improving productivity, ensuring a “fair standard of living” for farmers, “stabilizing” markets, establishing a secure supply chain with “reasonable” prices, “harmonizing competition rules across all countries”.
 
But, as usual with all big government programs, the unintended consequences of an extensive system of price and market controls put in place to guarantee farmers their accustomed standard of living effectively made them wards of state, “as grand an experiment in socialist management as anything Lenin was ever able to accomplish.”
 
Full post
 
13) Rupert Darwall: Net Zero’s days are numbered
The Spectator,  23 February 2024

 

If a week is a long time in politics, then 2023 belongs to a different age in the politics of Net Zero. Less than eleven months ago, the government was saying that ‘Net Zero is the growth opportunity of the 21st century. Earlier this week, former IMF chief economist Oliver Blanchard effectively poured water on that claim when he told the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee that there would be a ‘substantial fiscal cost to achieve anything close to Net Zero’.

 
‘The public does not believe, or has not been made to understand, that [it] is going to be costly for them,’ Blanchard cautioned. He then went on to suggest that Net Zero should be funded by higher public borrowing.
 
In similar vein, Sir Dieter Helm told the committee that it was ‘delusory to think’ that the Net Zero transition would pay for itself. It was his 2017 cost of energy review that warned ministers the energy policy was not sustainable. Sir Dieter could also have added that it is a delusion promoted by climate lobbyists.
 
As if to validate what the two economists were telling the Lords committee, the German-owned electricity producer RWE briefed the Financial Times that the level of government support – funded through the guaranteed prices electricity consumers are forced to pay for wind energy –is too low to offset rising wind power costs. The government’s model used forecasts of wholesale electricity prices that were too low and its assumptions on wind power performance assumptions too high.
 
That in itself is a big story: The wind industry is admitting that the ability to generate wind power has been vastly overestimated. With the bursting of the wind bubble, the industry’s messaging has switched to crude blackmail. As RWE’s German boss, Markus Krebbers, told the FT in September, ‘it is, of course, concerning because the UK climate targets cannot be achieved without offshore wind.’ Translation, if any were needed: consumers better pay up or else the government will miss its legally-enforceable decarbonisation targets.
 
Yet only eleven months before, the climate lobby was making the ludicrous assertion that offshore wind was nine times cheaper than natural gas, a claim repeated by Boris Johnson in one of his last appearances as prime minister.
 
It’s understandable that elected politicians are not candid with voters about the sacrifices entailed by climate policies. In his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama writes of what he calls his ‘happy talk’ of a painless shift to a carbon-free future, which the former president justified by quoting David Plouffe, his 2008 campaign strategist. ‘We won’t be doing anything to protect the environment,’ Plouffe remarked ‘if we lose Ohio and Pennsylvania.’ The inference is that saving the planet necessitates concealing from voters what it’s going to cost them. Dishonesty is thus baked into politicians’ claims about how Net Zero will make voters better off or, at the very least, have minimal impact on their standard of living.
 
The constraint of needing to get elected does not apply to the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). Rather than speak truth to power and produce anything remotely resembling objective economic assessments of Net Zero, both bodies are deep in the tank with the climate lobby. In its July 2021 Fiscal Risks Report, the OBR states that unchecked climate change ‘would ultimately have catastrophic economic and fiscal consequences’. It cites accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet as an example of a climate tipping point, but doesn’t mention the scientific opinion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that a hypothetical warming of 3-5°C is projected to lead to a near complete loss of the Greenland ice sheet ‘over multiple millennia’. This is a timescale that hardly fits with the OBR’s end of century fiscal horizon that sees public debt exploding to 289 per cent of GDP as a result of a series of unspecified climate ‘shocks’.
 
If anything, the Treasury’s Net Zero review, produced three months later, is even more controversial. The review had been set in train by Philip Hammond when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer pushing back against Theresa May’s desire to write the policy into law. Indeed, Hammond is the only senior politician who has flagged up the costs of Net Zero, last year criticising Conservative prime ministers for being ‘systematically dishonest’ about the costs.
 
In its review, the Treasury review assumes wind power costs of £50 per megawatt hour (MWh) based on non-binding subsidy allocation bids by wind investors. ‘It is not unreasonable to expect lower strike prices,’ the Treasury says of the government-guaranteed price received by wind investors. Estimates of break-even prices for offshore wind were, however, at the time in the range of £125-152 per MWh and are considerably higher now thanks to higher interest rates and materials costs.
 
However, the Treasury’s most egregious misstep concerns its analysis of the implications of Net Zero for productivity growth. Although it acknowledges that extent to which additional investment will translate into additional GDP is ‘uncertain’, it argues that Net Zero offers the opportunity for innovation, as if there is no opportunity cost to innovation. ‘All other things being equal’, the Treasury says, ‘additional investment will translate into additional GDP growth’. Other things aren’t equal, as Net Zero policies are forcing investment into less productive means of generating electricity.
 
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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.