The headlines:
British government to allow oil and gas exploration at sites intended for offshore wind
The Guardian, 2 May 2024
Bank of England's climate change remit is 'ridiculous' and 'needs to be culled'
Daily Mirror, 3 May 2024
UK set to miss net zero and decarbonisation targets
Energy Live News, 3 May 2024
UK Government defeated in High Court over climate plans
BBC News, 3 May 2024
Reality check: Europe moves closer to gas as Net-Zero goals slip
Energy Intelligence, 30 April 2024
Europeans ditch Net Zero, while Biden clings to it
The Wall Street Journal, 3 May 2024
European ports swamped with cars amid China EV offensive
Hellenic Shipping News,29 April 2024
EU duties might not be enough to hold off flood of Chinese EVs
The Register, 30 April 2024
China is cornering the EV market in the Global South
World Politics Review, 30 April 2024
Net Zero hands economic advantage to China
Friends of Science, 2 May 2024
The used electric car timebomb
Daily Mail, 1 May 2024
Germany’s green suicide: Achieving 2030 climate goals will cost 721 billion euros
Tagesspiegel, 3 May 2024
Washing away the climate lunatics
National Post, 27 April 2024
Trump’s electric car ‘bloodbath’ is here already, courtesy of China-owned Volvo
The Daily Telegraph, 2 May 2024
The detail:
British government to allow oil and gas exploration at sites intended for offshore wind
The Guardian, 2 May 2024
Fossil fuel companies will be allowed to explore for oil and gas under offshore wind-power sites for the first time, the government will announce on Friday, in a move that campaigners said is further proof that ministers are abandoning the climate agenda.
The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which regulates North Sea oil and gas production, will confirm that it is granting licences to about 30 companies to look for hydrocarbons on sites earmarked for future offshore windfarms.
The move has brought renewed criticism of Rishi Sunak from environmentalists, including from the prime minister’s own former net zero tsar, who worry that any future oil and gas production could hamper clean energy generation.
But it will also give the embattled prime minister a welcome piece of news to sell to his restive backbenchers – many of whom are keen to see more oil and gas production in the North Sea – the day after what are set to be a bruising set of local election results.
Full story
Bank of England's climate change remit is 'ridiculous' and 'needs to be culled'
Daily Mirror, 3 May 2024
Former governor of the Bank of England has labelled the institution's climate change remit as "ridiculous", arguing that tackling climate change is a government issue and it's absurd to suggest the Bank can significantly influence it.
Mervyn King, speaking at Westminster, expressed concern over the increasing number of tasks and responsibilities placed on the central bank over time, leading to an "inevitable reduction in focus" on its primary role, and emphasised the need for a "cull". The independent crossbench peer argued that efforts to control inflation and ensure financial system stability were "more than enough for one institution".
Lord King of Lothbury made these remarks during a debate among peers on a report by the upper chamber's Economic Affairs Committee published late last year. The report found that the bank's remit had considerably expanded, highlighting a particular emphasis on supporting government policy on climate change.
The Bank has faced backlash for its slow response and failure to predict the inflation surge, which at one point exceeded 11%, when its main responsibility is to keep it as close to 2% as possible. This has sparked concerns in Parliament about the lack of accountability of the independent central bank.
A review commissioned by the Bank last month discovered significant flaws in the economic forecast model it uses, with staff utilising "out-of-date" software that hadn't been properly maintained. Lord King has voiced concerns over the institution's broadened scope, which now includes prudential regulation and financial stability.
He remarked: "Those new tasks have increased the number of staff in the Bank from under 2,000 to over 5,000, with an inevitable reduction in focus on its monetary policy mission. The expansion of responsibilities has gone further with the introduction into its mandate of issues such as climate change, the competitiveness of the City and other secondary objectives."
Full story
Energy Live News, 3 May 2024
UK Government defeated in High Court over climate plans
BBC News, 3 May 2024
Reality check: Europe moves closer to gas as Net-Zero goals slip
Energy Intelligence, 30 April 2024
Europeans ditch Net Zero, while Biden clings to it
The Wall Street Journal, 3 May 2024
European ports swamped with cars amid China EV offensive
Hellenic Shipping News,29 April 2024
EU duties might not be enough to hold off flood of Chinese EVs
The Register, 30 April 2024
China is cornering the EV market in the Global South
World Politics Review, 30 April 2024
Net Zero hands economic advantage to China
Friends of Science, 2 May 2024
The used electric car timebomb
Daily Mail, 1 May 2024
Germany’s green suicide: Achieving 2030 climate goals will cost 721 billion euros
Tagesspiegel, 3 May 2024
Washing away the climate lunatics
National Post, 27 April 2024
Trump’s electric car ‘bloodbath’ is here already, courtesy of China-owned Volvo
The Daily Telegraph, 2 May 2024
The detail:
British government to allow oil and gas exploration at sites intended for offshore wind
The Guardian, 2 May 2024
Fossil fuel companies will be allowed to explore for oil and gas under offshore wind-power sites for the first time, the government will announce on Friday, in a move that campaigners said is further proof that ministers are abandoning the climate agenda.
The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which regulates North Sea oil and gas production, will confirm that it is granting licences to about 30 companies to look for hydrocarbons on sites earmarked for future offshore windfarms.
The move has brought renewed criticism of Rishi Sunak from environmentalists, including from the prime minister’s own former net zero tsar, who worry that any future oil and gas production could hamper clean energy generation.
But it will also give the embattled prime minister a welcome piece of news to sell to his restive backbenchers – many of whom are keen to see more oil and gas production in the North Sea – the day after what are set to be a bruising set of local election results.
Full story
Bank of England's climate change remit is 'ridiculous' and 'needs to be culled'
Daily Mirror, 3 May 2024
Former governor of the Bank of England has labelled the institution's climate change remit as "ridiculous", arguing that tackling climate change is a government issue and it's absurd to suggest the Bank can significantly influence it.
Mervyn King, speaking at Westminster, expressed concern over the increasing number of tasks and responsibilities placed on the central bank over time, leading to an "inevitable reduction in focus" on its primary role, and emphasised the need for a "cull". The independent crossbench peer argued that efforts to control inflation and ensure financial system stability were "more than enough for one institution".
Lord King of Lothbury made these remarks during a debate among peers on a report by the upper chamber's Economic Affairs Committee published late last year. The report found that the bank's remit had considerably expanded, highlighting a particular emphasis on supporting government policy on climate change.
The Bank has faced backlash for its slow response and failure to predict the inflation surge, which at one point exceeded 11%, when its main responsibility is to keep it as close to 2% as possible. This has sparked concerns in Parliament about the lack of accountability of the independent central bank.
A review commissioned by the Bank last month discovered significant flaws in the economic forecast model it uses, with staff utilising "out-of-date" software that hadn't been properly maintained. Lord King has voiced concerns over the institution's broadened scope, which now includes prudential regulation and financial stability.
He remarked: "Those new tasks have increased the number of staff in the Bank from under 2,000 to over 5,000, with an inevitable reduction in focus on its monetary policy mission. The expansion of responsibilities has gone further with the introduction into its mandate of issues such as climate change, the competitiveness of the City and other secondary objectives."
Full story
‘UK set to miss net zero and decarbonisation targets’
Energy Live News, 3 May 2024
Norwegian consultancy firm DNV's report reveals that the UK is forecasted to fall short of its net zero emissions target by 2050 and its decarbonisation goals for 2030
The UK is likely to miss its net zero emissions target by 2050 and its Paris Agreement commitments for 2030.
That’s according to a report by Norwegian consultancy firm DNV, which forecasts an 85% reduction in UK emissions by 2050, falling short of the legislated 100% reduction.
Transport and buildings are cited as major emission contributors, with fossil fuels still prominent.
Despite advancements, a considerable portion of vehicles, particularly in commercial use, will still rely on fossil fuels, according to the report.
Consultants note that while the transition to a low carbon economy is affordable, challenges remain, particularly regarding home heating.
Despite the potential of heat pumps for decarbonisation, cost barriers and insulation requirements pose significant obstacles to widespread adoption.
The report forecasts that without a substantial policy shift, natural gas will continue to dominate home heating, with heat pumps installations only expected to overtake boiler replacements around 2040.
Full story
UK Government defeated in High Court over climate plans
BBC News, 3 May 2024
The government has been defeated in court - for a second time - for not doing enough to meet its targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmental campaigners argued that the energy minister signed off the government's climate plan without evidence it could be achieved.
The High Court ruled on Friday that the government will now be required to redraft the plan again.
In response the government defended its record on climate action.
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said: "The UK can be hugely proud of its record on climate change. We do not believe a court case about process represents the best way of driving progress towards our shared goal of reaching net zero."
The legal challenge was brought by environmental groups Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth and The Good Law Project.
Tony Bosworth, lead campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said it was "an embarrassing day for the government".
Speaking outside the court to BBC News he said: "What we now need to see is a climate plan which is robust, which is comprehensive and which is fair, which makes sure we meet all our climate targets, and which does that in a way which doesn't leave anybody behind."
Full story
Reality check: Europe moves closer to gas as Net-Zero goals slip
Energy Intelligence, 30 April 2024
Realization of a longer life for fossil gas comes at a time when international oil and gas majors are slowly clawing back on their green commitments.
European energy company executives have been slowly expressing a view that was practically taboo up until recently: At the annual Flame Gas Conference held in Amsterdam last week, many revealed their belief that achieving net-zero targets by 2050 is likely an uphill task despite stringent government mandates. This supports an argument that could potentially breathe new life into natural gas and LNG trade in the region for longer than was expected — or accepted by policymakers — until fairly recently.
The realization of a longer life for fossil gas comes at a time when international oil and gas majors are slowly clawing back on their green commitments. UK’s Shell, for example, has scaled back plans for 20% reduction in net carbon intensity by 2030. A similar positive note about hydrocarbons was widely felt at this year’s CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston, held in March. However, Energy Intelligence’s recent Energy Transition Macro Outlook report states that the energy transition is keeping its momentum this year, even as macroeconomic and geopolitical challenges stack up.
“Getting to net zero is purely one of the biggest challenges facing mankind at the moment. And when you look at different approaches, it’s no surprise that governments have tried ... the big government approach to come up with solutions for that,” Exxon Mobil Gas Marketing Europe Managing Director Justin Jackson said at a panel at Flame. “And it’s clear that they’re not at the pace that we need to be to achieve things by 2050.”
Full story
Europeans ditch Net Zero, while Biden clings to it
The Wall Street Journal, 3 May 2024
You know you’ve stumbled through the looking glass when European politicians start sounding saner on climate policy than the Americans do. Well here we are, Alice: Europeans are admitting the folly of net zero quicker than their American peers.
The latest example—perhaps “victim” is more apt—is Humza Yousaf, who resigned this week as Scotland’s first minister. That region within the U.K. enjoys substantial devolved powers over its own affairs, including on climate policy. An administration led by Mr. Yousaf’s left-leaning Scottish National Party had hoped to rush ahead of the national government in London in slashing carbon emissions.
Until, that is, someone noticed the costs. A recent report from the U.K.’s Climate Change Committee noted Scotland had fallen far behind on its climate goals. The government aimed to reduce by 20% the aggregate distance driven by Scottish motorists, compared with 2019 levels, but had no plan to accomplish the reduction in personal mobility by the 2030 deadline. To get back on track with the government’s goal of a transition to home electric heat pumps, Scotland would have to replace natural-gas fire boilers at a rate of more than 80,000 households a year by the end of the decade. That’s a big ask considering that in 2023 it managed 6,000 boiler replacements. The government resisted imposing an aviation tax to discourage excess flying. And so on.
Mr. Yousaf did the only thing he could under the circumstances: He all but abandoned net zero. His administration announced it is ditching firm annual emission-reduction targets in favor of fuzzier “carbon budgets.” The Green Party, with which Mr. Yousaf’s SNP governed in a coalition, balked. After a series of political machinations that were one part “Macbeth” and two parts “Comedy of Errors,” Mr. Yousaf’s administration collapsed and he was forced to resign.
Observe two salient details. First, the specific list of targets the country was missing. Scotland had reached the point where further net-zero progress would have made obvious and material demands of household budgets. That isn’t counting the additional costs of renewable power hidden in utility bills. Apparently in Scotland as elsewhere, voters insist that Something Must Be Done to control global temperatures until the moment some hapless soul points out that Households Will Have to Pay for It.
Which leads to the other detail. Mr. Yousaf gets a bad press in Britain for his political incompetence, but give him credit for this at least: He saw trouble brewing and didn’t wait for a mass protest movement to erupt before trying to change course.
Other European politicians can’t say the same. In the Netherlands, Germany and the European Union’s headquarters in Brussels, among other places, farmers have blocked streets with tractors in opposition to climate-related and other environmental diktats whose costs they weren’t willing to bear. This after the French yellow vests in 2018 forced President Emmanuel Macron to abandon an increase in the diesel tax.
Even politicians are capable of learning. British politicians, still traumatized by the 2016 Brexit referendum, may be learning a bit faster than others. Mr. Yousaf’s move in Scotland is part of a race for the net-zero exits in which all major U.K. parties are participating ahead of an election expected later this year.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has toned down electric-vehicle mandates and ditched plans to require English households to install heat pumps. Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, likely the next prime minister, has hedged his party’s commitment to phase out oil and gas drilling in the North Sea—so that he can promise unionized Scottish oil workers that they’ll keep their jobs—and abandoned an earlier pledge to spend £28 billion the British government doesn’t have on the green transition every year.
Mr. Yousaf’s reversal particularly makes political sense because his SNP is locked in a fight for its life with Labour. No one wants to be the party that’s promising to take voters’ jobs and raise their energy bills. The SNP will hope that the short-term pain caused by the defection of the Greens from a governing coalition spares Mr. Yousaf’s party the existential crisis of a mass defection of its voters.
The puzzlement is that the U.S. is headed in the opposite direction. President Biden is pressing ahead with aggressive net-zero policies such as an electric-vehicle mandate and pouring trillions of dollars of borrowed government and hard-earned household money into climate boondoggles.
Perhaps Mr. Biden believes Donald Trump is sufficiently frightening that centrist voters will overlook the president’s climate flights of fancy. Perhaps he’s right. But it’s a big risk to assume voters won’t care about net zero’s costs. Notable for the many Europhiles on the American left, it’s also a risk fewer and fewer European politicians are willing to take themselves.
European ports swamped with cars amid China EV offensive
Hellenic Shipping News,29 April 2024
Some European ports are struggling to cope with a massive influx of vehicles. The surge in imports, mostly from China, has transformed these ports into vast parking lots causing congestion and delays.
Cars are special products: They’re easier to ship than, say, oil rigs, but they’re also so large that you can’t just put them on a shelf. Each car occupies about ten square meters (107 square feet) of space, even when not in use.
This poses problems for ports where cars are loaded and unloaded ― in Germany, there are two really big ones in Bremen and Bremerhaven. The car terminal at the Port of Bremerhaven is one of the largest auto ports in the world with a turnover of more than 1.7 million vehicles per year.
BLG Logistics Group, an international seaport and logistics services provider, operates the car-handling terminal at Bremerhaven. BLG spokesperson Julia Wagner said the port has space for approximately 70,000 vehicles with more than 1,000 car carriers visiting the terminal every year.
Wagner told DW that the shipping business especially concerning automobiles at Bremerhaven had changed in recent years. “We used to have 80% export and 20% import for a long time. This ratio is now at 50:50.”
Full story
EU duties might not be enough to hold off flood of Chinese EVs
The Register, 30 April 2024
Import duties of 40 to 50 percent will be needed to shield the European auto industry from China-based producers, according to a new report.
The European Commission launched an investigation into subsidized electric cars from China in 2023 and warned that subsidy duties might be imposed nine months later. With the deadline looming, a report from the Rhodium Group warns that duties on imports alone probably won't be enough to slow market gains for Chinese manufacturers.
According to the research, duties in the 15 to 30 percent range are expected as European Commission regulators seek to shield local automakers – which account for seven percent of the EU's GDP – yet even at the higher end of that range, China-based producers will still be able to generate comfortable profit margins.
While going as high as 50 percent would make things more challenging, Rhodium Group reckons that policymakers could turn to other tools, such as tightening cybersecurity requirements, to stem the flow.
EU imports of EVs from China have grown spectacularly in recent years, increasing from $1.6 billion in sales in 2020 to $11.5 billion in 2023. They account for 37 percent of all EV imports in the bloc. EVs in China are considerably cheaper than those in the EU. The Rhodium Group cited Volkswagen's ID.4, which sells for nearly 50 percent more in the EU than in China, and a larger gulf exists for some Chinese producers. The result is bigger profit margins.
"Increasingly, Chinese and foreign manufacturers are taking advantage of China's cheaper labor and energy prices, its more developed battery ecosystem, and [its] government subsidies to produce in China for the European and third markets," said Rhodium Group's report.
However, simply slapping on duties at the top end of the forecast might not be enough, particularly considering the incentives being given to firms to export to the EU, the world's second-biggest EV market.
Full story
China is cornering the EV market in the Global South
World Politics Review, 30 April 2024
Last year, Chinese automaker BYD clinched a deal to take over Ford Motor’s factory in Bahia, Brazil, two years after Ford decided to withdraw from the Brazilian market. BYD is already the world’s largest producer of electric vehicles, or EVs, and the move into Brazil is an effort to further consolidate its early conquest of EV markets in the Global South.
Over the past 18 months, BYD has been pursuing an aggressive internationalization strategy, targeting emerging markets. Not only is it selling cars in markets that its main competitor, Tesla, has yet to enter, it is also investing in local manufacturing. The new EV factory in Brazil is only one of several billion-dollar investments in EV production that the Chinese manufacturer is making across the Global South. BYD is also building, or planning to build, factories in Thailand, Uzbekistan, Indonesia and Mexico in an unprecedented global expansion.
Full story
Benny Peiser: Net Zero hands economic advantage to China
Friends of Science, 2 May 2024
A short take on how NetZero goals hands the economic advantage to China. So, it’s not really about climate change if Europe and North America are rejecting cheap Chinese EVs and solar panels. A conversation with Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation of the UK. To see Dr. Peiser's full presentation on "Europe's NetZero Rebellion and the implications for Canada, go to our "Past Events" page.
The used electric car timebomb
Daily Mail, 1 May 2024
Tens of thousands of EVs could soon become impossible to sell on because their batteries won't last - find out if you are affected
Money Mail can today reveal a timebomb looming in the second-hand market for electric vehicles (EVs).
Our investigation found that many EVs could become almost impossible to resell because of their limited battery life.
Experts said that the average EV battery guarantee lasts just eight years. After this time, the battery may lose power more quickly and so reduce mileage between charges.
Many EVs will lose up to 12 per cent of their charge capacity by six years. Some may lose even more.
Yet the cost of replacing an EV battery is astonishingly high, our research found.
In some cases, the cost of a replacement battery is as much as £40,000. For certain EVs, the cost of replacing the battery could be ten times the value of the vehicle itself on the second-hand market.
That means used EVs have a limited lifespan — which makes them a bigger and bigger risk as the years go by.
Research into EV batteries is yet to be conclusive and the second-hand EV market is new, given the first popular EVs were rolled off the production line in 2009.
Last night, one motoring expert said customers should be wary of buying a used electric car beyond its warranty (typically eight years), as after that timespan there is no easy way of measuring how much the battery will degrade before it needs replacing.
This may mean you end up needing to pay for an expensive new battery.
Motor expert Shahzad Sheikh, who runs the YouTube channel Brown Car Guy, said: ‘With a decaying battery, the range will be poor and you may find it becomes increasingly hard to resell the vehicle after eight years. Buyers will know that they’ll only get a small amount of life out of the car so will pay only a small sum, if anything at all.’
Full story
Germany’s green suicide: Achieving 2030 climate goals will cost 721 billion euros
Tagesspiegel, 3 May 2024
More than 700 billion euros must be invested by 2030 if the German energy transition is to be successful. One study calls this “very ambitious”.
According to a new study , investments totaling 721 billion euros will be necessary by 2030 in order to achieve the federal government's energy transition goals . This emerges from the “Energy Transition Progress Monitor” presented on Tuesday by the consulting firm EY and the energy industry association BDEW .
“In order to combat climate change, the federal government has set itself very ambitious goals ,” it said. The share of renewable energies in electricity generation is expected to increase to 80 percent by 2030 . Compared to 1990, greenhouse gas emissions are expected to fall by a total of 65 percent . The “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” had previously reported on the progress monitor.
Full story (in German)
Washing away the climate lunatics
National Post, 27 April 2024
As Dr. Peiser pointed out in Calgary, “If this was really about climate change, wouldn’t you want the cheapest EV’s, the cheapest wind, and solar, all from China?”
I have written here and elsewhere countless times before of the dangers of responding prematurely to alarmist concerns about climate change. Dr. Benny Peiser of the British Global Warming Policy Foundation spoke to the Friends of Science Society in Calgary earlier this month, warning that Europe’s extremist net zero carbon emission policies may get to Canada even though they are now running into extreme problems in Europe. The North American media has not much reported on the widespread and often violent farmer protests in Europe, which has caused every government that has been put to the test to scale back their aggressive climate change policies.
For a long time, it was a political free lunch: everybody loves the environment, and the climate change issue was very skillfully transformed by the left into an assault on the capitalist system from a new angle in the name of saving the planet. As long as the heavy costs of displacing fossil fuels by so-called renewable energy were carefully disguised and diffused, everybody could wallow in collective self-praise for doing the healthy and environmentally responsible thing.
The burden of subsidized wind and solar farms didn’t appear on peoples’ energy bills, though eventually they were placed on the back of the taxpayer. Now, however, net zero policies are directly eating into the earnings and savings of the public and in most of Europe, the taxpayer rebellion is exploding, and the advantages of democracy are being reaffirmed as elected governments scamper to the rear, explaining that there has been a misunderstanding. When the German government tried to compel the people of that country to change their gas boilers for heat pumps at a cost of thousands of dollars per home, what critics called “boilergeddon,” it produced a so-called green-lash.
Another political disaster has befallen the western European governments that had rolled over like poodles in front of the climate change alarmists: once they had fully committed themselves to the boondoggle of electric vehicles (EV’s), and forced the powerful automobile industries of Germany, France, and Italy into conversion of gas powered vehicles to EV’s, sales of EV’s plummeted after the customary faddish start, just as much cheaper Chinese EV’s flooded into Europe. Germany and Italy forced the European Union into delaying its ill-considered ban on internal combustion engine vehicles past 2035. Those who jubilantly imagined that Europe would commit industrial suicide by destroying its own automobile industry, will have to revise their plans. There are now thousands of cheap Chinese EV’s parked at the main ports of Europe with no buyers in sight. As Dr. Peiser pointed out in Calgary, “If this was really about climate change, wouldn’t you want the cheapest EV’s, the cheapest wind, and solar, all from China?”
It is now clear in Europe, as it long has been in the private sector of the United States, that with whole industries and millions of jobs at stake, implementation of net zero policies in the West would make China the dominant economic and industrial power of the world. Even our most naïve and insipid global warming crusaders are unenthused by that bone-chilling prospect. Although Germany has finally acted to protect its auto industry, it is not yet doing the same for the public. It is still officially planning to ban weekend driving to meet climate targets. If the federal German government proceeds with such an insane plan, it will sink without a ripple at the next election.
There have even been some murmurings of emulation of this course in Canada; on Sept. 14, 2021, Journal Metro of Quebec proposed pre-emptively moving against a climate crisis by lockdown measures, an emulation of the Covid lockdown then ending, but including rations and limitations on personal travel. This proposal comes from the same sort of thinking that seeks to eliminate meat by a war on bovine flatulence. Placid and docile toward virtue-posturing though Canadians are, insane measures like these to mitigate climate change would surely prove to be the funeral pyre of the coercive climate change terrorists.
For notorious historic reasons, Europe is always vulnerable to the madnesses and outrages of the left. The senior human rights court in Europe ruled three weeks ago in a lawsuit brought by 2000 elderly Swiss women against the Swiss government that it had violated the human rights of the plaintiffs by insufficiently mitigating climate change. Switzerland is a very small country but is responsible for between two and three per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions, while Canada, a huge country with a much larger population, emits only 1.5 per cent of global emissions, compared to 27 percent for China. The European Court of Human Rights crossed the jurisdictional Rubicon by overruling the voters of a democratic country. The rationale for hurling millions of auto workers into unemployment and shutting down Europe’s greatest industry in order to profit the Chinese is a case that even the most ardent climate-zealots will find challenging.
At the same time that the climate fanatics are encountering irresistible political headwinds, the intellectual arguments of the climate skeptics are becoming steadily more unanswerable. A brief filed with the court of appeals in The Hague in November by three eminent, American climate-related academics, Richard Lindzen of MIT, William Happer of Princeton, and Steven Koonin of New York University, the Hoover Institute, and former climate adviser to President Obama, challenged the finding of a lower court and held that scientific analysis, as opposed to an aggregation of “government opinion, consensus, peer review, and cherry-picked or falsified data,” shows that “Fossil fuels and CO2 will not cause dangerous climate change, there will be disastrous consequences for people worldwide if fossil fuels in CO2 emissions are reduced to net zero, including mass starvation.” They assert that the poor, future generations, and the entire West will suffer profoundly from any such policy. which “will undermine human rights and cripple the realization of the first three UN sustainable development goals-no poverty, zero hunger, and good health and well-being.”
Full post
Trump’s electric car ‘bloodbath’ is here already, courtesy of China-owned Volvo
The Daily Telegraph, 2 May 2024
Americans will be subsidised to buy EVs assembled out of Chinese parts
The “bloodbath” Donald Trump warned about in mid-March has arrived on US shores sooner than expected. When he created a media-fed controversy by using that word to describe the impacts on US automakers if Biden were to be re-elected, Trump was referring to plans by Chinese car companies to flood the American car market with cheap, high-quality SUVs by exploiting loopholes in tariff laws utilizing plants built in Mexico as the jumping-off point.
At least one such plant, by Chinese auto company BYD, is in the planning stages, meaning the flood is set to begin within the next few years. But Reuters reported recently that Swedish-based, but Chinese-owned carmaker Volvo (a subsidiary of China’s Geely) is about to beat the competition as soon as this summer with the introduction of a small battery electric SUV, the EX30, in the US.
The EX30 will directly compete with the Tesla Model Y in terms of performance and features, but at a price tag of $35,000, $8,000 less than the Model Y’s current cost. Reuters writes that, “[t]he competitive price reflects an unusual combination of Geely’s China-specific cost advantages and Volvo’s ability to skirt US tariffs on Chinese cars because it also has US manufacturing operations.” Even better, Volvo says that, even at that market-undercutting price, it expects to realize a 15-20 per cent profit margin on the EX30, meaning it has room to cut the price further should Tesla or other companies find ways to meet its initial price tag.
Making the economics even more appealing to both consumers and Volvo/Geely is a recent Biden interpretation of a provision in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that provides buyers with a $7,500 federal subsidy if they initially lease the vehicle. Many buyers will later purchase the car outright by paying off the lease early without loss of any portion of the subsidy. The Biden Treasury Department created this situation with an interpretation that classifies leased EVs to be “commercial vehicles” regardless of class or configuration, a leap of logic that is truly breathtaking even in this administration.
One can only wonder if management at Tesla and legacy US carmakers like Ford and GM read that particular fine print as they loyally lobbied for the passage of the IRA in cooperation with the Biden administration in their eager pursuit of federal rents. As things are turning out, they may well have been signing their companies’ financial death warrants.
Under current US law, cars manufactured in China and imported directly into the US face a tariff of 27.5 per cent. Volvo qualifies for tariff refunds because it has US-based operations from which it also sells similar cars. Other Chinese car companies – like BYD – will be able to bypass US tariffs by building manufacturing plants in Mexico or Canada, utilizing a loophole in the US/Mexico/Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA). The USMCA was a Trump-era renegotiation of the former NAFTA agreement.
Volvo and Geely have been able to achieve the lower costs for the EX30 by utilizing a shared platform which allows Volvo cars to utilize the same batteries, motors, inverters, gears and other high-cost equipment used by Geely in its own manufacturing. It remains to be seen whether BYD and other Chinese car companies will be able to realize even lower costs by manufacturing cars in Mexican plants. The competition in that realm could become fierce in the coming years.
Full post
The London-based Net Zero Samizdat is a campaign group set up to highlight and discuss the serious implications of expensive and poorly considered climate change policies. The Net Zero Samizdat is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.netzerowatch.com.
Energy Live News, 3 May 2024
Norwegian consultancy firm DNV's report reveals that the UK is forecasted to fall short of its net zero emissions target by 2050 and its decarbonisation goals for 2030
The UK is likely to miss its net zero emissions target by 2050 and its Paris Agreement commitments for 2030.
That’s according to a report by Norwegian consultancy firm DNV, which forecasts an 85% reduction in UK emissions by 2050, falling short of the legislated 100% reduction.
Transport and buildings are cited as major emission contributors, with fossil fuels still prominent.
Despite advancements, a considerable portion of vehicles, particularly in commercial use, will still rely on fossil fuels, according to the report.
Consultants note that while the transition to a low carbon economy is affordable, challenges remain, particularly regarding home heating.
Despite the potential of heat pumps for decarbonisation, cost barriers and insulation requirements pose significant obstacles to widespread adoption.
The report forecasts that without a substantial policy shift, natural gas will continue to dominate home heating, with heat pumps installations only expected to overtake boiler replacements around 2040.
Full story
UK Government defeated in High Court over climate plans
BBC News, 3 May 2024
The government has been defeated in court - for a second time - for not doing enough to meet its targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmental campaigners argued that the energy minister signed off the government's climate plan without evidence it could be achieved.
The High Court ruled on Friday that the government will now be required to redraft the plan again.
In response the government defended its record on climate action.
A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said: "The UK can be hugely proud of its record on climate change. We do not believe a court case about process represents the best way of driving progress towards our shared goal of reaching net zero."
The legal challenge was brought by environmental groups Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth and The Good Law Project.
Tony Bosworth, lead campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said it was "an embarrassing day for the government".
Speaking outside the court to BBC News he said: "What we now need to see is a climate plan which is robust, which is comprehensive and which is fair, which makes sure we meet all our climate targets, and which does that in a way which doesn't leave anybody behind."
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Reality check: Europe moves closer to gas as Net-Zero goals slip
Energy Intelligence, 30 April 2024
Realization of a longer life for fossil gas comes at a time when international oil and gas majors are slowly clawing back on their green commitments.
European energy company executives have been slowly expressing a view that was practically taboo up until recently: At the annual Flame Gas Conference held in Amsterdam last week, many revealed their belief that achieving net-zero targets by 2050 is likely an uphill task despite stringent government mandates. This supports an argument that could potentially breathe new life into natural gas and LNG trade in the region for longer than was expected — or accepted by policymakers — until fairly recently.
The realization of a longer life for fossil gas comes at a time when international oil and gas majors are slowly clawing back on their green commitments. UK’s Shell, for example, has scaled back plans for 20% reduction in net carbon intensity by 2030. A similar positive note about hydrocarbons was widely felt at this year’s CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston, held in March. However, Energy Intelligence’s recent Energy Transition Macro Outlook report states that the energy transition is keeping its momentum this year, even as macroeconomic and geopolitical challenges stack up.
“Getting to net zero is purely one of the biggest challenges facing mankind at the moment. And when you look at different approaches, it’s no surprise that governments have tried ... the big government approach to come up with solutions for that,” Exxon Mobil Gas Marketing Europe Managing Director Justin Jackson said at a panel at Flame. “And it’s clear that they’re not at the pace that we need to be to achieve things by 2050.”
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Europeans ditch Net Zero, while Biden clings to it
The Wall Street Journal, 3 May 2024
You know you’ve stumbled through the looking glass when European politicians start sounding saner on climate policy than the Americans do. Well here we are, Alice: Europeans are admitting the folly of net zero quicker than their American peers.
The latest example—perhaps “victim” is more apt—is Humza Yousaf, who resigned this week as Scotland’s first minister. That region within the U.K. enjoys substantial devolved powers over its own affairs, including on climate policy. An administration led by Mr. Yousaf’s left-leaning Scottish National Party had hoped to rush ahead of the national government in London in slashing carbon emissions.
Until, that is, someone noticed the costs. A recent report from the U.K.’s Climate Change Committee noted Scotland had fallen far behind on its climate goals. The government aimed to reduce by 20% the aggregate distance driven by Scottish motorists, compared with 2019 levels, but had no plan to accomplish the reduction in personal mobility by the 2030 deadline. To get back on track with the government’s goal of a transition to home electric heat pumps, Scotland would have to replace natural-gas fire boilers at a rate of more than 80,000 households a year by the end of the decade. That’s a big ask considering that in 2023 it managed 6,000 boiler replacements. The government resisted imposing an aviation tax to discourage excess flying. And so on.
Mr. Yousaf did the only thing he could under the circumstances: He all but abandoned net zero. His administration announced it is ditching firm annual emission-reduction targets in favor of fuzzier “carbon budgets.” The Green Party, with which Mr. Yousaf’s SNP governed in a coalition, balked. After a series of political machinations that were one part “Macbeth” and two parts “Comedy of Errors,” Mr. Yousaf’s administration collapsed and he was forced to resign.
Observe two salient details. First, the specific list of targets the country was missing. Scotland had reached the point where further net-zero progress would have made obvious and material demands of household budgets. That isn’t counting the additional costs of renewable power hidden in utility bills. Apparently in Scotland as elsewhere, voters insist that Something Must Be Done to control global temperatures until the moment some hapless soul points out that Households Will Have to Pay for It.
Which leads to the other detail. Mr. Yousaf gets a bad press in Britain for his political incompetence, but give him credit for this at least: He saw trouble brewing and didn’t wait for a mass protest movement to erupt before trying to change course.
Other European politicians can’t say the same. In the Netherlands, Germany and the European Union’s headquarters in Brussels, among other places, farmers have blocked streets with tractors in opposition to climate-related and other environmental diktats whose costs they weren’t willing to bear. This after the French yellow vests in 2018 forced President Emmanuel Macron to abandon an increase in the diesel tax.
Even politicians are capable of learning. British politicians, still traumatized by the 2016 Brexit referendum, may be learning a bit faster than others. Mr. Yousaf’s move in Scotland is part of a race for the net-zero exits in which all major U.K. parties are participating ahead of an election expected later this year.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has toned down electric-vehicle mandates and ditched plans to require English households to install heat pumps. Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, likely the next prime minister, has hedged his party’s commitment to phase out oil and gas drilling in the North Sea—so that he can promise unionized Scottish oil workers that they’ll keep their jobs—and abandoned an earlier pledge to spend £28 billion the British government doesn’t have on the green transition every year.
Mr. Yousaf’s reversal particularly makes political sense because his SNP is locked in a fight for its life with Labour. No one wants to be the party that’s promising to take voters’ jobs and raise their energy bills. The SNP will hope that the short-term pain caused by the defection of the Greens from a governing coalition spares Mr. Yousaf’s party the existential crisis of a mass defection of its voters.
The puzzlement is that the U.S. is headed in the opposite direction. President Biden is pressing ahead with aggressive net-zero policies such as an electric-vehicle mandate and pouring trillions of dollars of borrowed government and hard-earned household money into climate boondoggles.
Perhaps Mr. Biden believes Donald Trump is sufficiently frightening that centrist voters will overlook the president’s climate flights of fancy. Perhaps he’s right. But it’s a big risk to assume voters won’t care about net zero’s costs. Notable for the many Europhiles on the American left, it’s also a risk fewer and fewer European politicians are willing to take themselves.
European ports swamped with cars amid China EV offensive
Hellenic Shipping News,29 April 2024
Some European ports are struggling to cope with a massive influx of vehicles. The surge in imports, mostly from China, has transformed these ports into vast parking lots causing congestion and delays.
Cars are special products: They’re easier to ship than, say, oil rigs, but they’re also so large that you can’t just put them on a shelf. Each car occupies about ten square meters (107 square feet) of space, even when not in use.
This poses problems for ports where cars are loaded and unloaded ― in Germany, there are two really big ones in Bremen and Bremerhaven. The car terminal at the Port of Bremerhaven is one of the largest auto ports in the world with a turnover of more than 1.7 million vehicles per year.
BLG Logistics Group, an international seaport and logistics services provider, operates the car-handling terminal at Bremerhaven. BLG spokesperson Julia Wagner said the port has space for approximately 70,000 vehicles with more than 1,000 car carriers visiting the terminal every year.
Wagner told DW that the shipping business especially concerning automobiles at Bremerhaven had changed in recent years. “We used to have 80% export and 20% import for a long time. This ratio is now at 50:50.”
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EU duties might not be enough to hold off flood of Chinese EVs
The Register, 30 April 2024
Import duties of 40 to 50 percent will be needed to shield the European auto industry from China-based producers, according to a new report.
The European Commission launched an investigation into subsidized electric cars from China in 2023 and warned that subsidy duties might be imposed nine months later. With the deadline looming, a report from the Rhodium Group warns that duties on imports alone probably won't be enough to slow market gains for Chinese manufacturers.
According to the research, duties in the 15 to 30 percent range are expected as European Commission regulators seek to shield local automakers – which account for seven percent of the EU's GDP – yet even at the higher end of that range, China-based producers will still be able to generate comfortable profit margins.
While going as high as 50 percent would make things more challenging, Rhodium Group reckons that policymakers could turn to other tools, such as tightening cybersecurity requirements, to stem the flow.
EU imports of EVs from China have grown spectacularly in recent years, increasing from $1.6 billion in sales in 2020 to $11.5 billion in 2023. They account for 37 percent of all EV imports in the bloc. EVs in China are considerably cheaper than those in the EU. The Rhodium Group cited Volkswagen's ID.4, which sells for nearly 50 percent more in the EU than in China, and a larger gulf exists for some Chinese producers. The result is bigger profit margins.
"Increasingly, Chinese and foreign manufacturers are taking advantage of China's cheaper labor and energy prices, its more developed battery ecosystem, and [its] government subsidies to produce in China for the European and third markets," said Rhodium Group's report.
However, simply slapping on duties at the top end of the forecast might not be enough, particularly considering the incentives being given to firms to export to the EU, the world's second-biggest EV market.
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China is cornering the EV market in the Global South
World Politics Review, 30 April 2024
Last year, Chinese automaker BYD clinched a deal to take over Ford Motor’s factory in Bahia, Brazil, two years after Ford decided to withdraw from the Brazilian market. BYD is already the world’s largest producer of electric vehicles, or EVs, and the move into Brazil is an effort to further consolidate its early conquest of EV markets in the Global South.
Over the past 18 months, BYD has been pursuing an aggressive internationalization strategy, targeting emerging markets. Not only is it selling cars in markets that its main competitor, Tesla, has yet to enter, it is also investing in local manufacturing. The new EV factory in Brazil is only one of several billion-dollar investments in EV production that the Chinese manufacturer is making across the Global South. BYD is also building, or planning to build, factories in Thailand, Uzbekistan, Indonesia and Mexico in an unprecedented global expansion.
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Benny Peiser: Net Zero hands economic advantage to China
Friends of Science, 2 May 2024
A short take on how NetZero goals hands the economic advantage to China. So, it’s not really about climate change if Europe and North America are rejecting cheap Chinese EVs and solar panels. A conversation with Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation of the UK. To see Dr. Peiser's full presentation on "Europe's NetZero Rebellion and the implications for Canada, go to our "Past Events" page.
The used electric car timebomb
Daily Mail, 1 May 2024
Tens of thousands of EVs could soon become impossible to sell on because their batteries won't last - find out if you are affected
Money Mail can today reveal a timebomb looming in the second-hand market for electric vehicles (EVs).
Our investigation found that many EVs could become almost impossible to resell because of their limited battery life.
Experts said that the average EV battery guarantee lasts just eight years. After this time, the battery may lose power more quickly and so reduce mileage between charges.
Many EVs will lose up to 12 per cent of their charge capacity by six years. Some may lose even more.
Yet the cost of replacing an EV battery is astonishingly high, our research found.
In some cases, the cost of a replacement battery is as much as £40,000. For certain EVs, the cost of replacing the battery could be ten times the value of the vehicle itself on the second-hand market.
That means used EVs have a limited lifespan — which makes them a bigger and bigger risk as the years go by.
Research into EV batteries is yet to be conclusive and the second-hand EV market is new, given the first popular EVs were rolled off the production line in 2009.
Last night, one motoring expert said customers should be wary of buying a used electric car beyond its warranty (typically eight years), as after that timespan there is no easy way of measuring how much the battery will degrade before it needs replacing.
This may mean you end up needing to pay for an expensive new battery.
Motor expert Shahzad Sheikh, who runs the YouTube channel Brown Car Guy, said: ‘With a decaying battery, the range will be poor and you may find it becomes increasingly hard to resell the vehicle after eight years. Buyers will know that they’ll only get a small amount of life out of the car so will pay only a small sum, if anything at all.’
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Germany’s green suicide: Achieving 2030 climate goals will cost 721 billion euros
Tagesspiegel, 3 May 2024
More than 700 billion euros must be invested by 2030 if the German energy transition is to be successful. One study calls this “very ambitious”.
According to a new study , investments totaling 721 billion euros will be necessary by 2030 in order to achieve the federal government's energy transition goals . This emerges from the “Energy Transition Progress Monitor” presented on Tuesday by the consulting firm EY and the energy industry association BDEW .
“In order to combat climate change, the federal government has set itself very ambitious goals ,” it said. The share of renewable energies in electricity generation is expected to increase to 80 percent by 2030 . Compared to 1990, greenhouse gas emissions are expected to fall by a total of 65 percent . The “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” had previously reported on the progress monitor.
Full story (in German)
Washing away the climate lunatics
National Post, 27 April 2024
As Dr. Peiser pointed out in Calgary, “If this was really about climate change, wouldn’t you want the cheapest EV’s, the cheapest wind, and solar, all from China?”
I have written here and elsewhere countless times before of the dangers of responding prematurely to alarmist concerns about climate change. Dr. Benny Peiser of the British Global Warming Policy Foundation spoke to the Friends of Science Society in Calgary earlier this month, warning that Europe’s extremist net zero carbon emission policies may get to Canada even though they are now running into extreme problems in Europe. The North American media has not much reported on the widespread and often violent farmer protests in Europe, which has caused every government that has been put to the test to scale back their aggressive climate change policies.
For a long time, it was a political free lunch: everybody loves the environment, and the climate change issue was very skillfully transformed by the left into an assault on the capitalist system from a new angle in the name of saving the planet. As long as the heavy costs of displacing fossil fuels by so-called renewable energy were carefully disguised and diffused, everybody could wallow in collective self-praise for doing the healthy and environmentally responsible thing.
The burden of subsidized wind and solar farms didn’t appear on peoples’ energy bills, though eventually they were placed on the back of the taxpayer. Now, however, net zero policies are directly eating into the earnings and savings of the public and in most of Europe, the taxpayer rebellion is exploding, and the advantages of democracy are being reaffirmed as elected governments scamper to the rear, explaining that there has been a misunderstanding. When the German government tried to compel the people of that country to change their gas boilers for heat pumps at a cost of thousands of dollars per home, what critics called “boilergeddon,” it produced a so-called green-lash.
Another political disaster has befallen the western European governments that had rolled over like poodles in front of the climate change alarmists: once they had fully committed themselves to the boondoggle of electric vehicles (EV’s), and forced the powerful automobile industries of Germany, France, and Italy into conversion of gas powered vehicles to EV’s, sales of EV’s plummeted after the customary faddish start, just as much cheaper Chinese EV’s flooded into Europe. Germany and Italy forced the European Union into delaying its ill-considered ban on internal combustion engine vehicles past 2035. Those who jubilantly imagined that Europe would commit industrial suicide by destroying its own automobile industry, will have to revise their plans. There are now thousands of cheap Chinese EV’s parked at the main ports of Europe with no buyers in sight. As Dr. Peiser pointed out in Calgary, “If this was really about climate change, wouldn’t you want the cheapest EV’s, the cheapest wind, and solar, all from China?”
It is now clear in Europe, as it long has been in the private sector of the United States, that with whole industries and millions of jobs at stake, implementation of net zero policies in the West would make China the dominant economic and industrial power of the world. Even our most naïve and insipid global warming crusaders are unenthused by that bone-chilling prospect. Although Germany has finally acted to protect its auto industry, it is not yet doing the same for the public. It is still officially planning to ban weekend driving to meet climate targets. If the federal German government proceeds with such an insane plan, it will sink without a ripple at the next election.
There have even been some murmurings of emulation of this course in Canada; on Sept. 14, 2021, Journal Metro of Quebec proposed pre-emptively moving against a climate crisis by lockdown measures, an emulation of the Covid lockdown then ending, but including rations and limitations on personal travel. This proposal comes from the same sort of thinking that seeks to eliminate meat by a war on bovine flatulence. Placid and docile toward virtue-posturing though Canadians are, insane measures like these to mitigate climate change would surely prove to be the funeral pyre of the coercive climate change terrorists.
For notorious historic reasons, Europe is always vulnerable to the madnesses and outrages of the left. The senior human rights court in Europe ruled three weeks ago in a lawsuit brought by 2000 elderly Swiss women against the Swiss government that it had violated the human rights of the plaintiffs by insufficiently mitigating climate change. Switzerland is a very small country but is responsible for between two and three per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions, while Canada, a huge country with a much larger population, emits only 1.5 per cent of global emissions, compared to 27 percent for China. The European Court of Human Rights crossed the jurisdictional Rubicon by overruling the voters of a democratic country. The rationale for hurling millions of auto workers into unemployment and shutting down Europe’s greatest industry in order to profit the Chinese is a case that even the most ardent climate-zealots will find challenging.
At the same time that the climate fanatics are encountering irresistible political headwinds, the intellectual arguments of the climate skeptics are becoming steadily more unanswerable. A brief filed with the court of appeals in The Hague in November by three eminent, American climate-related academics, Richard Lindzen of MIT, William Happer of Princeton, and Steven Koonin of New York University, the Hoover Institute, and former climate adviser to President Obama, challenged the finding of a lower court and held that scientific analysis, as opposed to an aggregation of “government opinion, consensus, peer review, and cherry-picked or falsified data,” shows that “Fossil fuels and CO2 will not cause dangerous climate change, there will be disastrous consequences for people worldwide if fossil fuels in CO2 emissions are reduced to net zero, including mass starvation.” They assert that the poor, future generations, and the entire West will suffer profoundly from any such policy. which “will undermine human rights and cripple the realization of the first three UN sustainable development goals-no poverty, zero hunger, and good health and well-being.”
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Trump’s electric car ‘bloodbath’ is here already, courtesy of China-owned Volvo
The Daily Telegraph, 2 May 2024
Americans will be subsidised to buy EVs assembled out of Chinese parts
The “bloodbath” Donald Trump warned about in mid-March has arrived on US shores sooner than expected. When he created a media-fed controversy by using that word to describe the impacts on US automakers if Biden were to be re-elected, Trump was referring to plans by Chinese car companies to flood the American car market with cheap, high-quality SUVs by exploiting loopholes in tariff laws utilizing plants built in Mexico as the jumping-off point.
At least one such plant, by Chinese auto company BYD, is in the planning stages, meaning the flood is set to begin within the next few years. But Reuters reported recently that Swedish-based, but Chinese-owned carmaker Volvo (a subsidiary of China’s Geely) is about to beat the competition as soon as this summer with the introduction of a small battery electric SUV, the EX30, in the US.
The EX30 will directly compete with the Tesla Model Y in terms of performance and features, but at a price tag of $35,000, $8,000 less than the Model Y’s current cost. Reuters writes that, “[t]he competitive price reflects an unusual combination of Geely’s China-specific cost advantages and Volvo’s ability to skirt US tariffs on Chinese cars because it also has US manufacturing operations.” Even better, Volvo says that, even at that market-undercutting price, it expects to realize a 15-20 per cent profit margin on the EX30, meaning it has room to cut the price further should Tesla or other companies find ways to meet its initial price tag.
Making the economics even more appealing to both consumers and Volvo/Geely is a recent Biden interpretation of a provision in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that provides buyers with a $7,500 federal subsidy if they initially lease the vehicle. Many buyers will later purchase the car outright by paying off the lease early without loss of any portion of the subsidy. The Biden Treasury Department created this situation with an interpretation that classifies leased EVs to be “commercial vehicles” regardless of class or configuration, a leap of logic that is truly breathtaking even in this administration.
One can only wonder if management at Tesla and legacy US carmakers like Ford and GM read that particular fine print as they loyally lobbied for the passage of the IRA in cooperation with the Biden administration in their eager pursuit of federal rents. As things are turning out, they may well have been signing their companies’ financial death warrants.
Under current US law, cars manufactured in China and imported directly into the US face a tariff of 27.5 per cent. Volvo qualifies for tariff refunds because it has US-based operations from which it also sells similar cars. Other Chinese car companies – like BYD – will be able to bypass US tariffs by building manufacturing plants in Mexico or Canada, utilizing a loophole in the US/Mexico/Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA). The USMCA was a Trump-era renegotiation of the former NAFTA agreement.
Volvo and Geely have been able to achieve the lower costs for the EX30 by utilizing a shared platform which allows Volvo cars to utilize the same batteries, motors, inverters, gears and other high-cost equipment used by Geely in its own manufacturing. It remains to be seen whether BYD and other Chinese car companies will be able to realize even lower costs by manufacturing cars in Mexican plants. The competition in that realm could become fierce in the coming years.
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The London-based Net Zero Samizdat is a campaign group set up to highlight and discuss the serious implications of expensive and poorly considered climate change policies. The Net Zero Samizdat is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.netzerowatch.com.
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