127112
Book your tickets here to the FSU’s live discussion with Matthew Goodwin about his new book. Book your tickets here to the FSU’s live discussion with Matthew Goodwin about his new book. Book your tickets here to the FSU’s live discussion with Matthew Goodwin about his new book.
  • Log in
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Forum
  • Donate
  • Newsletter
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

Net Zero Policies Will Turn Europe Into a “Trivial and Incapable” Backwater

by Chris Morrison
24 July 2022 7:00 AM

The social and economic destructive power of the political Net Zero agenda across the European Union, and by extension the U.K., is laid bare in a damning new report from the Global Warming Policy Foundation. In a long and detailed presentation, energy writer John Constable warns that the European Green Deal seems all but certain to break Europe’s economic and socio-political power – “rendering it a trivial and incapable backwater, reliant on – and subservient to – superior powers”.

It is easy to read into the report that “superior powers” include countries that supply Europe with vital oil and gas and make the industrial goods required to enjoy current lifestyles. If they wish, European consumers and politicians can continue to indulge in monumental green virtue signalling, print money until kingdom come and even consider resurrecting old economic and social disasters like pointless Covid restrictions. The TalkTV host Julia Hartley-Brewer often notes that Net Zero is “borderline insanity”. The use of the word “borderline” seems superfluous.

The collapse in competitive manufacturing capacity is nowhere more evident than in the renewable sector itself, says Constable.

It is clear that renewable energy equipment manufacturing has no future in the EU, and indeed manufacturing of any kind exposed to international competition will struggle to survive, except in niche areas.

The all but total collapse of the Spanish solar industry within eight years is highlighted. Constable describes it as “extraordinary” and in large part explained by the curtailment of subsidies. Overall, he says, “subsidised deployment in Europe has failed to give European industries a secure position in the world markets for renewable energy equipment. The field is now dominated by China”.

Again, it might be noted that if you can’t even pay companies to produce hardware under local economic conditions, Boris Johnson’s promise – backed it seems by almost all politicians – to bring plentiful green jobs in the U.K. across the ‘Red Wall’ is just windy rhetoric.

News of an impending Net Zero calamity is rarely far from the headlines. Tata Steel has been trying to obtain subsidies approaching £1.5bn from the U.K. Government to pay decarbonising costs and keep Port Talbot steelworks operational. “The new Prime Minister is unlikely to be willing to hand over subsidies on this scale, not least because every other industry hit by demands for decarbonisation would insist on handouts too,” said Dr. Benny Peiser, Director of Net Zero Watch. “It is becoming more evident by the day that the Climate Change Committee misled Parliament over the true cost of Net Zero,” he added.

The lack of Net Zero discussion in the current Tory leadership battle is interesting. Savvy politicians are starting to become aware of the disaster that is hurtling towards society as it seeks to quickly remove the cheapest and most efficient fuel it has from the energy mix and replace it with intermittent sources – described by Constable as “thermodynamically incompetent”. On the other hand, large swathes of the population have become convinced that the climate is breaking down, as evidenced by the hysteria that surrounded the recent brief heatwave. The science is ‘settled’, although a more realistic interpretation is that green activists and financiers have pursued a ruthless 30-year campaign to outlaw the scientific method from atmospheric climate science.

Constable argues that a change of course is inevitable to undo the “deeply embedded” harm of nearly 30 years. Moving towards “fundamentally cheaper energy” will require substantial reductions in European living standards. “Explaining this to the European people will form the greatest political challenge of the next 50 years,” he says.

In his wider report, Constable attempts to demonstrate that the enthusiastic adoption of the green agenda in the 1990s and early 2000s “has effectively produced gradual industrial and economic disarmament”. The ‘”resultant enfeeblement” compared to Europe’s competitors will make arresting the decline difficult: “Recovering the situation entirely may be impossible.” The author lists numerous body blows to overall competitiveness. Electricity prices to industry in the EU between 2008-2018 have been about 30% above those in the G20, an organisation that includes China, India and Russia. Gas price were 20-30% higher. Electricity prices were 80% and 30% higher respectively for industry and households,  and this would have hit competitiveness hard and placed heavy energy costs on some of those least able to afford them. Petrol prices were approximately 30-50% higher, and diesel 10-40%, figures again that were guaranteed to destroy competitiveness outside the EU’s protective internal single market.

Meanwhile, energy consumption in the EU has been falling and is now said to be at levels last seen in the early 1990s. Such a deep and sustained decline is said to be unprecedented in the modern era. In the U.K., electricity consumption is reported to have fallen back to levels not seen since 1970. Energy efficiency, of course, plays a part, but Constable notes the effect of “price rationing and demand destruction”. The report labels Europe’s “green experiment” as a “costly failure”, noting that “carbon dioxide abatement costs in the EU are on average several times greater than even high-end estimates of the social cost of carbon”. This is said to indicate that the economic harm of the EU’s mitigation policies “is greater than the climate change it aims to prevent”.

Politicians – and green activist commentators – often blame inflation, high energy prices and food shortages on recent events such as Russia’s war in Ukraine. But Constable argues that the Ukrainian war, while bringing the failures of climate policies into sharper focus, does not mean that the harm is of recent origin. “On the contrary,” he argues, “the environmental policies have been damaging to the EU’s interests, and advantageous to those of its rivals, from the very beginning.”

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Tags: Carbon dioxideClimate Alarmismclimate changeEuropeNet Zero

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

News Round-Up

Next Post

Eleven Children Report Serious Injury From the Vaccines Versus Zero Serious Cases of Covid, Official Data From Iceland Show

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

23 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

 

DONATE

PODCAST

Nick Dixon and Toby Young Talk About Andrew Tate’s Confrontation With the BBC, Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Presidential Campaign and the Fall of Joe Biden

by Will Jones
6 June 2023
0

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editors Picks

WHO and EU Announce Global System of Vaccine Passports for “Future Pandemics”

6 June 2023
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

7 June 2023
by Jonathan Barr

Jacinda Ardern Awarded Damehood for Handling of the Pandemic – As Excess Deaths Continue to Mount and Media Censorship Intensifies

7 June 2023
by Igor Chudov

Lockdown Sceptic Molly Kingsley: “I Was Cast as an Extremist But I’ve Since Been Proved Right”

6 June 2023
by Toby Young

Oxfam Faces Boycott Calls Over ‘Terf’ Pride Cartoon ‘Depicting J.K. Rowling’

7 June 2023
by Will Jones

WHO and EU Announce Global System of Vaccine Passports for “Future Pandemics”

62

News Round-Up

31

Jacinda Ardern Awarded Damehood for Handling of the Pandemic – As Excess Deaths Continue to Mount and Media Censorship Intensifies

27

Oxfam Faces Boycott Calls Over ‘Terf’ Pride Cartoon ‘Depicting J.K. Rowling’

24

Surge in Sexually Transmitted Diseases Linked to End of Lockdown

28

Who Destroyed the Kakhovka Dam?

7 June 2023
by Noah Carl

Richard Dawkins: “Affirmative Action is Racism”

7 June 2023
by Amber Muhinyi

Jacinda Ardern Awarded Damehood for Handling of the Pandemic – As Excess Deaths Continue to Mount and Media Censorship Intensifies

7 June 2023
by Igor Chudov

WHO and EU Announce Global System of Vaccine Passports for “Future Pandemics”

6 June 2023
by Will Jones

Academics Claim There Was a “Non-Binary Minority” in Prehistoric Europe

6 June 2023
by Noah Carl

POSTS BY DATE

July 2022
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Jun   Aug »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Forum
  • Donate
  • Newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Please note: To be able to comment on our articles you'll need to be a registered donor

Already have an account?
Please click here to login Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment