There is an old Scottish proverb which runs as follows: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” This came to my mind after seeing the brief note in the Daily Sceptic about the apparent award of a £70 billion contract linked to Net Zero projects by a small company in Stevenage to another small company in Cornwall. Even if there is a typo in quantifying the money involved, £70 million would still be a serious sum of money. However, we are not dealing with real money but some indicator of “value”, probably more in the eye of the provider than of any of the supposed beneficiaries. This is where the important story lies, in the bizarre incentives that exist in a world of bureaucracies committed to vague and ill-considered targets dealing with entrepreneurial types who have lots of sales panache but limited technical competence.
My background stimulated my interest in this story. Among other things, I manage companies which operate broadband networks in Scotland. Quite separately, I have published a lot on the economics of climate change and renewable energy, while in the past I managed large energy and infrastructure projects. I would not claim a total value of £70 billion but the total amount of real money at stake in these projects was more than £20 billion. Such sums may seem like funny money but they are not unrealistic when dealing with a large sector in a large country. That experience gives a clue to the lesson that we need to learn.
The company which supposedly awarded the £70 billion contract provides networking and other broadband services to schools. They seem like many other small IT companies in the area with, apparently, limited and not especially sophisticated skills. Managing high performance networks is a very specialized business quite separate from the management of IT facilities run over such networks. The consequence is that local authorities, private companies and other organisations often employ a hierarchy of sub-contractors to provide and maintain networks, IT and network services.
This hierarchical structure applies similarly when dealing with large infrastructure and energy programs. Even with decades of experience, the reality of such programs is littered with grotesque cost over-runs and failures to deliver what is promised. Politicians, bureaucrats and private sector managers do not have the incentives or the skills to deliver what is promised on time and within budget. The combination of project hype and poor management mean that the outcome is all too often an expensive disappointment.
Now, consider Net Zero as such a program. It is based, from beginning to end, on wishful thinking – that costs will fall rapidly, that new technologies will transform sectors within years rather than decades. There are thousands of companies – and academics – who claim that everything will be different in some way or other if only they are given lots of money. Anyone who takes a cautious view based on what we can do now and what it will cost knows that the goal is not feasible within the timescale promised and that the costs may be ruinous. But that is not the right answer, so instead we have “If wishes were horses…”
The public sector and large companies provide dozens of examples of how this works. In the last decade the public has been deluged with propaganda for Zero Waste – recycling all garbage rather than sending it to landfills. What could be wrong with that? But suppose you are a harried manager in a local authority which is setting up a recycling scheme but has no idea what to do with the stuff that will be collected. You go to some conferences and come across a group with some very pretty slides and a plausible story about how they are going to sort recycled waste to make plastic bags or packaging materials and send the rest to an energy-from-waste project (aka an incinerator). The council is persuaded to invest in the scheme and seemingly your problem is solved. However, two years later it comes out that the sorting facility doesn’t work, there is no market for the recycled plastics, the incinerator couldn’t get planning permission, and all of the “recycled” waste is being shipped to West Africa or Vietnam.
Such cases are not rare. They happen all of the time because developing and implementing new technologies or ways of working is expensive, time consuming and very prone to failure. Venture capitalists, whose primary skill is to assess risk, expect that only 1 in 10 of their investments will really pay off and that may take 10 or 15 years. Why should bureaucrats with less experience and skill expect to do any better? Yet politicians, urged on by lobby groups, set Net Zero time scales of five-to-10 years for changes that, on a realistic assessment, might take two, three or four decades.
The whole field is riven by conflicts of interest and the absence of any serious penalties for failure. There is a tendency to assume that if the goal is worthy we need not explore who really benefits in too much detail. Yet the truth is that governments, in particular, are very bad at managing large projects and programs. The reason is that it is difficult, tedious and often unrewarding work, none of which fits well with a political and administrative culture that is focused on hype and short-term goals. Whether it is the PPE saga or Test and Trace or HS2 or NHS IT contracts or any of the other blunders of our Government, the one thing we should have learned by now is that major Net Zero projects will not be delivered on time or on budget.
With Net Zero the situation is even worse because nobody knows what they are doing but there is a lot of ignorant money seeking a home. Local authorities, private companies and other organisations want their share of this money. The result will be a few successes, a larger number of partial or complete failures and a vast amount of money wasted. That is routine in venture capital and technology R&D. It is less acceptable when the money comes from taxpayers and is, in practice, diverted from more immediate ways in which the well-being of the population or the environment could be improved.
It is a sad reflection of the current media environment that anyone who challenges either the goal of Net Zero or the means to achieve it is likely to be labelled a “climate change denier”. Hence, I will be blunt: that is defamatory codswallop. Thirty years ago I was co-author of one of the first international analyses of climate change. I have written as much or more about global adaptation to climate change as anyone. Our difficulty is that the policies followed to date have been a spectacular failure and nothing which Britain or Europe can do will change what is already baked in for 2050. In these circumstances, it is worth asking whether throwing billions of pounds at an “If wishes were horses …” program is a sensible use of public or private money.
Gordon Hughes is a former Professor of Economics at Edinburgh University and was a senior adviser on energy and environmental policy at the World Bank until 2001.
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I am pretty sure my colleague in the Social housing sector told me that all new build homes are already banned from using gas boilers or oven or hobs.
This is a plan, but they have run into reality!
At some stage is no-one going to make the point that such bans risk leaving elderly and vulnerable people at severe risk in Winter in the event of a failure of the electricity supply? (I grew up in the 1960s and 70s, during an era when it was regarded as prudent to have alternative sources of energy available for heating and cooking. No-one seems willing to question the security of our electricity supplies despite the mounting evidence that we are heading for serious problems.)
If the electric goes then surely the boiler goes as well. I grew up in a house with a Rayburn that took coke.
True, a gas boiler will not light if it loses its electrical connection, its a built in safety feature
Gone are the days when you could poke a lit piece of twisted up daily mirror through a hole to light the pilot!
And chalk gas mantels! The sound and smell of the seaside caravan was unique! Reminds me of walks along the prom with fish and chips in a newspaper! Reading about the Profumo affair whilst waving away the seagulls! Ooo I could just eat some!
A downtick!!! Why? Ffs
The Tilly lamp gives the same experience independent of the gas main. Though it also adds the sweet odour of paraffin and a slight fire risk if you start pumping before it’s hot enough!
During the power cuts of the 1970s tube trains were powered from generating stations owned by London Underground so they could keep running. Lighting for stairs and underground walkways were not.
they hung Tilly lamps along the pedestrian routes to platforms and thousands of people an hour walked past. No working from home then and besides homes had power cuts too.
when reliance on “renewables” gets too high while districts and entire services will cease. How they will be brought back without huge technical difficulty is not clear to me. TFL has hundreds of servers to run the network. If one does not restart correctly the system cannot be run safely or at all.
I was going to buy one for emergencies when the oil shortages kicked off last year, but owing to a supply-chain shortage they couldn’t manufacture the paraffin containers. Looks like it’ll be back to tallow and reeds come the revolution.
Tallow and reeds ! Love it
Even more complex than that, the boiler now has a pump and computer and these need to work before anything happens. All in the name of energy efficiency of course. I could be sceptical and point out that a non-working boiler is 100% energy efficient, but of course useless scrap metal! However the subtlty of that is completely lost on most people in the “Green” movement.
Nail on the head mate
All your eggs in one basket has never been a sensible idea!
There was nothing like warming oneself in front of the gas fire as a student in cheap digs during the 1970s, especially during power cuts. And they talk of more power cuts in the future because of the increased demand, some of it driven by EV charging points, and reduced supply because the governments over the past 20 years and more have had zero ability for long term planning and now think we can cover the UK with fields of unrecyclable solar panels and ruin the countryside with arrays of vast unrecyclable wind turbines all to ‘save the planet’ They just deal with the short term and their fixation on elections and power not what they are there to do which is to guarantee our basic services such as electricity, heating and housing. Barstewards!
‘Net’ zero ability for long term planning!
And barstools
“We are going to have to get used to using electricity as and when it is available” ———————–Head of the National Grid (Steve Holliday) about 12 years ago. ——-If pensioners are cold and dying the eco socialists will simply hand them a chunk of more taxpayers money to help them keep a bit warmer and at the same time advise them to put on more jumpers.
So you can sell the house with a gas connection just not the plumbing and appliances
The banning of the sale of such properties is on the way.
There are 21 million gas boilers in the UK. ——–They are taking more than a decade to even change everyones meter so how long will getting rid of 21 million gas boilers take? Imagine the almighty cutter in everyone’s house and huge expense, and all for WHAT? ——–This is utterly PATHETIC. This will never happen before 2050
Gas hobs and boilers
I think they should all be switched off and permanently removed before they can do anymore damage!
The councillors that is!
I remember councillors in their global warming wisdom planting Yukka Trees all along the promenade somewhere, it may have been Torquay. ——The following winter they all died. These are the kind of dummies that we have making decisions that are beyond parody.
I’ll bet my house these North Oxford based globo-fascists continue to enjoy all the trappings of their giant gas powered AGAs and range cookers. Just like they gerrymandered their own ULEZ scam to come nowhere near millionaires row where they live.
Are there any such thing as elections anymore in Oxford? Or are people just cake brained zombies? How TF are these Stalinist butt munchers still in power??
Oh you’ve just given me such a belly laugh with your excellent turn of phrase
!
No doubt someone has the answer, but I do wonder on what legal basis a local council has the right to ban facilities which are legally available across the nation. If LAs can ban certain kinds of cars, and now certain domestic fuels, does that mean they have devolved powers to, say, introduce Sharia Law, forbid the sale of beef, or any other whim they take on?
We usually think that we are citizens with the rights of the English or the British, rather than subjects of Oxford State.
Excellent point.
Ah – a proud citizen of Oxford has downvoted me!
I assume Oxford will refuse to permit a heat producing appliance powered by gas (gas boiler) in a planning application for a new building and reject the application. However once a building has been issued with a certificate of completion with, say, electric resistive heating, the purchaser of said building can install a boiler compliant with Building Regulations. In England and Wales local authorities must be informed within 30 days when a heat producing appliance is installed in a property, so a Building Regulations Compliance Certificate can be issued. I can see Oxford being ‘difficult’ in issuing such a certificate but unless Building Regulations are changed to allow local whims, legally they will have no option. A flueless appliance retrofit such as a gas hob is covered by voluntary notification not by the Building Regulations and a Declaration of Safety Certificate, a little different to a Building Regulations Certificate is issued.
While absence of certificates might affect resale I can’t see how Oxford can actually stop anyone using either.
Presumably the good people of Oxford can use their democratic power to remove this idiots from office?
There’s also direct democracy. Obstruction, non payment, protest, legal action …
So , do the builders of new homes think that the negative publicity surrounding heat pumps will just be ignored ? I do not think so . Therefore , I as a builder will seek to build houses elsewhere and Oxford Council can go hang .
The world can rest easy now in the knowledge that Oxford won’t be using gas cookers (in new homes, so in a tiny percentage of Oxford homes).
The “climate crisis” is solved.
Those who fear CO2 emissions needn’t worry about the dozens of new coal powered plants China (and other countries) are building. Oxford will make it right banning gas cookers.
Clowns.
Pho#kin fascist idiots.
Tony Blairs government in 2008 gave us the climate change act (Miliband). This set us on the path to excruciating energy prices as we used more and more unreliable niche technologies, and charged the public for it all via their bills. But the same Tony Blair has recently said that nothing the UK does regarding NET ZERO will have the slightest effect on global climate, mainly because we only emit 1% of human emissions of CO2. If doing something will have no effect then why do it? ———–The only reason for doing it is because it isn’t for the reasons you claim. How many people on the council in Oxford could explain to a five year old anything about climate and energy? They are simply group think brainwashed dreamers that are prepared to try and get a little gold star from government and the UN for their pretend to save the planet nonsense and are going to impoverish their own residents to achieve those goals. How many more of these phony climate initiatives are the UK citizens to suffer before we wake up to the real reasons for it all and it has NOTHING to do with climate as even Tony Blair freely admits.
I think we are very close to the point where the “project” will collapse. Certainly a cold winter, a determined low pressure system and zero wind, and a single gas plant failure will ensure power cuts, presumably rotated around with smart meters. All the cold citizens will begin to ask “how did we arrive here, usually quoting the winter of discontent”. Suddenly they will realise that the discontent is not of coal miners, but of bureaucrats who are actually even more stupid than Arthur Scargill. Whilst I consider this an ideal situation, the MSM will probably claim it is due to Covid, or something equally ridiculous, and the population will believe the propaganda from the “nudge” unit.
Last (mild) winter we were dependent on the 2 Drax coal-fired generators to keep the lights on. These are now permanently closed down so it’s not if but when we have rolling blackouts. I remember the 70’s well but we weren’t quite as dependent on electricity then. People will scream loudly when they can’t use their WiFi and mobiles and computers – no working from home possible, no TV, no central heating, no heat pumps, no lights, no cooking (unless with gas) etc, etc, etc.