Last month, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) released its 2024 Progress Report to Parliament. As you might expect, there is much sound and fury because we are not on track to meet our target of a 68% reduction in emissions by 2030.
The Climate Change Committee sets out the priority actions that the Government must take to get back on target. Interestingly, there are ten of them and they are presented almost like a list of commandments. However, some of the new priorities underline just how wrong much of their previous guidance has been and how self-contradictory their latest commandments are.
The commandments we shall look at are:
- Make electricity cheaper
- Effectively design the upcoming CfD auctions
- Finalise business models for deployment of engineered removals
- Reverse policy rollbacks
- Accelerate electrification of industrial heat
Make Electricity Cheap Again
The first commandment is that the Government should take out its magic wand and make electricity cheaper. It is like a Trump campaign slogan: “Make Electricity Cheap Again!” They want to do this by removing “policy costs” from electricity. They are coy about where they want these to go, but recently the NG ESO made the explicit call for levies on electricity bills to be “re-balanced” on to gas.
In other words, they now acknowledge electricity prices have risen because of the massive subsidies that have been lavished on wind and solar power, along with crippling grid balancing costs and the enormous costs of expanding the grid to connect to these remote generators. Loading these costs on to gas instead will immediately make it more expensive for most people to heat their homes. This move might also make heat-pumps superficially more attractive, but as Andrew Montford has explained, this is really a massive bait-and-switch con.
This is the same CCC that called for variable renewables to expand to 60% of generation capacity by 2030 and 80% by 2050, and claimed in their sixth carbon budget that the cost of offshore wind could fall as low as £23/MWh by 2050. They also claimed that a near-zero electricity system had additional costs of about £3 billion up to 2035, and by 2050 there could be savings of up to £5 billion compared to the high-carbon alternative. The reality is that offshore wind is being offered £102/MWh in AR6 and renewables subsidies are already costing about £11 billion per year with more in the pipeline.
The only way they can make electricity cheap again is by pretending the costs they have already imposed on us do not exist and that their new cost estimates are credible.
Effectively Design Upcoming CfD Auctions
They call for the upcoming allocation rounds six and seven (AR6 and AR7) to be “effectively designed” to deliver at least 50GW of offshore wind by 2030. There’s currently about 15GW installed, 8-12GW with planning consent and the AR6 budget is set to procure about 3GW [Update August 4th, 2024: The recent budget increase might have pushed this up to 4-5GW]. Some of this will be allocated to projects that are re-bidding part of their capacity because they can no longer meet the commitments made in earlier rounds, so they are effectively calling for AR7 to be a bumper auction of about 20GW or more. The CCC also recommends defining a minimum targeted procurement volume, effectively calling for volume to be prioritised above price. This is a recipe for developers to bid anything they like.
In the Executive Summary, they make the false claim that the “cost of key low-carbon technologies is falling”. The offer price for all technologies have gone up in AR6 compared to AR5.
They go on to say that the “adjustment” (increased by 66%) made to the administrative strike price for offshore wind made for AR6 may not be sufficient. If offshore wind really were cheap, it would not need subsidy and the allocation rounds would be redundant as developers fall over themselves to provide cheap energy.
We can expect more subsidies for these “cheap” renewables and we will pay in some way or another, either through our electricity bills, our gas bills or general taxation.
Business Models for Engineered Removals
Not content with extra subsidies for renewables, the CCC are also demanding that business models for engineered removals of CO2 are finalised. This is code for even more subsidies for BECCS and other carbon capture technologies.
Reverse Policy Rollbacks
Of course, the CCC are angry that Rishi Sunak had the temerity to delay the phase-out of new petrol cars by 2030 and exempt 20% of properties from the 2035 gas-boiler ban. Now they are demanding that these bans are reinstated in their original form. They claim this transition will save households money, without explaining why any Government intervention is required if electric cars and heat pumps are cheaper, superior products. I do not recall the Government exhorting us to replace old Nokia bricks with smart phones. They rather give the game away by calling for measures to “support affordability” which totally undermines their claim that these new technologies are cheaper.
Accelerate the Electrification of Industrial Heat
The CCC also calls for a comprehensive set of policies to enable a rapid transition to electric heat across much of industry. These policies include “making support available”, which is another code word for subsidies. They also insist that the price of carbon be increased, effectively demanding that gas be priced out of the market. They recognise that this will not be enough and call for a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) which is a carbon tax on imports. They think this will protect against offshoring, but no energy intensive company is going to remain in the U.K. if its main cost is much more expensive than elsewhere in the world. This is because they will not be able to export to the rest of the world. Electrification of heat is a recipe for industry dematerialisation, not decarbonisation.
Conclusions
They start with the lie that renewables are getting cheaper and contradict themselves by demanding even more subsidies. They go on to demand even more “support” to accelerate the adoption of EVs and heat-pumps, which also contradicts their claims that they will save customers money. Their plans for industrial heat reveal an economic naïveté that is beyond comprehension.
Our energy policy institutions are broken beyond repair, and the CCC is no exception. As we have discussed before, the CCC should be disbanded.
If they really do want to make electricity cheap again, then they should call for renewables subsidies to be rolled back together with a big investment in new gas-fired plants and new sources of gas supply in the North Sea and through fracking. This should be followed by a U.K. version of France’s Messmer plan that installed 56 new reactors over a period of 15 years.
David Turver writes the Eigen Values Substack page, where this article first appeared.
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How to make electricity cheaper? Leave it to the private sector.
And stop using everything that moves to skim off even more taxes so you can gerrymander the next election.
A UK private sector.
I expect at some point the government will make electricity “cheaper” by subsidising it more and taking the money through increased taxation.
Industry insiders have concluded that current policies will lead to the complete collapse of the national grid in 2035. After that, anyone who wants electricity will need their own generator.
It could seem far fetched but many Uniparty policies in the UK and other rich world countries look like they are calculated to cause collapse – Nut Zero, mass immigration, Health Fascism, money printing to support “lockdowns”, perpetual war…
How exactly do you work out that ‘perpetual war’ is a policy?
Something the chancellor could do would be to abolish 5% VAT on domestic electricity, now that we are not in the EU.
Where would he get the money he loses by doing that? Cuts to public spending?
Last time I looked, the Chancellor is a woman. But having said that, I wouldn’t put it past her to have decided she is actually a man today, whilst tomorrow is another day.
Heck, she might even be a man. Who knows.
Lol, yes, well, I have not paid much attention to who is who in the Cabinet as I don’t think it makes much difference.
They ae planning to put all the Green subsidies onto gas bills so we all run away from gas and clamour for a heat pump——-Eco Tyranny knows all the tricks
Yes that makes sense.
The Climate Change Committee is the most dangerous body in the UK——-The cheapest way to produce electricity is COAL, then GAS, then NUCLEAR. But our Eco Socialist Political Class who take their orders from the UN/WEF have all but removed coal and are about to remove the gas that gives us the best central heating system we ever had. They do this with the excuse that we must fight climate change. As if the UK can fight this alleged climate change unilaterally and that if only the UK stops emitting a little bit of CO2 then the planet will be saved. It matters not that China India and all the other developing countries making up about 60% of the world’s emissions are NOT saving the planet and continue to use fossil fuels.
—–We now have a virtual dictatorship as a government because of the huge majority they have and Miliband is rubbing his hands with glee that he is finally able to indulge in his eco communism and cover the country in turbines because he is fully signed up, like most of our politicians to “Sustainable Development”. Oh does not sound nice? Except it isn’t what most people think it is. It has virtually nothing to with climate or saving the planet. It is about Social Justice, Equity and Ending Capitalism. Sustainable Development is about writing the wrongs of human greed, profit making, raising of the standard of living of billions by using fossil fuels which seen by the Eco Communists as a finite resource and the wealthy west has used up more than our fair share of it, so the idea is that the west should stop doing that by coercing our citizens away from energy that works (coal and gas) and fobbing us off with energy that doesn’t work (wind and sun). Make no mistake, millions more will be forced into fuel poverty and hundreds of thousands of poor and old people will die as their reliable energy is removed. The excuse for removing reliable affordable energy is “climate change”. But climate change policies are actually worse for us all than the alleged climate change itself, and there is actually no evidence that the CO2 we are supposed to reduce is causing or will cause dangerous changes to the climate. Therefore this is an ECO SOCIALIST FRAUD.
I predict many more riots in the upcoming winters.
With gas heating set to be too expensive for most to run, a good workout running around waving sticks and rolling cars over is going to be a energetic and inexpensive way to warm up plus you may have the odd burning police van or shop to warm yourself beside
Yes funny——–Not so funny when our mum’s die of cold because that nasty piece of work Miliband is trying to get a little gold star on his lapel from the UN for pretending to save the planet.
They will never hit their insane “Net zero” targets, not even near, and they must know it, or they really are incredibly stupid! Which Ed appears to be!
They can set any targets they like, but next Monday is just as feasible as 2050 or 2100.
Unfortunately, what they will do is impoverish us for no gain, and destroy our energy capability and security, and they seem Hell bent on achieving that!
Yes correct——–and that is the whole idea of the eco socialism that Sustainable Development and Net Zero is. To take away affordable energy from the prosperous west because the Davos world governance people say our lifestyles are unsustainable, so Miliband licks their arses and hammers his own people and calls it “fighting climate change”——-Ofcourse it isn’t just Miliband and Labour, it is the entire Political Class. Remember Boris wanted to be “The Saudi Arabia of Wind” and it was actually Teresa May that gave us the Net Zero Amendment in 2019. ——-It is just that Miliband and Labour are the worst and most draconian.
As my mother used to say “Be sure your lies will find you out”. It’s popcorn time for the next few years watching Miliband wildly thrashing about trying to defy reality: https://metatron.substack.com/p/debunking-the-climate-change-hoax.
How to kill Pensioners: increase the Gas price. Overall effect is that it is far cheaper than the gas showers from the 1930’s and ’40’s.
Anyone who would like to understand climate change and its causes should watch Ticker Carlson’s interview with astrophysicist Professor Willie Soon. Spoiler alert, it is not fossil fuels.
I discovered that way back in 2007 and have been investigating the fraud ever since.
I think most politicians who subscribe to the Net Zero religion have their mental faculties switched off. Even accepting their delusions about CO2, none of what Labour (and previously the Conservatives) propose makes any sense other than to impoverish most UK residents and drive industry abroad.