Tesco and Shell are to buy the entire output of a controversial solar farm under construction on the Kent coast that was approved against massive local opposition on the basis that it would power 100,000 homes. The Telegraph has more.
The two companies have signed deals to purchase all the electricity generated by Cleve Hill, which is poised to be the U.K.’s largest solar farm when it goes into operation early in 2025.
The project won planning permission despite massive local opposition on the basis that it would power more than 100,000 homes. However, 65% of the output has instead been purchased by Tesco, which says Cleve Hill will help it cut emissions by powering up to 144 of its supermarkets.
The remaining 35% of output will be managed by Shell as it buys up sources of renewable electricity to power its growing network of EV charging stations.
Vicky Ellis, of the Kent branch of CPRE, said: “This project was approved on the premise that it would power homes, not petrol stations and supermarkets.
“The irony of a major supermarket such as Tesco and a prominent oil producer such as Shell buying into the green energy market to run their petrol stations and supermarkets is not lost on us. We suspect this is another example of greenwashing.”
Cleve Hill is owned and financed by Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, a U.S. investment fund based in Houston, Texas, which specialises in energy projects.
Worth reading in full.
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Other cheek of the same orifice – Saving humanity from the humanity haters.
Off-T
Breaking News.
This should be hilarious. Kneel will be spinning faster than one of Milli’s windmills to convince us all “nothing to see here.”
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/breaking-eu-commission-wrong-to-block-von-der-leyens-secret-texts/
“… that, for the sake of future generations, we have duties of care to the planet..”
The vast tonnage of absurdity and nonsense shows low grade thinking and weak intellect.
Did our Stone Age ancestors have a “duty of care”? Yes? Please do show how they achieved this marvel. Perhaps it’s just modern Man who has had a “duty of care” bestowed upon him. By whom?
Do we also have a duty of care for the Moon – if not why not? What about all the little asteroids – surely we must have a duty of care to these little darlings.
How about the Sun does our duty of care extend to it – are we using too much of its energy? That’s not sustainable. Yikes!
Planet Earth is a big rock hurtling through Space – a speck of dust comparatively speaking – with a vast, chaotic, non-linear, dynamic system which coincidentally, serendipitously has the right conditions to sustain life including Human life, in the development and emergence of which conditions we played no part and cannot in any way control. King Cnut put that stupid notion to bed a thousand years ago.
We have a duty of care to ourselves and the propagation of our species – that’s all. The “duty of care” we supposedly have involves impoverishing and immiserating Humans in pursuit of this Paganist “duty”.
The natural condition of Humans is poverty. By our ingenuity, Human capital and using what the Planet provides we grown wealthy. E have as much “duty of care” to “the planet” as we have to a lump of coal.
The argument is that by our actions we are compromising the planet in a way that will harm us. So by “saving the planet” we are saving ourselves, because the planet is where we live. You could argue that if the impending danger to “the planet” is clear and preventable and that downsides of any actions taken to prevent that danger are less than the consequences of doing nothing, then we should act. But I would say that the bar for proving all that has to be pretty high and the consequences of various courses of action pretty clear before we can make a meaningful choice – like a huge asteroid is approaching that will smash us to pieces and we can stop it by, for example, blowing up Alaska with everyone it. Absent unequivocal proof, the precautionary principle applies (not the perverse version that was used during “covid”).
The argument is that by our actions we are compromising the planet in a way that will harm us. So by “saving the planet” we are saving ourselves, because the planet is where we live.
Who defines what precisely contitutes a compromised planet and an uncompromised one, what’s the definition and who decides if it does or doesn’t apply to any particular planet? Further, who determines what’s necessay to uncompromise or decompromise a compromised planet and who has the authority to ensure it gets done and where did this authority come from?
Such a statement is really just grandiloquent waffle certain kinds of people employ to camouflage their desire to control other people to the degree chess players control chess pieces: They must not move unless authorized to do so and they may only move exactly as authorized. Otherwise, IRREPARABLE PLANETARY COMPROMISE will occur.
Bonus question: Are people who believe it’s up to them only them to prevent IRREPARABLE PLANETARY COMPROMISE really the kind of people who’d be able to prevent that should this actually be necessary? Or are they perhaps seriously full of themselves and greatly overestimate their abiltiy to avoid stupid mistakes?
Wisdom, intelligence and knowledge beget modesty and not rethorical cavalary charges against global boiling.
Indeed. As with “covid”, in a real emergency you would not need to pass laws to tell people what to do.
”Saving the planet” we are saying to ourselves we are lunatics,
This impending danger to,”the planet” – what happens… planet explodes, veers off into a galaxy far, far away?
I struggled to come up with an example which tells me that it’s not something we should be thinking about much. If there’s ever an obvious “emergency” then there won’t be much debate about it – for example, most people agree that, for example, exploding nuclear bombs over every inch of the planet would not be a good idea, neither would developing something that poisoned every source of water or killed all plant or animal life. Nobody needs a committee to tell them we should avoid doing those things. Or telling that living under an active volcano is dumb, or living next to a river that keeps flooding without building flood defences.
If you think farmers have a much longer view of time then try joining us in forestry where you will commonly plant a crop that will mature after you die.