According to a new report by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) and the Confederation of British Industry's (CBI) economics unit, “The UK’s Net Zero economy is now a major part of the national industrial base”, which “supports more than a million jobs and generates over £100 billion in economic value”. Whereas on these pages you will have read many stories about what I and my colleagues (among many others) believe is a suicidal economic agenda that requires deindustrialisation and degrowth, that it is pushing energy prices upwards with no sign of recovery, driving the cost of everything higher and undermining British businesses, the CBI and ECIU claim that everything is sunbeams and rainbows. How can anyone tell which one of these opposing stories is true, and which is a massive steaming heap of lies?
We could begin by seeing how this story is being received by politicians. Following the report being covered in the Guardian (of course), Ed Miliband piped up to quote its headline findings.
And so did his underling, Energy Minister Michael Shanks, citing its “clear evidence”:
Curiously, then came from the opposition benches the former PM Theresa May, claiming that the report was "proof" of her Net Zero 'legacy'.
Theresa May’s party has committed to scrapping Net Zero. But May never saw an Ed Miliband policy she didn’t like, not only including Net Zero but also the energy price cap, which Miliband had proposed. “May is stealing Ed Miliband’s clothes – but no one’s shouting ‘Red
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The only way Badenough stands a hope of persuading the gullible former Conservative voting base that the Party has changed is if she kicks out the likes of May and the other senior LibCONs who are no more than blue-tinged Labour: Cameron, Hague, Hunt, Hammond, Mitchell, Barwell, Zak Goldsmith etc
And since she’s not going to do that, she doesn’t stand a hope.
Anyone who thinks that is a good idea to replace power generators that work at large scale and consistently 24/7/365 at ~90% productivity with technologies that are dilute, unreliable, widely distributed and working intermittently at a measured productivity ~18% or less, (actually down to ~15% across Europe in 2025) must be in error or malign.
The low productivity of Weather-Dependent “Renewables” means that installations have to be about 5-6 times larger just to contribute the same amount power to the Grid. Even so they are still unreliable. If the installation costs of “Renewables” were equivalent, (they are in fact much higher when fully accounted including subsidies and other accounting fixes), their power costs more than conventional gas, coal and even nuclear technologies.
https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/a-few-graphs-say-it-all-for-renewables/
Weather-Dependent “Renewables” are:
· dependent on massive subsidies charged to customers
· require extended costly linkages to gather power from widely distributed small power sources
· very destructive of the environment, agricultural land and wildlife.
Weather-Dependent Wind and Solar “Renewables” aren’t effective power sources: they can only ever be intermittent fuel-savers.
Burning fossil fuels does produce Carbon Dioxide CO2, but its warming effectiveness is radically diminished at higher concentrations. At its current level its warming effect is already ~80% effective. Any future Man-made CO2 emissions… Read more »
£2.9 trillion national debt; £100 billion a year borrowing of which £55 billion spent on servicing the debt.
The only thing being boosted is the amount of money flowing into the pockets (out if ours) of lenders on the Bond market.
By the way CBI – jobs are a cost. Anything that is a cost is a benefit.
If the value of output of a job exceeds the cost of input, we get richer, if not we get poorer.
The so-called Green jobs are not adding to the economy, they are replacing jobs already engaged in the same economic activity and are more expensive.
That was too technical for me. I would have liked a closer analysis of what exactly one million “green jobs” comprises as I expect it will be mainly a repackaging of traditional jobs which already existed but were moved to this artificial definition. Were the 22,000 small businesses also simply moved over or what?
But we know that most of these jobs have got bugger all to do with the death cult of which Milibrain is the high priest. They include the bin men who collect your recycling, which is nothing to do with carbon production but preserving resources. Some of this recycling requires more energy not less than making raw products. It includes plumbers who only spend a fraction of their time on green and most of their time on traditional plumbing. Car mechanics who service both hydrocarbon cars and electric cars. The whole thing, like every lie that the moron spouts, is a fiction, a fairy tale that would embarrass writers who do a modicum of research when they spin their works.
I had solar panels and a battery back-up system installed last year. Talking to one of the (self-employed) installers, he explained that he became an installer with the initial boom in solar when the feed in tariffs first started. He then pulled out when the boom diminished and the flow of easy money (his phrase) stopped.
He restarted about 2 yers ago and said he is now making a really good living working less than a full week on average.
My panel installation was far cheaper than in the past and although the costs of panels has fallen a bit, so I can only assume that the difference is made up with subsidies from HMG. This situation never seems to be explained in the official guff.
Last year I had a pair of panels of from the same manufacturer that I used in 2014. The unit price of each one was £184.60, c.f. £347.98 back then. And back in 2014 there was 5% VAT, but last year it was zero – a VAT exemption was in place then.
Government intervention in retail energy is not a price cap, it is a moving average, the effect of which, when wholesale prices are rising, is that it starves suppliers of cashflow hence the number which went bust.
Quite so. It is a certainty that price caps, if set below market price, will drive retailers out of the market because revenue is fixed, their costs are not.
Intervening in the market to favour and subsidise some producers at the expense of others, will similarly drive some out of the market causing supply shortages. This is why we have to import electricity.
Many gas plants are nearing end of operational life and need refurbishing. Investors will not invest where they will not get a return because gas cannot supply continuously but just as back-up so no guaranteed revenue stream, plus Government policy is to put them all out of business.
Price is fundamental to a properly functioning market, to balance supply with demand. As the Government has effectively done away with market pricing in electricity supply, pricing is not there to prevent over-supply so the market is over-crowded with suppliers getting above market rates. This is mis-allocation of resources.
Worse, because consumers cannot get the benefit from lower prices caused by over-supply, demand does not increase to absorb over-supply.
We saw thus with EU agricultural policy where intervention to keep farm prices and thus… Read more »
The fact that Treason May remains in the Conservative Party says all one needs to know. Every aspect of her ‘leadership’ was a disaster and a betrayal of this country. Yet she still sits in the HoLs representing the Tories.
The Tories have no intention of really changing. Given half a chance, they would welcome back the Lib Dems (and Miliband?), sing Kumbaya, and proclaim they are once again saving the planet. Never forgive, never forget.
One Kemi does not a summer make. Her tribe is still the same.