Tag Archives: Climate Change Committee (CCC)

The Myth of “Net Zero”: Unmasking the Hollow Promises and Imposed Sacrifices on UK Citizens

From Watts Up With That?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/22/net-zero-has-become-unhelpful-slogan-says-outgoing-head-of-uk-climate-watchdog

The term “net zero” has devolved into nothing more than a convenient political slogan, says Chris Stark, the outgoing head of the UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) according to a recent Guardian Article.

His comments expose a facade that many have long suspected: the grandiose plans for a “green” economy are not only impractical but laden with hidden sacrifices for the everyday citizen.

A Convenient Escape from Reality

Stark’s admission that the term “net zero” might be better dropped because it has sparked a “dangerous” culture war is an astounding revelation of backpedaling. It appears that the climate agenda, once touted as the salvation of our environmental woes, is now a political hot potato that even its staunchest proponents are ready to drop when the going gets tough.

The populist response to the net zero label, described by Stark as a blockade to sensible improvements, conveniently omits a critical analysis of why such opposition exists. Could it be that the public has grown weary of being fed idealistic visions that fail to materialize into practical solutions?

The High Cost of Green Dreams

The U-turns by prominent UK politicians, such as the delayed changeover to electric vehicles and the watering down of financial commitments to green initiatives, are indicative of a broader trend. These reversals highlight a stark disconnect between policy promises and the realities of their implementation. The supposed minor lifestyle changes Stark alludes to under the net zero initiatives—like adopting heat pumps and shifting to electric vehicles—mask the significant financial and social costs that disproportionately burden the average household.

Tackling the climate crisis has been presented as a massive change, but Stark was at pains to point out that it would not be. “The world that we’ll have in 2050 is extremely similar to the one we have now. We will still be flying, we’ll still be eating meat, we will still be warming our homes, just heating them differently,” he said. “The lifestyle change that goes with this is not enormous at all.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/22/net-zero-has-become-unhelpful-slogan-says-outgoing-head-of-uk-climate-watchdog

Stark’s comments downplay the substantial lifestyle adjustments and economic sacrifices required from the public to meet these nebulous net zero targets. Suggesting that life in 2050 under net zero mandates will be “extremely similar” to today is either a gross underestimation of the changes being pushed or a deliberate attempt to pacify the populace with oversimplified and disingenuous assurances.

The Technology Trap

“It’s very strange that some see heat pumps as an enemy of the people,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian before leaving his post this Friday. “This is a remarkably sensible technology that we’ve known about for a long time, a straightforward technology to put in your house to keep it warm, or to keep it cool in the summer. But in this country, they’ve taken on a totally different totemic role, as a technology that is being somehow forced upon the populace. I think that’s very dangerous.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/22/net-zero-has-become-unhelpful-slogan-says-outgoing-head-of-uk-climate-watchdog

The push for technologies like heat pumps, which Stark defends as a “remarkably sensible technology,” does not acknowledge the broad resistance stemming from legitimate concerns about cost, effectiveness, and the imposition of such technologies on people without proper consultation or alternatives. Labeling this resistance as dangerous is a patronizing dismissal of valid consumer and citizen concerns, suggesting a disconnect between those formulating policies and those affected by them.

The Unrealistic Portrayal of Economic Benefits

“We are talking about cleaning up the economy and making it more productive – you can call that anything you like,” Stark said.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/22/net-zero-has-become-unhelpful-slogan-says-outgoing-head-of-uk-climate-watchdog

While Stark points to countries like China, the US, and the EU investing heavily in low-carbon technologies as models to emulate, he glosses over the complexities and challenges inherent in these transitions. The narrative that transitioning to a low-carbon economy will be largely beneficial and painless ignores the economic disruptions and job losses in industries reliant on fossil fuels.

Divisiveness and Policy Impositions

But it was not just those who were against climate action who were causing the problem, according to Stark. Climate activists were also alarming people, he warned, and creating “quite a serious barrier to large parts of the political spectrum to support climate action” by forceful protests, and presenting environmental policies as radical.

“It would be more helpful if they were less divisive,” he said. “I don’t think it is radical. It’s really important that we stop using words like that, as it is understandably frightening.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/22/net-zero-has-become-unhelpful-slogan-says-outgoing-head-of-uk-climate-watchdog

It is ironic that Stark criticizes climate activists for being divisive, as the policies he supports have themselves been incredibly divisive. Moreover, his call for policies that are “fair” and do not disproportionately impact those on lower incomes rings hollow when the track record of such policies shows a tendency to do precisely that.

Conclusion: A Call for Realism and Transparency

The narrative surrounding “net zero” as propagated by figures like Chris Stark has been one of oversimplification and, at times, outright deception. The sacrifices imposed on UK citizens under the guise of environmental progress involve significant lifestyle changes, economic burdens, and a curtailment of personal choices. As we move forward, a more grounded, transparent approach to environmental policy is necessary—one that honestly addresses the costs and challenges, engages with public concerns genuinely, and fosters policies that do not just serve the elite or technocratic visions detached from reality.

H/T strativarius

New calls for inquiry into Climate Change Committee

From NetZeroWatch

Campaign group Net Zero Watch is again calling for an inquiry into the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the Government’s official advisers on decarbonisation. The move follows revelations at the weekend that the organisation’s chief executive, Chris Stark, had tried to use obfuscation to “kill” questions over the adequacy of its energy system model, rather than addressing them directly. This behaviour put Stark in direct breach of the Nolan standards for public officeholders.

The scandal, published in the Sunday Telegraph, is just the latest of a series of controversies that have dogged the CCC since its inception.

Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:

The list of scandals at the Climate Change Committee seems to be endless, but Parliamentarians seem to want to let them get away with it. If the House of Commons Energy Security and Net Zero Committee again fails to launch an inquiry into the governance of the CCC, and in particular Chris Stark’s management and the adequacy of the modelling that underpinned the 2019 Net Zero report, it will look very bad.

We must end the Net Zero delusion before it’s too late

The green blob

Enough of the pretence. The current path threatens our economy, society and democracy, and we urgently need a change of direction.

Political obituaries will not be kind to Theresa May. But there is one unwritten law of modern British politics the former prime minister understood: you can be wrong on climate change, provided you are wrong in the right way.

Whisper that net zero by 2050 will have deleterious social and economic costs, and accusations of “denialism” will swiftly follow. Yet warn that the “house is on fire” and the end time is at hand, and you’ll probably be given a book deal. The Telegraph has the story.

Not only did May commit the UK to the 2050 target, but in the years since she has doggedly called for the Government to move faster. Last year, just months before we became the first economy to halve emissions since 1990, she claimed we were “falling behind”.  

Such attitudes are commonplace – and it will only get worse. Pity the prime minister in charge in 2033, when the sixth “Carbon Budget” kicks in, or in 2035, when electricity will apparently be fully decarbonised. A gulf now lies between the wishful thinking of the political class and economic reality, yet still the discourse is dominated by doomsday language and a worrying desire to silence dissent.

Consider the words of Climate Change Committee (CCC) boss Chris Stark, when asked for clarity over claims of a “mistake” (which it has denied) made by the body. “How’s this,” he told his team, “kill it with some technical language.” Like the clergy greedily collecting tithes from peasants unable to understand Latin, the green Blob seem to assume an unsuspecting public can be confused or shamed – usually both – into compliance.

The CCC, set up to advise government on climate policies, is useful to elected leaders eager to grandstand without taking responsibility or accountability for the choices they make for us. It allowed politicians to bypass the opportunity to scrutinise the 2050 target because they relied on the CCC’s apparently unchallengeable assessment that net zero was “necessary, feasible, cost-effective” and “achievable with known technologies”.

Yet in December, the OECD warned that the shift will leave our economy £60 billion – or 1.65 per cent – smaller. The idea that the green economy will lead to a jobs boom ignores the redundancies in those sectors that can never ride the net-zero wave, while the suggestion that the UK will be more prosperous and secure is difficult to square with our growing reliance on other countries for gas, oil, steel and the manufactures they rely on. It is time politicians ended the delusion that the current, top-down, centrally-planned approach to decarbonisation is the right one, and can be delivered at low cost.

Read the full story here.

Climate chief told staff to ‘kill’ negative net zero story

Chris Stark accused of obfuscation after being asked for clarity over claims of a mistake made by the Climate Change Committee.

The head of the Government’s climate watchdog told officials to “kill” a negative news story with “technical language”, The Telegraph can disclose.

Chris Stark, chief executive of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), drafted the response when asked for clarity over claims of a “mistake” made by the body. The Telegraph has the story.

“How’s this – kill it with some technical language,” he told his team.

The exchange was revealed in a Freedom of Information request submitted by The Telegraph after apparent obfuscation by the climate watchdog over a story published by The Telegraph in January.

It raises questions about the transparency of the committee, which has been pushing the Government to impose more radical net zero targets.

Mr Stark, a senior public servant whose pay package amounts to more than £170,000 per year, is bound by the Nolan Principles of Public Life, which require “openness” and “accountability”.

David Jones, a Tory member of the Commons public administration committee and former Cabinet minister, said: “Chris Stark steps down as chief executive of the CCC next month. Before he goes, he has some serious questions to answer.

“On the face of it, urging colleagues to ‘kill’ a reasonable request for information with technical language looks very much like an attempt at obfuscation.

“Mr Stark will undoubtedly understand the crucial importance of academic integrity when addressing such an important issue as climate change. A full and immediate explanation is called for.”

On-the-record denials removed

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business and energy secretary, said: “This seems outrageous – a public servant seeking directly to obfuscate. At least Sir Humphrey did it subtly.”

Mr Stark’s comments were made in private emails exchanged within the CCC after The Telegraph contacted the body for a response to a planned article in January.

The article reported a claim by Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, who led a recent Royal Society study on future energy supply, that the CCC had privately admitted that it made a “mistake” when it only “looked at a single year” of data showing the number of windy days in a year when it made pronouncements on the extent to which the UK could rely on wind and solar farms to meet net zero targets.

Referring to The Telegraph’s initial query about Sir Chris’s comments on Thursday, Jan 18, Mr Stark told staff: “I’m happy with a short response. If you need more, here’s what I suggest. But it may just feed the beast – so less may be more here.”

He added that the Royal Society would be “very embarrassed about this”, and one of his officials contacted the body to alert them.

An unnamed individual – apparently a representative of the Royal Society – stated that Sir Chris “says the comments about privately conceding a mistake were made to him by Chris Stark”.

In the internal emails, Mr Stark insisted to staff that “we absolutely have not conceded that there’s a ‘mistake’ in our work”.

But, despite repeated questions from The Telegraph about whether he did make the comments described by Sir Chris, Mr Stark removed suggested on-the-record denials from the body’s response, telling staff: “No need to fuel a fight.”

‘We stand by the analysis’

In emails to The Telegraph, the CCC said Sir Chris’s comments, in a presentation given in a personal capacity in October, following the publication of his review, related solely to a particular report it published last year on how to deliver “a reliable decarbonised power system”.

But The Telegraph pointed out that its original recommendations in 2019 about the feasibility of meeting the 2050 net zero target were also based on just one year’s worth of weather data. The recommendations were heavily relied on by ministers when Theresa May enshrined the 2050 target into law.

The Telegraph put several questions to the CCC, including asking to what extent the 2019 recommendations – and the predicted cost of the 2050 target – would have been different had they relied on a greater amount of weather data.

Read the full story here.

Climate Change Committee’s Net Zero Plan Involves Pumping Compressed CO2 With Energy of 500 Hiroshima Bombs into the Ground Every Year. Are They Mad?

From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS JOHNSON

In the last few weeks a number of serious errors have come to light in the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) plan for Net Zero. The CCC plan was published mid-2019 in a document titled ‘Net Zero Technical Report’.

In summary, the CCCs plan for Net Zero is to shift transport and heating from using petrol, diesel and gas to using electricity and then to decarbonise the electricity grid.

To decarbonise the grid, it is assumed that electricity will be generated using nuclear and renewables. During periods when nuclear, wind and solar cannot meet demand, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) will be deployed to remove CO2 emissions as the electricity must be generated using gas.

Carbon Capture and Storage is a new and untested technology that has never been deployed at scale anywhere on earth. However, it is clear from the CCC’s report that CCS plays a major roll in achieving Net Zero. As I reported in a previous article, regardless of this being an untested technology, the U.K. only plans to build a quarter of the required capacity to hit Net Zero by 2050 (the plan requires the U.K. to capture and store 176Mt of CO2 annually).

Nevertheless, our Government envisages significant CCS capacity at 50Mt annually. Carbon Capture and Storage involves filtering CO2 from the exhaust produced from gas turbines used to generate electricity, then piping the captured CO2 to plants that compress the gas into a liquid before it is then injected into underground storage areas around the U.K.

Compressed CO2 is currently being commercialised as a way to store energy for use in periods when nuclear and renewables are unavailable. The company Energy Dome has developed a working 4MWh system in Sardinia, Italy. The company says its technology has an energy storage density 10-20 times higher than other compressed air energy storage (CAES) solutions and two-thirds that of liquid air energy storage (LAES).

The CCC’s plan requires vast quantities of CO2 to be compressed and stored under the U.K. Given this potential energy could be released at any time should something go wrong, it seems sensible to consider the safety implications of Carbon Capture and Storage.

Energy Dome has recently raised $11m and is building a larger 100MWh system. Its 100MWh store requires about 2,000 tonnes of CO2. This means the company is expecting to store 0.05MWh of energy per tonne of compressed CO2. Using this energy density, the CCC’s plan to store 176Mt per year will mean 8.8TWh of potential energy is being trapped beneath the U.K. annually. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima exploded with an energy of about 15 kilotons of TNT or 0.0174TWh. Therefore the energy we will be storing under our feet is equivalent to 505 Hiroshima bombs every year or the energy released by 16 magnitude seven earthquakes per year.

Fracking is currently banned in the U.K. due to the risk of causing earth tremors. The planned Carbon Capture and Storage facilities are of an altogether different magnitude. Fracking can be stopped in an instant if a problem is detected. Obviously, if there is an issue with 505 Hiroshima bombs worth of energy under our feet, we cannot just release this vast amount of trapped energy.

No one knows what the effects may be of creating a whole series of high pressure areas in the earth beneath our feet, it has never been done at this scale.

There are other issues. CO2 is a colourless and odourless gas that is about 1.5 times heavier than air.

In addition to the asphyxiation hazard of CO2 displacing oxygen in the air, the inhalation of elevated concentrations of CO2 can increase the acidity of the blood, triggering adverse effects on the respiratory, cardiovascular and central nervous systems. A CO2 concentration of around 5% by volume in air may cause headaches, dizziness, increased blood pressure and difficulty breathing within a few minutes. If concentrations above 17% by volume in air are inhaled, this could cause loss of purposeful activity, unconsciousness, convulsions, coma and death within one minute.

The Lake Nyos disaster saw massive release of carbon dioxide from Lake Nyos in Cameroon on August 21st 1986.

The 1.6 million tonne cloud of magmatic gas was deadly, and a count of the fatalities indicated that 1,746 people, most from villages by the lake, had been asphyxiated by it, along with some 3,000 cattle and innumerable birds, insects and other animals. The bodies of the dead showed no signs of trauma or struggle; these people had simply died where they were.

The CCS plan means vast quantities of CO2 are going to be piped around the U.K. and ultimately injected into the ground. By 2050 we will be dealing with over 110 times the amount of CO2 released in the volcanic event that took place at Lake Nyos, every single year.

Of course to actually achieve Net Zero the CCC state we will need to store 176Mt of CO2 by 2050. That’s 3.5 times more than we have just been discussing.

As the years go by, the risks increase. The Carbon Capture and Storage plan means that every five years we will be pumping just shy of one billion tonnes of CO2 into the earth beneath our feet.

Does that sound like a smart move to you? What will your children and grandchildren think? They’re going to be stuck with this issue for ever.

As any commercial glass house grower will tell you, the plants on earth are currently pretty much starving. During daylight hours glass houses maintain CO2 levels that are double to three times more than our current historically low levels of atmospheric CO2. Plants have evolved for hundreds of millions of years; the fact they are adapted to thrive in an atmosphere with three times our current CO2 levels is a pretty good indicator that CO2 ain’t the problem.

CO2 is fundamental to all life on earth, but as we have seen with the Lake Nyos disaster, it is also capable of taking life if there is enough of it available in one place. Perhaps storing billions of tonnes of the stuff under our feet is just plain stupid, regardless of the reason?

Net Zero Crisis Deepens as Government Says it is Only Planning to Build a QUARTER of the Carbon Capture Capacity Needed to Hit Green Target

From The Daily Sceptic

By CHRIS JOHNSON

Last month the scandal broke that the Climate Change Committee (CCC) relied on just one year’s wind data when it advised MPs in 2019 that the U.K. would be able to rely on wind and solar power by 2050. This is despite U.K. annual wind varying by 39% from its maximum to its minimum during the period 2009-2022.

Now, it turns out that this error, major as it is, is a mere footnote compared with the much bigger problem of the mismatch between the CCC’s advice regarding carbon capture and storage and the Government’s stated intentions.

The U.K.’s ambition to achieve Net Zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 is heavily reliant on carbon capture and storage technology to remove all the CO2 that the country will still be producing.

According to the CCC report (see below), by 2050 the U.K. will need to be able to store 176 Mt of CO2 in order to achieve Net Zero emissions.

However, as things stand the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) states that by 2050 the U.K. will only have capacity to store 50 Mt of CO2, which is just over a quarter (28%) of what the CCC says is needed, falling 126 Mt short:

The U.K. is a first mover; we are aiming to support the establishment of two CCUS [carbon capture, usage and storage] clusters by the mid-2020s and a further two by 2030, through which we aim to capture 20-30 Mt CO2 per year. The long-term ambition is to reach 50 Mt CO2 annually by 2050. [emphasis added]

This massive shortfall guarantees that Net Zero cannot be achieved by 2050. Furthermore, it would in no way be possible to undertake the engineering and groundworks to build all that missing CO2 storage capacity by 2050, even if the U.K. had the money to fund it, which it does not.

There are of course all number of reasons why Net Zero is unachievable, unnecessary and unjustifiably costly. But the chasm between the amount of carbon capture the CCC says is needed to hit the target and the amount the Government actually thinks it will have available at the time means Net Zero is unachievable even on the Government’s own terms. It means that it doesn’t matter how much the Government cripples U.K. industry and drives it overseas, how successful it is in replacing dependable fossil fuels with intermittent renewables, it will never hit Net Zero by 2050 or anywhere close to it and has no credible plan to do so.

Do MPs and ministers realise this? The danger is that once they are alerted to the issue they will see it as a reason to redouble efforts to slash emissions and accelerate the building of carbon storage capacity. Of course, what they should do is add it to the ever-growing list of why Net Zero is a terrible idea that needs replacing with a proper energy policy that prioritises prosperity and security for the long term.

Stop Press: The Executive Chairman of Fortescue Metals, Andrew Forrest has said carbon capture is a “complete falsehood” that will never work. The Australian billionaire told the 50th anniversary meeting of the International Energy Agency: “We’re going to keep burning fossil fuels and somehow magically get rid of the carbon down into the ground where there is no proof that it will stay there, but heaps of proof that it fails. I say for policymakers everywhere, do not be the next idiot waiting for the old lie to be trotted out and say I believe in carbon sequestration. It has only failed for 75 years… It’s a complete falsehood.”

More Revelations Emerge of How the Climate Change Committee Dupes Parliament into Voting for Net Zero Measures

Having been caught using just one high wind year to persuade British parliamentarians to donkey-nod through an insane rush to Net Zero in 2019, interest is growing in some of the other stunts pulled by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) to promote the green collectivist agenda. In 2020, the CCC used a supposed finding of the Citizen Climate Assembly to promote to Parliament the idea – found in its Sixth Carbon Budget – that meat and dairy consumption should be cut by up to 40%. In fact only a third of the 108-strong assembly discussed the matter, and only 10 people expressed priority support for such severe reductions in the diet. The assembly was largely curated by the CCC, while £200,000 of funding for the event organiser was supplied by the European Climate Foundation, a green activist operation drawing heavy financial support from Extinction Rebellion funder Sir Christopher Hohn.

The CCC’s Sixth Carbon Budget identified the drastic legal pathways the U.K. Government must follow to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide during the years 2033 to 2037. Everything must go it seems in the unreal world of Net Zero, despite the fact that human activity – and survival – depends on exploiting the Earth’s natural resources. “The experience of the U.K. Climate Assembly shows that if people understand what is needed and why, if they have options and can be involved in the decision-making process, they will support the transition to Net Zero,” states the CCC.

The investigative journalist Ben Pile broke the meat story and wondered at the time how just 10 individuals can be used to somehow represent the wishes of 66 million people. Needless to say, poodle media took the bone with Roger Harrabin of the BBC writing that members thought politicians should encourage people to eat up to 40% less meat.

The assembly was set up by a number of Parliamentary committees to include 108 members of the public invited for six weekend sessions around the time of the first Covid lockdown in 2020. Three were held in Birmingham and three by Zoom. The Chief Executive of the CCC, Chris Stark, was one of the four main organisers and one of the four ‘Expert Leads’. The leads chose the speakers who addressed the gathering. What transpired, of course, was 12 days of relentless eco propagandising. Just 35 members of the Assembly discussed the ‘what we eat’ issue and, noted Pile, listened to one speaker who said the following:

We know that red and processed meat is associated with a number of health conditions so it’s linked to heart disease, it’s linked to strokes, it’s linked to particular types of cancer like bowel cancer, it is also linked to diabetes. Whereas on the other hand, eating fruit and vegetables is linked to prevention of all these conditions, so the more fruit and vegetables you eat, you are less likely to suffer from those diseases.

Alas, when it came to a vote on eight options, only 29% of the group, or 10 members, chose eating less meat as a priority. In fact it was the second least popular option.

Mike Thompson was the Chief Economist of the CCC and the lead author of its Sixth Carbon Budget. He put a slightly different spin on the ball:

The Climate Change Assembly said it would be happy with a 20-40% reduction in meat consumption. We’ve looked really carefully at the Climate Assembly recommendations and actually we were quite engaged in the process as well. If you take the time to guide people through this, to explain why the changes are needed, to explain the sorts of things that need to happen, they’re really supportive of action, and actually we were really surprised how supportive they were of late of the things we were thinking of already.

Quite what planet people like Thompson operate on is not clear, but a good case can be made that extreme eco activists like him, indeed anyone associated with the Climate Change Committee, should not be allowed anywhere near the machinery of public policy and Government. The agenda of Net Zero, with its capacity to wreak havoc on economic and social lifestyles, is far too important to be left to public sector extremists and lazy Parliamentarians content to follow a Net Zero narrated plan. The push to 100% Net Zero was rushed through with barely an hour’s debate in the House of Commons in 2019, with MPs relying on advice from the CCC that there would be just seven days a year when wind turbines produced less than 10% of their potential electricity output. This of course helped play down the enormous cost of storage required for intermittent wind and solar power. Net Zero Watch has noted not seven, but 30 such days in 2020, 33 in 2019 and 56 in 2018.

Always in the background, as we have reported in the Daily Sceptic on numerous occasions, is the seemingly unlimited supply of elite billionaire money to buy influence with politicians, media and academia. Although set up by Parliament and curated by the CCC, the billionaire money was still in evidence at the Climate Assembly with £200,000 given specifically to Involve, the event organiser. Step forward with the cash, the European Climate Foundation whose other good works include backing for the Labour Climate and Environment Forum and the Conservative Environment Network. This latter operation runs a caucus composed of around half the backbench MPs of the ruling Conservative party, dedicated, it is noted, to supporting Net Zero ‘champions’.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Climate Change Committee boss “should have been fired”

From Net Zero Watch

Campaign group Net Zero Watch has welcomed the resignation of Chris Stark, the chief executive of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), but says he should have been fired years ago.

Stark controversially oversaw the preparation of the Net Zero report, which was the economic and scientific justification for the complete decarbonisation of the economy, but was subsequently shown to have been a deception.[1]

Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:

The public have remunerated Mr Stark to a total of over a million pounds over his term of office, an astonishing sum for running an organisation with a staff of around 40 people. In return, he oversaw the production of a “dodgy dossier” of policies that have led to the ruin of the economy. It’s good that he is gone, but he should have been summarily dismissed many years ago.”

Extraordinarily, it seems that Mr Stark may be moving to an even more lucrative position in the Green Blob, as CEO of the Carbon Trust. But according to Mr Montford, the appointment raises ethical concerns:

Mr Stark’s colleague at the CCC, Baroness Brown, has apparently appointed him to run the Carbon Trust, where she is chairman, and where the last CEO earned over £400,000. It’s clear that these eco-quangocrats are just lining their pockets. Claire Coutinho needs to institute a programme of reform of all these institutions. It’s obscene, the way ministers allow them to rip us all off.

[1] The cost of Net Zero was shown to have been kept artificially low by use of concocted assumptions on wind speeds and EV prices. See:

Net zero is about to get even more painful

1 Comment

Few would challenge the need to decarbonise – but our current approach will be economically ruinous

By ANNABEL DENHAM

Human beings are an adaptable species – which is fortunate, given that modern-day politicians incessantly foist new laws, rules and regulations on us.

In few areas of public policy is this more exhaustive than net zero. So we’ve grown accustomed to paying 50p for a plastic bag in some supermarkets. Driving in many cities now brings an array of charges, and that’s before bewildered motorists accidentally stray into a new bus or cycle lane, yet still we just shrug. The Telegraph has the story.

As of October this year, single-use plastic straws, bowls, trays and cutlery have been banned, but seldom do we complain.

And the wider green drive is paying dividends, of sorts. This week it was reported Britain has become the first major economy to halve its carbon emissions. Curiously, the news has not been widely shared nor lauded by the nation’s usually noisy eco-fanatics. Perhaps it doesn’t fit their common refrain that the Government “isn’t doing anything” about climate change.

Some people may think this reduction has been painless, but they’d be wrong. While the minor inconveniences can be downplayed, the costs should not be.

Green levies now make up a significant proportion of energy bills. Restrictions on new North Sea developments and a windfall tax are likely to have combined to drive up energy bills further at a time when the post-Covid rebound and war in Ukraine had already sent them soaring.

Progress on environmental aims may have been aided by the failure of successive governments to build homes and lockdowns, but those policies have themselves wrought enormous harm on the UK economy.

It has, however, been relatively straightforward. The decarbonisation of power and offshoring of heavy industry, for instance, accelerated an existing trend. The consumption of intermittent renewables was able to increase because fossil fuels could be relied on to provide baseload power.

The next half will be much more difficult, clobbering the economy and imposing massive costs on the consumer. Conscious that the public’s patience may begin to wear thin, the Prime Minister earlier this year promised a more “pragmatic, proportionate and realistic approach” to net zero. This primarily involved pushing back the deadline for the end of new petrol and diesel cars and the phasing out of gas boilers – but even the new 2035 date will be a stretch.

Despite the subsidies and the exemptions from resident parking permits or congestion charges, only a small proportion of vehicles in the UK are currently electric.

The charging infrastructure is hopelessly inadequate and battery duration is prohibitive for many. Meanwhile, the Government is shovelling money towards homeowners to boost heat pump uptake, yet is falling far short of its annual installation targets.

The bigger problem is that Rishi Sunak has far less wriggle room than he might have voters believe.

If the 2050 net zero target – the most consequential economic policy decision for generations, made by a piece of secondary legislation without a proper parliamentary debate – wasn’t restrictive enough, the Government is obliged to set binding, five-year carbon budgets which cap the maximum amount of emissions allowed during each period. Ministers face legal action if they fail to do enough to reach them, as judged in part by the apparatchiks on the Climate Change Committee (CCC) quango.

We are currently on the fourth (2023-27) carbon budget, which requires a 52pc fall in emissions compared with 1990. This might be achievable, but the fifth and sixth (involving a 77pc fall by 2037) surely won’t be, at least not without a walloping blow to our economy, freedoms and living standards.

In its sixth Carbon Budget Paper, the CCC, which ostensibly provides advice to the Government but often acts more like an eco-activist NGO, advises homeowners to turn on their heating in the afternoon, so that they can turn it off again in the evening when demand for electricity is higher. Rishi Sunak was ridiculed when, in September, he announced there will be no tax on meat nor new levies on aviation, as though such ideas were preposterous.

And yet they’re right there in this document, which says that around 10pc of emissions saving will come from “changes that reduce the demand for carbon-intensive activity” – particularly “an accelerated shift in diets away from meat and dairy products… slower growth in flights, and reductions in travel demand”. Will the public tolerate such radical changes to their lifestyles, ones that may not even be necessary?

Few would challenge the need to decarbonise, but our current, highly dirigiste approach will be economically ruinous. There will be huge waste, with the taxpayer footing the bill: when the Government asked the economist Dieter Helm to look into what it was doing to meet the net zero target, he concluded that up to £100bn had been squandered, largely from investment in technologies which hadn’t matured to the point where they were cheaper than the alternative.

Read the full story here.

Chris Packham issues legal challenge against Rishi Sunak

Lower CO2 emissions to limit global warming and climate change. Concept with manager hand turning knob to reduce levels of CO2. New technology to decarbonize industry, energy and transport

From Tallbloke’s Talkshop

October 6, 2023 by oldbrew 

Climate lawfare by carbophobes again. ‘The ball is in your court, Prime Minister’. At the same time the Scottish Nationalists have reported the PM to the police over comments in his conference speech.
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Chris Packham has sent a legal challenge to the Prime Minister over his decision to delay the phase-out of new gas boilers and petrol and diesel cars, reports The National (via Yahoo News).

If Rishi Sunak does not reverse the changes he announced last month, Packham said he will apply to the High Court to challenge this in a judicial review – arguing that such a delay is unlawful given the Government is required to follow a series of carbon budget plans on the way to becoming net zero by 2050.

The Prime Minister said the sale of new fossil fuel cars will not be phased out in 2030 but in 2035 and that only 80% of gas boilers will need to be phased out by that date, instead of 100%.

He said that because the UK has so far decarbonised faster than other developed countries, it can afford to relax its net-zero policies, telling the country that the approach to net zero is imposing “unacceptable costs on hard-pressed British families” that “no one was ever told about”.

Packham said this change of direction was made without any public consultation, without informing parliament or the Climate Change Committee (CCC) – which advises the Government on how to meet its carbon budgets.

He said the Prime Minister is “playing populist politics with the future of life on Earth”, adding: “Even before this spontaneous, ill-judged and – we contend – unlawful announcement, the UK Government’s plans to meet its legal net-zero commitments were shambolic and destined to failure.

“Its own Climate Change Committee’s last report said that continued delays in policy development and implementation meant reaching those targets was increasingly challenging.

“It also highlighted a lack of urgency across government, a worrying hesitancy and lack of political leadership on the climate issue.”

Full report here.