Tag Archives: green transition

British Labour Considers “Office for Net Zero”

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Sir Keir Starmer

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Never has a proposed Whitehall taskforce been so aptly named.

Election 2024: Labour to create new office for net zero in government to push green transition

Sources say the new office would demonstrate commitment to achieving clean power by 2030 and provide a key dividing line with the Tories.

Alexandra Rogers
Political reporter @Journoamrogers
Tuesday 25 June 2024 03:04, UK

Labour will ramp up its efforts to achieve net zero with a dedicated team of officials working to eliminate carbon emissions if it wins the election, Sky News understands.

The party’s transition team, led by Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray, is considering setting up an Office for Net Zero if it forms the next government, sources said, with a focus on delivering its aim for clean power as laid out in its manifesto.

It is not yet clear whether the new office would sit within the Cabinet Office – one of the key control centres in government alongside Number 10 and the Treasury – or under the the existing Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Desnez).

…

While Labour have announced moves to accelerate the move to net zero, including doubling onshore wind, tripling solar power and quadrupling offshore wind by 2030, Mr Sunak’s approach has been more cautious.

…Read more: 

https://news.sky.com/story/election-2024-labour-to-create-new-office-for-net-zero-in-government-to-push-green-transition-13156557

If only the Net Zero push had been around back when the BBC used to make comedy programmes.

In the famous BBC Sitcom “Yes Minister”, MP Jim Hacker and his adversary Permanent Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby ran the “Department of Administrative Affairs”, a fictional Whitehall ministry which had poorly defined responsibilities and achieved nothing significant during the entire series.

But “Office for Net Zero” beats “Department of Administrative Affairs” in terms of implied uselessness. I mean, there’s a vague expectation the “Department of Administrative Affairs” might actually be expected to achieve something. But “Office for Net Zero” – can you imagine a “Net Zero” progress report?

Labour leader Keir Starmer’s imminent administration was always destined to be a comedy special – radical green politicians using Karl Marx as their guide to fixing the economic failures of Britain’s energy market.

Don’t lose any important peripheral appendages to frostbite kind of humour.

But please keep the “Office for Net Zero” title for the crack team of bureaucrats who will lead the charge to make it all right. Writing future WUWT articles about the unfolding energy disaster at the “Office for Net Zero” would just be the cherry on the cake.

 Germany May Sales Of Electric Cars Plummet 30.6% Compared To Year Earlier

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From NoTricksZone

By P Gosselin

Back to fossil fuels!

The figures for the registration of new electric cars in Germany are looking increasingly awful. In May 2024, the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) reported that it had registered only 29,708 vehicles with electric motors.

May e-car sales in Germany plummet more than 30% compared to a year earlier. AI image Chat GPT. 

That is 30.6% down on the result for the same month last year.

CO2 emissions of new German cars also rose 3.3%…indicating the green transition has stalled and is reversing.

Hat-tip: Blackout News

The KBA also adds that 89,498 passenger cars were equipped with a gasoline engine – an increase of 2.1 percent compared to the same month last year.

44,893 new cars were diesel-powered, an increase of 3.2 percent compared to the same month last year.

71,451 new cars had a hybrid drive in May 2024, accounting for a share of 30.2% (-0.3%), including 14,038 plug-in hybrids (+1.7%/5.9%).

According to the KBA, the average CO2 emissions of new passenger car registrations rose by +3.3% and amounted to 124.0 g/km.

£300 Million Down The Drain For Trafford Storage–And Guess Who Pays?

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From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

More money down the drain!

UK Infrastructure Bank and British Gas-owner Centrica are the primary funders for Highview Power’s proposed liquid air energy storage plant next to the former Carrington Power Station off Manchester Road.

This would be the first commercial-scale liquid air energy storage plant in the UK, according to Highview. Constructing the facility will support more than 700 jobs both directly and in the supply chain, the company added.

The cryogenic energy storage plans have already received approval from Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.

“My vision is for Greater Manchester to be a leader in the green transition – and Highview Power’s decision to build one of the world’s largest long-duration energy storage facilities at Carrington is a huge boost for the region,” Burnham said.

“This new plant will deliver renewable energy to homes and businesses across our region and bring world-leading technology, jobs, skills, and investment to Greater Manchester.”

With the £300m secured, work is set to start “imminently” on the plant, according to a press release. When operational in early 2026, the facility should be able to store 300MWh of energy and distribute 50MWs per hour every for six hours.

Highview’s cryogenic energy storage facility would compress excess energy from solar and wind farms into air. This would then be liquified and frozen so that it can be stored for several weeks. When the energy is needed again, the liquid air is warmed up so it becomes a gas once more and, in the process, drives a generator-connected turbine – thus making the energy usable by the grid.

The plant would have an operational lifespan of at least 30 years, according to a planning statement from RSK in 2022 – which is when Trafford Council gave the project the go-ahead. You can view that planning application by searching reference number 108006/FUL/22 on the local authority’s planning portal.

Highview has spent the past 17 years creating the technology that makes the cryogenic energy storage plant possible. The company said that its energy storage programme is now capable of being deployed across the country at scale.

It is already planning four facilities that will be even larger than the one at Carrington. These would be capable of storing 2.5Gwh of energy. Building them would require an investment of £3bn.

£300m secured for Trafford cryogenic energy storage

If it was not for intermittent wind and solar power, we would not need to be wasting all of this money.

And for what? Six hours worth of power. That is hardly likely to keep the grid going for days on end when the wind stops blowing.

And it will, of course, be funded via our energy bills, one way or another. Why else would Centrica want to splash out hundreds of millions?

Even the 2.5 GWh mooted at a cost of £3bn would only keep the grid going for a couple of minutes. £3 billion pounds just for that?

And remember that storage creates no energy. You have to generate electricity for it to store in the first place, then spend a lot of money to store it, and worst of all you don’t even get all of your energy back out of it.

If someone could tell me of a more illogical proposition, I’d like to know!

John Kerry Pushes Massive Tax Rises to Meet the $13.6 trillion Climate Finance Challenge

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Squeezing the global economy dry to solve a fake problem.

The $13.6 trillion question: how do we pay for the green transition?

The public sector will have to provide about 30 per cent of climate finance globally, and the heat is building on governments to come up with ways of doing that.

…

The bill will be immense. If average global temperature rises are to be limited in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement, climate finance globally will need to increase to about $US9 trillion ($13.6 trillion) a year globally by 2030, up from just under $US1.3 trillion in 2021-22, according to a report last year from the Climate Policy Initiative.

…

Former US presidential candidate John Kerry, who stepped down from his role as the US special climate envoy in March, puts the challenge of meeting this bluntly: “We don’t have the money.”

The 80-year-old is now planning to turn his attention to climate finance to prepare for the phaseout of fossil fuels. “We have to put in place more rapidly the funding mechanisms that are going to actually fuel this transition at the pace it needs to be,” he says.

To do that, governments around the world are weighing up options from wealth taxes to levies on shipping. The US is planning to fund the IRA by raising $US300 billion over the decade by requiring large corporations to pay a 15 per cent minimum tax on their profits, as well as through a stock buyback tax, among other measures.

…Read more: https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/the-13-6-trillion-question-how-do-we-pay-for-the-green-transition-20240507-p5fpwo

The impact of the proposed tax squeeze on ordinary people would be unimaginable.

People in the USA and other Western nations are already reeling under the impact of excessive government spending on climate measures and other wasteful “investments” driving up inflation, coupled with the simultaneous attack on fuel and energy availability and cost. Adding to this burden would inflict hardship previously unknown outside of wartime or great calamities.

All for the sake of solving a problem which does not exist.

This is how great powers fall, not by the hand of a conqueror, but rotted from within by rulers who lose touch with reality, burdening the nation with their delusions, until the structure of society is crushed under the weight of unbridled incompetence. A conqueror, if they appear, merely delivers the final blow to a power which is on the brink of collapse. Let us hope it is not our turn to suffer that fate which has befallen so many throughout history.

UK Climate Advisor Accuses Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of “Stepping Back from the Transition”

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Falling between two stools? Backsliding on banning gasoline vehicles and green targets is enough to upset greens, but not enough to alleviate the green energy bill pain of ordinary Britons.

Sunak has ‘set Britain back’ on net zero, says UK’s climate adviser

Chris Stark, head of the Climate Change Committee, says Tories’ decision to dilute key green policies has had huge diplomatic impact

Michael Savage Policy editor Sun 21 Apr 2024 03.11 AEST

Rishi Sunak has given up Britain’s reputation as a world leader in the fight against the climate crisis and has “set us back” by failing to prioritise the issue in the way his predecessors in No 10 did, the government’s green adviser has warned.

Chris Stark, the outgoing head of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), said that the prime minister had “clearly not” championed the issue following a high-profile speech last year in which he made a significant U-turn on the government’s climate commitments. The criticism comes after Sunak was accused of trying to avoid scrutiny of Britain’s climate policies by failing to appoint a new chair of the CCC.

…

“It was presented to the country as a step back from going too fast on this transition,” Stark told the BBC. “In the speech itself, he talked a lot about the need to reappraise lots of the steps that take us to net zero. I think it set us back. I think we have moved from a position where we were really at the forefront, pushing ahead as quickly as we could on something that I believe to be fundamental to the UK economy, fundamentally beneficial to the people living in this country, whether you care about the climate or not.”

…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/20/sunak-has-set-britain-back-on-net-zero-says-uks-climate-adviser

Bringing energy price relief to ordinary people could actually claw back support for the British Conservatives.

Going pedal to the metal on the green transition could restore the faith of green supporters.

Trying to find a green policy compromise, where no compromise is possible, just upsets everyone, and will lead straight to the electoral disaster which the out of touch British Conservatives so richly deserve.

Net Zero’s dirty secret: Britain’s green transition is powered by Chinese coal

Tansport crates with Chinese flag on the conveyor belt. Global exportation concept.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

 New Statesman analysis of climate and trade data exposes how much the UK’s net-zero agenda depends on cheap foreign coal power, particularly from China.

The UK’s top four trade partners are Germany, the US, China and the Netherlands.

All four of these countries have a significantly larger share of coal-fired electricity in their energy supply than the UK does. This means that goods produced in factories in those countries will typically have a higher emissions footprint than those produced in UK factories.

China’s power grid is particularly carbon-intensive, with coal-fired power plants running 60 per cent of its grid. The UK has capitalised on cheap imports made using low-cost Chinese coal power, with imports from China to the UK more than doubling in value over the past decade.


For its part, China has positioned itself as a leader in the production of clean technologies such as batteries and solar panels (80 per cent of the global supply of which is manufactured in China). These too are made using cheap coal-fired electricity, which helps China to undercut other countries. China is also trying to dominate the extraction and processing of minerals key to the energy transition. It is responsible for 60 per cent of global production of rare earth elements, which are crucial for low-carbon technologies.“For other countries, the choice is between making use of China’s low-cost supply chain, but with the risk of reliance on China, or building their own supply chains using a combination of trade protectionism and subsidies to offset China’s subsidies and cost advantages,” said Lauri Myllyvirta of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
 
The UK’s reliance on China’s low-cost clean tech and mineral exports can be seen in HMRC trade data, which reveals how the UK imported large shares of its energy transition technologies and products from China in 2022 – including 64 per cent of rare earth metals and 49 per cent of lithium batteries.

Via its Belt and Road initiative, China was for many years by far the largest financier of new coal power plants worldwide – until Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, told the UN General Assembly in September 2021 that China would build “no new coal power plants abroad”. There have been loopholes, however, that have enable China to finance the construction of some coal-fired plants that power industrial facilities rather than the national grid. These are known as “captive” power plants.
 
China-backed captive power plants are a particularly significant phenomenon in Indonesia. The country uses captive coal power to smelt nickel, a metal central to the production of batteries used in electric vehicles. Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of nickel. A 2020 ban in Indonesia on the export of unprocessed nickel ore, designed to maximise the value of Indonesian nickel within Indonesia itself, has further increased demand in the country for nickel smelters powered by captive coal power plants.

Full story

Electric Vehicles and Africa: No Place for Rich Boys Toys

By Vijay Jayaraj

Electric vehicles (EVs) are a poster child for the so-called green transition. Even in some of the world’s poorest economies, an unquestioning embrace of all things “green” on the part of political elites powers a push for the adoption of electric vehicles.

Africa — considered to be the least developed continent — is inundated with a plethora of programs and voices fervently promoting EVs as its nations struggle with a gazillion existential issues stemming from the cruel fact that nearly half the population lives in poverty.

EV advocates lobby for subsidies to manufacturers, retailers, and purchasers of electric vehicles with no apparent consideration of the continent’s extremely poor access to electricity. Neither is there acknowledgement that a majority of Africans cannot afford conventional cars let alone pricey battery-powered ones.

No Country for Fancy Toys

A report from World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme (ESMAP) states that “the power system infrastructure [in developing countries] especially continues to provide defective services and is vulnerable to external shock.”

“Grids, on both transmission and distribution levels, are, in many cases, unreliable because of inadequate capacity, lack of maintenance and reinforcement, and a host of other operational issues,” the report said.

The upshot is grids in a majority of African nations are not able to support EV adoption. It is estimated that sub-Sahara Africa experiences nine power outages every month, each lasting for more than five hours. This is hardly service sufficiently adequate to make EVs reliable for daily transportation.

Reuters notes that even Africa’s most developed economy, South Africa, is “facing its worst power crisis on record, with a persistent electricity shortfall necessitating daily scheduled rolling blackouts — known locally as loadshedding — of up to 10 hours, for the past 18 months.” It’s ironic that the home country of the world’s largest EV car company owner (Elon Musk) has a decrepit power supply system.

Those experiencing blackouts at least have some access to electrical service. There are many others who have none.

According to the International Energy Agency, “The number of people without electricity (in sub-Saharan Africa) is almost back to historic highs, increasing from 580 million in 2019 to reach 600 million in 2022.” In the Central African Republic, only 6% of the entire population had access to electricity.

As of 2022, less than half of the population in the region had access to electricity. IEA’s data suggests that 660 million globally are projected to remain without electricity in 2030, “of which 85% or about 560 million people will be in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

In other words, we are dealing with a population that is yet to have electricity for basic lighting and appliances. Moreover, the situation will not improve substantially any time soon.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s poverty is another major barrier to the region’s widespread adoption of electric vehicles. The cost of even electric bikes is generally higher than that of their gasoline-powered counterparts. For many prospective buyers, this is a major deterrent.

Even if we are to assume that buyers will save money on fuel, most Sub-Saharan Africans simply cannot afford the upfront costs of electric vehicles. For most people in this region, internal combustion engines are a more practical option due to their relative affordability, superior availability of spare parts and ease of refuelling.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the push for electric vehicles is a diversion from the region’s more urgent problems. First among these is the people’s well documented poverty followed by related challenges such as inadequate electrification, unreliable power service, and the urgent need to address basic sanitation, nutrition, freshwater access, conventional mobility and economic development.

With General Motors and Ford Motor Co. cutting back EV production because of slow sales in the U.S. — the richest country on Earth — the promotion of EVs to Africans looks all the more ridiculous.

Originally first published at Real Clear Energy on November 05, 2023

Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, UK.

Country On Green Transition’s Leading Edge Will Fire Up Coal Plants To Meet Demand This Winter

A country on the forefront of the green transition will put several mothballed coal-fired power plants back online ahead of the upcoming winter, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday, says The Daily Caller.

(Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

By NICK POPE

Germany, which has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to enact the green energy transition, will reactivate several coal-fired units in order to meet peak demand and keep the lights on this winter, Bloomberg reported. The country has experienced elevated and inconsistent energy prices since Russia invaded Ukraine, impacting both German customers and companies.

The German government opted to go ahead with its plans to phase out its last nuclear reactors in April, and the war in Ukraine has resulted in diminished flow of relatively inexpensive natural gas from Russia, according to Bloomberg. German officials have cited safety concerns and a desire to focus on developing green energy as their rationale for shuttering the remaining reactors. (RELATED: ‘Political Suicide’: Germany Will Shutter Nuclear Plants Despite Looming Winter Shortages)

The country needed to rely on coal last winter once the flow of Russian gas had slowed, and supply is likely to be even tighter this winter now that the nuclear reactors are out of the picture, Bloomberg reported. The energy crisis and inconsistencies in the power market have contributed to the decisions of many companies to scale down their operations in Germany and look for more stable, affordable business environments in North America and Asia, according to Politico.

In June, German Economy and Energy Minister Robert Habeck warned that a future energy shortage could produce conditions in which “there is no secure scenario for how things will turn out” for the German economy. Habeck issued his warning ahead of the December 2024 expiration of a natural gas deal between Russia and Ukraine, which allows for Russian gas to flow into Western Europe.

Germany aims to achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2045, and the country relied on wind and solar power to provide about 32% of its energy in 2022, according to Statista.

The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Oil giant Shell warns cutting production ‘dangerous’

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Robin Guenier

Cutting oil and gas production would be “dangerous and irresponsible”, the boss of energy giant Shell has told the BBC.

Wael Sawan insisted that the world still “desperately needs oil and gas” as moves to renewable energy were not happening fast enough to replace it.

He warned increased demand from China and a cold winter in Europe could push energy prices and bills higher again.

Mr Sawan angered climate scientists who said Shell’s plan to continue current oil production until 2030 was wrong.

Professor Emily Shuckburgh, a climate scientist at the University of Cambridge, said firms such as Shell should focus on accelerating the green transition “rather than trying to suggest the most vulnerable in society are in any way best served by prolonging our use of oil and gas”.

Head of the UN António Guterres recently said investment in new oil and gas production was “economic and moral madness”.

Mr Sawan told the BBC: “I respectfully disagree.” He added: “What would be dangerous and irresponsible is cutting oil and gas production so that the cost of living, as we saw last year, starts to shoot up again.”

The world is in a race to ditch fossil fuels in favour of greener alternatives as globally leaders have pledged to keep the world from warming by more than 1.5C this century.

Last year the European Commission outlined how the EU would speed up its shift to green energy to end its dependency on Russian oil and gas.

Many countries do not have the infrastructure to move to more sustainable forms of energy.

Mr Sawan said an international bidding war for gas last year saw poorer countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh unable to afford liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments that were instead diverted to Northern Europe.

“They took away LNG from those countries and children had to work and study by candlelight,” he said. “If we’re going to have a transition it needs to be a just transition that doesn’t just work for one part of the world.”

The Committee of Climate Change found household gas appliances were linked to respiratory problems and cardiovascular disease.

Claire Fyson, co-head of climate policy at Climate Analytics, a global science and policy institute, told the BBC: “The idea that it’s a choice between our addiction to fossil fuels or working by candlelight is a gross misrepresentation of reality, when we know renewables are cleaner, cheaper and better for public health.”

The UK has pledged to spend £11.6bn on international climate finance but a memo seen by the BBC said economic shocks like the Covid pandemic had “turned a stretching target into a huge challenge”.

The head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, has said that “if governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal from now”.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66108553

Mr Sawan is of course perfectly right. The only way to get energy prices back to down to historical levels is to drill more. And as he says, the real losers in the last year have not been rich westerners, but the third world who have to go without energy because they cannot afford it.

But being the BBC, they have to flood the articles with the usual crackpots and charlatans, like Emily Shuckburgh, who is a mathematician not an energy or economics expert. Or Claire Fyson of Climate Analytics , which is a climate lobby group.

And the ludicrous CCC must be getting desperate to pretend that cheap gas boilers are damaging to your health, when the electric alternatives are unaffordable for most people, who will really will suffer without properly heated homes in winter.

Maybe next time, the BBC should ignore the charlatans and publish more comments from experts who understand the energy market.