France’s Economy Minister slams EU’s ‘no longer wanted’ renewable targets

So-called climate targets are once more proving to be a recipe for trouble wherever they appear. With a large nuclear fleet for its electricity generation, France is calling EU demands “the Europe we no longer want” and ignoring its directives, incurring the wagging finger of warning from Brussels.
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The EU’s renewable energy targets adopted in March last year are too restrictive and unsatisfactory as climate goals, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire, who took over the Energy portfolio in a recent government reshuffle, said on Monday (4 March).

Despite repeated requests from the European Commission, France remains opposed to the calculation method used by Brussels to set targets for the use of renewable energy, says Euractiv.

“The targets can no longer be to have so many windmills here, so many photovoltaic panels here,” Le Maire said on Monday, criticising “the Europe we no longer want”.

Britain to harness power of Sahara solar farms using world’s biggest cable-laying ship

‘The project has already been declared one of “national significance” by Claire Coutinho, the Energy Secretary, who has also set a team of civil servants to work on it’, says the story. A claim of ‘near-constant’ electricity supply from one of the project team sounds a tad optimistic. Sandstorms are not unheard of in the Sahara region, for example. [Click on image to enlarge]
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A project to power Britain using solar farms thousands of miles away in the Sahara is moving a step closer to fruition as its backers prepare to commission the world’s biggest cable-laying ship, says The Telegraph.

The 700ft vessel will lay four parallel cables linking solar and wind farms spread across the desert in Morocco with a substation in Alverdiscott, a tiny village near the coast of north Devon.

Once completed, the scheme is expected to deliver about 3.6 gigawatts of electricity to the UK’s national grid – equating to about 8pc of total power demand.

‘Our old way of life will be gone forever’: The tenant farmers targeted by solar developers

Just 0.1% of farmland is currently taken by solar panels – similar to the area claimed by Christmas trees (says Sky). But if solar developers get their way, backed by climate-obsessed politicians, tenant farmers could be facing a fate like the notorious Highland clearances when crofters were forcibly evicted from their smallholdings to make way for sheep farming. Goodbye to the bother of rent collection, hello bigger profits.
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It’s a frosty morning on Kidsley Farm in Derbyshire, a rare thing in this unusually warm winter, says Sky News.

Andrew Dakin’s beef herd is housed in the old brick barns, their breath steaming in the chill air. Alongside scuttling chickens and tractors of varying vintages, this is the very image of a traditional farmyard.

But for how long? Andrew is a tenant farmer and his landlord, who owns the land, wants to turn his pasture into a solar farm.

Belgian central banker claims climate fight will leave EU poorer — upsets Green chief

Is the EU’s attempt to ‘confront climate change’, as some see it, with a so-called energy transition creating an economic millstone round the necks of countries in the form of high industrial energy costs? Such costs are likely to go even higher on present policy trends.
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The co-president of the Greens/EFA European parliamentary group, Philippe Lamberts, rebuked recent warnings by the head of Belgium’s central bank that the green transition will make Europe poorer, saying that anyone who does not see the transition as a matter of survival should give the floor to “more serious people”, reports Euractiv.

Talking to Euractiv on Tuesday (13 February), Lamberts challenged Pierre Wunsch’s remarks to the European Parliament’s plenary session on Tuesday that EU policymakers needed to be “more candid” about the climate transition being “a negative supply shock that will reduce [Europe’s] growth potential”.

“If we start saying that basically we cannot afford to invest for [our own] survival then I believe that we need to have a discussion with more serious people,” Lamberts rebutted. [That] Europe should engage full-on in the green transition to me cannot be questioned. It’s a matter of environmental and economic survival.”

Contesting Wunsch’s prediction that the energy transition would not make Europeans “collectively richer”, the Greens MEP said Europe’s failure to confront climate change would be tantamount to “collective suicide”.

Jean-Marc Nollet, co-president of Belgian environmental party Ecolo, echoed Lambert’s warnings.

“It is the absence of a [green] transition that will impoverish Europe and its citizens,” Nollet told Euractiv. “A society that does not invest in the transition is a society that condemns its companies. Conversely, investing means being a pioneer, relocating, and capturing the jobs of tomorrow.”

The price of inaction
Nollet added that Wunsch “should know what the scientists are telling us”, namely that “the cost of inaction is five times higher than the cost of action”.

Antoine Oger, research director at the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP), said yet more daunting forecasts are set to come from a European Environmental Agency (EEA)’s report showing that the accumulated costs of inaction could prove significantly more severe – as much as “one hundred times higher than mitigation measures”.

“It is now clearly cheaper to save the planet than to ruin it.”
. . .
Industrial woes
Wunsch’s remarks, however, channelled widespread worries around the effects the transition will yield on different sectors.

On the industrial front, he suggested that high energy prices may have made European industrial firms permanently uncompetitive compared to those in China and America.

“Before the war in Ukraine [European natural gas] was at around €20 [per MWh]. The new normal is between €30 and €50 [per MWh], and if you add to that carbon capture or the cost of blue hydrogen you need to add another €20 to €30 [per MWh].”

That compares with US natural gas at €10 per MWh, which would make European energy “about five to eight times more expensive than in the US. So yes, one might ask: Is there a future in the EU for energy-intensive firms?”

Full report here.

Labour to ditch £28bn green prosperity plan – Sky News

Maybe the vast scale of anti-net zero protests around Europe has given them cold feet, plus the general lack of enthusiasm for such extravagant so-called climate policies among UK voters battling the fast-rising cost of living.
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Labour is ditching its policy of spending £28bn a year on its green investment plan, Sky News understands.

The policy will not be dropped altogether, but the party is ditching the financial target to spend £28bn a year on environmental schemes.

Labour will put this down to uncertain public finances and is also likely to say that this is the outcome of finalising ideas for their manifesto for the next general election, expected later this year.

Face It: The Energy Transition Ain’t Happening — Manhattan Contrarian

Wind power and EV sales stalling or in retreat, while coal, oil and gas advance. Things are not going according to the climate alarm script, despite assorted government interventions.
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If you are at all interested in matters of climate and energy, you have probably read hundreds of articles over the past few years about the inevitability of the coming energy transition, says the Manhattan Contrarian.

A piece of the claimed inevitability is that all good and decent people support this transition as a matter of moral urgency; but it’s not just that.

Nor is it just that government backs the transition with all its coercive powers, from subsidies to mandates to regulations. No, most importantly, the transition is said to have become inevitable due to unstoppable economic forces.

Ofgem to investigate claims of UK wind farms overcharging billpayers £millions

Scottish offshore wind project [image credit : urbanrealm.com]

We knew wind farms were also subsidy farms but this could be even worse. Why ‘regulators’ need to get informed by the media before noticing anything wrong, or potentially wrong, is another question.
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Energy regulator Ofgem is investigating the claim that wind farms may have incorrectly added close to £51m to taxpayer bills since 2018, says CityAM.

A Bloomberg report found that 40 out of 121 studied projects overstated their output by ten per cent on average and one-sixth (27) of wind farms were found to be overstating by at least 20 per cent.

Ofgem said it was investigating the alleged behaviour and has asked the Energy System Operator (ESO) to look into the matter.

Gwythian Prins: National security concerns must take precedence over the climate

There is a respectable peacetime economic case for closing the Port Talbot blast furnaces and ceasing production of basic oxygen steel (BOS) in the United Kingdom and it is set out by the leading trade economist Catherine McBride. She shows how much British steel-making of any type has declined by volume, and how chronically dependant what remains is upon imported raw materials. She also explains how much EAF – electric arc furnace – steel production from recycled scrap has increased worldwide: for example, 70% of American steel in 2022 came from that source. Finally, she shows how globally dominant China and India have become in BOS, as witness 90% of China’s 1 billion ton steel production in 2022. China and India have massive economies of scale, and also access to domestically controlled raw materials, giving end-to-end control: in the Chinese case, both coking coal and iron ore, and in the Indian case, iron ore but with need to import coking coal. In contrast, the UK currently has to import both ore and coking coal at scale to feed the condemned blast furnaces.

Finance problem for Labour’s ‘green power by 2030’ pledge

Cost won’t be the only problem, as weather dependency increases with the percentage of renewables in the electricity generation system, alongside the reduction of thermal power plants. Ploughing on with ‘net zero’ type policies in the face of all the costs and risks seems to have broad appeal in UK political circles.
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Ed Balls has predicted that Sir Keir Starmer will ditch Labour’s flagship £28 billion green pledge, says The Telegraph.

The former Labour shadow chancellor said that the party will need to make a “big U-turn” on the figure to shut down the Tory attack line that Labour will be irresponsible with Britain’s finances.

Sir Keir initially pledged to borrow £28 billion annually to fund green projects from year one if the party were to win power, but has repeatedly watered down that commitment over recent months.

Net zero setback: UK decommissioned onshore gas field fails hydrogen storage safety check – ‘numerous barriers’

Eco house with hydrogen heating technology. [Image credit: emergingrisks.co.uk]

Sounds like game over for that site. Back to the drawing board for the climate obsessed UK government.
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A study exploring the potential of a decommissioned gas field in Scotland as a major hydrogen store has highlighted concerns over potential leaks and recommended that it shouldn’t be used, says the University of Aberdeen (via Phys.org).

Research led by Professor John Underhill at the University of Aberdeen and Malcolm Butler at the UK Onshore Geophysical Library (UKOGL) concluded that the Cousland gas field in Midlothian fails to meet the criteria for safe subsurface storage.

The site near Dalkeith in Midlothian, which was decommissioned in the 1960s, has been highlighted by other academic studies as a potential contender for large-scale hydrogen storage to help meet national net zero ambitions.

French ‘rubbing their hands’ as Britain forced to import £1.5bn of electricity

Another expensive and wasteful result of ‘net zero’ climate obsession in government, as the much vaunted renewables policy continues to prove fatally flawed, no matter how much is spent on it. One obvious problem with wind power is that the times of peak electricity demand and the times of optimal wind conditions rarely coincide. In other words, variable weather, not properly factored in by policymakers. Relying on averages won’t work either.
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Britain imported a record amount of electricity from Europe last year as solar and wind farms struggled to generate sufficient energy in the wake of coal and nuclear power plant closures, says The Telegraph.

The UK forked out £3.5bn on electricity from France, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands last year, accounting for 12pc of net supply, according to research from London Stock Exchange (LSEG) Power Research.

According to official data, France accounted for around £1.5bn of power sold to the UK in the year to November 2023 while Norway earned around £500m.

Dose of engineering reality needed to counter climate obsessions

Using ‘Green Energy’ To Wreck Our Way Of Life

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Talkshop comment:
Playing the expensive renewable energy game isn’t an option for the majority of ‘non-wealthy’ countries anyway, regardless of promoters of climate alarm. China for example forges ahead with dozens of new coal mines every year to help keep its growing economy functioning, while countries like Britain attempt to survive without any. Somebody has it wrong and it’s not going to be China.

Chancellor Hunt ‘bitterly disappointed’ after gas drilling approved in his constituency

Climate obsession can warp the mind if this case is anything to go by. Government policy is to find more UK gas but one of its top ministers opposes the idea in his own constituency.
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Chancellor Jeremy Hunt says he is “bitterly disappointed” after a Court of Appeal ruling gave the green light to a gas drilling project in his Surrey constituency, reports Sky News.

The site in Dunsfold, which energy company UK Oil and Gas (UKOG) wants to explore, has been the source of a protracted legal battle.

The application was approved by the government in June 2022, despite it being refused by the local Conservative council and opposition from Mr Hunt when he was a backbench MP.

Latest energy policy announcements show that the UK Government has gone Insane

By David Turver at his ‘Eigen Values’ substack blog

Introduction

Back in the summer, there were signs that the consensus around Net Zero policy was starting to crack. The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak then made his speech that watered down some Net Zero commitments and promised “a more pragmatic, proportionate, and realistic approach that eases the burdens on families.” However, in the run up to Christmas, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) made several announcements about various aspects of energy policy that can only add to consumer costs. These included various announcements about their hydrogen policy, a statement on carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS) and an update on the business models for greenhouse gas removal (GGR) and power from bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).

This article explains that unfortunately, the announcements mark the end of any serious fightback against the Net Zero insanity and demonstrate that the Government has no idea about economics, thermodynamics or energy and has gone completely insane.

Claim: the James Webb telescope ‘threatens to break cosmology as we know it’

Ye Olde Universe
[image credit: Hubble / Wikipedia]

Or did it just confirm the unhappy status of the ‘dark energy’ seekers, long after Nobel prizes were handed out for its ‘discovery’? Quote: ‘despite much searching, astronomers have no clue what dark matter or dark energy are.’ A Nobel for having no clue – where’s the physics?
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For decades, measurements of the universe’s expansion have suggested a disparity known as the Hubble tension, which threatens to break cosmology as we know it. Can it be fixed? asks Live Science.

Now, on the eve of its second anniversary, a new finding by the James Webb Space Telescope has only entrenched the mystery.

Something is awry in our expanding cosmos.

‘Hydrogen village’ plan in Redcar abandoned after local opposition

Eco house with hydrogen heating technology. [Image credit: emergingrisks.co.uk]

People power 1, ‘net zero’ 0. Government attempts to browbeat the public into accepting even a trial based on its flaky climate obsessions prove fruitless, on this occasion at least. As for the ‘insufficient local hydrogen production’ excuse: who would want to produce large amounts of hydrogen on spec and then hope to find a buyer nearby?
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A plan to test the use of hydrogen to heat homes in a village in the north-east of England has been abandoned after months of strong opposition from concerned residents, reports The Guardian.

The government said the Redcar “hydrogen village” scheme, which had been expected to start in 2025, would not go ahead because of insufficient local hydrogen production for the trial to replace the home gas supplies with the low-carbon alternative.

The decision ends months of protest against the scheme locals feared could raise energy bills and prove unsafe.

Oil-rich Azerbaijan tipped to host COP29 climate talks

The Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline (green) is one of several pipelines running from Baku.

Azerbaijan is one of the birthplaces of the oil industry (Wikipedia). It was part of the Soviet Union from 1922-1991. EU countries were unsurprisingly blocked as hosts by Russia. Maybe there aren’t too many ‘renewables-rich’ countries (if such a category even exists) elsewhere, seeking to be the host next time.
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DUBAI, Dec 8 (Reuters) – Azerbaijan is tipped to host next year’s U.N. climate summit, after striking a late deal with longtime adversary Armenia over its bid.

While some diplomats said other countries including Russia – which has blocked other host candidates – were expected to back Baku’s bid, there was no official confirmation from Moscow on Friday.

The issue is still being negotiated at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.

The Oil Demand Outlook COP28 Leaders Would Hate

The 28th UN-sponsored attempt to reduce global ’emissions’, in line with its pet climate theories, stares its own failure in the face as emissions keep going up. The renewables industry is running fast to stand still in terms of making a global dent in oil usage, for example. Imposition of ‘net zero’ policies may impact some countries, but oil marches on as demand from the many aspiring – but less developed than the ‘net zero club’ – countries boosts business.
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->> The International Energy Agency said in its recent oil report that oil consumption is close to peaking, thanks to transition efforts and energy efficiency gains.
->> Goehring and Rozencwajg: In 12 of the past 14 years, the IEA has underestimated oil demand by an average annual of 820,000 barrels per day.
->> Goehring and Rozencwajg: “If the IEA’s error were a country, it would be the world’s 21st largest oil consumer”.

This week, a report from a climate organization warned that emissions from the combustion of hydrocarbons are set for a record this year, says OilPrice.com.

Vast village heat pump tests one route to net zero for rural Britain

At £12 million per village, what would the national cost of such devices be for all the other villages that might want one? If it ‘shows how the costs of the energy transition can be made more manageable’, we could ask: more manageable than what?
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In a quiet field in eastern England a vast heat pump generates enough warmth to supply houses throughout a historic village, a pilot project is testing ways to spur renewable energy use in a country that is falling behind its net zero targets, says Reuters.

Resembling a large agricultural site, with gleaming silver water vats, the heat pump produces water hot enough to feed existing domestic systems, removing the need for costly home retrofits. A 60-year funding scheme removed upfront costs.

Supporters say the network, the first of its kind in rural Britain, not only shows one way for the UK to catch up with Europe on heat pump adoption, but addresses how it can fund the wider net zero transition when household finances are tight.

Why COP28 Will Fail: Policymakers Should Focus on ‘Insufficient’ Energy Tech

Lack of effective technology isn’t the real problem. Inability to accept the lack of a fixable problem, due to blind adherence to IPCC conjectures about the climate, is the problem.
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Summary of a City AM article, from OilPrice.com:

->> In strictly numerical terms therefore, Cop28 will be a failure, like all the climate summits that came before it.

->> Governments across the world are stepping back from their net zero promises because inflation, the cost of living, Ukraine, Gaza and other issues make it appear too costly politically.

->> Politicians should acknowledge that the current level of technology is insufficient to deliver enough carbon abatement in a way that enables an energy system that is affordable, secure and reliable.

Full article here.
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City AM: Why Cop28 will be a failure and leaders should stay at home – by Paul Domjan, a former Energy Security Adviser to the U.S. European Command of the U.S. Department of Defense.