Shetland Island residents must earn £104,000 to avoid fuel poverty next year, warns official

Sullom Voe oil and gas terminal [image credit: shetland.org]

The climate hasn’t got colder, so something else has to take the blame. How did a place on the doorstep of various gas and oil fields, and even touted as ideal for wind power, get itself into such a state?
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Some 96% of residents of the Shetland Islands could find themselves in fuel poverty by next April, according to a local official, who issued a stark warning about the future of the archipelago, reports Sky News.

Despite Scotland supplying much of the UK’s gas, islanders must earn a salary of £104,000 to avoid slipping into fuel poverty, according to the Leader of Shetland Islands Council.

The estimated average energy cost on the Shetland Islands will rise to £10,300 per household by next April, with the vast majority of residents spending 10% of their income on energy bills.

New inquiry into how the UK can (?) cut fossil fuels and accelerate net zero transition

[image credit: latinoamericarenovable.com]

Re-writing the laws of physics is not an option. The only thing accelerating at the moment is the downward spiral into energy poverty for ever larger numbers of the population, in manic pursuit of the mystical ‘net zero’ climate target. Another trip to cloud cuckoo land beckons for these blinkered climate obsessives.
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The Environmental Audit Committee announced the inquiry in response to the rise in fossil fuel prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and continued speculation on what will be included in the government’s Energy Security Strategy, reports Energy Live News.

The Committee believes protecting consumers from high fossil fuel prices and fuel poverty while ensuring security of supply and continued progress towards net zero is critical for any strategy on energy security to be successful.

Stop funding Putin’s war, Boris! – Net Zero Watch

The era of silly but damaging climate games is over, or should be. The world has far more serious matters to attend to.
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London, 25 February – Net Zero Watch has called on Boris Johnson to stop all Russian gas imports and follow through on his statement to Parliament yesterday that the UK should use domestic hydrocarbons “rather than pointlessly importing them from abroad.”

According to the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy the UK has imported 73,770 Gwh of Russian LNG in the last 4 years. At 4 pence per kwh – that gas has a value of £2.95bn.

In other words, Britain has been funding Putin’s war machine to the tune of £14 million per week.

Energy crisis: Conservative MPs urge Boris Johnson to scrap taxes as bills rocket

Overcharged and overtaxed. UK energy customers are getting clobbered from all directions: the markets, the so-called climate levies, and taxes. The government is in disarray as its renewables-based policies force the pace of cost increases.
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Energy bills have soared as global wholesale prices have risen rapidly – but some Tory MPs and peers say they have increased more in the UK because of taxes the government has the power to remove.

Twenty Conservative politicians have urged Boris Johnson to scrap energy taxes as bills continue to rocket, reports Sky News.

The MPs and peers have written a letter in the Sunday Telegraph to ask the prime minister and Chancellor Rishi Sunak to help consumers facing “fuel poverty”.

Energy prices in the UK are being forced up faster than any other comparable country due to “taxation and environmental levies”, they wrote.

Declare an energy emergency or risk economic disaster, Boris Johnson warned – Net Zero Watch

Fracking: note the deep shaft

The chances of the UK government listening to anybody other than climate obsessives on energy matters are about zero. Most of the opposition parties are even more addicted to the notion of climate being determined by the level of trace gases in the atmosphere, with wildly unrealistic policies to match.
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London, 29 December – Net Zero Watch has called on Boris Johnson to declare an energy emergency and introduce radical policy reforms in order to prevent the energy cost crisis turning into an economic and social disaster.

The call comes as fears grow over a devastating energy cost and energy security crisis, with spiralling prices hitting households and businesses hard, and warnings that energy bills could double or even treble next year.

It is reported that Boris Johnson is considering to hand out £20 billion of taxpayers’ money to energy suppliers who are threatening to double or treble energy costs.

Critics warn carbon price proposal would exacerbate energy poverty

No surprise that cranking up the cost of essentials is a greater burden for people on low incomes than for others. But nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of overblown climate obsessions, it seems. Carbon dioxide must be demonised no matter how tenuous the evidence against its tiny 0.04% share of the atmosphere, much of which pre-dates the modern era anyway.
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Energy poverty could be exacerbated ad prices rise under the European Commission’s proposed revamped emissions trading scheme, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has warned, with other stakeholders raising similar misgivings.

Proposals under the European Commission’s Fit for 55 package include creating a new emissions trading scheme to impose a carbon price on road transport and buildings (ETS II), says Euractiv.

But stakeholders are warning that the move would hit society’s most vulnerable.

Why Californians have sky-high electricity bills — no surprises here

Solar power complex in California [USA. Gov – BLM – Bureau of Land Management]

The Golden State isn’t a good place to be poor, and that’s set to get worse thanks to the ill-founded climate obsessions of its leaders, as this article observes. Others following their model can expect to face similar issues.
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California is known to have the most expensive electricity in the U.S., and the distributed nature of its grid is negatively affecting less-wealthy Californians, says OilPrice.com.

Californians pay for some of the most expensive electricity in the United States. They also live in one of the greenest states, at least from an energy perspective.

California is only going to get greener. Meanwhile, electricity bills are expected to continue their rise. Some deny there is a link between the two.

The facts show otherwise.

We still don’t know enough about new heat technologies to decide the best way forward

Posted on 2 March, 2021 by Green Alliance blog

This post is a reblog of an article by Dr Robert Sansom, independent consultant and member of the IET’s Energy Policy Panel.

Recently, Professor Cebon wrote on this blog that pursuing the hydrogen economy would be a mistake. I am neither an advocate of hydrogen nor am I associated with the oil and gas industry, but I was the lead author of a report, produced by the IET in 2019, which focused on the engineering questions that need to be addressed if the UK is to transition to hydrogen.  There are also major questions around the electrification of heat. Until these questions are dealt with, I do not believe anyone can say that one technology is better than another.

Held to Ransom: Smart Meters Shut Off Power Whenever Renewable Energy Output Collapses

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It’s much cheaper to cut off your electricity supply for a while than it is to provide adequate backup from supposedly ‘green’ sources like batteries. Who knew?

STOP THESE THINGS

Cough up, or the kid gets it!

So-called smart meters are a very dumb response to intermittent wind and solar, even dumber energy sources. Wherever governments attempt to run on sunshine and breezes, the push to control and micromanage household power use, quickly follows.

Over the last few Australian summers, we’ve been treated to power rationing on a grand scale – which the Market Operator euphemistically tags “demand management”.

‘Demand management’ is not about supplying power consumers with what they need, it simply means shutting off power to industry, businesses and households – and even forcing hospitals to switch their lights and air conditioners off – among other indignities, whenever the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in. That’s what our ‘inevitable transition’ looks like at the macro level.

At the micro level, there’s the push to have smart meters installed in every home or business premise, in order that…

View original post 960 more words

Vijay Jayaraj: India Crafts Fossil Pathway to Secure its Future

Credit: Coal India Limited

In some countries ’emissions’ obsessed leaders stumble around looking for non-existent net-zero pathways to their imaginary climate heaven. But India’s recent approach towards fossil utilization can be summed up in three words: “No Holds Barred”, says the author.
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India is on the way to becoming a fossil fuel-based energy powerhouse of the 21st century, says Vijay Jayaraj @ The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

India’s developmental goals for the future are quite ambitious. They ought to be: From tackling the surging poverty rates to providing affordable utilities, the country faces a steep challenge.

The key to achieving any of its developmental goals is a strong energy sector.

India is the third largest energy consuming nation and is following the fossil fuel pathway (like the West did during the 20th century) to achieve energy independence in the near future.

The Dollar signs behind the origin of the term “Fossil fuels”

H/T to John

Are “fossil fuels” really made from biological life? Coal, certainly. But oil? Maybe some of it. But oil drilled from 30,000 feet underground??

Still waiting for greenhouse: No response to my last email to Roy Spencer

Before the last time I had to dive deeply into politics to defend the EU referendum result, I had an email conversation with Roy Spencer in an attempt to resolve the conflict between physicists like himself, who believe the radiative greenhouse theory is correct, but it’s effect small, and physicists like Ned Nikolov, who contend that the theory is fundamentally incorrect.

After a couple of to and fro emails I sent this response in Feb 2019, to which I never received a reply. It’s time we got this discussion back out in the open, because Boris’ green reset #netzero plan for the UK post Brexit and post pandemic is set to ruin our economy and cause untold suffering, deprivation, and death.

the lukewarmers have utterly failed to convince the fanatics that although they think their theory is correct (it isn’t, but that’s their misguided opinion), they’ve overestimated the magnitude of the effect.

It’s time they stopped supporting the fanatics by deploying false arguments against better theory which will exonerate CO2 and move the debate away from ridiculous and expensive ‘mitigation’, and forward to adaption to the effects of natural climatic change.

Political suicide note: UK Government considers banning gas heating & cooking

H/T The GWPF

The UK government seems to have a bad case of climate derangement syndrome at the moment, in the run-up to the COP26 conference in Glasgow this year. How much economic damage could its futile attempts to reduce the supply of essential carbon dioxide (CO2) to the Earth’s ecosystems do?
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Homeowners could be forced to replace their gas boilers to ensure the UK meets its target to be carbon neutral by 2050, ministers are warning.

The Government will publish a White Paper later this year which will set out the “bigger decisions” that the UK has to make to meet the target, says the Sunday Telegraph.

Lord Duncan of Springbank, the Climate Change minister, said that the White Paper will consider whether the Government should ban gas central heating altogether from all homes.

European EV charging network IONITY hikes price by 500%

Image Credit: freepik.com

Electrek reports:

IONITY, a European EV charging network owned by BMW, Daimler, Ford, Hyundai, Kia, and VW Group (with Audi and Porsche) has announced that prices will be going up over 500% starting January 31 as they transition to a pay-per-kWh system.

Previously, IONITY charged a flat, fixed rate of €8 for a DCFC charging session. This was a good deal if you showed up with an empty battery and filled most of the way. If you arrived with, say, 10% battery remaining, and added 60 kWh during your charging session, then you’d get away with paying about €0.13 per kWh. For context, in France, electricity costs about €0.19 per kWh at home, and €0.24 per kWh at Tesla Superchargers. In Germany, you pay €0.30 per kWh at home, and €0.33 at Tesla Superchargers in Germany.

Boris goes full speed ahead for Britain’s economic suicide

Apologies to Josh

Today, the UK government will commit to destroying the nation’s economy. It published this suicide note on its website.

The Prime Minister will today, Tuesday 4 February, launch the next UN climate conference COP26, joined by Sir David Attenborough and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte at an event in central London.

At the event, he will set out the UK’s position as a world leader in the response to climate change, having made a legal commitment to achieve net zero emissions, and call all nations to strive towards this goal.

Tallbloke talking about climate and energy on PlusNews live TV

Yesterday I got the opportunity to have a relaxed climate conversation with Stephen Place, who presents the ‘Talking Yorkshire’ programme on PlusNews TV, a community based channel going out on 15 live platforms worldwide, youtube and on facebook. Make a pot of coffee and check it out.

Energy costs a factor as Germans worry about old-age poverty

German Chancellor Merkel surveys an offshore wind site [image credit: evwind.es]

The bad news for Germans is that energy costs as a percentage of income seem set to rise inexorably under current policies aimed at eliminating coal and nuclear power generation. That means spending even more on expensive and unreliable renewables plus vast new transmission lines, as well as importing more power when renewables fall short, with all the inevitable high costs these things incur. Of course Germans are far from the only ones facing these issues.

More and more Germans are worried about not being able to make ends meet when they retire, a new study has shown.

Rising energy costs and low interest rates are also feeding fears of financial insecurity, says DW.com.

Riot police clash with Paris fuel tax protesters

‘Yellow vest’ fuel tax protesters in France

Strong resistance to paying any more for climate-related ideology through vehicle fuel bills continues in France. As the President suggested, many people are more interested in the end of the month rather than the (alleged threat of) end of the world. Trace gases are not a big deal to much of the public, it seems. Making ends meet is the top priority.

This is the third weekend of ‘yellow vest’ protests against President Macron’s controversial fuel tax, reports BBC News.

Protesters have scaled the Arc de Triomphe in central Paris, as clashes with riot police continue during a third weekend of “yellow vest” rallies.

EU steps in to halt UK energy security measures

The Daily Telegraph reports

A European Court ruling has thrown the UK’s energy security into disarray by ordering the immediate halt to a £1bn scheme designed to keep Britain’s lights on.

The cornerstone energy security scheme has come to an abrupt standstill after the European Union’s Court of Justice ruled that the UK should not be allowed to pay power plants to stay open.

The shock-ruling wiped hundreds of millions of pounds from the UK’s largest listed energy companies on Thursday and threatens to bring a return of energy market price spikes over the winter.

Tony Thomas: Ex-BHP Chief “Scrap Paris Now”

Ex-chairman of BHP (1997-99), Jerry Ellis  (right) ex-chancellor of Monash University, and an ex-director of ANZ Bank, has called for Australia to dump the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Ellis’s intervention puts cat among climate pigeons. 

The alarmists like to lie that sceptics are a fringe group. Ellis is hardly fringe. His former BHP continues to promote the story about human-caused catastrophic CO2 warming, as does Monash University. Ellis is an awkwardness for both.

By coming out against climate alarmism, Ellis, 91 81,  is giving added respectability to scepticism, much as ex-PM Tony Abbott did with his London sceptic speech of last October.[i] The credibility of the sceptic case, of course, rests not on authority figures but data such as the  more than two-fold exaggeration of warming since 1980 by the climate models on which the CO2 scare is based.

Here is Ellis’s statement on Paris.