‘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.

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.

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.

The EU Is Willing to Go To War Over Lithium?

By Phil Butler
New Eastern Outlook

January 3, 2024

The riddle of unhinged EU support for the Zelensky regime in Kyiv is now solved. Anyone inclined can unravel why the Germans, in particular, backstabbed Russia in the Minsk peace boondoggle. Lithium.

Energy Monitor’s parent company, GlobalData, recently released a report showing that Europe’s biggest lithium reserves lie in the Donbass region of Russia. The former Ukrainian Shevchenkivske field in the Donetsk region and the Kruta Balka block in the Zaporizhzhia region are now part of Russia. These reserves add tremendously to Russia’s humongous Lithium deposits (now 1.5M metric tons) and solidify the country’s top ten position globally. If we consider other BRICS nations’ reserves, including China (2M metric tons), EU industry is at a leverage point.

Matt Ridley: I’ll buy a new petrol car in 2029

The rush to electric vehicles risks killing our car industry, shackling us to China and bumping up our taxes to reduce global emissions by just 0.044%. That’s why I’ll be buying a brand new petrol car just before the 2030 ban

Daily Mail July 8

BMW i3 electric car plus battery pack [image credit: carmagazine.co.uk]

Britain’s electric vehicle transition and the ban on petrol car sales from 2030 are a slow-motion car crash. The technology is not ready, the cost will be vast, the logistics are forbidding, the reliance on China is worrying and the backlash from the public is likely to be harsh.

Worst of all, the benefits are derisory at best and may not even exist.

Yes, you read that right. It is possible that we could replace all of Britain’s cars and vans with electric vehicles and still find that carbon dioxide emissions are higher, not lower. Cost-benefit, hello?

Green Energy – The Greatest Transfer Of Wealth To The Rich In History

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The cost per molecule of atmospheric CO2 ‘saved’ must be phenomenal i.e. ridiculous.

PA Pundits International

By Steve Goreham~

We are in the midst of history’s greatest wealth transfer. Government subsidized support for wind systems, solar arrays, and electric vehicles overwhelmingly benefits the wealthy members of society and rich nations. The poor and middle class pay for green energy programs with higher taxes and higher electricity and energy costs. Developing nations suffer environmental damage to deliver mined materials needed for renewables in rich nations.

Since 2000, the world has spent more than $5 trillion on green energy. More than 300,000 wind turbines have been erected, millions of solar arrays were installed, more than 25 million electric vehicles (EVs) have been sold, hundreds of thousands of acres of forest were cut down to produce biomass fuel, and about three percent of agricultural land is now used to produce biofuel for vehicles. The world spends about $1 trillion per year on green energy. Government subsidies run about…

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How windfarms charge you twice for the same electricity – Net Zero Watch

Moray East windfarm [image credit: offshorewind.biz]

It turns out that ‘when a windfarm is constrained off or constrained down, it doesn’t actually have to switch off or switch down. It is free to divert power via a private wire to anyone who will pay for it.’ Someone with a big battery, for example.
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I recently noted that Moray East, a very large and very new windfarm situated off the Scottish coast, is spending a remarkable amount of time switched off – something like a quarter of the time, in fact, says Andrew Montford @ NZW.

As is widely known, windfarms can receive so-called constraint payments when the transmission grid doesn’t have the capacity to deliver power from windfarms (typically in the north, and often far offshore) to markets (in the south), so Moray East receiving such payments was not a surprise; only the scale of the payments was.

A constraint payment is worth around £60 per megawatt hour, which is around the fixed price at which Moray East contracted to sell power to the grid.

However, as noted elsewhere, Moray East has failed to take up that contract, and it is therefore able to sell its output into the open market at £200, £300 or even £400 per megawatt hour.

The crackdown on wrongthink: be prepared.

The big tech oligarchs have seized the moment and are purging social media platforms. The Twaliban have been suspending pro-Trump accounts (including the US president himself) and FakeSpook are following suit and forcing a new user agreement on WhatsApp users allowing Zuck to harvest their private data. Google and Apple have removed alternative chat platform Parler from their app stores.

A better, more secure messaging platform called Signal should now be used by people who care about free speech and privacy. More info in this article from Wired.

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.

Goldman Sachs operative Carney slithers from BoE to UN climate con job.

Bank of England governor Mark Carney, who previously served as Canada’s top central banker, will be taking on a new role as the United Nations’ special envoy on climate action and climate finance.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made the announcement while speaking to reporters in Madrid on Sunday, adding the move will take effect next year.

#Brexit blackmail: EU extorts UK taxpayers by withholding carbon creds from UK industry

Brussels strikes again. The EU commission has decided to withhold the free carbon credits it gives to member states’ industries from the UK ‘until a Brexit withdrawal agreement is ratified’.

A UK government which had any capable negotiators would respond in kind by withholding the much bigger amount in membership fees we are still paying to Brussels every month, despite taxpayers having voted to leave the EU almost three years ago.

Taxpaying voters will get an opportunity on May 23 to let our incompetent government and the Brussels mafia know that they now support the Brexit Party which seeks a mandate to take over negotiations with the EU and leave on WTO terms in the meantime.

IPCC SR15 Report lacks cost/benefit analysis of ‘Goldilocks thinking’

The UN climate report known as SR15 calls for high carbon taxes from $135 to $5,500/ton while a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Bjorn Lomborg of Oct. 9, 2018 says the costs of proposed CO2 cuts are not worth it, leading the Friends of Science Society to slam the UN report as Goldilocks thinking without any rational cost-benefit analysis or practical plan.

Friends of Science says the WSJ paragraph in which Lomborg describes the economic impact on Europe of cutting emissions 80% by 2050 should be front page news in every newspaper in Europe and North America. Lomborg notes that, with a well designed and coordinated climate policy (i.e. the opposite of what European and North American governments have now), the annual costs will reach U.S. $3.3 trillion, “more than twice what EU governments spend today on health, education, recreation, housing, environment, police and defense combined”.

“The policy will make the EU 24% poorer in 2050.”

Grenfell: Plastic firms helped write climate-related safety rules

Grenfell Tower fire [image credit: BBC]

Insulation added to buildings like the ill-fated Grenfell Tower was a result of climate regulations, as this extract from a Sky News report shows. But the manufacturers themselves helped write those rules, and now some critics who tried to point out potential fire hazards in the materials say they were subjected to intimidation by them.
H/T Damian

While legal threats were being made in private, the plastic insulation industry was openly advertising its role in writing the rules that govern the fitting of its products to millions of buildings across the country.

The main lobby group for the plastic insulation trade was, until November 2017, called the British Rigid Urethane Foam Manufacturers’ Association [BRUFMA].

Partly in response to Grenfell Tower – or what it refers to as “events of this year” – BRUFMA changed its name to the Insulation Manufacturers Association.

Monckton: Green policy kills jobs and causes energy poverty

Visit Cartoonsbyjosh.com

Excerpt from an open letter to the head of MIT:

Professor Reif of MIT says, “In 2016 alone, solar industry employment grew by 25 percent, while wind jobs grew 32%.” These numbers are highly misleading. In fact, they underscore how deficient these energy sources are as job creators.

Growing jobs by subsidy is easy, provided that one cares nothing for the far greater number of jobs destroyed by the additional taxation, energy price hikes or public borrowing necessary to pay for the subsidy. Several studieshave shown that the creation of one “green” job results in the loss of two to four jobs elsewhere in the economy. In Spain the estimated ratio was two jobs lost for each one created by renewable energy, prompting the government to finally end most renewable subsidies.

And yet, despite all those subsidies, wind and solar power generation expensively and unreliably account for 5.6% and 0.9% of total U.S. electricity production, respectively. On its own, electricity provides only a small fraction of total energy consumption, including transportation, industrial processes, heating and electricity generation, so these numbers actually exaggerate the contribution of wind and solar facilities to overall energy consumption.

Brexit Costs: EU Commissioner Proposes EU-Wide Climate Tax

Taxing the weather – EU member states may have to cough up climate dues as part of the cost of supporting the seemingly insatiable Brussels bureaucratic machine.

Due to Brexit and other new commitments, the EU will soon be short of € 25 billion, reports The GWPF.

EU Budget Commissioner Günther Oettinger, therefore, wants to introduce new revenues for the EU in form of a climate tax.

In addition, he wants to take Brexit as an opportunity to remove not only Britain’s EU rebate but similar discounts for other EU member states.
“When the British leave, the rebate negotiated by Maggie Thatcher falls away; I want to use this opportunity to cancel all discounts, including those for Denmark and Germany,” Oettinger told SPIEGEL.

“After the departure of the British, we are likely to be short of at least € 10 billion a year,” he said. “I can imagine that half of this sum can be saved, and the remaining members will divide the other half among themselves,” the EU Commissioner said.

Germany, for example, receives a discount on the additional costs incurred as a result of the British discount.

Conflicts Of Interest At The Committee On Climate Change

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How obvious does it have to be before people realize they’re being taken for a massively expensive ride by the Greenblob, hiding behind their figleaf of ‘climate change’?

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Dennis Ambler

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2523726/Web-green-politicians-tycoons-power-brokers-help-benefit-billions-raised-bills.html

The Mail’s story, about how the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy cheated to claim govt grants, recalls another investigation by David Rose three years ago:

Other industries would stand accused of damning conflicts of interest but when it comes to global warming, anything goes…

The Mail on Sunday today reveals the extraordinary web of political and financial interests creating dozens of eco-millionaires from green levies on household energy bills.

A three-month investigation shows that some of the most outspoken campaigners who demand that consumers pay the colossal price of shifting to renewable energy are also getting rich from their efforts.

Vested interest: Lord Deben (John Selwyn Gummer) is chairman of the Committee on Climate Change

Enquiries by this newspaper have revealed:

• Four of the nine-person Committee on Climate Change, the official watchdog that dictates green energy policy, are, or were until…

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Christine Lagarde to be Roasted, Toasted, Fried and Grilled by French Courts

#Brexit and climate scaremonger and soon, we suspect, not to be IMF chief, Christine Lagarde is to stand trial over a 404 million euro payment of taxpayers money to controversial tycoon Bernard Tapie, who supported former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Lagarde, who famously said we’d all be “Roasted, Toasted, Fried and Grilled” by global warming, more recently boosted her reputation for chronically incorrect exaggerations by predicting that a Brexit vote would be “bad or very bad” for the UK economy. The FTSE100 reached a new record high yesterday.

Expect updates on this one folks.

ESM: New EU treaty in the works will bankrupt nations

The EU is a curious mix of Autocratically controlled crony capitalism (Google and McD’s love it), and socialist redistribution. The poorer countries are in the east (ex-soviet communist, now democracies); and south (Mediterranean siesta economies).

If the EU applied to join the EU, it would be refused on the grounds that it doesn’t respect basic democracy. It is controlled by unelected bureaucrats who dictate new legislation to a rubber stamp of a parliament. The member nation states are in the process of having their sovereignty dismantled, using the European Court of Justice, the borderless Schengen zone, the single currency and the (German dominated) central bank.

It’s a catastrophe unfolding before our eyes. The single currency has all but destroyed Greece’s economy, with 50% youth unemployment blighting the lives of the young. The rest of the mediterranean countries are economic basket cases too. France is headed the same way.

Here’s how the EU intends to deal with the massive structural problem it has created. You won’t believe this. The European Stability Mechanism is about to be injected with steroids. The UK can’t be forced into this, because we didn’t join the single currency, but it will have a huge impact on UK if we don’t get off the sinking ship.

#Brexit: The Movie needs your help

 

UPDATE: The talkshop pledge is now up to £500 + a reserve, see comments.

We see your pledge going up – Thank you @RogTallbloke and your readers! @kickstarter @Martin_Durkin

— Brexit:The Movie (@BrexitTheMovie) February 2, 2016

Brexit: The Movie, is a new project set up by Martin Durkin, of ‘The great Global Warming Swindle’ fame. Martin is a top documentary maker, but none of the big TV channels are going to finance this one. Check out the trailer above and you’ll know why.

Climate sceptics have a lot of reasons to be eurosceptics too, given the nutty energy policy being dictated to the UK from Brussels thanks to their mad climate policies.

Climate change: Crisis or Con-job?

James Delingpole pulls no punches in a new article at Breitbart, part of which I’m reproducing below. Many  in the climate debate try to ‘stick to the science’, to avoid accusations of political bias or motivation. James doesn’t do science, though many think he’s an astute observer of it, and an entertaining, if occasionally over-the-top reporter on the state of the debate.

Global Warming Is Not the Problem. Global Governance Is.
James Delingpole 31:12:2015

To anyone with even half an eye on world events, it’s perfectly obvious that there are many more desperate problems – fundamentalist Islam, say – than the imaginary problem of man-made global warming. So why do our political class persist in pretending to us, in defiance of all the evidence, that “climate change” represents the only global issue serious enough to justify the convening of a conference like the recent one in Paris attended by 40,000 delegates and the leaders of over 150 nation states?

The answer to this is too complicated for one sentence – for the full story read this book – but the consequences can be summed up in two words: global governance.