PM’s “green industrial revolution” plan hits the road — subsidies all round

Image credit: BBC

Of course the assumption behind most of this is that the climate needs ‘saving’ from the demonic trace gas CO2, according to failing climate models anyway. We’ll skip most of the BBC commentary and show the main points of the plan. The expressed aim is ‘to put the UK on track to meet its goal of net zero emissions by 2050’. No sign of the eye-watering costs, in this report at least.
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New cars and vans powered wholly by petrol and diesel will not be sold in the UK from 2030, Boris Johnson has said.

But some hybrids would still be allowed, he confirmed.

It is part of what the prime minister calls a “green industrial revolution” to tackle climate change and create jobs in industries such as nuclear.

Boris Johnson seeks advice on how to create 2 million green jobs

Green blob [credit: storybird.com]

Tree planters required – no experience in climate saving necessary? Government announcement here.
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Investors are keen to create ‘green jobs’ in technologies such as nuclear, hydrogen and carbon capture but they are too expensive to work without subsidy, says The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seeking advice from industry on how to create green jobs in the U.K. as unemployment rose at the quickest pace in a decade.

The government is gathering a green jobs taskforce that seeks to create employment for 2 million by 2030.

Johnson is planning a major speech on how he will spur an industrial revolution in clean-energy technologies, part of a series of initiative leading up to global talks on climate change the U.K. will host next year.

Scotland’s ‘green jobs’ fiasco

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

Electricity bill payers are in effect subsidising work that’s being exported round the world while promises of so-called green jobs for Scottish workers, and the government’s own ’emissions’ policies, are forgotten or ignored. The irony being that the high cost of UK electricity – and rising due to renewables – is part of the problem.
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A trade union has called for a halt to new offshore wind farms until a local supply chain is established, says The National (via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

GMB London echoed the growing anger from GMB Scotland after it was announced last week that contracts to supply turbine jackets for SSE’s offshore wind farm, Seagreen, in Angus, were awarded to firms in China and UAE.

The decision meant Scottish firm Burntisland Fabrications (BiFab) was left overlooked in favour of companies based thousands of miles away, even though it has engineering sites in the country, in Fife and Stornoway.

Despite BiFab securing backing from the Scottish Government to win the work, SSE Renewables claimed the gap between the submissions of foreign firms and BiFab was “too significant to close”.

Ross McKitrick: Save the economy, ditch the ‘green recovery’ plans

Any ‘green’ ideas were never about economic sanity anyway, but that problem is now even more acute.

H/T The GWPF
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Green technologies that were known money-losers before the pandemic are still money-losers today.

There’s a curious idea floating around that the COVID crisis undid the principles of economics, says Ross McKitrick.

Nobody puts it exactly like that, but it’s implied in the various proposals for restructuring the post-pandemic economy so that it will look very different from the one we experienced up to the end of January.

Amid the buzzwords about “Resilient Recovery” and “Building Back Better” are proposals for an investment push into green technologies and new environmental policies, including initiatives that failed to pass standard economic tests before the pandemic.

So how, exactly, did the pandemic change the criteria for evaluating policies, investments and major public projects?

The short answer is: it didn’t, and any claim otherwise is untrue.

The great green reset is at odds with economic and energy reality.

From Forbes, by Tilak Doshi H/T to Andrew Gibson

As the world emerges from Covid-19 lockdown we are now being told that the economic recovery from the pandemic-panic needs to be “green.” Political leaders and mass media editors cite the well-known slogan “never let a crisis go to waste,” and claim that massive sums need to be spent on economic recovery plans, and that the spending has to be “sustainable.”

Prince Charles – a prognosticator of apocalyptic climate change – said at the opening of a virtual World Economic Forum event that the global pandemic presented an opportunity to “reset the global economy and prioritize sustainable development.” Using similar language, the founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab calls for a “Great Reset” of capitalism. Seeing a silver lining in the pandemic, he advocates “radical changes” to “create a new economic system” including sustainably green urban infrastructure.

Wrightbus boss in push for £500m hydrogen subsidy

Hydrogen-powered London bus

Fare-paying travellers can rejoice in subsidising the buses and the means of producing the fuel for them, i.e. the wind turbines, under this plan. Maybe do the same for trains too.

The owner of manufacturer Wrightbus has said he hopes to bring another 1,500 jobs to Ballymena as he pushes for a Government subsidy to fund the building of more than 3,000 buses in the town, reports the Belfast Telegraph.

Jo Bamford, executive chairman of the historic bus-builder, said the use of hydrogen could usher in a new era of environmentally-friendly transport.

It’s seeking subsidy funding of £500m from the UK Government, with the aim of building over 3,000 hydrogen-fuelled buses in Ballymena by 2024.

The Western Link: A new failure highlights the overbuild of Scottish Wind and raises new questions

[image credit: beforeitsnews.com]

In short, Scottish wind power often produces too much for the electricity system to handle, yet more is planned. Meanwhile the super-expensive Western Link is failing miserably to draw off the excess power. Matt Ridley is trying to blow the whistle on this fiasco in the House of Lords, with some success.

Last weekend the Italian cable manufacturing company, Prysmian, released a statement announcing to the markets that the Western Link High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) interconnector between Hunterston and Deeside had failed again, on the 10th of January, says the Renewable Energy Foundation.

This grid link, which is a joint venture between Scottish Power Transmission (SPT) and National Grid (NG), employs cables manufactured by Prysmian.

This £1 billion project has a peak transit capacity of 2.25 GW and was designed solely to facilitate the export of Scottish wind power to the English and Welsh markets.

In doing so it was expected to reduce constraint payments to wind power, payments which amount to £630m since 2010, with a record £130 million in 2019 alone.

The project was expected to come online at the end of 2015 but in fact did not become fully operational until late 2018 and has been plagued with faults ever since.

Green Madness: Wind Farms Paid Up To £3 Million Per Day To Switch Off Turbines

H/T The GWPF
Same old story, but numbers keep getting bigger. This just reinforces the point that large-scale surplus electricity can’t be stored. But nobody pays non-renewable sources for switching off or reducing output when wind and/or solar are operating at or near their capacity.
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Wind farms were paid up to £3 million per day to switch off their turbines and not produce electricity last week, The Telegraph can disclose.

Energy firms were handed more than £12 million in compensation following a fault with a major power line carrying electricity to England from turbines in Scotland.

The payouts, which will ultimately be added onto consumer bills, were between 25 per cent and 80 per cent more than the firms, which own giant wind farms in Scotland, would have received had they been producing electricity, according to an analysis of official figures.

The Warming Wind Turbines Of Climate Change

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An eye-opener for wind turbine supporters, and everyone else who has to pay for them via taxes and power bills.

PA Pundits - International

By Duggan Flanakin ~

Wind turbines continue to be the most controversial so-called “renewable” energy source worldwide. Yet, you say, wind is surely renewable. Really? Sure, the wind blows intermittently, but what if wind power actually contributes to global warming?

While the wind itself may be “renewable,” the turbines surely are not. Arcadia Power reports that the widely used GE 1.5-megawatt (MW) turbine, is a 164-ton monster with 116-foot blades on a 212-foot tower that weighs another 71 tons. The Vestas V90, which has 148-foot blades on a 262-foot tower, has a total weight of about 267 tons. That is just ONE TURBINE!

How are these giants constructed? The U.S. Geological Survey, citing the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, states that turbines are predominantly made of steel (which comprises 71 to 79 percent of total turbine mass), fiberglass, resin, or plastic (11 to 16 percent), iron or cast iron (5 to…

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Quotes from COP25: It’s a nothing-burger

Here are key quotes from leaders, experts and activists on the UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) outcome.

Antonio Guterres, UN secretary general

“I am disappointed with the results of COP25. The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation and finance to tackle the climate crisis.”

Filthy Future: The Staggering Cost of Cleaning Up ‘Clean’ Energy’s Toxic Mess

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What really happens – if anything – to land-based wind turbines at the end of their brief working lives?

STOP THESE THINGS

Wind turbines don’t run on wind, they run on subsidies: cut the subsidies and once these things inevitably grind to a halt, they’ll never be replaced.

With an economic lifespan of something like 10-12 years (rather than the overblown 25 put forward by turbine makers and wind power outfits), over the next decade countries like Germany will be left with hundreds of thousands of 2-300 tonne ‘problems’ littering the landscape. With hundreds of turbines totally kaput, Germans have already been smacked with the harsh and toxic reality of their government’s so-called ‘green’ obsession.

And they aren’t alone.

Iowa’s wind industry has been going for barely a decade and already wind power outfits are sending thousands of tonnes of toxic waste to landfill.

In addition to 10-15 tonne toxic plastic and fibreglass blades, there’s a smorgasbord of toxic plastics, oils, lubricants, metals and fibreglass in the tower and nacelle; and…

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British renewables subsidies cost households £340 per year each

Looking past the smoke and mirrors game, we find the true financial pain being inflicted on UK electricity customers in the name of climate ideology aka the Climate Change Act.

The total annual renewables subsidy impact on UK household cost of living is £9 billion — which comes to £340 per year per household, says The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

The low and much-publicised offshore wind bids for Feed-in Tariffs with Contracts for Difference (FiTs CfDs) continue to confuse many analysts, even those from whom one might expect clear-eyed caution.

A writer for CapX (“What is the point of Corbyn’s nationalised wind farms?”), to select an example almost at random, quite correctly takes issue with the Labour Party’s reckless plans for major public investment in further offshore wind, but does so on the mistaken ground that “offshore wind is a big success story […] delivering ever more clean energy, at ever lower prices, for a fraction of the price of Labour’s plan”.

However, and as a matter of fact, none of the low-bidding wind farms have actually been built, and the 8.5 GW of operational offshore wind capacity which is “delivering” is without exception very heavily subsidised.

Electric cars: call for tax on road usage to cover lost fuel revenue

Electric car charging station [credit: Wikipedia]

The advice is to act soon, before too many EV owners get used to the idea that their road journeys should always be much cheaper than those made in fuel-burners.

Britain should move to a system of road pricing to combat congestion and compensate for the £28bn loss of revenue from fuel duty as the country makes the transition to electric vehicles, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said.

The thinktank said the government’s pledge that the UK would reach zero net emissions by 2050 meant the tax take from petrol and diesel would shrink to nothing over the coming decades and a new way to raise money from drivers was needed, reports edie.net.

Electric vehicle push in Norway could add $1.3 billion to power bills by 2040: study

Teslas in Norway [image credit: Norsk Elbilforening (Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association)]

Norway is one of the world’s largest exporters of oil, also of natural gas. Loss of revenue from fuel taxes seems not to be a problem for them, but high demand by car users for electricity at certain times of the day could be. Are other countries ready for such issues?

OSLO (Reuters) – Norway’s power grid is likely to need an 11 billion crown ($1.27 billion) upgrade over the next 20 years to meet demand from the country’s growing fleet of electric cars, with consumers likely to have to foot the bill, a study has shown.

Electric car (EV) sales in Norway reached a record-high in March, with almost 60% of new cars sold fully electric, a result of state policy to exclude such vehicles from certain taxes and offer free or cheaper road tolls, parking and charging points.

Chill Wind Of Reality Blows Through The Green Energy Lobby

They will just rattle the begging bowl in front of gullible leaders even more frantically.
H/T Climate Change Dispatch

In recent weeks, observers of the energy scene have been wondering if the long honeymoon of the renewables industry might finally be over.

They’re right, says Andrew Montford.

EU renewables capacity additions have been falling for years, and have now declined to less than half of their 2010 peak.

Meanwhile, a wave of insolvencies is sweeping the wind industry as a result of the sharp scaling back of subsidies.

Regressive Renewables: Chaotically Intermittent Wind & Solar Deliberately Designed to Destroy Wealth & Prosperity

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Expensive, unreliable, ineffective, hard or impossible to recycle – what was the point of large-scale renewables again?

STOP THESE THINGS

Australia’s Renewable Energy Target reads like a National suicide note, but the land of Oz is no orphan in that regard. If the enemies of state were looking for insidious, all-pervasive policy perfectly designed to wreck an economy from within (while barely raising a murmur amongst the proles), they need look no further than ratcheting up subsidies, mandates and targets for intermittent and unreliable wind and solar.

Australia’s wind and solar capital, South Australia set and met its very own 50% RET: it pays the world’s highest power prices, as a result; little wonder it’s an economic backwater, critically dependent upon make-work schemes funded by Commonwealth taxpayers. Once upon a time, it enjoyed the cheapest power prices in Australia and was a manufacturing powerhouse.

Places like South Australia, Denmark and Germany put paid to the lie that wind and solar are both cheap and reliable.

But, as Michael Shellenberger…

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Tesla’s bad news accelerates as Wall Street loses faith

Tesla model X [image credit: IB Times]

Can electric car companies ever be financially viable? The Tesla example isn’t looking too good since government subsidies were withdrawn, pushing up prices. This article asks if Tesla is running out of buyers for its vehicles.

Late last year, Tesla Inc. was fully charged and cruising down the highway on Autopilot, says Phys.org.

Shares were trading above $370 each, sales of the Model 3 small electric car were strong and the company had appointed a new board chair to rein in the antics of sometimes impulsive CEO Elon Musk.

But around the middle of December, investors started having doubts about the former Wall Street darling’s prospects for continued growth, and the stock started a gyrating fall that was among the worst in company history.

For the year, the share price is down around 40%, largely on concerns Tesla is running out of buyers for its vehicles, which range in price from a base $35,400 Model 3 to a larger Model X SUV that can run well over $130,000.

UK’s EV growth ‘is severely lagging behind the rest of Europe’

Nissan Leaf electric car on charge [image credit: drive.co.uk]

Oh dear. Bribes not big enough any more? No sign of mass market take-up anyway.

The European Automobile Manufacturers Association says 2018 sales of EVs were more than twice as high in France and Germany than in the UK, says Energy Live News.

That’s the verdict from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA), which has published a new report showing the UK sold a total of 15,510 fully electric cars last year, a rate of 13.8% growth on 2017.

However, it highlights that average growth across the continent between the two years was 48.2%, rising to 53.2% among just EU member states.

Western Link failure leaves energy users facing £36m bill

[image credit: beforeitsnews.com]

From the Times:

Consumers in England and Wales may have to pay millions of pounds in compensation to Scottish wind farms after a £1.1 billion underwater cable failed for a second time.

The Western Link, which connects Hunterston in Ayrshire and Connah’s Quay on Deeside, will be out of action until the end of May as engineers tackle a failure 90 miles off the Scottish coast.

Surprise: electric car subsidies largely benefit ‘rich’ Tesla and Jaguar drivers

Tesla model X [image credit: IB Times]

H/T Climate Change Dispatch
No surprise at all, of course. The Dutch subsidy budget for electric cars is already in the red, so how they expect to go all-electric by 2030 is a mystery. High prices even with a subsidy, and concerns about batteries and range, have so far put off the majority of motorists anyway.

Around half the government fund to stimulate people to drive electric cars has ended up in the hands of ‘rich Tesla and Jaguar drivers’, the Volkskrant said on Wednesday.

Last year, the government said it would fund tax breaks totaling €700m for electric car drivers.