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.

Is a new Interactive Climate Atlas ‘a game changer for policymakers’ – or just a game?

Delving into the technical section (see below), this puzzling statement appeared:
‘One of the main innovations of the dataset is its inclusion of [a named] dataset, which provides regional climate projections covering the land components of the globe by combining two regional climate models and six general circulation models, which were selected to span the widest possible range of uncertainty.’ — Another section is headed ‘Quality assured data’ but surely models with a wide range of uncertainty must include some which are more uncertain, aka inaccurate, than others. What purpose does that serve for policymakers?
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The Copernicus Interactive Climate Atlas, launched by the Copernicus Climate Change Service on 20 February, is set to be an important new resource for policymakers looking to formulate effective climate policy and for other users needing to visualise and analyse climate change information, says the European Commission.
. . .
Let’s get technical
So, how does the Copernicus Interactive Climate Atlas work? The gridded monthly dataset used for the Atlas integrates information from several climatic observational, reanalysis and projection datasets. The data is harmonised across the different datasets and catalogues to ensure standard common definitions and units for each of the variables.

One of the main innovations of the dataset is its inclusion of the CORDEX-CORE dataset, which provides regional climate projections covering the land components of the globe by combining two regional climate models and six general circulation models, which were selected to span the widest possible range of uncertainty. Due to its global continental coverage and higher resolution, this is a strategic dataset for the C3S Atlas, making it possible to analyse climate change in even higher resolution, such as for megacities around the world, for example.

Full article — Copernicus Interactive Climate Atlas: a game changer for policymakers.

Government climate techno-fixes raise ‘grave doubts’ among UK’s civil servants

Net zero policies and plans of climate-obsessed politicians looking threadbare and unrealistic yet again, this time in court. They can never admit that their goals are unachievable at any price, even supposing their methods had some merit.
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British civil servants have grave doubts about their government’s favoured techno-fixes for climate-polluting industries like meat production and air travel, new documents show.

In risk assessments made public because of an ongoing court case, officials warned that technology to reduce methane emissions from cow burps is “nascent” and there might not be enough plants or hydrogen available to power the world’s planes more sustainably, says Climate Home News.

Yet despite the uncertainties surrounding these and other climate solutions like carbon dioxide removal, the UK government is relying on such technologies to meet a big chunk of its climate plans.

Net zero will be far more expensive than public thinks, Lords warned

Comment: “The problem is that net zero is very popular until people get asked to pay for it.” And get pushed into giving up things like fuel-powered private transport and home heating, for alternatives many don’t want at any price. None of this is new, but here it’s getting aired in a national political forum. Chasing climate obsessions and targets at any cost and by any means, including by increasing national debt as suggested here, is an ongoing drag on everyone for debatable reasons.
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Net zero will be far more expensive than the public has so far been led to believe, top economists have warned the Lords Economic Affairs Committee. — The Telegraph reporting.

Transitioning to a low-carbon economy is “necessary” but will be “much more expensive than people imagine”, Olivier Blanchard said.

The former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund said there was a “substantial fiscal cost to achieve anything close to net-zero”.

‘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.

French farmers express net zero nausea as ‘siege of Paris’ begins

The tractors are out in force. Wrestling with onerous climate regulations, squeezed by supermarkets and pressured to give up land, many farmers have had more than enough, and not only in France.
Update: Farmergeddon! – (Daily Mail)
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Why the farmers don’t like the EU’s environmental policies – BBC News.

At the heart of the European Green Deal, which sets out how to make Europe climate-neutral by 2050, is a scheme called the Farm to Fork Strategy.

The approach aims to:

— Halve pesticide use by 2030
— Reduce fertiliser use
— Devote at least 10% of agricultural areas to non-agricultural uses (for example by turning it into fallow land, planting non-productive trees or creating ponds)
— Ensure 25% of the total EU agricultural land is used for organic farming
by 2030

These targets are seen by many farmers as unrealistic and expensive.

The Green Deal itself also includes legislation aimed at reducing emissions.

Agriculture accounts for around 11% of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions, so farmers will be very affected by efforts to reduce emissions.

Already in 2019, protests erupted in the Netherlands over proposals to dramatically reduce livestock farming in order to lower emissions.
. . .
‘Just impossible’ to be a farmer in France

There’s a line of tractors behind me which is blocking one of the main motorways into Paris, near Charles de Gaulle airport.

We were driving along with one man who is here with his son-in-law, who has been driving a tractor. His son-in-law has a horse stables not too far from here.

He says things are just impossible for farmers here in France, and that it’s very hard for them to compete with other countries in the European Union, which he says have lower standards.

On top of that, he was complaining about the low cost of food being sold and the challenge that the green agenda is posing for production.

Full report here.

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.

Trillions being wasted on climate emergency – reader’s letter to local paper

Commonsense from a citizen objecting to the vast sums being frittered away on futile and unachievable dogma-driven objectives in the name of somehow ‘correcting’ the global climate.
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With reference to your article Sit For Climate Protests At Station, I would like to point out an alternative view.

So begins a reader’s letter in the Newark Advertiser.
. . .
The reader concludes:
By focusing on C02 we are spending trillions on inefficient renewables and EV vehicles rather than using the money for real environmental issues and adapting to changing climatic conditions.

Source: Reader’s letter [pdf].

Another ‘net zero’ tax: UK to implement carbon tariff on imports by 2027

The government’s war on a vital trace gas in the atmosphere ratchets up yet again, burdening everyone with more pointless bureaucracy and costs. That includes importers of renewables and electric vehicles.
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Britain said on Monday (18 December) it would implement a new import carbon pricing mechanism by 2027, with goods imported from countries with a lower or no carbon price having to pay a levy as part of decarbonisation efforts, reports Euractiv.

The government said the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) would apply to carbon intensive products in the iron, steel, aluminium, fertiliser, hydrogen, ceramics, glass and cement sectors.

The charge applied will depend on the amount of carbon emitted in the production of the imported good, and the gap between the carbon price applied in the country of origin – if any – and the carbon price faced by UK producers.

‘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.

Rishi’s Empty ‘Net Zero’ Rhetoric – NZW

Photosynthesis [image credit: Nefronus @ Wikipedia]

Net Zero Watch summarises: ‘Rishi Sunak’s recent speeches on Net Zero are long on rhetoric, but the decarbonisation juggernaut rumbles on uninterrupted.’ — Pursuing climate obsession at a slightly slower rate still doesn’t work. Carbon dioxide isn’t a pollutant.
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Over in the Spectator, Fraser Nelson is inviting us to welcome a change in Rishi Sunak’s tone on Net Zero, says Andrew Montford @ NZW.

His interest has been piqued by the PM’s speech at COP28, which he says shows that Sunak has “started the difficulty work of moving the UK climate agenda from fantasy to policy”.

There will be no more precautionary-principle daftness, we are told, and attention is drawn to the Prime Minister’s claim that from now on decarbonisation will be pursued “in a more pragmatic way, which doesn’t burden working people”.

Nelson is quite correct that the whole drive for Net Zero is a fantasy. It is the triumph of political posturing and bureaucratic trickery over rational decisionmaking.

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.

German climate policy insufficient, court rules

German Autobahn

The legal consequences of government climate obsession rumble on, as countries keep insisting that their ‘targets’ will somehow make the weather nicer, or something. Some pressure groups want lower speed limits but with a future of (supposedly) EVs that seems fairly pointless.
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The German government must present emergency programmes to improve its climate policy in the transport and buildings sector, a Berlin court ruled on Thursday (30 November), after the country repeatedly failed to meet emission reduction targets, reports Euractiv.

The higher administrative court of Berlin-Brandenburg ruled that the German government must present immediate action programmes to reach the emission reduction targets in the transport and buildings sector, as written in the German climate law.

The ruling follows a lawsuit by environmental NGOs Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) and Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND), who called it a “groundbreaking” decision.

Alberta Strikes Back at the Federal Government’s Energy Transition Plan

Image credit: mining.com

Alberta is the main player in Canada’s shale oil and gas industry. The outcome of this power struggle over climate ideology and its claimed consequences will be, let’s say, interesting.
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Alberta’s Premier has invoked a controversial piece of legislation to protect its citizens from the federal government’s Clean Electricity Regulation, reports OilPrice.com.

This is the first time the Sovereignty Act has been invoked in Alberta. The move involved Premier Smith tabling a resolution at the Alberta legislature that instructed provincial agencies such as the Alberta Electric System Operator to ignore the Clean Electricity Regulations when they came into effect, “to the extent legally permissible,” CBC reported.

The Sovereignty Act was enacted last year and its purpose was exactly the purpose it was used this week by the government: to protect the province from federal laws that the provincial government considers unconstitutional.

Why the Dutch election result spells trouble for Europe’s climate efforts

Dutch wind turbines

Climate mythology on the back foot. Some people at least are not keen on being frogmarched into costly and disruptive ‘net zero’ energy policies for more pain than gain, while having their reliability of supply reduced and farmers demonised.
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The far-right party that surged to victory in Wednesday’s Dutch election wants to ditch all efforts to stop climate change, says Politico.

About a quarter of Dutch voters backed Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV), whose platform includes exiting the Paris climate accord, dismantling domestic green legislation, and scrapping measures to reduce planet-warming emissions.

While right-wing politicians from Scandinavia to Italy have won big over the past year, this is the first time a party openly calling for an end to the green transition has won a national election in the European Union.