Tuesday
Mar082011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill As if things weren't bad enough
The EU continues its efforts to deindustrialise the entire continent:
Europe's climate chief has beaten off intense lobbying from businesses to secure a key victory in the battle over greenhouse gas targets.
Connie Hedegaard, the EU climate change commissioner, published on Tuesday afternoon her long-awaited report into how the EU can toughen its climate targets in a cost-effective manner, with a proposal that the EU could raise its current targets on emissions cuts from 20% emissions cuts to 25% cuts by 2020.
I think this is going to turn out very badly.
Reader Comments (56)
Setting targets, doubtless they'll be "achieved", with a bit of fiddling. Just shows how much we need (Scrolls up page to check name) Connie Hedegaard, the EU climate change commissioner.
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Er 'China' and 'India', Connie?
Pointless, destructive gesture politics up to the next level then.
From the Graun article
What, exactly is a victory for Huhne? Oh - this is:
Apart from all those publicly subsidised 'green' jobs, whatever will the rest of us do?
And where will displaced European industrial capacity end up, I wonder?
As Connie is a EU Commissioner, what I posted this the other night on 'The third-world ambition of the UK' thread is relevant here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWSYMpuCFaQ&feature=related
(Nigel Farage on who's who in the EU commission - highly recommended if you have not seen it)
Growth opportunities? What with making the EU uncompetitive? The Chinese do not even have to do anything to beat us. They just have to copy and make it faster and cheaper...
Can you imagine the amount of future red tape to get factory started here? In China, the factory will be up and running before the EU mandated Environmental Impact Analysis has even been signed off.
You do seriously have to wonder about the future of Europe, led by mostly unelected people like this.
All hail low-carbon growth.... fantasy at large...
Do the Chinese know about their 40-50% reduction target?
Have you seen the UK carbon plan released today?
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/pn11_020/pn11_020.aspx
"The new Carbon Plan sets out what has to happen and by when if the Government is to live up to its green ambitions, meet tough domestic carbon targets and encourage greater action internationally. It is focused on the jobs and economic opportunities of the low carbon economy and on policies that will help insulate Britain from future energy price shocks."
Is that the CH4 Anonimouse?
opps, try
www.youtube.com/v/Gxgr5CQIqaE?version=3
We are all ARabs now
mount your camels and lets ride to Damascus
Has anyone come across any green job that isn't subsidised by the income generated by real jobs?
Soon there'll be no real jobs, so the green jobs wil disappear too.
PS Huhne was on Channel 4 news this evening discussing with John Snow the lunacy of solar panels. Fantasy Island is where we live.
'I think this is going to turn out very badly.' ...for whom ?
It's pretty clear that the body politic of the EU is a larger scale version of the body politic of the UK; that is something run by its members for the benefit of its members and largely doing things according to its own internal rules, which have little to do with external realities, and have no reference to either the wishes or well-being of the various peoples it has sway over.
Roll on 2020. Those fortunate to have jobs will be awoken, assuming they remembered to wind up their alarm clock. Assuming they also remembered to wind their radios, they can then listen to the morning electricity forecast and see if there'll be enough power to work.
EU Commissioner the only thing they are good at is lining their own pockets with cash, while Europe been going through a recession the EU parliaments been busy handing its self bucket-loads of cash through increases, pay, pension etc.
So this ‘target’ may not be much to worry about given the EU track record of ‘inability’ but I will give you 1000-1 it will required more ‘visits’ and ‘conferences’ which by pure lucky chance happen at some of the worlds nicest tourist destinations.
This policy isn't to support international banking's investments in India and China, it is to save the polar bears and the beetles. The poor we beetles.
I would like to think that we Americans are gradually recovering our sanity and our ability to raise a middle finger to such targets.
I'm beginning to believe that what these people have is genuinely an illness.
According to commenter fitzr (8 March 2011 9:27PM) in the linked Guardian article, AFP, the Agence France-Presse news agency reports that the Hedegaard 25% proposal failed to secure the full backing of the commission.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jEdJ9wLNISdr-PQHiAzYiENU5Znw?docId=CNG.08dc880232fd4c049d2f1a10f4641409.931
Does anyone here really believe that hard nosed, expense driven Eurocrats care about the planet in 100 years time ?
We could reduce emissions considerably by installing the new nuclear power stations that EDF and others are planning.
One could call it the "middle ground" between the AGW's and us but of course when these plans are put forward the greens will forget about the lack of CO2 emissions that nuclear power offers and just winge as usual.
However with great news coming out of American with regard to Mann et al at last being caught for deleting emails we may finally get closer to the end game for all this nonsense.
It is one thing having deep foolishness in our own politicians, but having it thrust upon us by foreign bureaucrats becomes less and less tolerable. When the fans spin, the ordure scatters, the dust settles, and the chickens come home to roost, we shall be a little nearer to getting out of the EU madhouse thanks to Connie's bizarre proposal. A consolation for the fact that we are paying for a share of her salary, support, and expenses.
This is going to play very badly with the banks.
Broadly, utilities have been buying carbon credits in case the reduction is set at a very aggressive level. In that case the indulgences would get very costly to buy, because no reductions in emissions are actually possible in Europe. Emissions are pretty flawlessly correlated to GDP, so the only significant reductions achieved have been in Russia when its economy collapsed, and in the wake of the credit crunch, when everybody's did. Thus there is no prospect of supply-side reductions in emissions - utilities will just emit as normal, and pay up for the indulgences.
The natural sellers to them have been banks. If the level turns out to be 30% rather the widely mooted 20%, then given that emissions cannot actually fall, the banks will have to buy these positions back at whatever the price inflates to. I can see this taking another bank or two down.
In fact, this has the makings of a self-fulfilling target. If set at 30% the economic impact on utilities, and hence on retail energy price, and hence on the cost of everything generally and hence on interest rates, will be so harsh that we'll head back into recession. Et voilá! GDP shrinks, so emissions fall, so job done, and as by 2020 we'll be well and truly in a cyclical cooling trend, the psyentists will claim the credit! Emissions cuts saved the planet!
In the longer term, this business of taxing air that governments have got themselves into is going to be very hard to wean themselves off. Income tax was introduced as a temporary measure to pay for the Napoleonic Wars and 200 years later look at it. I can see westrn economies being lumbered with taxes on air for may decades on the grounds that if we don't tax air we'll have to close schoolznospitals, or gas nurses, or force de kidz to club baby seals to death, or something (insert weepy emotional blackmail image here).
I truly am despaired to find out which sort of weed they are smoking in Brussels. Anyway, I am more than certain they're cashing big on it, and that it is no longer just a mere possibility. We have an empty house, and we're paying 10 euros a month for the electricity bill, whithout using a single electron. These go to subsidize 'windmills' and that.
@Atomic Hairdryer
yep, spot on:
"the morning electricity forecast and see if there'll be enough power to work"
I had cause recently to research The Good Power Company and their efforts to do exactly this
It's their vision of the future - I suppose a consolation of less windy days & cloudy days might be less Guardian...
Emissions cuts should include removing EU buildings from the public power grid.
The EU: They are not constrained by any accountability to anyone in that expensive freewheeling club
It is like a BBC on steroids that one.
if CO2 is any of their worries I wonder why they haven't yet virtualised the whole EU admin ?
No, instead they still commute daily between Brussels and Strassbourg by the thousands , at about 500 Euro minimum a pop.
Gaiia Climate worries propel them to ukaze a lot, but they wouldn't let the Brussels-Strassbourg commute ridicule suffer by it.
Tom linked to Judy Davenport's (CEO of Good Energy) article. From that article:
In plain English, these technologies are not appealing, despite being based on capturing "free" energy. If they were, venture capitalists would be funding them. Much as they funded dot-coms in the 90s, knowing a majority of the efforts would founder, because the winners would pay off enough to cover the losing enterprises. So, concludes Ms Davenport, the public must underwrite them, either through (tax) incentives to investors, and/or directly through subsidies.
It is thinking such as this which has helped to create the bloated government spending endemic to the modern world. No longer is it considered appropriate to let individuals decide how to invest their money: the government, ably assisted by those such as Ms Davenport with an idea to flog, invests its citizens' money in schemes which have demonstrated insufficient appeal to the investor class.
While some of these investments no doubt will bear fruit, I think the upshot is hinted at ironically by Ms Davenport: "For too long we have taken for granted that power is available at a low price whenever we want it - at the flick of a switch!" Yes, this will be the end result: power will not be available 'round the clock, nor will it be available at a low price.
Meanwhile, while Prof Tim (one day one of my predictions will come true) Flannery is bothering you folks, Connie has sent us one of her foot soldiers, Ms Jill Duggan MSc (environmental economics). What, no PhD, shurely shome mishtake (ed).
Ms Duggan apparently was recently appointed a national expert on carbon emissions trading and pricing at the European Commission and is touring Oz meeting with MPs and giving helpful seminars at various universities. Hopefully on why she sees our opposition to a carbon tax to be slightly bizarre.
Well at least we're not fully bizarre which is only used if you are rude enough to suggest that certain proxies may have been used in an incorrect orientation.
Chairman Al
"It is focused on the jobs and economic opportunities of the low carbon economy and on policies that will help insulate Britain from future energy price shocks."
Thanks I like that.
Very sound.
Makes ernomous economic sense - in an approved very post normal manner.
Our PM speaks that way too, but so far her target is rather more modest.
We are politely trying to disuade her.
It's like talking to a brick wall, as my late mother used to say.
The popularity of her government has now fallen to a new low of 30%.
But hey, when you're doing Gaia's work, you can't worry about the voters too much, can you?
EU documents "Leaked to the Guardian prior to publication"? I am surprised!
"20%, now 25%.. do I hear any increase on 25%? Thank you... Greenpeace in the back there, 30%,.. 30%, any increase on 30%?
Connie should have no problem with big numbers having presided over the theft of 2% of the whole Danish GDP while Climate and Energy Minister. That qualifies for promotion to the EU!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/taxing-lessons-of-a-flawed-ets/story-e6frg6zo-1225978200804
Did no one notice our mate Richard Black a couple of days ago?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/ "China and EU share climate vision".
I swear Black really is losing the plot. He holds China up as the "Holy Grail" whilst they burn 50% of the coal use every year! He does not mention that he refers to a country that gives Maurice Strong protection from criminal proceedings! He is right about the China and the EU sharing something though. Both make laws using non elected bureaucrats!
Let's not forget:-
http://www.zerocarbonbritain.com/index.php/summaries/the-built-environment
and their dismal “Report” [Introduction:- Sir John Houghton, “Former Co-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” et al, partners and funders including the UEA and Mystic MET]
who campaign for zero emissions by 2030.
Unbelievable (sic)
OMG - now SSE have announced that they are going to moth-ball a Scottish gas plant, and cut back and delay the construction of a CGT plant they have permission for in Wales -
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/business/Scottish-amp-Southern-cuts-planned.6730713.jp
Meanwhile the tories now have only 7 years to complete their first nuclear station -
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/7476680/Tories-plan-new-nuclear-power-plant-every-18-months.html
According to the "Carbon Plan":
cutting emissions by at least 34% by 2020
and 80% by 2050 – below the 1990
baseline
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/what_we_do/lc_uk/carbon_plan/carbon_plan.aspx
More recession means more targets met, I feel we are in for a bleak decade perhaps in future we will learn that these are the dark ages of UK history!
lapogus
Re nuclear. As usual with politicians, too little, too late. It's a pity the Telegraph think Greg Clark is the shadow energy secretary.
The growth opportunities associated with a "low carbon" (dioxide, I presume) economy are nil. Negative, in fact. Are these politicians so thick that they really don't realise the likely result of their pseudo scientific fantasies or are they genuinely set on sending us back to the middle ages? It will be interesting to see who jumps from the EU global warming ship first. Obviously not UK, but I can't see the French willingly taking it up the derrier and seeing their livelihoods destroyed.
OT-Posting problems again (Tue).......
"I think this is going to turn out very badly."
I don't, a friend once gave me some advice I have found to be very useful, and I think European businesses may benefit from adapting it. The advice was "Never argue with your wife, it isn't worth it and you will always lose, just agree, ignore whatever it was you didn't agree with, then forget about it"
Works a treat.
Or take the classic corporate fudge the numbers approach. When they come knocking explain how you reduced your potential output by 25% percent, the actual reduction itself being immeasurable since the possible increase was pure speculation. Show them a graph with a very large scale to create the impression of a 25% drop.
Or just willfully misunderstand and say you thought it meant a 25% drop in the reduction itself.
Is 68 too late for a Gweilo to start learning to speak Guānhuà?
Can someone remind me why we're in Europe? If the future cost to the UK economy is greater than the revenue lost from leaving the EU then it's in the UK interest to leave. If we invest in high tech manufacturing we could sell China the things it wants as it grows.
I've grumbled about the EU before but this is the first time I've seriously considered the UK leaving the EU. No wonder UKIP did well in the Barnsley by-election.
Energy Minister Charles Hendry today gave the go-ahead for RWE npower proposals to construct a new gas power plant at Willington, South Derbyshire.
Charles Hendry, who will visit the proposed site later today, said:
“The Willington plant will play an important role in providing secure electricity supplies to millions of homes, as well as bringing jobs and investment to South Derbyshire.
“Gas plants like Willington will continue to be a central part in the country’s energy mix as we make move towards a low carbon economy.
“There is a also a major opportunity in the long-term for gas power stations like this to be fitted with abatement technology. This station will be built carbon capture ready, which means that eventually CO2 emissions from the plant could be captured and transported for storage offshore.”
If built, the combined cycle gas turbine plant would take about three years to construct, and will be located on the site of the former Willington A and B power stations which closed in the 1990s.
The plans are for a new power station comprising of up to four CCGT generating units, each around 500MW in capacity, and four open cycle gas turbine (OCGT) generating units with a combined capacity of 400MW – bringing a total capacity of up to 2400 MW. This brings the total new capacity consented by the Government since May to 5456MW.
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/pn11_019/pn11_019.aspx
That's us in the Midlands taken care of, hopefully with the plans for increased gas storage we can expect to see more sensible decisions being made.
It's time some hard-headed treasury officials have a talk with Huhne and show him in simple numbers what his proposals mean for us, their employers.
It should also be made clear to him that he's going to lose his seat (that usually concentrates the minds of these little b*stards!), and that he will lose his pensions because there won't be any money left to pay for it - due to the 'de-industrialisation' he so craves for our country. It is quite simple, really - so simple even a Hoo should be able to understand:
de-industrialisation = no taxes going into Treasury coffers
Why can't we have a revolution - one where we'd also take away income and possessions of MPs and ministers who got us into this mess, proportionally to their guilt.
Hoo should be doing fine, living on income benefits on a council estate ...
Phillip
"Huhne was on Channel 4 news this evening discussing with John Snow the lunacy of solar panels."
I assume the 'lunacy' was not a major part of the discussion! Did JS ask any searching questions?
I posted at WUWT:
Andrew Bolt this morning on the radio in Melbourne this morning:
“We chat to Jill Duggan, from the directorate-general for climate action at the European Commission, who says the opposition here to a carbon dioxide tax is ”slightly bizarre” when Europe has no problem with its own price on carbon dioxide. Really, I ask, with European unemployment at 10 per cent and growth at just 1.6 per cent? So I ask this salesman of the EU emissions trading scheme the two basic questions everyone should ask of anyone selling anything: how much does it cost, and what will it do? How many billions will Europe spend on this scheme to cut its emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, and by how much will that cut the world’s temperatures by 2100? The interview suddenly goes very pear-shaped for one of us – and is a stunning indictment of the EU’s foolishness. The question about job losses caused by Europe’s green schemes goes no better. ”
Please listen to this show. It will inform and greatly amuse. The link to the recording is under the picture of Jill Duggan. Make it viral.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/mtr_today_march_9/#commentsmore
Now we are getting to the crux of the matter. In order for the city to make even more money and receive even bigger bonuses then the UK has to be the leading light in the Green revolution:
With 81% of the world’s carbon market
transactions taking place in London, the
City has confirmed its place as a global
carbon finance hub. The Government
will draw on this expertise to support the
development and reform of the carbon
market to help to drive and finance
emissions reductions internationally.
The Government is also supporting the
design and implementation of trading
schemes in countries such as India (UK–
India collaboration on the PAT scheme).
The aim is to build capacity and share
expertise to promote emission reductions.
Pages 70-71 http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/What%20we%20do/A%20low%20carbon%20UK/1358-the-carbon-plan.pdf
@timheyes,
Look upon the EU as a benefit club for politicians, bureaucrats and QUANGO dwelling critters. A means by which they can look after themselves and increase their number, all untouched by the clamourings of the brutish mob (or democracy as some call it). For politicians in the UK it means they can enjoy the trappings of office without the hard work and responsibility.
It's a view which explains a lot.
Don't make the mistake of muddling Europe, a loosely defined geographical area, and the EU, which is a specific political construct.
Not a problem for us in Scotland. Last October:
"Scotland's renewable electricity target for the next decade is being raised from 50 per cent to 80 per cent, First Minister Alex Salmond announced today"
Even though 10% of Scotland's power comes from hydro that means a 77% cut in our power supply, Or 86% when like during the December freeze, there is no wind. The SNP are beyond insane but so are the Scottish media and other parties who are unwilling to even mention the problem..
The EU's evil plans can be read here. Not a single mention of nuclear in their "roadmap".
http://ec.europa.eu/clima/documentation/roadmap/index_en.htm
Agenda for Scottish Government
Mar 2011 Publication of a report setting out Scottish Government’s position on
potential use of regulation to enforce energy efficiency standards in the
private sector
You lucky people!