Bishop Hill Axe the tax
Dec 9, 2013 Energy: grid 
The head of Scottish Power has called for the Climate Change Act to be axed. The alternatives are terrifying:
Britain's unilateral carbon tax should be scrapped before it causes blackouts, pushes up household bills and makes the UK uncompetitive, ScottishPower argues.
Keith Anderson, chief corporate officer, warns that the “carbon price floor” (CPF), which taxes companies for burning fossil fuels, will make Britain’s remaining coal plants “largely uneconomic by around the middle of the decade”.
I don't suppose this will have any impact on Ed Davey or David Cameron, so I think we should probably assume the worst (although I reiterate my view that spiralling prices and industry shutdowns are more likely than consumer blackouts). What seems increasingly clear is that the crisis will be upon us soon. It is therefore not only the younger culprits - the noble and learned Baroness Worthington for example - who will live to see the results of their ideology, but the older ones like Lord Deben too.
Reader Comments (29)
As we've seen from recent postings by the Bish, the Great Delusion is well entrenched amongst the Great and The Good.
As soon as King Charles III is on the throne, we can look forward to Lord Jones of Climategate making his maiden speech in the House of Lords and the Great Delusion becoming still further entrenched.
Only when the consequences have become tangibly and undeniably catastrophic will sanity prevail.
Good to see that the new Telegraph energy editor Emily Gosden can present what appears to be balanced reporting.
I just cannot comprehend why our learned politicians cannot see the energy armageddon approaching our shores.
I don't think he's asking for the CCA to be axed. He's asking for the carbon tax to be scrapped.
As I posted on unthreaded, here is Government policy in one sentence:
What future is there for the country when policy is based on hope?
Alec Salmon missed a trick . Nightmare scenario for Cameron and Ed Davey vote for an Independant Scotland vote out the Carbon Tax
Scraping Carbon Tax. Vote winner in Australia why not an independant Scotland
Turkeys don't vote for Christmas and consumers don't vote for higher energy bills especially somewhere as cold as Scotland
jamspid
Given that Eck the Fish is more obsessed with the idea of carbon-free energy even than Davey and Cameron I don't think your hypothesis has much mileage.
And since the current instructions from wherever these nincompoops take their instructions from are that "energy bosses" are to be sidelined and vilified at every opportunity (not least by using pejorative terms like "energy bosses"!) nobody is listening to him anyway.
I genuinely wonder what will happen when the politicians finally wake up to the fact that what they are trying to do is simply not possible — at least in the physical universe that we inhabit.
Britain faces blackouts next winter, energy boss warns (HT Richard Tol on twitter)
Roll on. Lets have some blackouts.
However in advance we need to push blackouts are caused by Green nonsense. Then when they happen, we can reverse the mess completely.
Paul: There's nothing in that article that we haven't been telling sucessive Governments about for years. It is only now that it is getting wide-spread publicity.
Alec Salmon doing his Mel Gibson William Wallace act a free Scotland free from London imposed hated Carbon Taxes.The SNP trade independence for scraping Carbon Tax .
At least get it out there as a discussion that's the point.
1. Will the tax raise prices more that green energy alternatives ?
The Drax CEO was on BottomLine saying biomass will cost 3X coal
, but I calculate that if they stuck with coal fuel costs would be less than 2X even at the 2020 peak carbon tax of £40/tonne.
And in 2020 the Polish coal stations and all the new German ones will be chugging along.
- 2. Move your factory abroad - The thing is that with the carbon tax UK industry will be paying much more, so they might aswell move to Germany, Poland or BRICs
- the UK homeowner might end up going offgrid and buy-in batteries from China instead /sarc
None of this will get mentioned in the Greeniad, so the chattering classes will be surprised when their lights go out.
I suppose when the first blackout occurs the green idiots wil blame:-
1. Climate change/extreme weather.
2. The energy/grid companies.
3. Bishop Hill & his ilk. (Deniers - wouldn't let us spend enough).
4. The previous government.
5. ......
They will never blame Miliband's Climate Change Act or the Green Taxes.
There won't be any blackouts due to the vast army of Diesel STOR generators popping up all over the country. What there will be is vast exodus of the remaining energy intensive industries like glass making and so on due to the ridiculous cost of operating in this manner.
For God's sake Cameron et. al., go ahead with a massive fracking programme. Ignore the protests from both inside and outside parliament. Clearly the government is too stupid to repeal the climate change act.
Ineos wants to attract other "energy heavy" industries to their site at Grangemouth to share energy costs and Tom Crotty, Ineos Group director has this warning to UK government
“The Government needs to wake up to the damage high energy costs are causing companies in Britain,”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/10504104/Ineos-plans-to-share-out-Grangemouth-site.html
Clearly the government is too stupid to repeal the climate change act.
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There is a far simpler explanation. Just as climate alarmists hide the decline, governments hide their debts. This is for the same reason that Bernie Madoff hid his debts.
So for the UK, the official debt is 1.2 trillion. The off the book debts are over 7,000 bn on top. Pensions.
So they won't repeal because they want the cash no matter what damage results.
it won't change the outcome. Climate change is just the excuse for yet another tax.
Remember like all good snake oil salesmen, a new tax cures everything from Syphilis to general economic malaise.
I don't see that he's calling for the CCA to be repealed either. One of the things he is calling for is the culling of remaining old boilers in the name of efficiency. Quite how the saving of £100 a year in running costs that he (optimistically) predicts would offset the thousands of pounds it would cost me to do, I don't quite see.
Why are these people always trying to treat symtoms and not the causes?
Nick:
Clearly the government is too stupid to repeal the climate change act.
I'm not sure that the government can readily repeal the CCA, it being the UK's implementation of an EU Directive. Any legal wallah care to comment?
Note also that, as ScottishPower is not calling for RO/ROS subsidies to be repealed, the call is perhaps, not to put it too strongly, just a tad hypocritical.
I'm not sure that the government can readily repeal the CCA, it being the UK's implementation of an EU Directive.
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Directive?
Lets see about rights. Freedom of movement of people, goods, services and CAPITAL. Except if you're Cypriot.
It's all optional. What are they going to do? Send in the gunboats? Ok. we send them back the migrants on welfare.
From a few years back:
If he'd stuck the word 'alarmism' after 'climate change', he'd have been closer to the mark.
CAGW -- the self-fulfilling prophecy. All their absurd and ignorant policies will bring about the misery they claim to want to save us from.
Noble and learned Baroness Worthless?
I assume someone's feeling a little sarcastic...
Cumbrian Lad
The saving of £100 a year assumes that you compare the efficiency of your old what-on-earth-can-go-wrong-it's-a-cast-iron-kettle boiler at its most inefficient with your spangly new bells-and-whistles-which-runs-from-a-computer-and-can-be-guaranteed-to-need-a-technician-to-sort-at-least-every-couple-of-months condensing boiler running at the optimum efficiency as described by the manufacturer. Which has about the same relevance to the real world as vehicle fuel consumption figures or the rated output of windmills.
Or so my heating 'engineers' tell me both in the UK and in France.
A friend of mine made a good living for about six months before the compulsory switch to condensing boilers in Scotland — not by installing the old ones but by charging £50 to do a proper service on them, replacing any parts that actually needed replacing and fitting new ones where absolutely necessary. He reckons he 'stole' about 100 new customers from the cowboys with the result that he is still making a good living!
As usual, nobody bothers to look at the overall cost to the consumer. Properly maintained the cost of a CH system running from a traditional boiler is less than that from a condensing boiler once all the other costs — breakdowns, annual servicing, etc — have been taken into account.
Of course if your only criterion is saving the planet ... but then perhaps you shouldn't have central heating at all. Open hearths fuelled by cow dung, perhaps?
Quite so Mike, and remember that the claimed efficiencies are only achievable if the piping system is appropriate for the boiler, most unlikely for an old system, so the claimed savings would be ephemeral in the real case. A part on my 35+ year old boiler went in November. I was able to identify it easily, track down a new part (identical spec by the same manufacturer being made new in Hungary) and had a gas safe engineer install it, all for less than £200. Should be fine for another 5 years. I reckon that's far 'greener' than paying someone 250 notes to tell me what sort of Green Deal I qualify for!
As soon as King Charles III is on the throne, we can look forward to Lord Jones of Climategate making his maiden speech in the House of Lords and the Great Delusion becoming still further entrenched.
Only when the consequences have become tangibly and undeniably catastrophic will sanity prevail.
Dec 9, 2013 at 9:01 AM | Martin A
On an admittedly small, but larger than necessary for Prof the Lew to produce results, sample, odd numbered Charleses have been rather unlucky. With any luck…
A moment of practical reflection. If you can afford it I strongly suggest you buy a generator. If the lights go out so does your gas or oil boiler as well as everything else. If it happens in winter you are without heat.
Ideally you want one able to deliver at minimum 1kW - this will give you enough to run a few lights and a fridge.
Philip: I Agree, but there is always the chance that central heating won't work because of the country running out of gas as well (as almost happened last winter). A generator, an oil-fired boiler, a camping stove to provide cooking facilities and a wood burning stove should see most people through the worst winter blackout.
More worrying than a UK blackout is the possibility of a European blackout.
There has been an unusual shift in the pattern of imports and exports to the continent as this winter sets in: France is normally a net exporter of nuclear electricity to its neighbours, including the UK. Indeed it is Frances third largest export.
This year the direction has reversed early in the winter: The UK is now exporting to the Continent via France.
That implies a larger shortage of generating capacity across the channel than in the UK..
Government worst case analysis (naively?) assumes that the full capacity of the continental links would be available to prop up UK generation..that is unlikely to be the case if France is assuming the same, but in the opposite direction...
The occurrence of the first pan European high pressure foggy overcast period of winter is not one to be welcomed. With solar and wind power effectively disabled, coal being shut down and gas mothballed due to no ability to compete with wind, the possibility of a pan European crisis where international links are severed by national operators in order to preserve their own integrity, exists.
European integrations means we are all bound to the same policies. And if they turn out to be ill considered, we all go down together, or break the integrated model.
Now where have we come across that principle before...ah!. the Euro!
Leo S; apparently the Poles are installing breakers (or whatever they are called) on the main interconnectors. The official reason is to be able to protect their grid from instability triggered by renewables in Germany. However they could also be used exactly as you suggest.
Leo, that's an interesting observation. An electricity bail in. I suspect that it won't work. The Czech/Poles's will cut off Germany and because Germany has exported its coal powered generators over the border they are vulnerable.
Transmission losses are also pretty high. You have to factor that in.
Also look at all the Green schemes. What's left off is the cost of building the grid to support them. Apparently that comes for 'free'