Quote of the day

[It's a] struggle to find a single fund manager that believes energy policy is credible... That is why they are not investing.

Peter Atherton

Comments

[Pharos]

[It's a] struggle to find a single VOTER that believes COALITION policy is credible... That is why they are VOTING UKIP.

[Dolphinlegs]

It seems pretty obvious that the politicians who are incapable of seeing the stupidity of current energy policy have absolutely no chance of understanding how investors will react to that policy. Stupidity squared.

[sHx]

Nargh! They are not investing because they are evil capitalists.

[Dodgy Geezer]

I wonder where the analysts were when this policy was first mooted? Because it was obviously going to collapse the economy then. Nothing has changed...

However, at the time it came with a lot of bribes, in the shape of wind farm and other green subsidies that the analysts could 'sell' to their clients.

Are we to assume now that the minuses have just outweighed the plusses?

[AC1]

Behind every artificially high price there's a rent-seeker lobbying the government.

[Brute]

Politicians are not liable for poor decisions other than in the voting booth. This makes bizarre risk-taking brutally common since no one is going to be held legally responsible for the ensuing mess.

[Phillip Bratby]

It's been said before. Consumers pick winning technologies. All that's left for politicians to pick are losing technologies.

[geronimo]

@Philip Bratby:

Philip have you seen this document? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-carbon-plan-reducing-greenhouse-gas-emissions--2. I asked to see the plan for moving us from where we are now to where we want to be and this is what they, DECC, believe to be a plan. I would welcome your comments if you want to put them on the unthreaded thread. For me this isn't a plan, it's not even a Statement of Requirements, it's simply a statement of intent, which in industry would go to the engineers for a cost/timescale feasibility study, from which a detailed statement of requirements, a road map of how it can be achieved with feasible costs and timescales, from which approval to proceed would be granted/not granted. This project needs an overarching project management office, which doesn't exist, detailed project plans, which don't exit, detailed costs, which don't exist. It is government on a wing and a prayer

[Phillip Bratby]

geronimo: I believe that I may have briefly looked at the "Low Carbon Plan: Delivering our low carbon future". Like all DECC documents it is indigestible. I agree with all you say. In addition, I have recently been giving evidence at wind farm public inquiries (and continue to do so) into the alleged savings from wind energy; specifically that not one Government around the world has examined the alleged CO2 emissions savings from deployment of wind turbines (only independent engineers have done so). It is truly incredible. So even if they had an overarching project management office, detailed project plans and detailed costs, they still have not determined what the effect on CO2 emissions would be (and as they have no costs, what the cost/unit of CO2 reduced would be). Only Governments can get away with intentions based on wishful thinking and religious belief.

[Paul Matthews]

Here's my quote of today, from Nate Silver on Today this morning:

Academics also want to provide false certainty and they also tend to be very skilled at obfuscating how messy their conclusion is by using very cumbersome technical language that's hard to parse, so you assume that if someone uses a lot of jargon they must know what they're talking about

He also said a lot of other good good things, like the more confident someone is with their prediction, the more suspect you should regard it.
Listen here.

[Stephen Richards]

Thedre is an article at the bbc site this morning about a UK parliamentary committee on energy policy which took evidence from enviromentalists and came to the conclusion that they needed to better support the eu carbon trading scheme. Now that how far we have come. Nowhere. They are not moving, they are not listening. fingers in ears la la la da la .........

[Ruth Dixon]

Geronimo, Philip Bratby:

Last year I wrote a post on one of the more startling claims in DECC's Low Carbon Plan, that industrial emissions have fallen 46% since 1990. I found that they could make that claim, but only by means of interesting accounting!

http://mygardenpond.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/industrial-ghg-emissions-fall-46-per-cent/

[Phillip Bratby]

An impressive bit of digging there Ruth. You have shown how the civil service (the Sir Humphreys) distorts the facts and the information and ministers have no clue about anything they repeat. DECC needs a good cleaning out.

[sherlock1]

Well - if emissions have fallen 46% since 1990, there's nothing more to be done, is there..?