"What is the point of the EU summit and a Georgian fudge?" asks Bruno Waterfield.Tuesday, September 02, 2008
The unholy trinity
One of the "colleagues" wittering away on the BBC World Tonightprogramme – I think it was Solana – was at pains to reassure his audience that the Russian energy weapon was not an issue. We need Russia, he said, but Russia also needs us to buy its energy.
That is true, but only up to a point. As Putin has been at pains to point out recently, there are other customers apart from Europe and, if the EU took too strident a line, he could "diversify" Russia's oil and gas export markets.
Then there is the beneficial effect - to Russia - of instability. The prospect of shortages induced by shutting off the taps is bound to send oil and gas prices soaring, which means that Putin and his merry men could quite happily rake in the petrodollars selling very much less for more.
All in all, therefore, even if we could rely on Russia to act logically (by Western definitions) we cannot necessarily rely on our supplier-customer relationship to assure a reliable flow of coal, gas and oil.
EU rhetoric aside, that is undoubtedly the driving force behind the dismally weak performance of the "colleagues" at the Extraordinary European Council meeting yesterday. Almost literally, Russia has Europe over a barrel and the "colleagues" know it. A "paper tiger", as The Times puts it, is the mildest of epithets.
What is not being said often enough though is that the EU's weakness is largely a self-inflicted wound. Separately and collectively, the individual member states have failed to secure reliable energy supplies or coherent energy policies, thus putting themselves in the thrall of Russia.
And, of course, the reason there is no coherence is that energy policy has – as we have pointed out before – been subordinated to the greenie agenda, dominated by the fantasy of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and seasoned by their abhorrence of nuclear power.
In this, we have allowed a situation to develop where we have an unholy trinity of three separate policies – energy, "environment" and foreign policy – which have become hopelessly intertwined, dereliction in the first two engendering impotence in the third.
To deal with Russia, as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes yesterday, there is no need to confront the Kremlin in the Caucasus or on the Dnieper. All we need to do is to chip away at its energy wealth. If we can drive oil back down to $70 a barrel, and keep it there, Russia will be reduced to a middling power of 141m people, with a deformed industry, in the grip of an acute demographic decline. It will no longer be a threat.
But, to do that, we need to sort out our energy policy and, for that, we need to break free from the tyranny of the greenie agenda. We need, as John Hutton said recently to put Britain's ability to generate its own energy needs above climate change in Government's priorities.
Clearly, that message has got through as, at the behest of Britain, theCouncil communiqué included a reference to energy policy, stating:Recent events illustrate the need for Europe to intensify its efforts with regard to the security of energy supplies. The European Council invites the Council, in cooperation with the Commission, to examine initiatives to be taken to this end, in particular as regards diversification of energy sources and supply routes.
As far as diversification goes, there is only one sensible and realistic option – nuclear energy on a grand scale. Speaking recently to a nuclear energy expert, he advocated the rapid development of pebble bed technology on a scale sufficient not just for base load but to provide our entire peak electricity supply.
During off-peak periods, he then argued, surplus energy should be used forunderground coal gasification, producing gas for domestic use and, potentially, vehicle fuel.
With intelligent use of technologies such as anaerobic digestion and careful husbandry of our remaining North Sea oil supplies, there is no reason why the UK could not be energy efficient for decades to come – apart from supplies of uranium (and possibly thorium), which are available from friendly, stable democracies.
As it stands, however, if we continue to allow the dominance of the greenie agenda and the interlinkage of the unholy trinity, not only do we suffer from the lights going out – at enormous expense as we indulge in the fantasy of windmills – but we remain impotent on the world stage. Greenery is no longer an option – not that it ever was. It is now an indulgence we simply cannot afford.
COMMENT THREADMonday, September 01, 2008
Got it in one … almost
"What is the point of an EU foreign policy that can reconcile British and east European calls for tough "sanctions" against Russia (even it is all just talk) with the conciliatory approach of France, Germany and Italy?" his text then runs.
If he had deleted all after "EU…" he would have had a better title. But, after dismissing the EU as "mouth and no trousers", his piece would effectively say the same thing. What is the point of an EU?
COMMENT THREADThe consequences of meddling
It seemed so easy – nip in and force mobile phone companies to cut their fees and, hey presto! You have a "Europe of results" and everybody will love you.
As it turns out, it ain't that simple. Start interfering with the complex workings of the mobile market and you get all sorts of unintended consequences. That much comes over with crystal clarity from the reaction of Vodafone - one of Europe's largest providers – to the latest meddling by the commission.
As recorded by the Financial Times andthe BBC, Vodaphone is vented its anger at Viviane Reding by making the “extraordinary claim” that 40m Europeans could be forced to ditch their mobile phones, all because the EU wants to be loved.
The current battle is about so-called "mobile termination rates", industry jargon for the charges mobile operators impose on each other, together with fixed-line phone companies, for connecting calls to their wireless networks.
These wholesale charges represent between 15 and 20 percent of operators' revenues, and have been an important means of recovering costs. But now, after its "success" with roaming charges, Reding wants these charges cut.
Vodafone's response is that, if they are cut, retail charges will have to be raised to compensate for the losses, pointing out a rather simple truth that seems to have evaded the commission, like: "Failure to recover costs risks bankruptcy."
At stake is a completely re-shaped charging system, adopting a US-style system whereby mobile users pay to receive calls as well as making them. Reding thinks this is a good idea because users there – reputedly - pay lower call charges and make greater use of their mobiles.
On the back of lower termination charges, Vodafone argues that operators will have no option but to raise retail charges for European customers, also warning that the impact of increased charges would be felt by less well-off customers who have cheap pay-as-you-go deals with operators rather than the more expensive monthly contracts.
This is because Vodafone says most of its revenue from pay-as-you-go customers is derived from them receiving incoming calls, which attract termination rates. These customers make relatively few outgoing calls.
On this basis, a survey by the market research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres, commissioned by Vodafone finds that about 10 percent of Europe's mobile phone users – estimated at 40 million - would ditch their mobiles, rather defeating the object of Reding’s latest initiative.
Whatever the outcome, this one looks like running and running, the only certainty being that, by the time the commission has finished meddling, the mobile phone industry will be in about as good a shape as the Common Fisheries Policy.
COMMENT THREADThe elephant strikes again
The fragile housing market faces a fresh setback in the autumn, reports The Telegraph yesterday.
New regulations, we are told, could force tens of thousands of sellers to take their homes off the market when, from October, it will be illegal to sell homes without an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC).
Now, this we all know to be an EU requirement based onDirective 2002/91/EC - all of us, it would seem, exceptThe Telegraph.
According to this paper, the EPC is merely "a piece of paperwork introduced as part of the Government's controversial Home Information Pack (HIP) scheme." No mention of the EU, no mention of a directive – just "a piece of paperwork".
As to the current problem, the paper tells us that, since HIPs were introduced last December it has been a legal requirement for all sellers to obtain one, but the requirement did not apply to sellers whose homes were already on the market. Now, it appears, the Department for Communities and Local Government has warned that homes already on the market must be withdrawn from sale in October unless their sellers obtain EPCs.
With the large number of unsold houses on the market, due to the weak state of the property market, many sellers are now going to be hit once more with the cost of providing certificates.
Since they are being put to this cost and great inconvenience, you would have thought that the paper could inform us of the source of this new law. But that is not for us to know, it seems.
However, there is all the more reason for knowing what is going on as the implementation of the EU directive includes more than an element of gold plating.
Under Article 7 of the Directive, member states are required to ensure that, "when buildings are constructed, sold or rented out, an energy performance certificate is made available to the owner or by the owner to the prospective buyer or tenant, as the case might be."
This, according to one of our readers, is interpreted in France a requirement to provide a certificate just before the equivalent of completion of the contract. The purchaser has a right to renegotiate or rescind the contract if the reports are significantly negative.
In the UK, though, the requirement is imposed before the property is offered for sale – something the Directive does not demand. And further – something for the future – the Directive requires only that the certificate be renewed every ten years so there is no need for a new certificate each time a property is sold.
None of this we ever get from the MSM which drone on in their dreary way, with cheap, ill-informed journalism which simply fills space. No wonder the elephant survives and is in such rude health.
COMMENT THREAD
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
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