Doomed - by Richard... Friday, March 19, 2010

Doomed - by Richard... Friday, March 19, 2010

I am going to make this a running commentary – it has to be taken in bite-sized chunks ... so here are the first three tranches. I'll pick up the comments from the forum and e-mails, working towards a complete picture (I hope) by the end of the day. Here goes:

Whether you agree with it or not, a useful measure of a policy produced by a political party is its coherence – whether it actually makes sense within the parameters it sets itself.

Taking a deep breath and diving into the Conservative Party green paper on energy policy, that is what one needs to look for – and it is something you will not find.

Page 26 sinks the entire edifice. It is there that one learns of the abhorrence of permanentenergy subsidies, which "are ultimately paid for by consumers – whether as additions to their energy bills or through taxation." Energy markets, therefore, "must be sustained without permanent subsidy to any form of generation."

Thus we fund that, where subsidies are required, "it is with the restricted and time-limited purpose of overcoming the initially higher costs of the research, development and deployment of emerging technologies."

If we now go back to page 20, we see advocated not only the perpetuation of the system of feed-in tariffs that will be launched in April, but a massive extension of the system. There is, of course, no reference to cost, or duration, but the current system is based on commitments of 20-25 years.

We can, of course, play with words here, but in political terms, that length of time is, effectively, permanent. It will most likely see me out.

But there is another dynamic at play here – the careful choice of the battlefield, and the closing down of the discussion. The Conservatives chose to major on "permanence", not cost. Consumers, on the other hand, might prefer a very small "permanent" subsidy as against a massive, "non-permanent" subsidy lasting 20-25 years.

Needless to say, that is not one of the options on offer. The battleground has thus been defined – we can be ripped-off mercilessly, as long as it is not "permanent".

The illusion of value for money

For want of coherence, however, this Green Paper prefers to playing to the gallery. Choosing the theme "value for money" (page 13), and picking words they know their readers will want to see, the authors tell us that: "For businesses and for households, energy is a major component of their costs."

No shit, Sherlock!

Government, we are thus wisely informed, "should seek to minimise the costs of energy to consumers." And so we learn that: "Trading arrangements should expose, not distort, the full costs of each form of energy."

If that was the cases, of course, the hideously expensive forms of electricity generation, such as wind solar power, would fall by the wayside. In an undistorted market, we would go for nuclear, coal and gas.

But, built into the Green Paper is an inherent and fatal contradiction. Not only do we require energy, the paper helpfully tells us that: "We are required to raise our proportion of renewably-sourced energy to 15 percent from 2.5 percent today" and, "We have committed to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by at least 34 percent from 1990 levels".

The Conservatives have fully bought into these targets, which means massive costs. The one thing not on offer, therefore, is value for money.

Instead, contrary to their professed aversion to distorting the market, they aim to develop the UK's very own version of "cap and trade", with a floor price for carbon on the Climate Change Levy (page 16). They then intend to apply it to electricity generators, using it as a top-up charge when they think the EU's ETS carbon price is too low.

Thus, the Conservative idea for bringing us "value for money" is to take the utterly mad EU scheme and add to it with one of their own, making it even more expensive. Then, by favouring insanely expensive renewables, they aim to distort the market by making investment in the most inefficient forms of electricity generation more profitable than conventional generation.

And this is what is supposed to be a Conservative policy?

Being different

"Ultimately the cost of achieving a diverse and resilient energy system has to be paid for by consumers. Reducing that cost depends on incentivising the necessary investment in the most economically efficient way – which is what this reform will deliver," says the green paper (page 17).

"We will reduce costs to consumers and risks to investors by allowing feed-in tariffs to be used for future investments such as round three of the offshore wind development programme and wherever this would offer better value for money to the public and reduce the cost of capital for investors," it then goes on to say (page 20).

Our actions are "focused on ensuring that Britain has a more robust, more diverse, less polluting and lower cost supply of energy," we are then told (also page 20).

"Our policy aims to reduce the rise in consumer prices compared with what would happen if Labour's policies were to continue" (page 24), the legend continues.

"In the coming decade, the biggest challenge ... will be in achieving Britain’s targets under the EU Renewable Energy Directive ... Because so little progress has been made on renewables under Labour, the drive to reach our committed level now has to be made over an inappropriately compressed timetable, with all that implies in terms of cost" (page 24), is the next offering.

And so we come to: " ... we will reform energy policy with aim of reducing and offsetting the cost of the investment required. It is not possible to say that the cost of electricity in the uncertain future will be less than the cost in the past, when fossil fuels were cheap plentiful and secure. Our aim has, therefore, to be different: it is to ensure that the cost of energy will be lower than it would have been had Labour's policies continued. (page 25)"

That is our future – we will pay more, but not quite as much as we would have had to pay under Labour. But, given that the Conservatives neither cost their ideas, nor offer an analysis of Labour's costs, we only their word for it.

However, this policy makes a great play of reducing the cost of investment (in renewable) and thereby seeking to reach the EU target. Our best hope of savings, though, is the current position of muddle, where the uncertainties have dissuaded investment in the ruinously expensive renewable technology.

To that extent, the best defence we have is Labour's incompetence – if that's what it is. This allows the utilities quietly to get on with building a new generation of CCGT plants – cheap and highly efficient – while playing lip service to the renewable quota.

Thus, while Labour's headline policy might well be more expensive than the Conservative plans, its real policy is actually one of constructive failure – or "benign neglect" if you prefer.

Under those circumstances, a much desired failure to meet the renewables quota is far less expensive than a heroic success, which is cheaper on paper but in fact costs a whole lot more. If being "different" means a zealous drive towards meeting EU "commitments" at a theoretically reduced but actually massively increased cost, then we need to invest in failure.

And Labour seems to be very good at that.

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Mistake or mistakes? - by Richard...

Little Rajendra can't even make up his mind whether the IPCC has made "mistakes" (plural) or a "mistake" (singular). And this is the man whom the BBC and others cast as the world's leading "climate scientist".

Hilariously, Sharon Begley of Newsweek then offers us a piece headed, "Their Own Worst Enemies", with the strap: "Why scientists are losing the PR wars."

I say "hilariously" because la Begley goes on to cite, with evident agreement, a certain Randy Olson, who tells us: "Scientists think of themselves as guardians of truth ... Once they have spewed it out, they feel the burden is on the audience to understand it" and agree.

Clearly, that is the driving assumption behind erstwhile railway engineers and self-proclaimed "climate scientist" Rajendra Pachauri. La Begley might care to reconsider her thesis that climate scientists have problems because they are poor communicators and because have failed to master "truthiness".

Another, possibly more plausible explanation is that many of the lead figures – like Pachauri – are pathological liars and they have been caught out.

But what is also a massive turn-off is the airy arrogance of so many of the warmists, such as Chris Smith, chairman of the UK's Environment Agency. He tells us, in what is obviously an agreed line, often repeated, that "we cannot allow a few errors to undermine the overwhelming strength of evidence that has been painstakingly accumulated, peer-reviewed, tested and tested again."

Yet, almost in the same breath he tells us, "We need to take the argument back to the sceptics, and make the powerful, convincing and necessary case about climate change much clearer to everyone." Compare the two statements and what is on offer is neither powerful nor convincing.

And that is their problem ... and they don't have the first idea of how to fix it. 

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

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What energy crisis? - by Richard... Thursday, March 18, 2010

You can tell that civilisation as we know it is coming to an end when they call a car "The Leaf", the new Nissan electric fantasy which is going to cost the British taxpayer £20.7 million in grants, topped up with a soft loan from the European Investment Bank of £197.3 million.

We are told that this thing will have an average range of 100 miles and a top speed of 90mph, although the egregious hacks writing this stuff forget to tell us that it is one or the other – not both. They don't tell either that you need a calendar rather than a speedometer to gauge the acceleration.

Nor, of course, do they tell you that, in terms of net efficiency, the electric car performs far less well than a petrol-driven motor, by the time you have taken into account the power station and transmission losses, to say nothing of the conversion losses in charging the batteries.

And then, since about 40 percent of our electricity comes from coal, and will do so until it is replaced by gas generation, the odds are that this wonderful "green" car will be driven by fossil fuels, only very inefficiently at one stage removed.

None of this, of course, will impinge in the slightest on the greenie brain – or that of Mr Brown who is so proud of this exercise in applied fatuity. But, not only – as we saw yesterday – do green issues bring out the meanness, they make you stupid as well.

A far better option – in terms of energy efficiency, thus reducing your "carbon footprint", if that's what turns you on – is to use gas power directly. Or, rather than use coal to produce electricity, use it to produce petrol and drive a sensible car.

That is certainly an option the being looked at. According to the Globe and Mail, researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington have developed an economic and clean way to turn lignite, the cheapest kind of coal, into synthetic crude which can then be refined into petrol.

This is the answer to a gas-guzzler's prayer. Canada, for instance, has more energy in its "proven, recoverable" reserves of coal than it has in all of its oil, natural gas and oil sands combined: 10 billion tons. The world has 100 times more: one trillion tons. These reserves hold the energy equivalent of more than four trillion barrels of oil. They are scattered in 70 countries, mostly in relatively easy-to-mine locations and mostly in democratic countries.

The United States alone has 30 percent of the world's reserves, and if the technology can be scaled up successfully, this could represent a historic moment in energy production – a secure supply of petroleum and liberation from the tyranny of the Middle East and other unstable regions.

What with the promise of shale gas and the potential for thorium-powered nuclear reactors – and access to a plentiful supply of fuel – there is no prospect of an energy shortage some time soon, not for a hundred years or more. And by that time, we will doubtless have other technological solutions, not that any of us will be around to care.

But, of course, that does not account for today's greenies, who are intent on driving us back into the economic dark ages, saddling us with dead-end technology, all in pursuit of their mad obsession over global warming. Thus, do we see public money frittered away on "The Leaf". I cannot wait for autumn.

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