The end is nigh! - by Richard... Friday, March 12, 2010

The end is nigh! - by Richard... Friday, March 12, 2010

Nearly half of Americans – 48 percent – now believe the threat of global warming has been exaggerated. This is the highest level since polling began 13 years ago says a recent Gallup poll. 

That category does not seem comparable with a poll in February when 47 percent thought long-term planetary trends rather than human activity was the primary cause of global warming up from 34 percent in April 2008.

However, both polls show the same downward trend in the willingness to accept climate alarmism, a significant factor in the US where climate measures are still live political issues and need popular assent for legislation to be enacted. 

Imperfect though the US system might be, there is at least some check on the madness, as opposed to the UK and most of the rest of Europe which is saddled with EU law.

One has to believe, though – almost as an article of faith – that the madness must be running its course, although there is no sign of that some time yet. Going through the system this week is a consultation document on planning guidance for local councils, aimed at increasing the amount energy produced from renewable sources.

This is the handmaiden to the feed-in tariff which will effectively prevent councils and local residents blocking a rash of solar panels and micro windmills installed by granny robbers keen to get their snouts in the renewable energy trough.

The Scottish government has also unveiled its plans for carbon capture in the region, announcing its intention to have quarter of Europe's CCS plants by 2020. On top of its ban on nuclear power plants and its rush to disfigure the countryside with giant bird choppers, Scotland seems to be in a race with England to see which can run out of electricity first.

And despite the great slaughter of birds done by these windmills, the alarmists are still out in force. In a conference in Houston, Texas, they are claiming that global warming threatens some migratory birds with extinction. Never mind the icy conditions and the deep snows that have been covering most of the northern hemisphere. It's global warming wots going to get 'em – and if that doesn't the windmills will.

Meanwhile, in Chicago the US Global Change Research Programme has it that heat-related deaths, the spread of infectious diseases and the threat of natural disasters in Chicago could skyrocket in the coming decades unless greenhouse gas emissions are curbed.

The Daily Mash has had enough though. The March quota of global catastrophe warnings has been reached with almost two weeks to go, it was confirmed last night, it reports.

The monthly total now stands at 240 meaning scientists, politicians, clergyman and the Daily Mailwill have to apply for an extension or face a reduction in the April quota of terrifyingly apocalyptic, certain death scenarios. The quota system was established last year so that frightened citizens do not lose track of what is going to kill them by 2030, we are told.

Through the gate before the quota kicked in was UK government science adviser professor John Beddington, warning that the sky shall be filled with Dragons "and they shall devour our crops, befoul our cattle and drink dry our lakes and ponds."

"They will hover above your house and just when you think they've gone, you'll open the curtains and there will be this great big eye staring back at you. Then the Dragon will rip the roof off your house and eat you like a Creme Egg and all because you didn't listen," he says.

Professor Beddington is calling for a multi-billion pound anti-dragon gun to be paid for by increased taxes on Range Rovers and patio heaters.

Frankly, that sounds a great deal more credible than some of the guff the warmists are trotting out, but there may come a time when there has to be a scare quota. However, as we are finding, there is no known means of putting a quota on stupidly. It is not only a renewable resource, this country seems blessed with an inexhaustible supply, especially amongst the political classes.

But when we now hear that environmental changes brought on by global warming may affect women more negatively than men, the end has to be nigh. All we now need is for global warming to be blamed on men and the cycle of lunacy is complete.

Meanwhile, up yours greenies! (See above left.)

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME

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Germany warning - by Richard... Thursday, March 11, 2010

For anyone with any residual doubts about the wave of madness about to engulf us with the introduction of the feed-in tariff on 1 April, they need go no further than read a recent report from the Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, entitled: "Economic impacts from the promotion of renewable energies: The German experience".

Packed with detail and well-argued, its conclusions are unequivocal and coruscating. "Although Germany's promotion of renewable energies is commonly portrayed in the media as setting a shining example in providing a harvest for the world," the authors write, "we would instead regard the country's experience as a cautionary tale of massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic and environmental benefits."

You really cannot get much clearer than that, the result of a failed experiment based on an aggressive policy of "generously subsidising and effectively mandating renewable electricity generation" in Germany that has led to a doubling of the renewable contribution to electricity generation in recent years.

In this narrative, taken directly from the executive summary, we are told that the preference for renewables came primarily in the form of a subsidy policy based on feed-in tariffs, established in 1991 by the Electricity Feed-in Law.

A subsequent law passed in 2000 guaranteed continued support for 20 years. This required utilities to accept the delivery of power from independent producers of renewable electricity into their own grid, paying technology-specific feed-in tariffs far above their production cost of 2 to 7 euro-cents per kilowatt hour (kWh).

With a feed-in tariff of 43 euro-cents per kWh in 2009, solar electricity generated from photovoltaics (PV) is guaranteed by far the largest financial support among all renewable energy technologies. Currently, the feed-in tariff for PV is more than eight times higher than the wholesale electricity price at the power exchange and more than four times the feed-in tariff paid for electricity produced by on-shore wind turbines.

Even on-shore wind, widely regarded as a mature technology, requires feed-in
tariffs that exceed the per-kWh cost of conventional electricity by up to 300 percent to remain competitive. By 2008 this had led to Germany having the second-largest installed wind capacity in the world, behind the United States, and the largest installed PV capacity in the world, ahead of Spain. This explains the claims that Germany's feed-in tariff is a great success.

However, installed capacity is not the same as production or contribution. By 2008, the estimated share of wind power in Germany's electricity production was 6.3 percent, followed by biomass-based electricity generation (3.6 percent) and water power (3.1 percent). The amount of electricity produced through solar photovoltaics was a negligible 0.6 percent despite being the most subsidised renewable energy, with a net cost of about €8.4 billion for 2008.

The total net cost of subsidising electricity production by PV modules is estimated to reach €53.3 billion for those modules installed between 2000 and 2010. While the promotion rules for wind power are more subtle than those for PV, the authors estimate that the wind power subsidies may total €20.5 billion for wind converters installed between 2000 and 2010.

As in the UK, consumers ultimately bear the cost of renewable energy promotion. In 2008, the price mark-up due to the subsidisation of green electricity was about 1.5 cents per kWh, meaning the subsidy accounted for about 7.5 percent of average household electricity prices.

Yet, given the net cost of 41.82 cents/kWh for PV modules installed in 2008, and assuming that PV displaces conventional electricity generated from a mixture of gas and hard coal, "carbon" abatement costs are as high as €716 per ton.

Using the same assumptions and a net cost for wind of 3.10 cents/kWh, the abatement cost is approximately €54. While cheaper than PV, this cost is still nearly double the ceiling of the cost of a per-ton permit under the EU's cap-and trade scheme. Renewable energies are thus amongst the most expensive GHG reduction measures.

There are much cheaper ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions than subsidising renewable energies. For instance, the authors say, the current price of emissions certificates in the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is only €13.4 per ton (October 2009). Hence, the cost from emission reductions as determined by the market is about 53 times cheaper than employing PV and four times cheaper than using wind power.

Moreover, the prevailing coexistence of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) and the ETS means that the increased use of renewable energy technologies generally attains no additional emission reductions beyond those achieved by ETS alone. In fact, since the establishment of the ETS in 2005, the EEG's net climate effect has been nil.

Turning to employment, while projections in the renewable sector convey seemingly impressive prospects for gross job growth, they typically obscure the broader implications for economic welfare by omitting any account of off-setting impacts. 

These impacts include, but are not limited to, job losses from crowding out of cheaper forms of conventional energy generation, indirect impacts on upstream industries, additional job losses from the drain on economic activity precipitated by higher electricity prices, private consumers' overall loss of purchasing power due to higher electricity prices, and diverting funds from other, possibly more beneficial investment.

Proponents of renewable energies often regard the requirement for more workers to produce a given amount of energy as a benefit, failing to recognize that this lowers the output potential of the economy and is hence counterproductive to net job creation. Significant research shows that initial employment benefits from renewable policies soon turn negative as additional costs are incurred. Trade and other assumptions in those studies claiming positive employment turn out to be unsupportable.

In the end, Germany's PV promotion has become a subsidisation regime that, on a per-worker basis, has reached a level that far exceeds average wages, with per worker subsidies as high as €175,000. It is most likely that whatever jobs are created by renewable energy promotion would vanish as soon as government support is terminated, leaving only Germany's export sector to benefit from the possible continuation of renewables support in other countries such as the US.

Due to their backup energy requirements, it turns out that any increased energy security possibly afforded by installing large PV and wind capacity is undermined by reliance on fuel sources – principally gas – that must be imported to meet domestic demand. That much of this gas is imported from unreliable suppliers calls energy security claims further into question.

Claims about technological innovation benefits of Germany's first-actor status are also unsupportable. In fact, the regime appears to be counterproductive, stifling innovation by encouraging producers to lock into existing technologies. In conclusion, government policy has failed to harness the market incentives needed to ensure a viable and cost-effective introduction of renewable energies into Germany's energy portfolio.

On the contrary, Germany's principal mechanism of supporting renewable technologies through feed-in tariffs imposes high costs without any of the alleged positive impacts on emissions reductions, employment, energy security, or technological innovation.


Yet, this is the scheme that is to come into force in the UK on 1 April. Predictably, organisations such as the National Trust are leaping on the bandwagon, having already fitted PV to their Dunster Castle in Somerset (pictured, above). They are adding insult to injury by attracting funding from Barclays, the "Big Lottery Fund Bio-Energy Capital Grants Scheme" and the Rural Development Programme. Equally predictably, they do not tell us how much this is going to cost other electricity consumers, concentrating instead on the illusory "carbon" savings.

Delingpole, of course, gets the point (as well as making a ribald comment about the "independent" inquiry of the IPCC), picking up on the point that the British scheme, when fully developed, will cost the equivalent of four aircraft carriers each year.

Anyone with even a fragment of a brain can see the utter madness of the scheme, and the German experience simply reinforces the blindingly obvious. Yet, it seems that our current government's brain cell is flying solo.

But, if you despair that sentient creatures can be so utterly stupid, until we hear otherwise we have to continue to note that the Conservatives want a much larger scheme, set to cost £60 billion a year. That, in case you are interested, is 30 aircraft carriers a year. (Pick your own comparator if you prefer – it would, for instance, buy 50 billion bacon butties, thereby abolishing world hunger except in the Moslem world).

Forgive me for harping on, but this is so staggeringly stupid – in a land beset with stupidity – that it is difficult to take on board. One can only surmise that they really cannot be that stupid, and it is all a joke. After all, the scheme is set to start on 1 April. Sadly, though, they are serious. We are going to have to do something equally serious.

CLIMATE CHANGE – END GAME