Climate change: a choice of emissions or extortion
Tuesday 6 November 2012
 Last year, almost to the day, after EU action to curtail this $6 billion scam, Chinese officials were threatening to vent these "powerful greenhouse gasses" direct to atmosphere.
Having had $1.3bn in tax revenues out of the scam, they were fearful about the loss of revenue. Historically, plants have been paid 70 times the cost of destroying HFC-23 gases, and the local governments have thus benefited hugely by being able to tax the generous profits.
However, this year the situation has gone the other way. The emissions offset market is oversupplied by 13 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, more than 1,000 times greater than the anticipated demand of 11.5 million tons. As a result, the price for UN emission credits is set to drop almost to zero. Already, investors are dumping the greenhouse-gas credits, known as Certified Emission Reductions (CERs), after the price, up to last December, had dropped 85 percent, year-on-year. This means that not only could the Chinese vent their CFCs, the Indians may join in as well, with a steep rise in emissions expected. Each ton of the waste gas HFC-23 is equivalent to 12,000 tons of carbon dioxide. In India, specifically, there is no domestic legislation that would force companies cut HFC-23 emissions, and there are no plans to impose such laws nor to include these projects in a national carbon plan. The three plants producing the gas destroy the equivalent of around 10 million tons a year of CO2, making hundreds of millions of dollars in the process - in some cases over 50 percent of the plant revenues. Now each plant is faced with costs estimated at around $200,000-350,000 a year for destruction of the gasses. In China, there are eleven HFC-23 projects getting UN funding, and while observers hope the government will act to force chemical companies to destroy their waste gasses, with no income stream from carbon offsets, it is anyone's guess as to what will actually happen. Last year, Samuel LaBudde, senior atmospheric campaigner with the Environmental Investigation Agency, was saying that, "China is not the victim here, and a world order responsive to climate change cannot be predicated on unrepentant greed". LaBudde added that: "attempting to force countries into squandering billions on fake offsets that actually increase production of greenhouse gases is extortion". Thus, in the bizarre world of carbon trading, we are faced with the choice of emissions or extortion. If we are really lucky, I suppose, we could have both. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 06/11/2012 |
Media: Euromyths - what is the point?
Tuesday 6 November 2012
 At the time, Algirdas Šemeta, Commissioner for Taxation, Customs, Anti-fraud and Audit, said: "It is high time that we take a fresh look at reduced VAT rates. Member States need new revenue sources, while businesses need simpler tax systems with fewer compliance costs. Today we are asking whether certain reduced VAT rates are delivering what they seem to promise, or whether they pose more problems than they are worth". OK … seems reasonable enough. Even if you think VAT is the devil's spawn – and we do – there doesn't seem to much harm in this, at the moment. But that was before last Saturday, when theExpress had a go at it. "An EU plan to slap VAT on new homes will send prices soaring, experts warned yesterday", Sarah O'Grady breathlessly tells us. "Brussels has quietly issued a consultation document that proposes scrapping the current zero VAT rating". Then we are told: "The move to charge the full 20 percent is part of a plan to standardise tax rates across Europe. It would drive up the average price of a new home by £48,000 from £238,000 to £286,000 and have a catastrophic impact on the UK". But when we look at the explanatory memo that goes with the press release, something rather different emerges. In Q&A format, it asks: "Does the Commission plan to abolish some or all reduced VAT rates?" Then it provides the answer: This consultation is part of the assessment process, and does not pre-suppose the elimination of any particular reduced rate at this stage. The Commission will only make proposals on the possible abolition or introduction of certain reduced rates next year, once it has completed its thorough review and gathered extensive feedback. Moreover, it should be remembered that even if the Commission were to propose getting rid of one reduced VAT rate or another, this would have to be unanimously endorsed by Member States before it could happen. So the review of reduced rates will be a holistic and very inclusive one.That is what the Express translates into "an EU plan to slap VAT on new homes", a mystery that intensifies when you see the actual consultation document.
Actually, when you get to "housing", you find there is a story, but a different one altogether from the one the Express has to offer. It tells you that, in September 2011 the Commission presented a "Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe".
Housing, it says, is pointed out as one of the sectors with a substantial environmental impact. Better construction and use of buildings in the EU would influence 42 percent of final energy consumption, 35 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and more than 50 percent of all extracted materials. Significant improvements in resource and energy use during the life-cycle – with improved sustainable materials, higher waste recycling and improved design - should contribute to the development of a resource efficient building stock, it then says, thus arguing that: Coherence with this EU policy would require that the scope of the reduced VAT rates that can be applied by the Member States to housing would be restricted to those supplies that take this resource efficiency aspect into consideration.On the other hand, says the Commission, "certain questions could be put forward as to the way to implement this VAT rate differentiation in practice and whether this will not result in adding a substantial level of complexity for taxable persons active in the housing sector". And so we get to the question: Q5 In your view, how can the reduced VAT rate for housing be best applied in order to take the resource efficiency element into account, and how should/can this be achieved with a minimum of increase in the administrative burden for businesses, in particular SME's, providing supplies of goods and services in the housing sector?In other words, the EU is not in any way suggesting that VAT is slapped on new houses, per se. In some senses, it is worse than that. It is suggesting reduced rates (which includes the UK zero rates) to be confined only to "green" materials, such as insulation, which go into construction. And why is this worse? Well, in Die Welt recently, we saw a report which found that insulation can drive up heating costs. The reason for this is intriguing. House walls, even in the winter, retain heat from the sun and in the late evening give it up to the interior spaces. In heavily insulated houses, because of the thick plastic mass on the outer walls, this is not possible. The interior thus never benefits from this free source of heat. That in itself is a story, and there is much more to it, with compulsory insulation adding significantly to the costs of new houses – and now, it appears, to the running cost. But as far as theExpress report goes, this is actually a non-story. Adding VAT to new houses is not a realistic political proposition, and since Mr Cameron has a veto, it isn't going to happen. You do wonder, therefore, what is the point of running these scare stories, especially when the real stories, which are far more important, go unrecorded. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 06/11/2012 |
EU Regulation: an island nation
Monday 5 November 2012
 Separately, the BBC tells us that a nursery forced to destroy 50,000 ash trees after dieback fungal disease was found is considering taking legal action against the government for failing to block imports sooner. These two issues are, of course related in that we are no longer masters of our own domain – plant health and the trade in plants and plant products is entirely an EU competence and governed exclusively by EU law. We are no longer able to define our controls and rely entirely on systems agreed in Brussels. Currently, in respect of trade, there are two levels of control – one applying to intra-community trade and the other applying no non-EU imports. The legal base for both regimes relies on the much-amemded Council Directive 2000/29/EC "on protective measures against the introduction into the Community of organisms harmful to plants or plant products and against their spread within the Community". The probem here, as far as the UK is concerned, is that the controls are baised in favour of (two-way) movement of goods, and the control systems are based on a Continental philosophy, whereby only limited control over plant diseases can be exercised. This, then is a classic example of where the EU's "one size fits all" philosophy simply does not take account of the realities on the ground. The crucial issue here is that which we pointed out earlier – the UK is an island. We can, therefore, use the sea barrier to exclude diseases which, on the mainland, it is not reasonable to attempt. Rather than using the complex EU model, which relies on a fragile system of registration, inspection and "passports", we need to reverse the basic assumptions underlying the system. Currently, imports have to be permitted unless we can demonstrate that the product is infected – which we are not allowed to do with intra-community trade, if the paperwork is up to scratch.
What we need is a system where any product from abroad – whether the EU or the rest of the world – should be deemed infected unless proved to the contrary and automatically excluded. This should apply to all but exceptional circumstances, where we are able to define specific measures which will guarantee freedom from infection.
Here, it is not the EU that we should be looking to for our control model, but to Australia. There, theDAFF website sets out the rationale. Australia, it says, "is free from some of the world's major agricultural and aquatic pests and diseases, and is a world leader in animal welfare. This 'clean and green' status provides us with a major trading advantage and access to overseas markets". One can easily see how this would be rejected by the EU – because it would give us "a major trading advantage". The EU ethos has always been to share the misery, so that we have never been allowed under EU rules to capitalise on our island geography. However, this beggar-my-neighbour policy is both niggardly and shortsighted. With 90 percent of Ash trees in Denmark infected, the Danish authorities were looking to the UK from which to obtain healthy stock. In other words, the presence of an offshore island, which can be kept as an infection-free reservoir, is an EU as well as a national asset. The Government, we are told, is currently in talks with other member states on updating the EU Plant Health Regime, but tweaking round the edges is not enough. We need a complete rethink here. It may be the case that no man is an island, but the UK most certainly is, and it is about time that the EU recognised it. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 05/11/2012 |
Media: Britain on the way out?
Monday 5 November 2012
With his infinite capacity for getting it wrong, doyen of the Westminster lobby, Tevor Kavanagh, issounding off about a subject of which he knows vanishingly little – EU politics.
The Great Ego has finally sussed that there is something amiss in this department, and with a characteristically small-minded approach to the subject, displays the Germanophobia always just under the surface with his breed. "David Cameron", he writes, "should tell Germany's Angela Merkel the truth at talks in Downing Street this week – Britain is on its way OUT of Europe", then adding, "The Iron Chancellor may think she has ways of making Britain salute the EU flag, but her host has lost the power to do so". One dreads to think what contagion he might have picked up had he read this blog, but slumming it is not Kavanagh's style. Had he done so last June (below), he might have seen that the situation is exactly the reverse of what he paints. It is Merkel who is easing the UK out of the EU, and Mr Cameron who is struggling to stay in.  Similarly, The Great Ego misreads the "rebellion" of the 53 Tories who "joined shifty Labour to demand a CUT in Brussels' bloated budget". This, Kavanagh decides, was "an irreversible turning point — not just for Mr Cameron, but also for Britain as a sovereign nation state". From now on, he says, "no Prime Minister, Tory or Labour, can quell the head of steam building across all parties for an in/out referendum".
For once, though, I agree with Andrew Rawnsley of the loss-making Observer, on one point at least, when he brands the rebellion as "completely bogus". It is not real and neither will it achieve anything of substance.
In a way, though, it doesn't really matter what Kavanagh writes, or what Sun readers think. The newspaper was once a power in the land, but on this issue it is so far behind the curve that its wailing no longer has any relevance. Our fate, to a very great extent, is being decided in Berlin, but not in the way that Kavanagh thinks. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 05/11/2012 |
EU politics: sick Transit gloriam
Monday 5 November 2012
 The loan is from the European Investment Bank, which as we all know from its dealings with the BBC, is the European Union's bank. As the largest multilateral borrower and lender, its website says, "we provide finance and expertise for sound and sustainable investment projects, mostly in the EU. We are owned by the 27 Member States and the projects we support contribute to furthering EU policy objectives". So, Mr Osborne, as an ex officio governor of the EIB, presides over an institution which, in pursuit of "furthering EU policy objectives" made a substantial payout to a Turkish firm which, it is believed, played a key part in Ford's decision to shut one of its factories here. The cash was given to the firm that makes the latest Ford Transit vans at its Turkish factory in Kocaeli. Ford announced last month that its factory in Southampton, where the vans are currently built, will now close. Some jobs are also expected to be lost at its Dagenham plant, where parts for the vehicle are produced. The closure will cause the loss of up to 1,100 jobs, and is the end of Ford producing vehicles in Britain. And with the EU money, partly supplied by the UK, Ford plans to expand production of vans in Turkey from around 210,000 a year to 290,000 by 2014. Such are the benefits of our membership of the EU, about which Mr Cameron is so keen. It is perhaps just as well we are members. Think how badly we would be treated if we didn't have all that "influence" in Brussels. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 05/11/2012 |
EU politics: a statement of the obvious
Sunday 4 November 2012
 When you get that profound level of ignorance among senior Tory ministers, there is no going back. You are not dealing with people of this world, people who are actually capable of understanding what is going on around them, and reacting sensibly to what they learn. And from the mouth of the babe, we also learn that he [Cameron] "will veto something [on the EU budget] that he cannot bring back to the British parliament". These, says IDS, "are strong words compared to the last government and even governments before". Thus, Duncan Smith disagrees with the "rebels", telling Andrew Marr's Ego Show that, "He [Cameron] would love to come back with a real terms cut. I would love him to be able to do it". But in terms of the obvious, Duncan Smith "made clear" that Britain would not be part of new governance arrangements for the eurozone that are due to be negotiated over the next few years. The coalition is agreed that moves to greater fiscal union in the eurozone are a matter for the 17 members of the single currency. And of course that is the case, as membership of the inner core would require us to join the euro, which is not going to happen. The question that needs to be addressed is how Britain deals with its new "second class" status within the EU. At this point, it is actually quite difficult to divine what IDS is actually saying, which is why the loss-making Guardian's chief political correspondent is talking about IDS "suggesting" things. Nicholas Watt thus retails an IDS telling us: "My view isn't that we could do necessarily outside the EU better then we are inside. It is that we can do it all. I don't see why we shouldn't have it all". On the other hand, the people who are really determined to have it all are the "colleagues", who are seemingly not in the mood to play games with our Prime Minister. The same loss-making Guardian is telling us that Brussels will block David Cameron's attempt to cut the EU budget, and he faces a hostile reception at the European Council budget meeting this month. Not least, it looks as if Brussels, like Cameron, may have its hands tied. The EU Parliament is indicating that it will block any compromise deal, cobbled together to give Cameron a political fig leaf. That would leave the EU without a multi-annual settlement, requiring it to revert to its annual budget system, managing funding on a year-by-year basis - just like the member states. All of this guarantees a degree of entertainment for the mindless hacks as we crawl into the New Year, but it doesn't really solve anything. The big question of the new treaty is being glossed over, and there is no real discussion on the implications. David Cameron's grandstanding is simply serving as a smokescreen. The thought occurs, however, that budget pressure may firm up on the plans to create a separate eurozone budget. That much has been mooted since early October and would neatly sideline Mr Cameron and his games, leaving Britain further out on the edges than he want to be. Sooner or later, Cameron himself is going to have to come to terms with the changing EU scenarios, whence he will find that his prolonged manoeuvring has achieved precisely nothing. The choice on offer will be accept "second class status" or get out, and the "colleagues" care not which. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 04/11/2012 |
Booker: fracking the consensus?
Sunday 4 November 2012
 Hayes's verdict on wind farms could just have well been spoken about Britain and the EU, by any of those 53 Tory MPs who voted against the party line, Booker writes. But what was significant, he says, "was that each marked the cracking apart of a suffocating all-party consensus which has imprisoned our politics for far too long". Even a year ago, he says, "it would have been unthinkable that so many Tory rebels would be willing to defeat the Government over the EU – or that a minister would question the plans to cover our countryside with wind farms". Nevertheless, Mr Cameron "may secretly be pleased that this rebellion will help him strike a Thatcher-like pose, 'defending Britain’s interests' against demands for a further huge increase in the spending of the Brussels Monster – as his EU colleagues head for a new treaty which will more than ever marginalise the British as second-class 'European citizens'". That, in fact, is a distinct possibility, as we see via Witterings from Witney, the odious Andrea Leadsom mount another faux challenge on the EU, claiming she has "an agenda for EU reform we Tories can agree on". Whether she's right or wrong, it doesn't matter - this is Tories talking to themselves. What does matter is the dwindling band of people out there who might be tempted to vote Conservative at the next election. And they are unlikely to be at all impressed by Leadsom preaching EU "reform". Nor are they likely to be that impressed by Cameron's next cod squabble, as the Tory leader looks for another issue which will make him look "Big in Brussels" after the next European Council. It was, after all, this time last year that Cameron stumbled on his pretend veto, and since that played well in the polls – initially at least - his strategists are desperately looking for something to replicate the effect. Thus, while Booker sees a suffocating consensus at last starting to crack, and the genies of common sense and the national interest trying to struggle out of the bottle, there are different ways of looking at it.
More like, it is the Conservatives running scared, scrabbling round looking for something that will find favour with the voters – without having to change anything fundamental in their policy portfolio. Any departures from the consensus, therefore, are only skin deep and, as we have observed, Labour will soon paper over the cracks.
Nevertheless, Booker asserts that, on both the huge issues of energy policy and the EU, which are doing such damage to our country, although we are nowhere near the beginning of the end, we may have reached the end of the beginning.
There, he may be right. But I suspect that this end is a lot further from the finale than was el Alamein from V-E Day.
COMMENT THREAD Richard North 04/11/2012 |
EU regulation: ashes to ashes
Saturday 3 November 2012
Peeping from behind the paywall, we see The Times tell us that it is "impossible to track infected ash trees”. EU rules and "the sheer volume of imports" make tracking ash saplings brought in from infected countries almost impossible.
The Guardian amplifies this, arguing for "rigorous border checks on the billions of trees and plants imported into Britain and Europe from around the world every year for parks, gardens, woodlands and forests". "There is a tidal wave of pathogens coming in", says Martin Ward, chief plant health officer at Defra's Food and Environment Research Agency. "It is terrifying. We have to have a strategic response. Unless we have better biosecurity in the EU and Europe it will be very difficult to stop them coming in. It is difficult to ban all imports. It has to be done on a risk basis". And there you are. "It is difficult to ban all imports …". Another benefit of the EU – to ignore the fact that we are an island, and the benefits that go with it, to adopt a Continental system of control, that doesn't work anyway. This is the brilliant "Single Market" that Mr Cameron loves so much. We are so lucky we have it … no trees, but we can have open borders for dead wood. At least we'll have something to burn when the electricity runs out. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 03/11/2012 |
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