The Mail on Sunday has a story about conflicts of interest in individuals involved in renewables policy. In fact, it is our old friends Lord Deben and Bernie Bulkin.
When quizzed by MPs before his appointment was confirmed, he was asked about his chairmanship of the £500 million company Veolia Water UK. Lord Deben insisted it did no energy-related business and only dealt with water. If it had ‘even a remote connection’ with the environment or climate change, he promised, he would step down.
In fact, Veolia – of which Lord Deben remains chairman – boasts on its website of supplying ‘large electrical grid connections for renewable energy producers’, and illustrates this with a large photograph of wind farms.
The firm also publishes a ‘case study’ of how its engineers ‘braved the Scottish gales’ to install 12 miles of high-voltage cable to connect the national grid to the Dalswinton windfarm near Dumfries.
You read it here first.
Bishop Hill
Another must-read in the MoS is David Rose's look back at the reaction to his "global warming has stopped" article last year, in the light of the Met Office's prediction that we shouldn't expect any warming for a few more years yet.