Bishop Hill Officially sanctioned conflict
Jan 5, 2013 Corruption Energy: biomass FOI Some weeks back, I noticed the odd dual role of Bernie Bulkin, chairman of DECC's Office for Renewable Energy Deployment, who doubles as an adviser to VantagePoint Capital Partners, a company that invests in the energy sector. Reader Terry Sanders has been following up on this story and writes to update us on what he has found.
After reading [your post] I looked into Bernie and discovered he was a director of Ludgate Investments which had a significant piece of its funds (7.9%) in a biomass company so I left a comment on his blog asking about it. My comment stayed in the "awaiting moderation" for 10 days which 1 thought was strange. I figured if they haven't let it through or declined it then they must be discussing it so I sent in a FOI request for all communication regarding the comment.
I've now received a response...The comment moderator (I assume) asks:
"Couple of comments inferring a conflict of interest. Are we aware of this and is it a problem?"
The response is:
"Well yes and yes but:
All appointments are made in line with Cabinet Office guidance..."
It is unclear (to me at least) whether the second yes means they have a problem with Bernie's interests or whether they have a problem with commentators implying it.
There was more in my request regarding conflicts of interest but their response was unclear so I've asked for clarification.
Reader Comments (21)
Maybe whilst you are at it you could ask why Paddy Ashdown is given space on this blog ? Don't recall him having loads of environment qualifications.
He doesn't even work for the government, but likes taxpayers to pay him.
blog.decc.gov.uk/author/paddy-ashdown/
"All appointments are made in line with Cabinet Office guidance..." implies he was appointed to DECC after it was already known he was an adviser to VantagePoint Capital Partners.
However, if Bulkin became a (paid) advisor when already in post, then he's done a Yeo.
Can anyone lay their hands on the Cabinet Office guidelines?
Cabinet Office Guidance for Civil Servants: Contact With Lobbyists
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/content/guidance-civil-servants-contact-lobbyists
Re: Joe Public
I asked them what conflicts of interest had been declared and when. This is what they said about Vantage Point.
I submitted the FOI on the 4th of December and have now asked them to clarify when Vantage Point was declared.
See also the CODE OF CONDUCT FOR BOARD MEMBERS OF PUBLIC
BODIES
Solar Century is the company of Jeremy Leggett, who recently tweeted about DECC's recently published renewable energy roadmap, noting that
From the report, we note that
Hmm. I wonder just how good DECC's chinese wall is?
As an aside, we should note Mr Leggett's valiant stand against corruption in public office:
Thanks TerryS @ 10:20
So after you'd made your FOI request, BB declares that in future he won't paticipate in work having a conflict of interest.
Bernie Bulkin’s Declaration (as 12 December 2012) "I have agreed that in order to ensure no potential conflict of interest can occur due to any perceived indirect link with Solarcentury that I will not participate in any Departmental solar PV related work.”
Or how about this tweet from Leggett:
Joe Public
That's interesting. I think Terry should check out with DECC when this undertaking was made.
Hard not to recall that Deben's conflict of interest was cleared too.
The renewables bandwagon would seem to be full of blinkered people with hammers looking for nails.
The substitution of activist or self interested party opinion for arithmetic is endemic - especially within DECC.
Yeah... there's guidelines for talking to lobbyists - but it's window dressing that's adjusted to suit prevailing conditions - they are after all "guidelines" and not rules.
Since DECC is unequivocally central government = civil servants have a legally enforceable duty to abide by the Civil Servant's Code of Conduct and I'd draw your attention to the Objectivity section.
We see so much policy based evidence making emanating from DECC - isn't it about time they were properly pulled up on their fibbing and distortions?
Dear Bish, you appear to be under a misapprehension. There is not and can never be a conflict of interest in member’s interests.
But there is, without any doubt, a conflict of interest between the elected and those they are told they elected.
Here is what they sent regarding his commercial interests:
I have asked them to clarify the dates for Ludgate Investments, Cleantech Advisory Council and Vantage Point Capital Partners.
This is what those people who spend their lives moving smoothly between government and private industry do. They identify a problem or latch onto scientific research that has purportedly identified a problem that could impact mankind-- one that may or may not be a truly dangerous or imminent problem--and then, after determining that market forces will be incapable of solving the problem (which also may or may not be true), they go about creating a specialized government-sponsored, sanctioned and subsidized industry to combat the problem, which, to repeat myself, may or may not be an actual threat. This is how a certain class of people enriches itself.
This bastardized version of public policy-making is very serious development in my view because much of it goes on beyond the purview of elected officials at least in the initial phases, and then tends to corrupt the scientific research that follows that which first discovered the dubious danger the issue poses for mankind. Once the science is co-opted and misused, the lawyers, journalists and policy-makers are enlisted in the effort to sell the need for action in the public arena.
It's a very subtle and pernicious form of corruption, and if it ever turns out that the whole AGW scare was mistaken or fabricated (or both), there will need to be investigations to expose and punish those responsible. This in itself will pose another difficulty: how do you prosecute and punish thousands of people?
The amount of public money that has been and will be misused to combat "climate change" is potentially staggering. Will anyone ever be held accountable if it turns out that other than anthropogenic forces are responsible for the slight warming we've experienced in the past century?
This bastardized version of public policy-making is very serious development in my view because much of it goes on beyond the purview of elected officials at least in the initial phases, and then tends to corrupt the scientific research that follows that which first discovered the dubious Diablo 3 Gold danger the issue poses for mankind. Once the science is co-opted and misused, the lawyers, journalists and policy-makers are enlisted in the effort to sell the need for action in the public arena.
Bish, you quote from the UK Renewable Energy Roadmap 2012. I have been looking at the 2012 version compared to the 2011 version (only 67 pages of bureaucratic speak cf 106 pages). The fantasy land these people inhabit is truly awesome. Extrapolating into the future, I reckon that by 2050 (Climate Change Act target date for 80% reduction in emissions) most of the working population of the country will be involved in the renewable energy industry. Clearly their productivity will be exceedingly low. Most of the country will be covered in wind turbines and solar panels, with most of the remaining farmland being used to grow energy crops such as grass and maize to be used for biofuel and straw and short-rotation coppice to be burnt. Millions of people will be incolved in removing old wind turbines and replacing them with new ones, ditto for solar panels as all these technologies have a very short working life. Most of the energy produced will be recycled in transporting the low energy density fuelstocks around and in recycling wind turbines and solar panels. Where the money is going to come from to pay for all this is not clear, nor is there any indication of where the food will come from to feed the millions of drones involved in these low grade activities.
The good news is that none of this will have an impact on emissions and most of us won't be around when the whole system collapses.
This is what they sent regarding Bernie's commercial interests:
I have asked them to clarify the dates for Ludgate Investments, Cleantech Advisory Council and Vantage Point Capital Partners.
Having a Department of Energy and Climate Change makes as much sense as one of Health and Homoeopathy. The add-on to the main function of each will be no more than a corrupter of primary function. Free-up the DoE to ask the DoCC to prove their case and then recommended targets in the Climate Change Act can be amended accordingly. Either that or change the name of DECC to DNW - Nods and Winks.
The problem now is that politicians from all sides have their snouts in the renewables trough and, therefore, will not 'out' each other. Imagine if only one party had politicians involved in the scam; every one of the scumbags would be a target for the opposition and hounded out of office.
It is little wonder that there is such strong resistance by vested interests and their tame politicians to real alternative sources of energy such as shale gas and thorium reactors. When they get going their investments in these biomass, windmill and other fourth rate alternative energy companies will be worthless.