- Bishop Hill blog

David Cameron had a vision of a greener life, lived closer to natureIt's hard not to lose heart sometimes. Looking around the news on the energy front this morning, the bad news is overwhelming.

It's not online, but the FT has apparently reported that the coalition is considering accelerating the retreat from fossil fuels, with coal-fired power stations only operating as load-balancing capacity. This is because the coalition is frightened that Lord Oxburgh's Energy Bill amendment in the House of Lords will win through and that a ruinous decarbonisation target will be put in place.

Given that coal-fired power stations are not designed to operate in this way, the move strikes me as being counterproductive in terms of emissions reductions. Presumably operators of coal-fired stations will also demand a very high price in order to keep their plant operational on a part-time basis, so consumers will, once again, be forced to foot the bill.

Meanwhile, Scottish and Southern Energy have just announced an 8% price rise for its customers, starting from the middle of November, and the outgoing head of Ofgem has said that we should expect power cuts to begin in the next couple of years.

Update on Oct 10, 2013 by

Bishop Hill

Guido has dug up an old speech by Ed Miliband in which he argued that rising energy prices was the object of his policy, since this would save the planet from climate change. The economy took second place.

Update on Oct 10, 2013 by

Bishop Hill

Former Irish President Mary Robinson is clearly under the impression that old folk are not being killed off quickly enough.

She told the Guardian there was an "urgent" need for faster, tougher action by western, oil-rich governments to agree far stricter limits on carbon emissions after the latest report by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published "unequivocal" evidence linking human activity to global warming.

Robinson said developing countries needed to take a clear lead, cutting carbon emissions and investing in low carbon technologies, when she spoke later in a keynote address to a conference on climate change in Edinburgh.

Update on Oct 10, 2013 by

Bishop Hill

Meanwhile, the EU bureaucracy is doing its level best to ensure that any escape route via shale gas is well and truly shut down.

The European Parliament on Wednesday voted for new EU laws requiring that exploration for potential deposits of shale gas to face the same environmental regulation as a full-scale oil drilling.

Struan Stevenson, a Conservative MEP who sits on the European Parliament's environment committee, warned that the plan could strangle the nascent fracking industry in Britain.