Bishop Hill Consistent industrial policy
Oct 13, 2013 Energy: grid 
Winnington works by Berit Watkin (click image for full size and details)It is said that a consistent industrial policy is important, providing certainty for investors as governments come and go. In the UK, we have certainly been sending businessmen a consistent message of "Go away" and "Not wanted here".
The message seems to be getting through:
A chemicals factory which has supplied industries such as glass and soap-making for 140 years is to close because of "massive" energy bills, costing 220 jobs.
Tata Chemicals Europe said it was shutting its soda ash factory at Winnington in Northwich, Cheshire, which has produced the chemical since 1874, as it was being squeezed by rising gas prices.Job losses will be split across Winnington, support services and Tata's nearby Lostock plant, which will continue making soda ash and sodium bicarbonate - used in baking, detergents and reducing power station emissions.
Bravo Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg; bravo Mr Miliband.
Reader Comments (56)
And the irony here is: TATA used to run The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) now overseen by it's CEO Rajendra Pachauri
I suspect that the only surviving chlorine production plant in the UK owned by INEOS Chlor just up the road in Runcorn will not survive the green lunacy either.
Bishop, you should research your articles a bit. In five minutes on the Tata Chemicals Europe site I found this:
So they have their own power station. Interesting, no? And then we have:
So it is gas prices wot did it! As they run a power station, we can I think assume that they buy gas wholesale (or whatever it is called). Nothing to do with Cameron, Clegg or Miliband.
@ Anoneumouse
Yep, originally the 'Tata Energy and Resources Institute' (as it continues to be known in many places across India).
It would be in interesting to see how much of the UK's industrial base is now Tata-owned (Jaguar Land Rover for a start, Tata Steel and now chemicals) and how often & how much the Indian holding company benefits from Raj Pachauri's IPCC-endorsed wheezes like carbon credits and other environmental indulgences.
I'm surprised - particularly after the conflict of interest spotlights shone by Donna & Richard North - that Raj is still hanging on in there milking it.
It's amazing that such a Dickensian-quality author cum Nobel Laureate cum Saviour of the World can find the time, but there you go ... it must be expensive being Raj.
Chandra
Which bit of that sentence were you having trouble with? Or are you perhaps assuming that rising gas prices have nothing to do with government taxation policy or the "green levy" that is being added to everyone's bills?Pay attention.
If your standard of comprehension is on a par with the average of the British population then it's no wonder nobody seems to understand what is going on.
I suspect that INEOS Grangemouth may not be long for this world either though some of my Scottish colleagues are better placed than I am to confirm or otherwise.
Lynemouth aluminium smelter has gone, of course. And there will be more.
Booker on his usual favourite topic
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/10374005/Its-showdown-time-for-our-insane-green-energy-policy.html
"Although National Grid may try to keep quiet about it, the companies piling in to sign up for this scheme – attracted by the colossal sums it is offering to build up its “Short Term Operating Reserve” – make no secret on their websites and planning applications of the fact that it is designed to cover for the disastrous intermittencies of wind power. Even National Grid admits that, within six years, it hopes to have expanded its emergency reserve from 3.5GW to 8GW, equivalent to the output of four large conventional power plants. This is why firms such as Green Frog, Fulcrum Power and Power Balancing Services are pouring millions into building “mini-power stations” – container parks full of diesel generators – to qualify for “availability payments” so lavish that, in proportion, that they make the subsidy bonanza enjoyed by wind-farm operators look like chicken feed. "
More higher power bills, but the possibility that power cuts won't happen for those who can afford the bills. The industrial policy is clear, namely only the companies which understand how to tap into subsidies will survive until the economy as a whole collapses. The Soviet Union had full employment until it collapsed as nobody produced anything of real value. We are moving in the same direction. Sad but true.
Unfortunately I do not believe that messrs Camerloon, Clog and Millibrain- all expensively educated public school idiots -and in the case of Camerloon and Millibrain Oxford PPE graduates. This degree is the finest eroder of common sense known.
As for Clog- he took a "gentleman's" degree at Cambridge - Archaeology and Anthropology - that intellectually demanding course taken by another green lunatic- Prince Charles.
This is why these morons will never "get it".
@ JerryM 12:55 PM
Calm down dear and pour yourself another cup of Tetley tea
From the article:
This reconfiguration is a joint plan with EON to make combined heat and power, energy from waste, plant. The plan has a website here: http://sustainableenergy.brunnermond.com/
Would this mean that they will generate electricity and steam for themselves and get subsidies for it? Being energy from waste will they be buying waste or getting paid to burn it?
@ Anoneumouse
Thanks, you're quite right ... FAR to early on a Sunday to be mounting my Bhagwan Shree Pachauri hobby horse :-)
I heard Vince Cable advising people concerned about paying their energy bills to "shop around", whilst admitting that he had not done so himself. Of course not, I bet the tax payer is paying his bills.
@ JerryM
I am tot sure about your use of 'Bhagwan Shree' when referring to the Wheel Tapping Fakir
This isn't the first big chemical business to move offshore because of energy prices. What used to be Courtaulds Chemicals did the same. The work still goes on, the CO2 is still emitted, just not here.
Another victim
http://uk.ask.com/wiki/British_Celanese
Frankly, most of the green lobby won't lose any sleep that there is one less factory that has anything to do with the word "chemicals".
Many of them appear to believe that we can satisfy all of our material needs by repeatedly re-selling the same houses to each other, being employed as environment correspondents in the MSM, or selling home-made candles at WOMAD festivals.
Greens are in favour of deindustrialisation. Therefore their policies are working. What won't be working are the people who used to have jobs in industry. What do the trade unions make of the harm done to their members by Green policies? When will the trade union leaders have a word will Milliband about the Climate Change Act?
More on the closure of British Celanese,
Cheap shale gas makes industry more competitive. Since the UK is planning to kill off shale gas, only companies with idiots in charge will stay.
Apologies if it eventually looks like I'm repeating myself. I could have sworn I posted earlier about this.
The reconfiguration of the power plant mentioned in passing in the article is related to a combined heat and power, energy from waste, power plant Tata are building in league with EON. The plan started several years ago and was fairly recently given the go ahead by planners. It had attracted opposition from a group called CHAIN (Cheshire Anti-Incinerator Network) but a judicial review they had tried to obtain came to a premature end when they ran out of money.
The site had been put forward as a contender for a contract to incinerate rubbish from West London Waste Authority but was unexpectedly withdrawn from the competition last year.
Being CHP and energy from waste I wonder what subsidies this will attract. And if they will be buying waste to burn or be able to get paid to incinerate other people's waste.
'In the UK, we have certainly been sending businessmen a consistent message of "Go away" and "Not wanted here".'
Unless, of course, you are a fat-cat alternative-energy pocketer of the public's money (esp. if you are related to one or more politicians).
Mike Jackson, yes I did misread that (or perhaps not read far enough). All the same, you are concentrating on the taxes on industrial gas supplies and ignoring the rising price of the gas itself. The tax clearly makes a difference, but if a few percent of tax was enough to tip it over the edge, it was quite likely to close anyway.
Incidentally, here is a snippet from the DECC 2013 September quarterly energy prices:
Chandra
I don't see what your point is here in reply to Mike Jackson. Denmark and Germany have higher taxes than us and higher prices for electricity. If you think that is going well - you are not paying attention, especially in Germany where gas and coal generators are now threatening to close power stations and not build more unless they get subsidies to do so (Germany is currently building 6 new coal-fired stations). 600,000 last winter (which was bittery cold) could not pay their electricity bills in Germany. When you give renewable suppliers three times the price per unit and then give them priority of supply!!!! Imagine if our government always took the highest quote for everything.
Are you suggesting that our energy prices are too low? I think you might have a bit of trouble with that opinion expressed in the pub.
The trouble is that DECC's policy is simply delusional and built on fairy tales. Their headline summary says that all this drive to renewables will lead to lower bills in the long run. We all scratched our heads to see how that can be - after all the cost of wind for example is 3 times the cost of gas generation and you still need to build the gas anyway for when the wind isn't blowing, which is surprisingly often. Some research papers have put the cost of wind at 10 times the cost of gas alone, made worse by the fact that gas used as backup is much less efficient than gas used as base load.
DECC's own projections suggest that the %age of bills in 2020 that will be green levy will be approaching 20% and that by 2030 that will be 40%. This will be needed to pay the eye-wateringly massive subsidies to companies to build turbines that would not be viable in the real world.
Then the penny drops as to how this is all to be achieved. Their long term (40 years) projection shows the UK using half of the energy of today. A fine idea that will prove extremely difficult to achieve and will kill many old folk in the mean time. Or it might be achieved with the UK returning to the conditions of the 18th and 19th centuries.
All this would be hard to justify even if the world was going to hell in a handcart, but the policy is foolish now in a world that even the IPCC is beginning to admit, will not warm beyond the beneficial in the 21st century. If the solar forecasters are right we might be burning considerably more energy in 2050 than we are today just to keep warm. The Central England Temp has been slowly going down for a decade now. Arctic ice is beginning to grow again.
The lesson of history is that countries move ahead in the world when they have access to cheap energy and that we prospered by moving up the energy density scale. Our politicians are now actively trying push water uphill to cure a problem we may very well not have. It will end badly.
High Energy Costs Put Pressure On European Industrial Giants
Friday, 25 January 2013
Chandra
I don't know about elsewhere in the EU but comparing supermarket prices within 24 hours and using 1.177 Euro / £ prices below in Euro cents.
Derby Bellac (87)
95 Unleaded 152.9 153.9
Diesel 164.6 133.9
Now what you and the DECC say may well be accurate but the devil is in the detail as always.
Coutaulds Chemicals aka British Celanese aka Acordis produced the ultimate 'green' product. A plastic made from paper and acetone that is recyclable.
From DECC's Estimated impacts of energy and climate change policies on energy prices and bills 2011
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/assessment-of-the-impact-of-energy-and-climate-change-policies-on-prices-and-bills
This is a lot more than the impact DECC estimates on household bills, but we hear less about it.
Oct 13, 2013 at 4:14 PM | Chandra
I suspect weasels were involved in compiling your quote from DECC:
What is a 'medium consumer'? What are the statistics for major consumers? Why only the EU 15?
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2003-07-29/
@ Anoneumouse
"I am tot sure about your use of 'Bhagwan Shree' when referring to the Wheel Tapping Fakir"
OK, so perhaps you would prefer 'Maharishi'? ... especially as it is alleged that back then Pachauri would occasionally sit in for the Magical Yogic Levitator when the great man's giggle-box was running dry.
http://www.d-boss.com/IPCC/ashram.jpg
Retired Dave, as I read your post I though I might investigate some of what you wrote ... until I got to, "Arctic ice is beginning to grow again", at which point I lost interest.
Don Keiler, you have a good, respected, position. Why are you so full of resentment? Have you been deprived of what you deserve?
Greetings from Australia.
Your government is no longer serving you as its first priority.
I know it is not in your national character, but it is time to hit the streets.
Can't you just pretend that you are joining a large, disorderly queue around Parliament?
Will the last industry leaving the UK please turn lights off...
One of the side effects (benefits for banks) of AGW is the migration of industry to China, India. An environmental catastrophe for them. Cheap goods for us.
One of my customers is a hard nosed businessman with a very successful manufacturing business, exporting to several countries. He recently gave up the quest to build a new, larger factory due to the cost of green regulations. This was to have been a flagship development, bringing jobs to a run down area, now killed off by UK and EU pointless red tape. Government should be encouraging industry, not throwing obstacles in its way. The idiocy is truly breath taking.
upthere
It isn't idiocy for the financial sector.. Thatcher handed over this country to the banks. The banks get to invest in China and make fortunes from carbon treading. Thatcher was the mother of global warming. Long term planning.
@ Manniac
If they can chase enough businesses away and thereby reduce industrial energy consumption they'll have a better chance of keeping the lights on for domestic users (those who can afford it, that is).
Re: Oct 13, 2013 at 10:18 PM | eSmiff
No Smiffy, Thatcher was not the 'mother' of Global warming - it was conceived elsewhere, read for example Crispin Tickell's book Climatic Change and World Affairs written back in 1977
http://www.crispintickell.com/key14.html
(later he was to be our ambassador to the UN and is also heavily involved in pushing the UN Agenda 21 programme on 'sustainability').
But unfortunately she did take advice from the likes of Tickell and Houghton and was persuaded to support the creation of the IPCC, later she came to regret this and was probably one of the first sceptics making points I think few of us would disagree with - here a comment I wrote back in Dec 11 -
Dec 9, 2011 at 1:10 PM | Marion
Re: Dec 8, 2011 at 11:12 PM | John Shade
"The primary players in the alarm game, and their apologists and publicists like Ward, are so unimpressive that I feel I am missing something important given that they have had such a huge impact in the political world (in which I now include the governing councils of such as the Royal Society and the American Geophysical Union). How did they do it? It is not the science, which we know is flaky beyond measure. It is not their charm, which we know is just missing. So what is it? What am I missing?"
Margaret Thatcher has the answer in her book "Statecraft" published in 2002. Although it was she who had been persuaded by the UN ambassador Crispin Tickell to help found the IPCC she came later to bitterly regret the direction in which the 'science' was being pushed -
"since clearly no plan to alter climate could be considered on anything but a global scale, it provides a marvellous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism". (Something that EU president Herman van Rompuy touched on in his inauguration speech).
In a section of "Hot Air and Global Warming" she goes on to give an excellent summary of the main points ie (as well as her own sceptic viewpoints too long to reproduce here)
First, is the climate actually warming?...Second, is carbon dioxide responsible for whatever global warming has occurred?...Third, is human activity, especially human economic activity, responsible for the production of the carbon dioxide which has contributed to any global warming?.. Fourth, is global warming anyway quite the menace suggested... The answers to each of the above four questions will be directly relevant to the fifth and final one:can global warming be stopped or checked at an acceptable price"
She goes on
"The lessons drawn from past predicitons of global disaster should be learned when it comes to considering the issue of climate change
1.We should be suspicious of plans for global regulation that all too clearly fit in with other preconceived agendas.
2.We should demand of politicians that they apply the same criteria of commonsense and a sense of proportion to their pronouncements on the environment as to anything else.
3.We must never forget that although prosperity brings problems it also permits solutions - and less prosperity, fewer solutions.
4. All decisions must be made on the basis of the best science whose conclusions have been properly evaluated."
I think the massive EU funding of only the pro-AGW science, and also the massive EU funding of so-called NGOs that then go on to lobby for EU preferred policies amply demonstrates just how political intervention has skewed the 'science' so that it is politics leading the science rather than the other way round.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/12/8/booker-bashes-bob.html#comment16141841
marion
Best of luck in trying to alert esmiff to the values of eveidence, logic and reason....
Marion
I think you have this politics thing all mixed up.
The reason Margaret Thatcher loved 'Yes Minister' and made her love very public is because it's the truth. She was saying 'don't blame me'.
The idea that a greengrocer's daughter from the back of beyond would be allowed to make decisions for the British state is truly scary. That's why they put idiots and nobodies in charge. Who is Barack Obama ? The biggest nobody in the world.
Margaret Thatcher denies having ever subscribed to monetarism. LOL !! I am sure she was telling the truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuCt_ZdG18U
The Thatcher government put in place the structure for the whole global warming fiasco. That would include being the driving force behind the IPCC, putting certifiable Christian nut Sir John Houghton in charge, the creation of the Hadley Centre, the arming of the Royal Society and the Met Office to support it etc.
All fronted by Margaret Thatcher, including her IPCC speech.
Most here
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sealed/gw/fullpolitics.htm
Same thing happened here. We had one of the few (the only, I think) Soda Ash plant in the southern hemisphere. Jollya Gillards carbon tax has led to it being shut down too.
Sorry, her UN speech which was written by Sir Crispin Tickell, unreconstructed deep ecologist (Nazi Lite) , member of the eugenics loving Huxley clan and member of the Optimum Population Trust (too many peasants).
He was Monbiot's mentor at Oxford and as much as anything lead me to create this Monbiot critique as the self confessed ideological anarcho primitivist (not really a Nazi) he is.
http://alturl.com/py3pf
https://twitter.com/ecofst
Totally genuine disclaimer. Not suggesting Monbiot supports any right wing party, past or present or their policies, merely their ideologies.
Eh up smiffy, methinks your slip is showing!
Just what relevance does the views a research chemist, expressed over 20 years ago have on today's climate?
If you are suggesting that the whole AGW meme exists to ensure the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich then I wholly agree! That is why it is so championed by the elite, especially the political elite.
But it is only part of how being a representative of the public, becoming a member of parliament, ensures your own personal wealth. Some excel at such endeavors and yet still claim to be socialists
Which makes it very difficult to place this monstrosity on one speech, also please tell me who has actually carried out due diligence on the "Thatcher Architect designed AGW Carbon Tax" who Smiffy? Did the multi millionaire Blairs, both of which are more than well qualified to have taken Thatcher to task for her out and out scam?
Or should they be taking Ed Milband to court for misrepresenting the need of the 2008 act?
Any logical thought leads the normal homo sapiens to the conclusion that only observational facts, data, are correct and that model projections are equivalent to nothing more than dreams !
Going to be good when folks are sitting in a car controlled by a computer model that claims to be 95% certain that you will not die but only 66% certain about disability.
eSmiff
Question regarding something you said on the previous posting.
Using the chart posted by Lapogus, which goes back to 2004, the wholesale price of gas has been remarkably stable since 2005. There's a peak in 2008 and an equal trough in 2009 the price today is virtually the same as July 2005. The period 2004-2005 did see an increase but the 2004 price was almost matched in 2009.
Do you have a reference for the period 1998 to 2004 to extend the comparison and confirm what you say?
SandyS
Here it is. Very helpful adjusted price beneath.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3c/UsNaturalGasProductionAndPrices.png
Green Sand
It wasn't one speech. British lobbying created the IPCC and put Houghton in charge. Britain ran the Kyoto and Copenhagen climate conferences. John Prescott was the hero of Kyoto.
"Did the multi millionaire Blairs, both of which are more than well qualified to have taken Thatcher to task for her out and out scam?"
When Margaret Thatcher was asked 'what was your greatest achievement ?'. she replied 'Tony Blair'.
There is only one political party, the criminal, party. That's why you can forget UKIP or anyone else as opposition (in the near future).
eSmiff / SandyS - the wiki graph is US prices and we are looking for UK. It also stops at 2005 so doesn't show the recent and dramatic decline in the US price thanks to their shale fracking. (If only we were permitted to follow suit). I found a chart which shows European, US and Japanese gas prices from 1995 to 2012, and assume it is wholesale. [Source page - http://www.c2es.org/publications/looming-natural-gas-transition-united-states ]. So it looks like the EU price has steadily increased from 2000 to a peak in 2008, then fell and has stabilised for the last 5 years (contrary to Ed Davey's statement on the BBC that it had doubled in the last 5 years).
Booker on Thatcher
Role of Margaret Thatcher
Certainly, Mrs Thatcher was the first world leader to voice alarm over global warming, back in 1988, With her scientific background, she had fallen under the spell of Sir Crispin Tickell, then our man at the UN. In the 1970s, he had written a book warning that the world was cooling, but he had since become an ardent convert to the belief that it was warming, Under his influence, as she recorded in her memoirs, she made a series of speeches, in Britain and to world bodies, calling for urgent international action, and citing evidence given to the US Senate by the arch-alarmist Jim Hansen, head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
She found equally persuasive the views of a third prominent convert to the cause, Dr John Houghton, then head of the UK Met Office. She backed him in the setting up of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988, and promised the Met Office lavish funding for its Hadley Centre, which she opened in 1990, as a world authority on "human-induced climate change".
Hadley then linked up with East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) to become custodians of the most prestigious of the world's surface temperature records (alongside another compiled by Dr Hansen). This became the central nexus of influence driving a worldwide scare over global warming; and so it remains to this day – not least thanks to the key role of Houghton (now Sir John) in shaping the first three mammoth reports which established the IPCC's unequalled authority on the subject.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7823477/Was-Margaret-Thatcher-the-first-climate-sceptic.html
John T. Houghton
Chairman or Co-Chairman, Scientific Assessment Working Group, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1988-2002)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_T._Houghton
Smiffy
Let me confess right off that I was a fan of Maggie and think that on balance she did the country a service. (Just so we know where we stand!)
I also happen to think that in some respects she was naive and that the likes of Tickell "saw her coming". As a scientist and, from what I have been told, one who could have made a pretty good living in her field she suffered from the same ailment that afflicts a lot of the wider scientific community these days, namely a (not unnatural, perhaps) willingness to believe that her fellow scientists in disciplines she was not knowledgeable about were broadly honest and truthful.
Remember she eventually relented and recanted. Too late, alas!
But looked at objectively there is more than enough blame to go round. Tickell and Houghton certainly can take their share as can Hansen and Wirth who set up the notorious senate hearing in 1988.
But always lurking in the background have been the environmentalists — FoE, Greenpeace, and WWF especially — for whom the ability to link CO2 to climate was a godsend because it gave them the arguably unarguable case for their longstanding desire to abolish fossil fuels in the name of "saving the planet".
Without ever, as usual, bothering themselves with such minor details as the disasters that would inevitably follow if they succeeded.
Lapogus
Thanks for the link, that was what I was interested in EU/UK it doesn't matter what the US does when talking about EU/UK domestic fuel prices. The chart shows that eSmiff wasn't quite correct in what he said as the price (wholesale or not0 didn't rocket post Kyoto but gradually increased until 2004 when the rate of increase accelerated, but since 2008 prices have dropped then risen again. The US price is now the same as in 1992, wouldn't it be great if ours did the same?
Anyway I feel happier that my not remembering skyrocketing gas prices, but I do remember French and British fuel blockades in 2000. But as tax was more than 80% of the price at the pumps then increased raw material costs can't take the blame.
The impact of the increasing divergence between US and EU gas prices on the Chemicals sector will be significant. It has been analysed recently by the independent Chemicals Industry consulting group IHS and the conclusions for Europe are dire. To quote form the ExxonMobil's Perspectives blog:
"Recent analysis from the consulting group IHS shows how shale energy is poised to strengthen the U.S. chemical industry for years to come. As recently as 2011, according to IHS, North America and Western Europe each produced the same amount of basic chemicals and plastics: about 30 million tons apiece. When it came to petrochemical production, the two regions were matched fairly evenly.
But not for long.
By 2020, IHS predicts, output from North American chemical producers will more than double to 70 million tons. As for Western Europe, its chemicals and plastics output will shrink by fully one-third, to just 20 million tons.
That’s the power of shale energy.
In less than a decade’s time, the even match between the two regions will become a 70-20 spread as North America expands and Western Europe contracts. That is a tectonic market shift when one considers how global chemical demand is expected to rise by 50 percent over the next decade.
The reason for that shift is the massive increase in U.S. natural gas production thanks to shale energy development – up more than 30 percent in the last seven years to its highest level ever."
See: http://www.exxonmobilperspectives.com/2013/10/08/shales-competitive-advantage-a-tale-of-two-continents/
The Winnington soda ash factory will be among the first of many.