Bishop Hill Dealing with Davey
Feb 18, 2015 Climate: Parliament You have to pity the poor energy companies trying to deal with someone quite as erratic as Ed Davey. As he lurches from ridiculous policy measure to preposterous policy statement, people's livelihoods are trashed and trampled with the occupant of DECC apparently careless of what he is doing.
The Guardian has obtained a letter written by the head of Oil and Gas UK to Davey, essentially inquiring if he has thought through the implications of what he is doing and saying:
Webb wrote to Davey a few days later: “[Newspaper] articles reported you backing moves that would encourage investors to think about moving their money out of ‘risky’ fossil fuel assets, suggesting global emissions limits could make hydrocarbon reserves unburnable, therefore stranding assets and rendering them worthless.”
Webb said: “I must confess I find these statements unsettling. They come, after all, at a time when you and the Treasury are putting great effort into delivering the much-needed regulatory and fiscal reforms that will make the UK North Sea more [original italics] attractive to investors in oil and gas, not less. I am intrigued to understand how such opposing viewpoints can be reconciled.”
Of course Davey's words are aimed at winning votes from green-minded voters, so this is a case of doing one thing and saying another; that's just what politicians do (and why they shouldn't be entrusted with anything more important than the opening of a summer fete). But still, it can't be easy to have to deal with people like this on a regular basis.
Reader Comments (53)
If Bonino carried out his threat to cash out all Shells assets in 4 years that would likely be the end of the British Economy and certainly the end of Davey's career. (Mind you Davey's career is over in May anyway)
The UK has the DECC led by Ed Davey.
The Greeks have a Finance Minister.
Countries in Europe have the EU.
In management, the "Peter Principle" occurs when people rise to their own level of incompetence. Unfortunately, this is normally realised, too late.
Ed Davey was the LibDem mastermind behind their anti-nuclear stance before the last election. Despite his DECC rhetoric, you will have notice not one brick has been laid for a new reactor. Also despite his waffle at the LibDem conference about shale, you will have noticed we have moved forward very little.
He seems to have given us the worst mix of energy generators at a ridiculously high strike price
Off-shore wind £155/MWhr
Large solar £120/MWhr
Nuclear £ 97/MWhr
Onshore wind £ 95/MWhr
Massively higher than from conventional sources. Not only that but we will be committed to them for years.
What a complete mess by a complete idiot!
Davey is a prat well out of his depth. He's like a child loose in a sweet-shop, but worse because his idiocy will affect all of us.
Thank heavens he'll soon be gone, but fear not - there will another prat in his place after May, at least as bad.
We're doomed, aren't we?
Is this the answer?:
http://www.ukipmeps.org/uploads/file/energy-policy-2014-f-20-09-2013.pdf
I never thought I'd consider UKIP but just for the sake of this energy policy it might be worth a punt. This guy ticks all the right boxes - doesn't put a foot wrong.
Ivor Ward,
That's probably why they are worried.
Davey is free to do anything.
Unfortunately Davey is encouraged by his department which is probably run by Greenpeace.
Do not underestimate Davey: he is in my view a deep immersion agent indoctrinated at Oxford in the 1980s by those of our elite who, under the cover of organic farming and renewable energy with dreams of creating a replacement Oswald Mosley, set out to revive European-wide Fascism.
Not quite the 4th Reich, rather an EUSSR from Atlantic to Urals, the aim being to kill off half the population by starving inner cities of energy whilst enriching landowners by renewables' subsidies. The side show was the introduction of Putin's new Imperial Russia which via Gerhard Schroeder aimed to get the EU hooked on windmills and GazProm. Green is really the new Black.
MCourtney "Davey is free to do anything"
Probably because no one would actually pay him. His looks and brain, are not going to help, outside the NoGO land of NGO's
They're all bloody mad.
I can see this happening. Fossil fuel companies go bankrupt through "divestment" just as the earth's temperature starts to go seriously downhill.
And there is no need for the panic reactions.
Except that if you are one of the eco-maniac brigade you have only a limited time left before the extreme claims for global warming become patently ridiculous.
I wonder what their starry-eyed useful idiots will have to say when they finally realise just what "decarbonisation of the economy" really, really means. I'm thinking of starting a yurt business with some goat breeding on the side.
@ NCC1701E 11:17 am
So the watermelons are now rotten inside...
(and why they shouldn't be entrusted with anything more important than the opening of a summer fete).
This is why I love to read your blog. Always good for a laugh.
"I wonder what their starry-eyed useful idiots will have to say when they finally realise just what "decarbonisation of the economy" really, really means. I'm thinking of starting a yurt business with some goat breeding on the side."
I think that people are so used to the lights coming on when they flick the switch that they have forgotten/become complacent about the massive amounts of mechanical work that's involved in providing that service.
The energy density of a conventional power station really is beyond most people's comprehension.
Davy was pushing this at Lima, Tim Worstall had thoughts on it:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/12/13/ed-daveys-very-silly-worries-about-fossil-fuel-stranded-assets/
Stern has been pushing this for some time, in conjunction with Solar Century founder, Jeremy Leggett, formerly of Greenpeace. Bob Ward co-wrote the report....
http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/PB-unburnable-carbon-2013-wasted-capital-stranded-assets.pdf
It is based on the idea from Myles Allen et al in 2009, "Towards the Trillionth Tonne", that the earth is a fixed container, into which you can put only so much and take out only so much and we are at the point where all fossil fuels have to be left in the ground.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/full/nature08019.html. They now have a website with a digital countdown!
http://trillionthtonne.org/
Tell that to India: http://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/mine-allotment-process-for-psus-to-start-today/article6905763.ece?utm_source=Vuuklemail&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Newsletter
Nial
My point precisely.
The very same people that are currently sitting in the freezing cold at whichever is the current anti-fracking protest of choice will, in 10 years time, expect the world to work as it does now — electricity, petrol, flights to the Alps in winter.
And what is going through the brains of the likes of SamCam (air mostly) who know roughly how the world works and still send their monthly cheques or SOs to Greenpeace or whoever? Do they not understand what the eco-fools are really about? What do they think is going to keep the lights on when all the conventional power stations have been shut down and how are they going to get Tristran and Chloe to school (or to hospital in a hurry) when there's no petrol for the Chelsea Tractor (or the ambulance) ever again?
There is so much politicking going on at the moment - all to allay a supposed green threat in marginal seats. Personally, I have to ask where this flow of green votes will actually come from, though proportionately they would be higher in Lib Dem constituencies. This is a firm argument against fixed term parliaments since we are aping America in having a mental paralysis years before an election. Yet Government as against a government carries on.
Mr Davey has now put himself completely above the law.
https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/fracking-controls-on-powers-of-energy-secretary-removed-at-11th-hour-in-sneak-attack-by-uk-government/
Feb 18, 2015 at 11:08 AM | Unregistered Commenter Capell
He is certainly worth a punt. Mathematician and ex businessmen. Was a Tory and left due to the Warsi thing (he says):
https://rogerhelmermep.wordpress.com
It is the only chance we have in UK to dump the psychos like Davey
It is much worse than you think folks and getting rid of Davey will not help you ^.^
if you follow this link:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/briefing-papers/SN06786/the-post2015-development-goals
You can start following the paper trail and this paragraph will give you a taster hehe:
[b]In 2000, the global community signed up to the Millennium Development Goals, a set of international goals for human development. As the 2015 deadline for these goals approaches, attention has turned to what will replace them. In July 2012, the UN Secretary-General established a High-level Panel (HLP) to explore the ‘Post-2015 Development Agenda’. UK Prime Minister David Cameron co-chaired this process.
The HLP presented its report on the nature of the post-2015 development framework in June
2013. Their findings have been taken up by an Open Working Group, which has been tasked
with integrating the MDG successor goals with a separate process to establish a set of
‘Sustainable Development Goals’ based on the ‘Rio Principles’ of protecting the integrity of
the global environmental and developmental system. A UN System Task Team, and a series
of public consultations, are also assessing what should be included within the post-2015
framework.
On 2 June 2014, the Open Working Group published a ‘zero draft’ of 17 new goals.
Reactions to the draft have centred on the degree to which they learn from mistakes made
with the MDGs, and how effectively they grapple with new and emerging global challenges
that have arisen since the MDGs were formulated in 2000 (for example, urbanisation, the
global financial crisis, and climate change).
Formal inter-governmental negotiations on the draft goals will be launched at the beginning
of the 69th session of the UN General Assembly in September 2014.
[/b]
'How can you tell when a politician is lying..? His lips are moving..'
I'm also reminded of that brilliant recording by the late Peter Sellers, as a politician addressing an audience as from a soapbox, where he rabbits on for several minutes without actually saying ANYTHING....
Nial, unfortunately, Davey's understanding of decarbonisation, is probably limited to throwing away burnt toast.
Bear in mind the 'divestment' campaign requires asset / shareholders to dispose of their stocks. They do that by SELLING them to someone else. Therefore, so what? Btw had all these green 'experts' invested their pensions into 'renewables' they'd be clean out of luck by now, as that sector has taken repeated monstering's over the years. It's hot air from activists with nothing better to offer. Ignore.
I wonder if Davey has ever been inside a power station..?
I don't think I'd trust Davey to open a summer fete.
This part of what the OWG came up with:
[b]New deadlines have been set, with many goals set to reach their target by 2030
(notably the goal to eradicate poverty by 2030);
Hunger and poverty are separated in this draft so that each is a standalone goal;
The new goals tend to be ‘zero targets’ rather than percentage reductions (ie. ‘End
poverty in all its forms everywhere’ rather than MDG 1’s aspiration to halve poverty);[/b]
I have actually lost some of my references but basically the Open Working Group seems to have decided that this 2030 deadline should cover Sustainable Development which resulted in our Environmental Audit Committee telling Cameron that Economic Growth should be 'Decoupled from the use of Natural Resources'
The point is that all these new targets have come from the High Level Panel that Cameron chaired.
I suggest that the problem is Cameron and not Davey
Golf Charlie
"...unfortunately, Davey's understanding of decarbonisation, is probably limited to throwing away burnt toast."
****
Heh heh ..... excellent comment
On an earlier post these costs were quoted
Off-shore wind £155/MWhr
Large solar £120/MWhr
Nuclear £ 97/MWhr
Onshore wind £ 95/MWhr
Just been watching the news this morning on consumer energy prices on Sky & it was mentioned that 'much' of the cost of wind etc is offset by the tax payer and doesn't all hit your domestic energy bill
So just wondering if the above costs are totally inclusive ?
Cast your minds back to September 2012, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/lord-deben-appointed-chair-of-committee-on-climate-change
"The Rt Hon Lord Deben PC has been confirmed as Chair of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), as approved by Energy Secretary Ed Davey.
This follows a successful pre-appointment hearing on Tuesday 4 September, in which the Energy and Climate Change Committee (ECCC) recommended that he was suitable for the role.
DECC Secretary of State, Edward Davey, said:
“Lord Deben brings with him a huge amount of knowledge of working with businesses in the environment sector and of working with Government during his time as a Government Minister and an MP.
Lord Deben has a major contribution to make to the climate change agenda, and I look forward to working with him as we move into critical period on climate change issues both at home and abroad.”
Here are Davey and Deben together at a Globe International meeting held at the FCO in January 2013
http://globelegislators.org/foreword-by-lord-deben
"GLOBE Study reveals legistators(sic) hold the key to tackling climate change" http://www.globeinternational.org/news/item/study-reveals-legislators-hold-the-key-to-tackling-climate-change
As Dung says, the path is set, the daily politics is just window dressing for the plebs. There is more on Globe International here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/un_progress_governance_via_climate_change.html
Magnum
Any site that talks about landowners getting "raped" is going to get short shrift from me — and I suspect others on this site as well.
While I don't trust Davey on fracking (or indeed anything else) as far as I can spit, the powers of the SoS to decide (and anyway that phraseology means the Department rather than the SoS personally) on matters like what constitutes "protected" areas is quite normal practice.
I note the site doesn't specify which department is involved. I would guess it will be Environment.
I do wish people would learn a little bit about how government actually works before shooting their mouths off.
(Sorry; hobby horse of mine!)
Contrary to what's been said in this thread - I think Davey is a very competent *politician*. During his recent appearance on BBC Question Time he managed to turn an answer on the Ukraine situation into a eulogy for LibLabCon renewables energy policy and for remaining locked within the 'safety' of the EU - elicit a strong round of applause from the (hand-picked) BBC audience. Needless to say every sentence he uttered was mendacious rubbish, but he hit all his targets and batted the ball firmly back to UKIP's Suzanne Evans who, unfortunately, gave a woefully weak reply to what should have been a slam dunk. So in summary: Davey's daft, but he's deft.
dennisa
If you follow the link I gave earlier you see that Cameron's 'High Level Panel' (we are obviously not talking high IQ here hehe) and the Open Working Group have incorporated AGENDA 21 into their aims which means we really are screwed.
We now have a situation where DOBBIN has the job of holding the government to account in terms of whether they are meeting the targets that Cameron himself supervised as Chair of The High Level UN Panel, that will be hard I bet.
Davey , like lots of the libdems , is a dead man walking come the election , its now all about legacy and lining himself some nice little earners in green NGO's or the renewable industry where he can carry on living on the government tit , or Joe publics cash.
Hes been no worse than others that have headed the DECC . because frankly they all be awful and done nothing but aid the greens 'wish' for an energy shortage .
This is merely a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. It is quite normal for politicians.
When Microsoft first started being attacked by high ranking politicians in the US I recall reading that Microsoft’s main problem was said not to be the actual merits of their case, but that they weren't actually paying/bribing some other politicians to defend them in the same forum. Their industry opposition wasn't so naïve.
Phillip Bratby, it would be worthwhile to get Davey to open a summer fete, just to hear him prattle on about global warming, in freezing torrential rain.
Chilli: I don't follow your argument. When Suzanne Evans was rightly making the point that EU and NATO expansion was a bridge too far for Putin the aforesaid Davey was shouting "Nonsense" and "This is shocking". She had made her point: the yanks weren't too keen on the Ruskis placing nuclear weapons on their doorstep in Cuba were they? Incidentally there is a great book from about ten years ago called The Next 100 Years by a well respected American geo-political writer in which he sets out that the early stages of the "next 100 years" will be governed by defined "international fault lines" and the most imminent and dangerous of these he foresaw as Ukraine - we were warned.
I guess Owen Paterson is looking forward to the early hours of May 8th.
Every time he opens his mouth, Davey seems to confirm even augments the assessment I first made about him - that this man is well out of his depth and floundering like a beached whale on a tidal flat, where the sea has moved far out to the horizon.
Or,
Could it be that, I've comprehensively misread him, and that Davey is by a deranged conviction - a zealot of green and a Cultural Marxist hell bent on destroying Britain and its vestigial industrial base. Davey, a fifth columnist beavering away a tad more quietly than did his fellow saboteur - that old lag Huhne but nevertheless focused and determined to send us all to what is likely to be a puritanical regime and a future with little comfort, run by a dispassionately cruel and protected elite but where ordinary Britons will succumb to common disease we once deemed to have conquered and a very cold and miserable existence - for the peasants.
Either - or, Davey is 'home' but not all the lights are switched on - if you catch my drift.
Vernon: She erm'd and ah'd too much before getting to the point - starting off with some consensus waffle about Putin being a tyrant and having a big army which Dimbleby took as an opportunity to attack her over inconsistency with Nigel's past statements about Putin (thus destroying her credibility before she'd even started). She only got to the point right at the end: that the EU started the war by aiding the coup in Kiev. She completely missed the opportunity to counter Davey's idiotic renewables and 'EU safety blanket' points. She could take lessons from Davey in how to prioritise her answer, lay out her case and hit home with her points and her attacks. Granted it must be very difficult to maintain your composure with everyone on the panel and in the biased BBC audience against you. But we need to do better. We get precious few opportunities to layout the case against the EU & renewables on national TV - so when they come along we need to exploit them fully - which unfortunately Susanne Evans failed to do.
"What do they think is going to keep the lights on when all the conventional power stations have been shut down and how are they going to get Tristran and Chloe to school (or to hospital in a hurry) when there's no petrol for the Chelsea Tractor (or the ambulance) ever again?"
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Part of the problem is that Tristan and Chloe's Mum and Dad are in the economic class that is not affected much (if at all) by the consequences of these policies.
No matter how poor a country is, there are always people who have chauffeur driven cars, don't even see the household bills (much less care about them), buy the best health services, etc. They are insulated from the reality of the average - let alone below average - income person's life.
In relatively wealthy Western countries, this class exists even more than it does in poor ones. If you wonder why most politicians are so out of touch, spend a few days with them around Parliament. About the only thing they do for themselves is wipe their bottoms. They are waited on hand and foot by fawning courtiers, paid for by the rest of us.
I have no bright ideas about how to fix this problem. But one thing is for sure - even if the lights go out for the masses, they will be basking in well-lit, climate controlled comfort.
Amongst politicians, ignorance is normal (at ministerial level they rarely have first-hand knowledge of their briefs), incompetence is to be expected. But head-in-the-sand refusal to make the slightest effort to understand your brief should not be accepted or forgiven. Having seen no evidence that Davey has made the slightest effort to understand what he's playing with, I see him as criminally negligent, for which he should be held personally to account. Instead, of course, he'll get a generous payout (at our expense) when he loses his seat at the next election and has a nice pension pile (at our expense) to look forward to in the future. My contempt for him is absolute.
Not quite the case, johanna
The stalwarts of such as Greenpeace and FoE are the moderately affluent middles classes, as I'm sure they are in Australia. They are the very people (indeed the only people) with the spare cash and the inclination to "do something" about "the environment". The lower orders have neither the time nor the cash nor the inclination; the upper classes (at least outside the cities) know full well that this "unspoilt environment" is absolutely nothing of the sort and that if the idealistic greenies had their way it would go to rack and ruin in decades.
The very people who provide the bedrock support for environmentalism are not the ones with chauffeurs and fawning courtiers; they are the very ones who will be loud in their complaints when it all goes wrong and their passably comfortable lifestyles come to a shuddering halt.
Feb 18, 2015 at 1:28 PM | Registered CommenterDung
I agree with you on Cameron. I certainly don't trust him to run an effective in/out vote on the EU.
Also, I don't think Davey is stupid. He's got his agenda and he doesn't care what people think, even if his statements make him look stupid.
Oh, I agree, Mike. But in Australia at least, their lifestyles are not just "passably comfortable", they are very comfortable indeed. For example, one of my oldest friends (from university undergraduate days) has just retired from a senior partnership in a big law firm. He is a multi-millionaire, on paper anyway. He was a greenie at uni, and still is. He's a nice guy, and very bright. But, the fact that energy costs are skyrocketing means nothing to him. It's like the price of milk going up one cent a gallon.
In the Public Service, which I have now retired from, the people I worked with had two well above average incomes per household, owned their expensive houses outright, and looked forward to fat, taxpayer-guaranteed pensions for life. (I joined too late to get on the gravy train).
On a slightly different, but related, note, the former CEO of the Oxfordshire council, which is embroiled in a scandal about child abuse, has just graciously agreed to step down with a 600,000 quid golden handshake.
This is a class which is completely out of alignment with most people's experience and how hard they have to try to scratch a decent living.
Feb 18, 2015 at 6:31 PM | Unregistered CommenterDaveS
I cannot completely agree with you Dave. I think he understands very well what he's playing with. Makes him even more culpable in my book.
I never thought I'd consider UKIP but just for the sake of this energy policy it might be worth a punt. This guy ticks all the right boxes - doesn't put a foot wrong.
Capell
And not just on energy. There are many common sense policies on the website. VOTE UKIP. Please, for the sake of us europeans.
johanna
My point was that it is the well-heeled, regardless if how well-heeled they actually are and I take your point about the fat cats, that are supporting the greenies but will be hardest hit when the crunch comes partly because they are well-heeled and believe they ought to be shielded from it and don't realise the extent to which they are exposed.
When there is no petrol for the car/boat/plane/ride-on lawnmower then there is no petrol and the ones who will suffer will be the ones who up till then haven't had a care in the world. Pop down to the local supermarket and fill up the tank.
Can I suggest a look at this blog post which I wrote in January three years ago. It's not a direct example of what we are discussing but it makes the point about how the average urban dweller would become all at sea if his comfortable lifestyle was disrupted.
If you can lay your hands on a copy of James Burke's excellent series Connections then he lays out the argument much better than I can.
johanna
"they will be basking in well-lit, climate controlled comfort"
I'm not so sure. Even if they do have their own generators (and I know a few very well-heeled individuals with homes here who don't) the ensuing societal breakdown will affect them, and the rest of us. If the pols have to remove themselves to bunkers and tinned food, it will serve them right!
Sorry, Mike, I don't go for apocalyptic scenarios except in fiction.
The gradual grinding down of ordinary people's lives, however, is very believable and has happened many times in human history.
Looking forward to the day in May when this vacuous pillock gets booted out of the House of Commons. Not looking forward to the day, sometime later in 2015, when the same vacuous pillock inevitably gets appointed to a high-powered (sic) job in the EU.
I mean, why waste his talents screwing up energy policy in one country when they can be put to use screwing up energy policy in 28?
Anyone who says the "EU started the war by aiding the coup in Kiev" is placing their hatred of the EU above everything else. Life is only so simple for the simple-minded.