Mackay steps down

David Mackay is to step down as chief scientist at DECC and an advertisement has gone up seeking a replacement.

With blackouts and astronomical energy price rises a possibility in the next year or so, I imagine this could be a tricky role to fill.

CCC - the write-up

Ed Davey has just issued the triennial report into the performance of the Committee on Climate Change.

"Conflict of interest" might be expected to be an important issue in the report. However in terms of the conducts of the current members we learn only that the committee has been compliant with the "specified conduct and behaviour requirements". One can only assume that avoidance of conflicts of interest has not actually been specified. That said among the recommendations are the suggestion that the committee's register of interests, previously only available on request, be published on their website.

Click to read more ...

More windmill deterioration

David Mackay has left a comment on the earlier thread, saying that in fact he maintains that Gordon Hughes' estimates of windfarm deterioration are incorrect.

Christopher Booker did not check his facts: Booker asserts that "David MacKay ... could not dispute [Hughes's] findings", but this is poppycock. You can find a technical report I wrote, pointing out a significant flaw in Hughes's analysis here or here. Another paper is about to come out in a peer-reviewed journal, by Iain Staffell and Richard Green, which does the analysis properly, combining wind data with weather data. There is a decline in wind farm output, but it is much smaller than Hughes asserted.

As Guido would say: "Developing".

Out of tune & out of time - Josh 249

Ed Davey's performance yesterday at the Energy and Climate Change Committee, posted here, was a mix of horror and farce. DECC seem to live in a make believe world where increases in costs cost less and policies which increase carbon emissions will somehow magically decrease them, one day, somehow, somewhere.

What a pantomime. 

Cartoons by Josh

Disaster Davey

Ed Davey was up in front of the Energy and Climate Change Committee today for the committee's regular look at the department's work. Tim Yeo was back in the chair, which always adds a certain frission to events.

There was a very interesting exchange (from 15:37) when Philip Lee, who is a very perspicacious questioner of witnesses, asked the minister to comment on the big cumulative losses made by the big energy suppliers and wondered whether this was sustainable. What arrangements, Lee asked, had DECC put in place to deal with the fallout if, say, EDF went belly up.

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Sounds a bit off

Last week I discussed the work of Mike Stigwood on windfarm noise and the fact that the windfarm lobby had managed to nobble the Institute of Acoustics inquiry into the issue.

Today, a report in the Telegraph not only provides some confirmation of Stigwood's story, but also reveals that the green lobby's attempts to corrupt the policy process went even further than that. It seems that they also gained access to DECC officials and, a cynic might think, managed to get them to alter the official guidance on windfarm noise.

Internal energy department emails released following a freedom of information request show the lobby group met ministry officials, after which it was assured that “the majority of R-UK’s input” was “reflected in the guidance”.

Both the Government and the report’s author said last night that RenewableUK had not influenced the advice, but the emails raise new questions about the Coalition’s openness over its wind farm policy.

 The FOI request on which this story was based is here. 

[Update:the FOI reveals that DECC were using a wind-industry acoustician, from RES].

Davey knew Deben was conflicted

A few weeks ago I came across some new correspondence between the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee (ECCC) and Lord Deben relating to his appointment as chairman of the advisory Committee on Climate Change. This was on the committee's web server, but didn't appear to have been linked from the publications page.

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Mackay bashes Lawson

In his evidence to the Science and Technology Committee this morning, DECC chief scientist David Mackay attacked Nigel Lawson for (allegedly) saying in an article a few weeks ago that the IPCC was advocating a complete phase-out of fossil fuels.

The article in question is this one at the Telegraph. I think there is a bit of a snafu here. The text of the article is as follows:

What we should emphatically not do is what Dr Pachauri, Lord Stern and that gang are calling for and decarbonise the global economy by phasing out fossil fuels.

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Hosing down beancounters

DECC ministers have revealed the extent to which they are squeezing expenditure. In a written ministerial answer, Greg Barker has outlined the sums lavished on the big four accountancy firms.

Blue, PWC; Yellow, Ernst & Young; Red, KPMG; Purple, Deloitte

Orlowski at the IT

Andrew Orlowski has reported on David Holland's most recent visit to the Information Tribunal, this time in an attempt to get details of the IPCC's zero-order draft from the Met Office. Interestingly, DECC appear to have refused to allow their representative on the IPCC to appear:

I actually felt a bit of human sympathy for Stott; you can bet he would have rather been somewhere else, and it transpires that Holland didn't actually want him there at all. Holland had wanted to cross-examine the head of the UK delegation to the IPCC, a Department of Environment and Climate Change official called David Warrilow, head of climate science and international evidence.

The procedural questions under the spotlight are Warrilow's bailiwick, not Stott's, but Holland was refused his man. Stott, we learned, had been pressganged into appearing by the Met Office's lawyers. Stott also had to defend his and allied organisations' refusal to disclose material on a basis - as we shall see - that's highly questionable. No intelligent person should have to waste his own time, or anyone else's time, defending the indefensible.

DECC in chaos

A week ago DECC's director of energy strategy and futures resigned, a story reported in the Guardian:

Brearley did not turn up to a renewable energy conference in Scotland, where he was meant to be speaking on the EMR on Monday.

Delegates to the event, organised by the Infrastructure Journal, were told the civil servant was not coming because he had left the department.

But a spokesman for DECC said Brearley was not formally leaving until the summer, having completed the main policy work on the EMR.

Today, one of his colleagues Ravi Gurumurthy, director of strategy, has gone too - he's off to work with David Miliband in New York.

One could be forgiven for thinking that the ship is sinking and that all manner of livestock is heading for safer ground.

Thanks for everything you have done for us, gentlemen.

UK takes the German path

The government has just released its provisional figures for 2012 greenhouse gas emissions, and it's not good news. Emission are up sharply, taking them back to the levels prevalent in 2009, when the Climate Change Act had just been put in place.

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DECC's agenda

The FT's energy blogger, Nick Butler, notes some worrying behaviour.

The UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change is about to publish forecasts suggesting that gas prices could rise by up to 70 per cent over the next five years. This is scaremongering nonsense, and shows just how out of touch the Department is with the realities of the international energy market. Officials appear not to have consulted the industry or the traders. In reality the odds are that prices are just as likely to fall as to rise...

When civil servants are spreading misleading information to benefit a political agenda you know that there's a problem.

The green, the crooked and the incompetent

Updated on Feb 25, 2013 by Bishop Hill

Leo Hickman tweeted a link to this fascinating set of minutes from the September meeting of the DECC Science Advisory Group (SAG). SAG features several familiar names, including John Shepherd, David Mackay, Stuart Haszeldine and David Warrilow.

The whole document is worth a look, and it's only seven pages long. We learn much of what is worrying DECC's scientific advisers, for example the horrific (but presumably distant) prospect of low energy prices:

John Shepherd pointed out that whilst energy efficiency policies are required, they risk being ineffective while energy prices are low. Other SAG members observed that incentives such as a substantial price on carbon were needed to promote innovation and reducing carbon intensity, and it was vital to avoid carbon lock-in.

Click to read more ...

More revolving door

The Department of Business Industry and Skills is busily, industriously and skillfully hosing down insiders with public funds it seems. Here is the latest:

The government is buying a multi-million pound equity stake in a series of onshore windfarms in an unusual move that is likely to anger Conservative backbench MPs campaigning against public subsidies for one of the most controversial forms of renewable energy.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is spending £50m on six windfarms – five onshore and one offshore – through a "cornerstone" stake in a renewable energy fund called Greencoat UK Wind, launched on Wednesday. Some of the farms are being bought outright, while others involve a stake of less than 50% being purchased from two of the big six energy companies, RWE and SSE.

So that's pretty bad. But now consider this. Greencoat UK Wind is a subsidiary of Greencoat Capital. Greencoat Capital is run by Richard Nourse. And this is Richard Nourse's former page at the Department of Business Industry and Skills. It appears that he used to be a member of the Shareholder Executive, the group charged with looking after the government's interests in commercial and quasi-commercial companies. Kind of like all those wind farms that BIS has just bought into.

The notice of the intention to list Greencoat UK Wind on the stock exchange is here. It includes some interesting information about the company's board:

The Company has a strong Board of independent non-executive directors from relevant and complementary backgrounds, offering experience in the investment management of listed funds, as well as in the energy sector both from a public policy and a commercial perspective. The Board will be chaired by Tim Ingram, former chief executive of Caledonia Investments from 2002 until 2010 and will also comprise Shonaid Jemmett-Page, former KPMG partner Financial Services, and William Rickett, former Director General for the Department of Energy & Climate Change. The Company intends to appoint a fourth director to the Board post-Admission.

William Rickett was Director General of the Energy Group at DECC.