Unspeakable in pursuit of the iniquitous

The Mail on Sunday's splash last week about Lord Deben's misleading the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee over the business of Veolia, a company he chairs, has elicited a response in the form of a letter from committee chairman Tim Yeo.

You may have seen the press coverage on Sunday 13 January (attached) relating to your interests in Veolia Water. At the Committee's request, I have written to Ed Davey to ask for an update on how DECC and the Cabinet Office have addressed the outstanding matters in relation to your interests, which we drew to their attention back in September. The Committee also asked me to write to you to give you an opportunity to comment.

The spectacle of the heavily conflicted Yeo assessing Deben to see if he too is heavily conflicted is almost too much for me.

(H/T Dung)

Lord Patten's diary

A couple of interesting little snippets at a BBC-focused blog called Trading as WDR. The author has obtained some excerpts from the diary of BBC chairman Lord Patten under FOI.

These include meetings with Stephen Lovegrove, who has subsequently been appointed Permanent Secretary at DECC, and also with Lord Deben, who needs no introduction here. Lovegrove is married to a screenwriter, and has a background in media consultancy, so there may well be no climate connection.

Debent

The Mail on Sunday has a story about conflicts of interest in individuals involved in renewables policy. In fact, it is our old friends Lord Deben and Bernie Bulkin.

When quizzed by MPs before his appointment was confirmed, he was asked about his chairmanship of the £500 million company Veolia Water UK. Lord Deben insisted it did no energy-related business and only dealt with water. If it had ‘even a remote connection’ with the environment or climate change, he promised, he would step down.

In fact, Veolia – of which Lord Deben remains chairman – boasts on its website of supplying ‘large electrical grid connections for renewable energy producers’, and illustrates this with a large photograph of wind farms.

The firm also publishes a ‘case study’ of how its engineers ‘braved the Scottish gales’ to install 12 miles of high-voltage cable to connect the national grid to the Dalswinton windfarm near Dumfries.

You read it here first.

Update on Jan 13, 2013 by Bishop Hill

Another must-read in the MoS is David Rose's look back at the reaction to his "global warming has stopped" article last year, in the light of the Met Office's prediction that we shouldn't expect any warming for a few more years yet.

DECC and sociology

The British Sociological Association.

The [climate change ] study group was formed following the very successful BSA Presidential Debate ‘How to put society into climate change’ held at the British Library in February 2010. As that event demonstrated, sociology has an increasingly important role to play in shaping and contributing to public and policy debate about climate change. The study group provides a forum in which to explore how to effectively bring sociology’s unique perspective to bear on this most pressing of challenges. The study group is open to all sociologists, from whatever specialism and at whatever stage they may be at in their career

26 October 2012

BSA Climate change study group: informal discussion with DECC
No 3. Whitehall Place, Department of Energy and Climate Change, London, UK - 2.30-5.00pm -

This event provides members of the BSA climate change study group with an informal opportunity to meet some of the people involved in social science related research in the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Those who attend will get a chance to learn more about how research influences policy, and about what makes social science useful. There will be opportunities to discuss current and future research priorities, to hear about methods of commissioning and using research, and about experiences of working with policy.

FULLY BOOKED

Never mind, you can always go to this one instead.  [TM.]

31 October 2012
Consumption and the Philosophy of Denim
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

Powering the Nation

Old coal and nuclear power stations are coming to the end of their lives. We face a race against time to ensure our energy security. We need to secure £110billion of investment in a secure, diverse and low carbon power mix. It is a huge challenge, but an equally huge opportunity, with the Coalition’s reforms to the electricity market having the potential to support a quarter of a million jobs, many of these highly skilled. New nuclear, gas-fired power stations, carbon capture and storage and renewable energy will bring new investment to all parts of the country, developing supply chains which won’t just serve the UK market, but the global market too. [Block quote added 7.45pm, 11.10.12]

 From Powering the Nation, article by Energy Minister John Hayes for DECC

http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/housemag/housemag.aspx

 A number of unanswered questions within that paragraph, such as why don't we prevent the closure of the older power stations until we are sure we can manage without them.? Where is £110 billion coming from? What reforms to the energy market- smart meters? No thanks.  A quarter of a million jobs- ever heard of Bastiat?  CCS?- it doesn't work.....and so on.

[Update: figure on last paragraph corrected to £110 billion, 5.00pm]

Consumers' electricity bills

Here's an odd thing. Some weeks back I noticed that Gregory Barker, the Climate Change minister, had met with representatives of the Electricity Retailers Association to discuss "information on consumers' bills".

To me this seemed rather odd - why would electricity retailers need to discuss the information on bills with ministers? Perhaps Mr Barker wanted to insist that some information was passed on to consumers?

An FOI request later, I discover that the meeting was at the request of ERA itself - it appears that they asked to speak to ministers about a number of issues - Fuel Poverty, the Green Deal, the Community Energy Saving Programme and the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target. Putting this together with DECC's record that "information on consumers' bills" was discussed, I conclude that ERA wanted to make the costs of these government programmes transparent.

Unfortunately, I can only infer this because according to DECC, no record was kept of the meeting.

DECC ministers meetings

The Department of Energy & Climate Change has issued the latest lists of meetings attended by ministers. It appears that Huhne and his buddies are still vigorously resisting any possibility of speaking to anyone who might question anything they do - only energy companies and environmentalists are welcome. Trespassers will be prosecuted.

I was intrigued by a meeting attended by Huhne's deputy Greg Barker. Barker met with energy retailers to discuss, among other things, "information on consumers' bills". Is this where the government says "you will not break out the cost of green taxes on bills under any circumstances"?

I've written to ask.