Econowoo

The Royal Society of Edinburgh has produced a report on how Scotland should move to a low-carbon economy. This seems to demonstrate that the spirit of Chairman Mao's `Great Leap Forward' is alive and well and living in Auld Reekie. Yes folks, the answer to all our problems is a plan to be developed in Holyrood.

Here are the report's recommendations:

1. The UK Government should urgently improve the infrastructure and management of the electricity grid in Scotland to optimise the development of renewable energy and to permit the export of surplus renewable energy.

Click to read more ...

Throwing the Booker at wind turbines

Christopher Booker is on a roll at the moment, with an excoriating article about wind turbines in the Mail.

What we are seeing, in short, is the price we are beginning to pay for the past two decades, during which our energy policy has become hopelessly skewed by the siren calls of the environmentalists, first in persuading our politicians to switch from coal and not to build any more nuclear power stations, and then to fall for the quixotic dream that we could gamble our country’s future on the 'free' and 'clean' power of wind and sun

Environmentalists - working every day to mar your present and ruin your future.

CC Question Time

Tonight I was on the panel for a Climate Change Question Time at Strathclyde University, as part of their green week. As the lone sceptic on a panel of five I was somewhat apprehensive about the reception I would receive - one imagines booing and hissing and throwing of eggs - but it was actually all very congenial and polite. I was somewhat concerned to find myself agreeing at times with some of the other panellists, who included a green MSP, a LibDem, an ex-BBC weatherman and an environmental officer from business.

I thought it went quite well on the whole. I managed to tick off the LibDem for extolling the virtues of green jobs, which got a measure of agreement from others on the panel and a laugh from the audience, and I made some criticisms of the Stern report, which I hope may have opened some eyes.

Thanks are due to Linzi at Strathclyde University for inviting me and for organising a very interesting event.

Quote of the day

Philip Davies MP, from the House of Commons debate on windfarms:

The bottom line is that these policies will produce for Britain the most expensive electricity in the world if we carry on down this particular route. Is it morally or politically acceptable, particularly at a time of national austerity when families are struggling to pay their bills, for the Government to keep raising them just to meet an EU target? I do not think it is. It will hit the poorest people in our communities first...The point is that I find it nauseating to hear politicians for ever bleating on about how terrible fuel poverty is when those very same politicians advocate policies that entrench fuel poverty in this country and make it worse. They should be honest about what they are doing. They cannot in one breath say, "I want to see more wind power in this country; it will add this amount of money to people's bills," and in the next breath say, "Isn't it terrible how bad fuel poverty is?" I find that nauseating.

Parliament debates wind farms

There was a Westminster Hall debate on wind farms yesterday. Westminster Hall debates are often sparsely attended affairs, but yesterday's occasion appears to have been rather different, with what the speaker called "an extraordinary number" of honourable members wanting to speak.

Those attending appear overwhelmingly to have been from the government side of the house, with apparently only two opposition members showing their faces. I haven't read the whole transcript, but most people seem to have had little good to say about Labour's great blight on the British landscape.

Stitching up the gas market

Also in the House of Commons today, an inquiry into shale gas, again under the auspices of Mr Huhne's Energy and Climate Change COmmittee.

Who will give evidence?

At 9.45 am

• Nigel Smith, Geologist, British Geological Survey, and
• Professor Richard Selley, Petroleum Geologist, Imperial College London

At 10.45 am

• Jenny Banks, Energy and Climate Change Policy Officer, WWF, and
• Professor Kevin Anderson, Tyndall Centre, University of Manchester

I wonder if Chris Huhne has an environmentalist to tell him which pair of underpants to put on in the morning?

Stitching up the electricity market

This from the agenda for today in the House of Commons:

9 Energy and Climate Change

10.00 am Room 19 (private)  10.15 am (public)

Subject: Electricity Market Reform.

Witnesses: Riverstone, Citigroup Global Markets, Virgin Green Fund, and Climate Change Capital; RSPB, Greenpeace, WWF, and Friends of the Earth (at 11.15 am).

Nobody to put the case for the consumer then. Anyone could end up with the impression that Chris Huhne is trying to organise a stitch up of the electricity market to benefit his green friends.

Josh 68

More cartoons by Josh here.

Shale bonanza

Matt Ridley looks at the shale gas revolution, which he says changes everything. Well, perhaps. But then again perhaps not everything. The impression you get from Andrew Orlowski's article on the same subject is that Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change are entirely unmoved by the bonanza taking place around the world and indeed on our own back door here in the UK.

No doubt some wag will soon start to refer to the denizens of DECC as "shale gas deniers". It's just as well we are above that sort of thing here.

Government rejects deep greens

Roger Harrabin is reporting that the Tyndall Centre have called for a moratorium on shale gas extraction in the UK "until the environmental implications are fully understood" (meaning permanently, one assumes). The report was apparently commissioned by the Cooperative (which used to be called the Co-op Bank).

The Co-operative is concerned that Decc pronounced shale gas safe last week before the end of a consultation into the technology by MPs on the Commons energy and climate change select committee.

Paul Monaghan, head of the organisation's social goals, said: "There should be no fracturing of rock for shale gas until legislation can catch up.

Greenery BC

More evidence that greens are in retreat, with candidates for the premier's job in British Columbia sounding distinctly cool on the idea of ever-increasing green taxes.

If there was any doubt that the climate-change push is in retreat, have a look at the race in British Columbia to replace outgoing Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell.

Candidates for the premier's job are raising questions about whether the province should rethink its climate-change program, one of the most aggressive in North America.

It's the first positive sign for business that B.C. is not going to continue to strike out on its own with environmental regulation and put large sectors of its economy at a severe disadvantage.

Planning for power cuts

Commenter Lord Beaverbrook has asked if we can have a thread to discuss solutions to the power cuts that so many are predicting now that successive governments appear to have saddled us with a power generation system that will not provide sufficient power.

I think we should consider two issues - firstly whether there is a genuine need for households to get back up power supplies and secondly, if backup power is required, what form it should take.

Bob Carter on carbon tax

In the same issue of Quadrant as the Walter Starck article I mentioned in the last post comes a piece from Bob Carter on the Australian government's hopes for a carbon tax. Bob is not impressed.

Bob has also sent me the following letter, which he submitted for publication in the Australian. It wasn't published.

Combet's hot air tax: no seasonal break for the climate commissars

To the degree that statements such as those made by BMO’s Dr. Sligo represent the views of the professional meteorological community, that community has now moved beyond parody and demands to be ridiculed. Can it really be the case that amidst the hurricane of Green spin about global warming, not a single bureaucrat or government politician in Canberra has retained a functioning bullshit detector? 

Remarkably, in enunciating their “eleven principles”, the Canberra MCCC managed to evade entirely any mention of the underpinning scientific justification for introducing a tax on carbon dioxide. That is, of course, because there is none (which is doubtless why only one, tame, scientist was included as a member of the committee in the first place). 

As the government will discover from its focus groups over the next few months, no matter how hard Mr. Combet tries to spin it as beneficial, they will introduce a carbon dioxide tax at their considerable electoral peril. 

For where global warming alarmism is concerned, the good news is that the bullshit detectors of the Australian electorate are both alive and activated.

More wind

Apparently the Times has a story on the continuing failure of windmills to deliver sufficient energy. It's not online, but this looks like the key excerpt (H/T Philip Bratby)

Concern over huge fluctuations in the supply of electricity from Britain’s 3,000 wind turbines has prompted National Grid to begin detailed forecasts of wind strength.

The turbines have delivered well below their usual output this winter and in the 24 hours to 5pm yesterday contributed only 0.5 per cent of the country’s power. Parts of the day were so still that wind power’s contribution fell below 0.2 per cent. On the windiest days, the turbines deliver about 8 per cent. A record of 10 per cent over a 24-hour period was set on September 6 last year.

But since the beginning of December, turbines have been operating at only 20 per cent of their maximum capacity compared with an annual average of about 30 per cent.

Greens distance themselves from wind power

The leading Scottish environmental group, the John Muir Trust, have described wind power as a scandal and called for an urgent review. The story is on the front page of today's Sunday Times. More details are available from Rob Schneider.