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Bishop Hill Dec 4, 2013 Media 
This is interesting: the Daily Telegraph has created a new post of Energy and Climate Change Editor and has decided to fill it with the current energy and utilities correspondent Emily Gosden.
Interestingly, Ms Gosden appears to have no discernable eco-credentials.
Does this mean that that the green advertisers no longer hold sway at the Telegraph?
Josh
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.
Bishop Hill Dec 4, 2013 Royal Society 
Image: Somerset House: a meeting of the Royal Society. Via albionprints.com (click for link)Each year, the president of the Royal Society gives an address to the fellows at their annual meeting and Paul Nurse's speech last year is now available online. It's mostly fairly unremarkable stuff - extolling the virtues of the society itself; making the oft-repeated but scarcely credible claim that the society is independent of government; criticising those who reach different conclusions to Nurse's preferred scientific cliques. Most of this is in the first five minutes of the talk, and much of the rest is about the internal machinations of the society, which is probably important but frankly too dull for words. However, there's an interesting bit at the end.
Bishop Hill Dec 4, 2013 Energy: wind 
The government looks set to change the levels at which they fix prices for electricity. It seems that hard pressed consumers are going to hand over less cash to onshore wind and solar operators but more to offshore ones.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander described the shift in subsidy as "a rebalancing" and said overall spending would not change.
But Labour said "chopping and changing" pricing was bad for business.
As you can see it is fairly clear that all the big three political parties remain committed to ever-rising energy prices.
Bishop Hill Dec 3, 2013 Climate: Parliament DECC 
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.
Bishop Hill Dec 3, 2013 Bureaucrats DECC Energy: wind 
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].
Bishop Hill Dec 3, 2013 Energy: gas Greens 
Photo: A Weir under CC. Click for link.Earlier this week it was reported that Stirling Council has decided to oppose Dart Energy's plans to expand their coalbed methane operations in Airth.
The project actually spans two separate council areas, and the other one - Falkirk - has yet to pronounce, so the project is still alive, but the decision is presumably a setback. The scaremongering campaign by Friends of the Earth Scotland and Frack-Off seems to have had an effect. Nevertheless, the council's decision is actually rather surprising, as Dart have their European headquarters in Stirling. If the company can't operate in their own back yard, one can't help but wonder if they might decide to move the business elsewhere, perhaps closer to their operations in England. I suppose though that Stirling councillors are unconcerned about the loss of an important employer in the area - this is Scotland after all.
Meanwhile, it is reported today that Ineos, the operators of the Grangemouth chemicals site, just up the road from Airth, are going to go ahead with their plans to supply their plant with a feedstock of LNG, shipped from the USA.
So we can see that Friends of the Earth (and the other groups that claim to be concerned about the environment) have managed to work things so that instead of gas being sourced locally it will be shipped halfway round the world.
This will, apparently, help to 'save the planet'.
Bishop Hill Dec 2, 2013 Energy: other Greens 
Prominent green groups in Scotland have (inadvertently) called for fracking to take place north of the border as soon as possible.
Well, kind of.
Bishop Hill Dec 2, 2013 Climate: Parliament 
One sometimes wonders if members of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee inhabit a sort of a green fairytale land. It seems as if no policy measure is ever too silly to find its way into their recommendations or an opinion too cockeyed for them to adopt.
As an example, take their report on energy subsidies, published today, which boldly declares that fossil fuels are subsidised by some £12bn per annum in the UK.
Globally, subsidies for fossil fuels exceed $500 billion a year. They are inconsistent with the global effort to tackle climate change, providing incentives for greater use of such fuels and disincentives for energy efficiency. Energy subsidies in the UK are running at about £12bn a year; much directed at fossil fuels. There is no single internationally agreed definition of what constitutes energy subsidy, which has provided a way for the Government to reject—erroneously, in our view—the proposition in some areas that it provides energy subsidies.
Bishop Hill Dec 2, 2013 Climate: Parliament Energy: grid 
Readers may remember that I mentioned the launch of Labour's green paper on energy last week. At the time, I made a cursory and ultimately fruitless attempt to find the document in question, and at least one BH reader reckons it is in fact illusory.
Having dug a bit further, I have come across mention of a "ten-point plan", for example this analysis at the Carbon Brief. So I wonder if the green paper is in fact simply ten soundbites jotted down on a napkin by Ed Miliband and Captain Flint. If so, then it's a pretty damning indictment the level of thought involved in Labour's thinking, although perhaps not overly surprising as one looks at the body count that has resulted from the party's last time in office.
And as you look at point 9 on the plan, you see that the party is quite determined that prices will go higher still:
Set a 2030 power sector decarbonisation target to boost investor confidence.
Winter deaths? What winter deaths?
Bishop Hill Dec 1, 2013 Energy: grid 
David Rose has the must-read article this morning, trying to work out just how much the greens - the new friends of the people - are going to cost us at the end of the day.
Yes, £50 may be being cut from bills. But astonishingly, there’s still another £300 billion of projected increases from green commitments to go.
They make Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze bills meaningless. For this, we must thank primarily his own biggest legislative achievement – the passage, when he was Energy Secretary, of the 2008 Climate Change Act.
