Time for the cost-benefit question. In a sane world, the business case for carbon mitigation is like a naked singularity. No matter how many times the question is asked, no numerical answer ever emerges.
Yet whole economies are circling around this very question. — Jo
—————————————————————————-
Question 2: How many degrees Celsius of warming will these new requirements abate, and how will this outcome be measured?
What are the benefits to the Western Australian environment from the EPA recommendations, especially given that almost no nation is trying to reduce emissions and installing as much renewable energy as rapidly as Australia already is.[1]
The WA population is 2.6 million or about 0.03% of the total population of Earth. Given that the largest economies in the world, such as China, India, Brazil, Japan and Indonesia are not going to achieve significant emissions reductions, the imposition on the people of WA poses a large burden on the industry and economy of the state which may be entirely pointless. Only 16 countries are even aiming to meet their Paris targets.[2] One of those 16 is Indonesia, but only five months ago Indonesia threatened to withdraw from Paris Agreement.[3] The United States of America is one of the few that has reduced CO2 emissions, but not through any schemes or with targets. The reduction is almost entirely due to the growth of the shale gas industry.
If we assume the IPCC is correct and assume Australia could reduce emissions to zero starting today, it would lower the temperature in 2050 by around 0.015 °C.[4] Obviously the total for Western Australia alone, and with only a partial reduction, is an order of magnitude (or two) smaller than this. If the IPCC climate sensitivity is 3 to 10 times smaller, as the empirical observations suggest, the total effect of Western Australian action alone will be smaller still.
The EPA is only required to consider the environmental implications, but even so, if the benefit of carbon abatement by Western Australian projects is surely measured in ten thousandths of a degree, should the EPA be pursing guidelines that have only a symbolic benefit?
Surely there are more important environmental actions the EPA ought be considering?
The EPA needs to define what a “reasonable” measure is.
Furthermore, if the EPA action reduces emissions, in all likelihood those emissions will simply migrate (with the jobs and capital investment) to the countries with lower emission standards. Thus the emissions will just be emitted elsewhere and the EPA regulations will have achieved nothing in terms of overall CO2 emissions.
Worse, most countries have lower pollution standards than Australia does, and so the net effect may be to preserve an immeasurably small part of the WA wilderness, but indirectly create more environmental damage globally.
The EPA document argues that “It is rapidly becoming standard international practice for greenhouse gas emissions to be considered by regulatory agencies”. Many countries are paying lip service to emissions, but actual reductions are rare: see China, Indonesia, India, Africa, Brazil or the USA.
REFERENCES
[1^] Blakers, A., Stocks, M., and Lu, B. (2019) Australia: the renewable energy superstar, APO Analysis and Policy Observatory, ANU, [PDF]
[2^] Nachmany, M. and Mangan, E. (2018) Aligning national and international climate targets, London School of Economics and Political Science. http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/publication/targets/
[3^] Telesur, https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Indonesia-Threatens-to-Withdraw-From-Paris-Agreement-Over-Palm-Oil-20190328-0007.html
[4^]Evans, David (2011) Independent calculations, published at http://joannenova.com.au/2011/03/carbon-tax-australia-welcome-to-futility-island/. Dr Evans, was formerly a leading Kyoto Carbon modeler, Australian Greenhouse Office.
This is the WA Environmental Protection Agency we are talking about, They have a defined mission statement, and are limited by the Environmental Protection Act of 1986.
The EPA, therefore, is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. In a State like WA they will always only have a marginal effect on global issues. Berating them for that is silly.
Note that in the adversarial system of government, the EPA presents its advice to the Minister, who, if he accepts it, then presents it to cabinet, as do all the other ministers (like, say for mining). The best political performance, irrelevant of the facts will win the day. That is politics.
127
Hmm!
You really did your homework here, eh Peter Fitzroy.
Had you even bothered to check before running off at the mouth, you would have seen the patently obvious title as the Environmental Protection AUTHORITY.
It’s a proclivity of yours in your haste to ‘slag off’ to get things so patently wrong.
Tony.
230
good on you – now how about debating the main point – the WA EPA is only a small player on the global stage, expecting it to punch above its weight is silly
022
Yes it’s bit player.
More importantly it’s not authorised by it’s legislation
to SAVE the planet.
This EPA has turned into a
Latter Day mob of “Don Quihottes”
Along with sundry Sancho Panzas
Tilting at non existent windmills.
And if allowed to carry on in this crusade
It will destroy the current Labor government.
When at the next election the people of Western Australia
Punish the Labor mob for their folly
In allowing this EPA to run a mock !
200
Well Bill that is not the point I was making. In the end, any decision will be political, and more dependent on the skill of the various politicians. It is the job of the EPA to promote the environment, the job of the minerals council to promote mining etc. it is the job of politicians to steer a path through these competing interests
019
When a legislated authority
Starts going beyond the ambit
Of it’s legal authority
It has lost it legal legitimacy.
And then fit only for putting
In the garbage bin of history.
120
” It is the job of the EPA to promote the environment”
Then they should NOT be making recommendations based on anti-science from environmental activists.
Environmental activism is destroying society, and hence the environment, just like all far-left causes do.
Only a healthy functional society can afford to look after the environment properly.
Down-grading manufacturing, commerce, industry, the general economy, and life-style in general, (which is the far-left agenda) will end up causing a whole heap of real damage to the environment.
But you don’t care about that , do you PF.
170
As contributor Fitzroy states above:
“Well Bill that is not the point I was making”.
Clearly the end point anticipated by the EPA must be clearly defined according to its charter.
But that is only true if the precursor of the anticipated end state is accurately predicted prior to the enactment of the process under assessment.
Should that mid process data not be available then the initial baseline would be eliminated from the assessment resulting in substantial disconfirmation of the proposed analytical pathway and complete collapse of this important project.
I hope that helps.
Kinky Kalm Keith. KK.
30
It should go back to sleep and ignore the current and future levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Western Australia’s pastures and forests will be grateful and relieved if they do.
230
A bunch of far-left brain-washed ACTIVIST twerps.
You don’t get a job at one of these EPA places unless you are a “true believer”
They shouldn’t be in charge of a chook raffle.
161
“…they will always only have a marginal effect on global issues.”
Er, it seems to me they are not aspiring to have a marked effect on global issues. They are using global issues to have a very marked effect on WA. Therein lies the problem.
The EPA and the other alphabet quangos can affect globes all they like. It’s WA and the Commonwealth of Australia that concern us. We want to downgrade our nation from its current status of crash dummy for the sicko Trotskyist elites. If that’s all the same to you.
160
Well I never!
BY responding to this nonsense we are, in effect, accepting the EPA’s assumption that man-made CO2 is responsible for global warming or climate change.
I don’t accept that.
Let the silly EPA and its top fanboy Fitzroy present the evidence that supports that hypothesis. Then the discussion can start.
70
The ultimate question that the whole of the EPA determination revolves around is very strangely ignored.
Unaddressed issues:
1. Does atmospheric CO2 increase cause “global warming”.
2. If it does, what proportion of that increase can be attributed to humans.
3. What percentage of human origin CO2 is attributable to Australia.
The answers to these questions are strangely never provided by governments or their agents.
KK
241
Thats because they literally dont exist!
20
Answers.
1. No.
2. Answer at 1 makes this question irrelevant.
3. As for 2.
20
A longer version of your answers to 1,2, and 3…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/09/07/propagation-of-error-and-the-reliability-of-global-air-temperature-projections-mark-ii/
“Those who compile the global air temperature record do not even know to account for the resolution limits of the historical instruments, see here or here.
They have utterly ignored the systematic measurement error that riddles the air temperature record and renders it unfit for concluding anything about the historical climate, here, here and here.
These problems are in addition to bad siting and UHI effects.
The proxy paleo-temperature reconstructions, the third leg of alarmism, have no distinct relationship at all to physical temperature, here and here.
The whole AGW claim is built upon climate models that do not model the climate, upon climatologically useless air temperature measurements, and upon proxy paleo-temperature reconstructions that are not known to reconstruct temperature.
It all lives on false precision; a state of affairs fully described here, peer-reviewed and all.
Climate alarmism is artful pseudo-science all the way down; made to look like science, but which is not.
Pseudo-science not called out by any of the science organizations whose sole reason for existence is the integrity of science.”
20
They all go on so much about their Key Performance Indicators in the government,regulatory and corporate sectors.
I searched and searched until the methane-belching cows came home, but did not find a single KPI around the Climate Change bogeyman.
How odd, given that we now live on a “sinking planet”, at least according to TIME magazine.
https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/sg-time-article.shtml
Do so, as Joanne has done here,and the brazen climate-fixer deceit becomes clearer.
150
It is the lethal hubris of the unelected and unaccountable government governing Elite that they can define what is true. Then, as if my magic, reality adjusts to their whim. Thereby making it justified to do whatever to counter the falsely defined as true. All without one whit of attempt to prove the correctness of their magical decision. Simply because they say so, they can unleash any program onto the public without concern over the possibility that their whim might be wrong.
The really interesting thing is that far too many of the general public go along to get along. This even though all objective evidence points to the fact that the government action is causing a rapid degradation of quality of life and will cause eventual total disaster. It seems that it will required a total collapse of the society and the economy to change peoples minds. If that doesn’t do it, the 1000 years it takes to recover might do it. Then again perhaps not.
160
Nicely put Lionell.
At a more concrete, local level, many small businesses which seemed to be doing O.K. have closed in the last year or two and the vacated premises are empty.
Something is happening and it is not good.
Personally I think that the small business down turn is linked to lack of government focus on reality.
Electricity prices for small business are crippling and employment growth in mainstream industry is nonexistent.
All politicians are concerned about is themselves.
When western Australia puts eco weirdness before reality there is going to be a day of reckoning.
KK
130
Why limit your observation to WA?
I have been observing that there has been no rush to rent the old Dick Smith store in Mt. Barker (SA) for some time. This despite a car park behind (shared with Aldi and other businesses) and 2 shopping centres a block away (in different directions).
Of course both major parties in SA have too many people who would be rejected by the Armed Forces even for “Latrine cleaning – permanent assignment”.
100
Yes, electricity prices are crippling, and the internet sites are playing a part too. People can go into the shops, while they still exist, to get an eyes and hands on, and then they go home and order online.
90
WA could make a very significant hole in the global consumption of carbon simply by stopping iron ore exports. Takes out 30% of the global steel production and the coal associated with that. Will decimate the global production of motor vehicles, which consume carbon based fuels. On the positive side, it would also decimate the production of wind generating towers.
If WA was serious about curbing global carbon emissions they simply need to stop iron ore mining and export from the State. That would be a truly splendid way of curbing global carbon consumption; serious stuff rather than fiddling at the outer extremities.
122
Rick:
And where would the money come from to pay those politicians and public servants?
70
As kick-backs from the renewable energy barons re-cycling our hard earned taxes channeled to them as “subsidies”.
70
Why not stop coal exports too? Our coal is coking coal for making steel. These are our two biggest export earners and far more important for making CO2. Plus stop natural gas with EPA regulations. Pass laws to stop or tax everything, as we have done to coal electricity.
The top exports of Australia are Iron Ore ($48.2B), Coal Briquettes ($47B), Gold ($29.1B), Petroleum Gas ($20.3B) and Wheat ($4.88B).
Of course we can make everything ourselves, using solar and wind power and our clever factories, except we don’t have any. Especially in Canberra and the inner city Green areas of the big cities.
Cars, trucks, tractors, phones, appliances, everything. No imports at all, if only because we do not have the money without our biggest exports. No flying as we have to import the aviation fuel and half our petrol and we have 7 days of diesel as a reserve. We can sell the aircraft and build sustainable wooden boats with sails and ropes from hemp, marijuana grown in NSW. And we no longer make fuel after being self sufficient since the war. Steam engines are the go again with sustainable wood.
This in a country where we now cannot even afford to recycle plastic because the electricity is too expensive, a country where we make a big deal of banning plastic straws and plastic bags but send all our plastic rubbish to China and the Phillipines and India.
We cannot afford the electricity to smelt lead, iron, aluminum for the same reason as aluminium is 90% electricity. That at least will stop the billions in assistance to firms who pretend it is profitable, just to keep the jobs in Portland, Port Pirie, Whyalla and Port Kembla. This is wonderful as smelting produces CO2 as the only way to remove oxygen from oxides.
And we can live happily ever after in the lucky country, run by public servants who think food comes from supermarkets and goods and appliciances come from shops and cars come from dealers and petrol comes from bowsers and electricity comes from plugs.
The Eloi are in charge. Like the Ugandans under Idi Amin or Rhodesians under Mugabe, we will have to eat the wildlife and dig for root vegetables. The ab*rigines can show us how to live off the land and without beer, cheese and wine, all polluting food with massive CO2 outputs. And without heaters and airconditioners, we can enjoy the perfect average climate of the lucky country without burdening the planet with our CO2.
111
There was an article on last night’s news that a housing project being demolished has many solar panels that are being shipped to Zimbabwe(?) to power a school.
The kicker was that the panels would have ended up in landfill if not given away as Australia has no facilities for recycling the panels.
Good forward thinking of the ‘renewable’ industry and the politicians who promote it.
40
So they end up in landfill or in the creeks in Zimbabwee. Great !!
30
How will this outcome be measured?
Like all green schemes, the outcome is measured by their following standard criteria:
– Does this policy progres our cause for green socialism through social conditioning
– Can we leverage the policy to increase taxes from those that choose to work and provide more free handouts to those that need to protest instead (ie: ourselves)
– Will this policy increase poverty for conservative voters
– Will the public debate provide us with an opportunity to glue ourselves to roadways and start street riots
130
This is appalling. This is beyond protection of any environment, just idiocy in public policy. Indefensible, nonsensical and morally wrong. Governments are by the people for the people, not this. How does anyone benefit, any ecosystem, any person, animal, plant or microbe?
So why are they doing this? Because they can? Is that it? I can think of no actual reason. And these people are paid a salary for this? Why? It’s power gone mad.
111
EPA. Extremists Punish All. On public service salaries.
110
In Melbourne, the Andrews Government is now declaring a short stretch of plain 50 year old freeway as requiring Heritage Listing status, simply to prevent any future government from building a tunnel to take 40,000 cars a day out of the inner city. This is the same Premier said the contract to finish the tunnel and connect two freeways was not worth the paper it was written on. That alone cost us $1.3Billion and billions more in Federal funding. It’s quite impossible to see who benefits, just like this EPA nonsense.
At what point did politicians decide that they were unaccountable to the public. Or the ABC/SBS/BOM and now the EPA? Our local council spends 85% of all income on their own salaries and 15% on roads and rubbish and the average salary of these people is $110,000 a year for 1,000 people. Governments, out of control, unaccountable, irresponsible and arrogant. Then you get James Cook University. I cannot understand why the clearly vindictive Vice Chancellor has not lost her job.
130
Welcome to 2019.
Totally off the planet.
60
As always, the only solution to government run amuck is less government.
No matter what the acronym, no matter what the stated purpose, there is one immutable
feature of government.
It provides it’s goods and services with a monopoly on force; any transgression by a citizen,
will, carried to its logical conclusion, eventually result in conforming at the point of a gun.
No non-criminal private venture has this feature.
This power quickly makes government self-referential, market feedback being mostly absent.
Idiocy and illogic need only make sense to the bureaucratic perpetrator; client voices being irrelevant.
Reform is impossible; any reformed agency retains the same ultimate power, and motives, and incentives.
Restraint is rare, as even with layers of civil protection the same ultimate power remains.
Any task undertaken by government, whether agreed upon supply of public goods or usurpation of a private practice,
suffers the same dynamic, and tends toward authoritarian mediocrity.
Unfortunately, your WA environmentalists are thus merely sorry and tired retreads of petty authoritarians in all governments
everywhere; the scars of a gaping wound created when someone thought it would be a good idea to establish a branch of the government to
protect, er… promote the environment, whatever the heck that is.
The lead question asks for specificity, to hold these folks accountable.
This is not a function of any non-voter-facing bureaucratic agency at any time in any place.
If you ask a scorpion to ferry you across the river, you will end up being bitten. One’s position in nature is fixed.
The correct position is to eliminate the agency entirely because any real task it might do seems entirely outside it’s
capabilities.
80
with every passing day, the entire CAGW scam looks more & more like an ad for particular RE:
9 Sept: Bloomberg: As Macron Fights for the Amazon, France’s Green Policies Falter
By Francois De Beaupuy; With assistance by Helene Fouquet
Policies to tax carbon, boost renewables see limited success
President struggles to balance environment, economic concerns
An attempt to increase taxes on fossil fuels crumbled in the face of protests, the expansion of renewable energy is still hindered by red tape, and legacy power plants haven’t yet been shut down.
“On the one hand, Emmanuel Macron deserves credit for almost all his speeches” on the the environment, said Arnaud Gossement, a Paris-based lawyer who works for clean power developers. “On the other hand, most of his actions fall short.”
Like fellow European leaders, Macron is walking a fine line between growing public concern that the climate is changing and the immediate cost to households of the transition to low-carbon energy. The president is pulled in one direction by those who seek to preserve jobs in the nuclear industry, the oil and gas business, and farming, and in the other by proponents of wind and solar power, cleaner vehicles, and soil protection.
The ferocity of the protests against tax increases on gasoline, in which so-called “Yellow Vests” protesters blocked roads and fuel depots, burned vehicles on the streets of Paris, and ransacked banks, underscores the risk of getting the balance wrong…
When it comes to domestic policy, Macron’s pledge to boost wind and solar power has been marred by an insufficient reduction in red tape that hampers clean power developments, said Gossement, who is also a board member of French solar business federation Enerplan. Promises to close a nuclear plant from next year and to shut coal-fired power plants by 2022 have yet to be enacted, he said…
France still needs to provide more incentives for the development of biogas, and simplify proceedings for the replacement of old wind turbines with bigger, more efficient ones, a process that currently takes about seven years, (Gwenaelle Avice-Huet, the head of renewables at French utility Engie SA) said. The government should also free up some of its unused land to develop solar farms, a policy it’s currently considering, she said…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-09/as-macron-fights-for-the-amazon-france-s-green-policies-falter
41
And I am hoping that the Rebel Bill does not get Royal Assent due today. Simply because it is possible her Prime Minister and ministers do not recommend the signing, a unique event. That would tell politicians they cannot promise one thing and do another. Britain needs an election and a working government, not this travesty where politicians and public servants think they own the place and the deplorables and deluded conservatives can be safely ignored.
100
We may soon find out how plan B is supposed to work.
80
9 Sept: SolarQuotes: Climate Change And Energy In Western Australia – Issues Paper
by Michael Bloch
WA’s McGowan Government is calling on Western Australians to have their say on climate change policy, including issues related to energy…READ ON
https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/climate-energy-wa-mb1206/
9 Sept: EurActiv: EIB begins metamorphosis into climate bank
By Sam Morgan
European Investment Bank (EIB) directors will begin discussing on Tuesday (10 September) an updated lending policy which could see the EU bank stop funding fossil fuel projects. But some member states and even the European Commission might push for a more reserved approach.
In July, the EIB published a draft version of its proposed lending policy (LINK) for energy projects, which includes extra financing for less developed member states, a bigger focus on renewable sources and a phase-out of fossil fuels by 2020…
Changes in policy are normally made using consensus but a double majority vote, based on the size of shares held, could also be an option if there is a clear split of opinion. Germany, France, Italy and the UK are the bank’s biggest donors…
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/eib-begins-metamorphosis-into-climate-bank/
40
9 Sept: USA Today: As Earth faces climate catastrophe, US set to open nearly 200 power plants
by Elizabeth Weise
An exclusive analysis by USA TODAY finds that across the United States there are as many as 177 natural gas power plants currently planned, under construction or announced. There are close to 2,000 now in service.
All that natural gas is “a ticking time bomb for our planet,” says Michael Brune, president of the Sierra Club. “If we are to prevent runaway climate change, these new plants can’t be built.”…
Catastrophic effects ahead unless we make changes
The world needs to reduce its carbon emissions rapidly – by 50% within the next decade – or face the prospect of a global temperature rise of more than 2.7 degrees within decades, said Michael Mann, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Pennsylvania State University.
That’s enough warming to kill off the coral reefs, melt large parts of the ice sheets, inundate coastal cities and to yield what Mann calls “nearly perpetual extreme weather events.”…
It also doesn’t make financial sense, according to an analysis by the Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colorado-based think tank that focuses on energy and resource efficiency. By the time most of these power plants are slated to open their doors, the electricity they’ll provide will cost more to produce than clean energy alternatives…
“If the current pipeline of gas plants were to get built, it would make decarbonizing the power sector by 2050 nearly impossible,” said Joe Daniel, a senior energy analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit based in Cambridge, Massachusetts…
An analysis by the Rocky Mountain Institute published Monday (LINK) looked at 88 gas-fired power plants scheduled to begin operation by 2025. They would emit 100 million tons of carbon dioxide a year – equivalent to 5% of current annual emissions from the U.S. power sector.
The institute calculated the cost of producing a megawatt-hour of electricity of a clean energy portfolio in each state that would provide the same level of power reliability as a gas plant. It determined that building clean energy alternatives would cost less than 90% of the proposed 88 plants.
It would also save customers over $29 billion in their utility bills, said Mark Dyson, an electricity markets analyst who co-authored the Rocky Mountain Institute paper…
USA TODAY compiled its own list of 177 planned and proposed natural gas plants through August, using data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, which tracks power plants that have been officially announced, and the Sierra Club, which tracks proposed plants.
Of those, 152 have a scheduled opening date of between 2019 and 2033, though only 130 have specific locations chosen…
Not all will be built…
It’s also true that power companies are building out solar and wind generation…
Even so, that will only bring the share of wind and solar in the United States electricity market to slightly under 11%…
Duke Energy, a power company based in Charlotte, North Carolina, has more than 7 million customers…
Today 5% of Duke Energy Carolinas’ electricity comes from solar, a percentage it plans to increase to between 8% and 13% by 2034, according to its most recent filing with state regulators. The state has almost no wind energy because of laws restricting the placement of wind turbines…
But she (Duke spokeswoman) emphasized that Duke doesn’t believe solar and wind can be cost-effective and reliable enough to meet all its customers’ energy needs…
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/09/09/climate-change-threatens-earth-us-open-nearly-200-power-plants/2155631001/
21
9 Sept: BBC: Solar panels: Thousands of customers complain
By Ed Hanson, BBC Inside Out, North East & Cumbria
(You can see more on this story on Inside Out North East & Cumbria and Inside Out North West on Monday 9 September at 19:30 BST)
Thousands of people who bought solar panels have complained to a financial watchdog that they are not bringing them the returns they were promised.
Many people took out loans to pay for panels on the promise they would save thousands of pounds in electricity costs and make money generating power.
They say they have not had the expected savings, and the Financial Services Ombudsman has had 2,000 complaints.
Barclays Bank has put aside £38m to deal with potential claims.
Brian Thompson from Rowlands Gill, Gateshead, told BBC Inside Out he was contacted by a salesman for PV Solar UK but told him he did not want to take a loan on as he was preparing for retirement.
He said he was told the move would provide money towards his pension, which persuaded him, and he took out a loan with Barclays of more than £10,000 over 10 years.
Mr Thompson said the payments he was getting back from the power his solar panels sent to the National Grid did not correspond with what he was told.
“I had to dip into my savings which I was putting away for retirement to pay the loan off. To me it was lies,” he said.
An independent survey of Mr Thompson’s system showed even after 20 years the income from the panels would not cover the cost of the loan.
Barclays offered him some compensation but Mr Thompson said it was not enough.
PV Solar UK went into liquidation in 2017…
Tony Walch, from Bolton, was told he would be better off by £30,000 over 20 years when he bought solar panels from MyPlanet.
He said: “They were very, very persuasive. Everything they said was plausible. It was a no-brainer.”
He took out a loan of £15,000 but he said the panels did not generate the amount of electricity he was promised. They also overheated, damaging the equipment, and he believed they had cost him more than £500 a year.
MyPlanet went into liquidation in 2016…
Former director Mark Bonifacio said all calculations had been made using strict methodology, and the performance of the systems was impossible to predict because of different factors affecting performance.
He said MyPlanet installed more than 15,000 systems, and customers would be getting free electricity.
Debbie Enever, from the Financial Ombudsman Service, said: “We have got about 2,000 complaints about solar panels at the moment and more coming through every week.”…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-49566130
60
“Robert Skillen, who was the director of the firm when Mr Thompson bought his system, said Mr Thompson’s panels would make him money.
Mr Skillen is now in business claiming to help people who have been missold solar panels. He did not want to be interviewed.”
10
behind paywall:
8 Sept: Financial Times: EU electric car sales to pass 1m next year in industry CO2 drive
by Peter Campbell
More than 1m electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles are expected to be sold across Europe next year as carmakers ramp up output to avoid crippling fines under new emissions rules. The figure, predicted by environmental campaign group Transport & Environment, is four times higher than sales last year, and comes on the eve of the Frankfurt Motor Show, the last major industry gathering before the new rules come into force in January.
Volkswagen, Daimler and Honda are among carmakers that will use the trade fair to showcase their latest electric vehicles, which are needed to help them avoid punitive fines that could exceed a billion euros for missing the targets. Under the rules, carmakers must lower the average CO2 output of their fleet to 95g of CO2 per km, or risk fines. Any carmaker that misses the target faces a fine of €95 per gramme over the target, multiplied by the number of cars sold in the EU.
A flurry of electric and hybrid cars are coming to market this year and next, as carmakers seek to avoid penalties and the ***environmental stigma that would come from missing them…
https://www.ft.com/content/6aa6117c-d0b4-11e9-99a4-b5ded7a7fe3f
more detail:
8 Apr: AutoNewsEurope: Automakers risk massive fines for CO2 target miss, analysts say
by Peter Sigal
Automakers could be hit with billions of euros in fines for missing the European Union’s fleet CO2 emissions reduction target that starts to take effect next year. That is the conclusion of analysts after CO2 emissions rose to their highest level since 2014.
The estimated total penalty payment is 34 billion euros, according to a report this month from JATO Dynamics, which based its figure on CO2 data from last year. Volkswagen Group and PSA Group, the two largest automakers by volume in Europe, could face the loss of up to half of their combined net profits, JATO said…
Top executives say they are confident that they can reach their emissions goals, even if the figures show that many automakers have taken a step backward…
https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/automakers-risk-massive-fines-co2-target-miss-analysts-say
21
behind paywall:
8 Sept: UK Times: Scottish wind farms paid almost £10m following Western Link failure
Consumers forced to pick up the bill over faults to green energy power cable
by Mark Macaskill
Almost £10m has been paid to wind farms in Scotland after a subsea cable carrying green energy across Britain suffered a technical hitch.
The £1bn Western Link, which went live in June after a series of setbacks, experienced a “power trip” in August and was shut down for several hours.
It triggered a surge in compensation, known as constraint payments, to energy firms who were unable to deliver power to the National Grid.
On August 30, when the fault occurred, 20 wind farms shared in a £1.6m payout. The day after, almost £4m was paid to more than 50 wind farms, including — for the first time — Scotland’s largest offshore wind farm, the 588-megawatt (MW) Beatrice site, which was paid £268,000 to reduce output.
Energy campaigners have criticised the National Grid’s failure to publicise the incident, particularly since consumers cover the costs through their energy bills.
“It’s a very expensive problem for the energy consumer yet no announcement was made by the National Grid,” said John Constable from the Renewable Energy Foundation, a charity that publishes data and analysis on renewables.
“The consistency of both high-cost, large volumes and the high number of wind farms constrained since the 30th strongly suggests that the difficulties with exporting wind power over the Western Link are probably continuing to this day.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7bb9d718-d1a0-11e9-8748-e9a1563a9aa9
8 Sept: UK Times: Power grid ‘needs faster upgrades’ as solar and wind generation rises
by Rachel Millard
The energy industry has been criticised for moving too slowly on upgrades to the power grid that could help it cope with an increase in solar panels and wind turbines.
Ofgem, National Grid and smaller network operators have been overhauling the frequency settings of power generators to make them less likely to “trip” and fall off the system in the event of sudden dips in generation supply.
Such drops are becoming more difficult to manage as additional renewable sources come online. The industry has just agreed to make £100m of changes to smaller generators, but critics say this has come too late.
Smaller generators shut down following the loss of two larger generators during last month’s power cut — though National Grid claims that the blackouts would still have occurred even had the smaller generators stayed online.
Paul Massara, former boss of Npower, said: “Given all the changes in the system, would it not have been better to do it faster? This is a resilience question for the next 10-15 years.”…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0d260274-d18f-11e9-b36a-8cbd36fa980c
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behind paywall:
8 Sept: UK Times: Edi Truell threatens to pull plug on Teesside’s Atlantic Superconnection cable factory
by John Collingridge
Entrepreneur Edi Truell has threatened to scrap plans to build a £200m cable factory in northeast England and site it in Germany instead if he fails to win state support.
The tycoon wants to build the factory on Teesside, creating 800 jobs, as part of his plan to lay a power cable between Iceland and the UK.
Atlantic Superconnection would transmit electricity generated from hydroelectric and geothermal sources in Iceland, but the plan relies on securing a guarantee from the British government. Truell wants ministers to provide a contract for difference, which would guarantee a minimum price for the connector’s electricity for about 35 years.
Truell, an ardent Brexiteer, is understood to have written to Greg Clark, the then business secretary, in December to warn that he would take the factory to Germany. That followed junior minister Claire Perry’s rejection of the plan…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/93845f3e-d18d-11e9-b36a-8cbd36fa980c
8 Sept: UK Times: Give up your wood burners, say officials
by Colin Coyle
The government has been urged by state agencies and academics to stop all supports for unregulated household wood- and peat-burning stoves, because of their “toxic” emissions. Residential stoves were identified as one of the greatest causes of pollution in responses submitted to a consultation by the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment into the introduction of a new air-pollution control programme.
Irish building regulations currently encourage the use of renewable energy, including wood-burning stoves, as an energy-efficient alternative to open fireplaces.
Ervia, a state agency previously known as Bord Gais, noted in its response that “combustion from the residential sector is the largest source of emissions, with 48% in 2016”. It said it was “concerned about the level of emissions from the increasingly popular biomass stoves being installed, especially in urban areas”. It cited research from the UK that found domestic wood burning accounted for up to 31% of “fine particle” emissions in London…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/give-up-your-wood-burners-say-officials-5dsm7cl3m
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W.A. should ask itself why,
With emissions reductions comply,
Which costs a huge bill,
Cooling down almost nil,
Like a sledgehammer killing a fly.
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It seems like the only way to do this kind of stuff is to agree to do it on the condition that a majority of other countries are taking actions designed to reduce emissions as well. That means this is postponed to after 2030 because China is not reducing emission until after 2030.
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That course of action would also allow collection of relevant data on which to base an accelerated emission reduction program if deemed necessary at the time.
KK
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Just as the figures touted for the increase in temperature caused by CO2 are entirely plucked from the aether and not from science, so are the figures for temperature reduction by the implementation of industrial strangulation entirely imaginary. What will not be imaginary however is the damage that will be done to Australian society if any of these hair-brained Warmista ideas are fully implemented.
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Hey, credit where credit is due. You left out China and India from the countries on track to meet, in fact exceed their Paris targets. China to double its emissions by 2030 and India to triple theirs.
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Not a single climate scientist is present on the EPA. You have to wonder where their advice comes from, I can think of a few names.
https://www.epa.wa.gov.au/pages/epa-members
Glenn McCloud is an Adjunct Professor at Murdoch University where he teaches units in environmental and town planning law. Not on the EPA, but also based at Murdoch as an adjunct professor, is former Greenpeace Political Director, Bill Hare. It is quite possible they may have had more than a passing word.
Find out more here:
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/tony-thomas/2019/04/doctor-hares-nasty-green-prescriptions/
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