Extinction Rebellion / Climate Change

I recommend Dale Vince’s weekly podcast. We could and should be doing so much more. All those promises have been ditched with new North Sea oil explorations authorised and a new coal mine.

The government has just announced that it has declined to support the building of new offshore wind farms that could have powered millions of homes, and reduced both our energy bills and our dependence on autocratic petrostates such as Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Not quite in those terms, of course, but the results of the latest round of contracts for difference (CfD) allocations, published this morning, amount to the same thing. No new offshore wind capacity will be built as a result of this year’s CfDs, at a time when energy security and carbon reduction could hardly be more urgent.

Offshore wind is our cheapest source of electricity, but the farms take very significant investments, and energy prices are volatile. Since 2014 the government’s solution has been to offer support contracts, agreed between the supplier and a government-owned company, that effectively set a fixed price (an “administrative strike price”) for the energy produced. Below the strike price, consumers subsidise the supplier; above it, the supplier pays the government back. This has been a great success, so far: seven of the world’s ten biggest offshore wind farms are in UK waters.

Why has the process failed this year? The technical reason is that government has lowered its strike price for offshore wind to £60 per megawatt hour (confusingly, you might also see it as £44 – that’s because 2012 prices are used in the auctions).

In previous years, the cost of installing new wind power had also fallen, so the economics of building a new wind farm still worked out. This year, the opposite is true: energy firms tell me high inflation in supply chains, and higher borrowing costs have made it impossible to justify investment.

Perhaps they’re being greedy? I doubt it: turbine supplier Siemens Energy has been losing almost a billion euros a month to tech problems and inflationary pressures. And wind farms are typically funded by debt – which, as anyone who lives in a building may have noticed, is a lot more expensive these days. Bear in mind also that the current wholesale gas price averages well over £100 per megawatt hour, and energy analysts Cornwall Insight predict it will remain there until at least 2028.

Energy industry sources tell me they have been alerting the government to the problem for some time (AR5 applications opened at the end of March) and suggesting possible solutions, which include extending the contracts to 20 years, or longer-term capital allowances for renewable investments – but so far, nothing has happened.

In July work on a huge new wind farm off the coast of Norfolk, designed to power 1.5 million homes, was halted because the price its owner, Vattenfall, had bid last year meant there was no longer a business case to continue.

Is it fair to blame the PM? Rishi Sunak appointed Grant Shapps to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, a post in which Shapps lasted less than a year before failing up into Defence. More significantly, in today’s news we see the results of what Sunak calls a “proportionate and pragmatic” (translation: cheap) approach to the grand problems of energy security and climate change: at least a year’s delay to big projects that could have delivered cheap renewable energy, produced at home.

Perhaps Boris “Saudi Arabia of wind” Johnson could intervene, but he’s a bit busy: this week, as the UK bakes in unseasonal heat, Johnson has been appearing at a fossil fuel conference sponsored by Exxon and Shell. It’ll be up to Jeremy Hunt to try to fix this in November.

Is humanity worth saving ?

Extinction at least means the end of breathing excreta like Johnson , Trump , Braverman, Netanyahu etc.

As civilization begins to collapse these maggots will begin to show their true colours and I suspect it will include mass extermination of people they don't like. People like me.

Musk: eco warriors may use AI to wipe out humanity.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67172229

Sounds like psychological projection of his own dark misanthropic thoughts to me.

File under you couldn't make it up...

The United Arab Emirates planned to use its role as the host of UN climate talks as an opportunity to strike oil and gas deals, the BBC has learned.

Leaked briefing documents reveal plans to discuss fossil fuel deals with 15 nations.

The UN body responsible for the COP28 summit told the BBC hosts were expected to act without bias or self-interest.

The UAE team did not deny using COP28 meetings for business talks, and said "private meetings are private".



www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67508331



It's like leaving the fox in charge of the hen house

Also plans to use the forum as a venue for oil sales. Maybe they should rename it Cop Out 28?

The Supreme Court in London ruled that the climate impact of burning coal, oil and gas must be taken into account when deciding whether to approve projects. The landmark judgement sets an important precedent on whether the “inevitable” future greenhouse gas emissions of a fossil fuel project should be considered.