LAST week Kemi Badenoch came out with a rather half-hearted criticism of Net Zero. While this was welcome, she appeared to kick the whole thing into the long grass with an investigation to be headed by Tory energy spokesman Claire Coutinho.
The problem is that by the time the next election comes around, Ed Miliband will have done so much damage that much of it will be irreversible. While there is nothing the Tories can do about the current electoral arithmetic, both they and Reform need to start vigorously campaigning against Net Zero now, and build a groundswell of support amongst the public.
This ten-point plan of objectives might be a good start.
- Call for a full inquiry into the costs and economic impacts of Net Zero. All spending on Net Zero to be suspended until this is complete.
- Cancel the ban on petrol/diesel vehicles; also cancel the ZEV mandate.
- Ensure EV drivers pay their full share of tax; in the short term this can only be via a surcharge of £1,000 on Vehicle Excise Duty for all EVs. Also abolish all other subsidies for EVs.
- Guarantee that the sale of gas boilers will not be banned until 2040 at the earliest. Abolish the £7,500 subsidy for heat pumps.
- Drastically cut the £8billion cost of Renewables Obligation subsidies.
- Abolish the pernicious Emissions Trading Scheme, aka carbon tax, which is adding an estimated £6billion to energy bills.
- Suspend all future CfD auction rounds until further notice.
- Open the North Sea for new oil and gas exploration and drilling.
- Cancel the £100billion programme for electricity grid upgrades, which are required only for Net Zero.
- Abolish the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) and its capital spending programme, saving £14billion a year.
These actions would lead to immediate savings for taxpayers and lower energy bills. In the longer run, of course, there needs to be a full reappraisal of government Net Zero policy, but we need to start somewhere.
There will be a massive kickback against this by vested interests as well as legal challenges. However this will not be the Tories’ problem as they are not the ones in power. The real goal is to get a proper public debate going, something we have been denied for years because of the cross-party conspiracy to exclude the public from decision-making.
I’ll give you one example – how many people still believe the lie that renewable energy is cheaper and will reduce bills? I suspect the answer is quite a lot, because they have been continually lied to by large sections of the media. How many know that in reality the cost of renewable subsidies this year is expected to top £16billion?
It is time to have the fully informed debate we have been denied for 20 years.
Chinese Checkmate
PREDICTABLY Ed Miliband came back empty-handed from his trip to China. He went in the naïve expectation that they would take up the battle against climate change following the election of Donald Trump. Instead all he got was a vague promise of ‘pragmatic co-operation’. No mention of cuts in Chinese emissions or a phase-out of coal.
Quite shamefully, he failed to push the Chinese government on their exploitation of Uyghur slave labour, notably used in the production of solar panels, which Miliband is desperate to import. He could have announced a ban on these imports until human rights concerns were fully addressed, but he did not. Net Zero zealotry seemingly trumps human rights.
Laughably, Miliband promised that the UK will share its expertise on phasing out coal, having closed our last coal-fired power station last year. I am sure President Xi will find this useful, but in the meantime China began construction of another 94 GW of coal power stations last year, as well as approving a further 66 GW, according to official data recently released. Added together, these new plants will increase coal power capacity in China by 13 per cent. To fuel these plants, coal production in China continues to increase year on year. Good luck with phasing all that out, Ed!
BP Energy Review
Schools to be plastered with Chinese solar panels
As soon as he got home, Miliband announced that Great British Energy was going to waste £200million of taxpayers’ money fitting solar panels to the roofs of schools and hospitals.
According to his own figures, the savings on energy bills will not even cover the interest cost on the debt. If solar panels were cost-effective, of course, schools would be paying for them out of their own budgets.
We were assured that Great British Energy, the government owned company that will not actually produce any energy or sell it, would soon be profitable. Instead it will just be a black hole for taxpayer money, if Miliband keeps giving it away on these sort of vanity projects.
And where will these solar panels be coming from? Yes, you guessed it – China, as Miliband himself admitted. It is China that makes 80 per cent of the world’s solar panels, and 92 per cent of the solar cells used in their manufacture, all with the use of cheap coal power. Their carbon footprint will probably offset most of the emission savings in this country.
And it is not just a matter of carbon footprints. As we have seen, there are alarming human rights abuses involved in their manufacture in China. The House of Lords passed an amendment last month to the Great British Energy Bill, stipulating that GBE should not provide finance where ‘there exists credible evidence of modern slavery in the energy supply chain of any company designated’.
Human rights campaigner Lord Alton of Liverpool, the independent cross-bencher who championed the amendment, said last month: ‘British labour will never be able to compete with slave labour or with industries that are heavily dependent on cheaper and dirtier energy.
He added: ‘This amendment puts it to Parliament ‘Do we want a slavery-free green transition or are we content to allow the Government’s objectives to be achieved through forced labour in a state accused by the House of Commons of genocide?’
‘It should be inconceivable that the UK which did so much to end the scourge of slavery around the world would today accept or be willing to turn a blind eye on products made by a state with an imposed system of forced labour.’
It is expected that Miliband will attempt to block this amendment when it is voted on in the Commons. It appears that he is happy turning a blind eye.
