Parliament Misled by Climate Change Committee over Net Zero Costs
By Paul Homewood
This is huge news:
Parliament was misled by Climate Change Committee
London, 2 March – The Public Accounts Committee’s report on Achieving Net Zero, published today, shows that plans to decarbonise the economy are in disarray.
The parliamentary committee noted that there appears to be no coherent plan for delivery, and points out that the Government has finally admitted it has no idea of the cost involved.
According to the committee report,
HM Treasury was reluctant to be drawn on the future costs of achieving net zero, cautioning that while the Climate Change Committee has provided estimates, they contain ‘heroic assumptions’ with errors potentially compounding over very long periods.”
The Net Zero policy was put into law on the basis of an official cost estimate provided to Parliament by the Committee on Climate Change, whose chairman, Lord Deben said it was “recognised universally as the most seriously presented, costed effort”.
However, it has become clear over the last two years that it was largely a fiction [1–3], with at least one independent estimate suggesting that the Climate Change Committee understated the cost of Net Zero by an order of magnitude [4].
Net Zero Watch director Benny Peiser said:
The report shows that the Government has written off the Climate Change Committee’s cost estimates. This completely vindicates what we have been saying since 2019. Parliament was tricked into Net Zero by misleading claims. The Government has now thrown the CCC and Lord Deben under the bus, and it’s not before time.”
Welcoming Net Zero Watch’s statement, Craig Mackinlay MP called for a complete overhaul of climate and energy policy:
For 20 years, policy has been dominated by ideological pipe dreamers, and to date they have succeeded in wrecking livelihoods and undermining national security. It’s time to look again at fracking, at nuclear, and at adaptation. It’s time to get serious about climate and energy.”
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Could this be the start of the end? Can facts, reality, common sense be about to be reinstated as a way to proceed? There are huge financial resources waiting to be applied to the ‘greening’, so they won’t go down without an enormous battle, but there is a glimmer of hope here.
First sign will be the contents of the long overdue white paper on ‘ Improving the energy performance of privately rented homes’. If this is toned down to reflect the real world, the glimmer can start turning into a beam.
Move that money to putting scrubbers on smokestacks. Install electrostatic precipitators and Nitrogen Oxide burners. Take the ash collected and make drywall and fertilizer . . . Advocate for REAL change. CO2 is NOT the problem . . . Pollution IS !
Teach our leaders that ALL the alternative ‘Green Energy’ solutions are just as bad and in some ways WORSE for the environment than current energy production methods. Teach our Leaders that EV’s cause more pollution to be produced than gas cars . . . OHM’s Law.
128 kwh of electricity must be produced for every 100 kwh consumed . . . Expose the Lies.
https://www.academia.edu/71023588/Batteries_Renewable_Energy_and_EV_s_The_Ultimate_in_Environmental_Destruction
https://www.academia.edu/71021345/All_Electricity_Even_Renewables_Poisons_Planet_Earth
Carrie Antoinette won’t let Bozo change his approach . He’ll lose out on his marital privileges otherwise and she knows full well what that leads too. Marrying your mistress leaves a job vacancy.
It’s all beginning to unravel. I have maintained for years that the ‘scientific’ approach of persuading the public would never work because the public is by and large, scientifically illiterate.
For whatever reasons, and there are many, when the first inflated domestic energy bills hit the doormats of the general public, the sh*t will hit the fan.
Then the Russian invasion of Ukraine will come under the spotlight and as much as the excuses over NATO being trotted out the fact is Putin is, amongst other things, ensuring his gas pipelines crossing Ukraine are safe.
If I were in charge of Ukraine and facing defeat at the hands of Putin’s all out attack on civilians, which is his standard mode of war, I’m afraid Europe would have to manage without gas pipelines passing through my country.
Ben Vorlich:
the transit fees for the gas are a very welcome part of Ukraine’s budget. They needed shut the gas pipes down but let the stupid Germans do that anyway (as they have threatened to do).
One question…if the EU & USA cut off funds flowing to Russia, would Russia continue supply?
You might want to read this for some insight. Fairly short.
https://maajidnawaz.substack.com/p/thirteen-days-of-the-cuban-missile?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxNDc4ODA3MCwiXyI6Ijd5NHhyIiwiaWF0IjoxNjQ2MjYwNTQxLCJleHAiOjE2NDYyNjQxNDEsImlzcyI6InB1Yi02NzI0MTEiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.EvIsI6qpgx_W6W_l27hp-Xf3PCeO6PD2ZLvSNcmayW0&s=r
To use the term “misled” is misleading. They lied!
“…Parliament was tricked…”
No, it wasn’t! As a smoothly turning cog-wheel in the ruling alliance between the very rich and the very Left, they all knew damned well the name of the game is to steadily trick the sheeple, peasants, other-ranks, great unwashed, hoi polloi, non-U speakers, white-van men, unspeakables, fringe minority, white patriarchs, racists, Trumpists, fascists, unacceptables, bigots, vulgarians, lunatics, idiots, marks, rubes, mugs, cannon fodder,…whatever the current short-hand term for us may be.
You left out ‘deplorables’. (A big thank you to Hillary.)
Actually, it seems to me that most of that list couldn’t give a s**t about ‘climate’ , only the woke-tards care (very rich and very left) but they hold all the influence at this point. They will however, as you say; ‘react’ now that the impact of the lunatic policies is becoming obvious. My work colleagues are best described as fat dumb happy ‘islington setters’. Middle class types with increasing numbers having zero private sector experience, protected by Government paycheck. The organisation is ‘all in’ on EDI and climate bullcr@p. I stick out like a sore thumb TBH. I have insisted, to no avail, that we are not acting in the best interests of those who fund us. Well, perhaps the deplorables will find a voice at last. I am one of them. It is NOT before time!!!
“…left out deplorables…”
I also forgot to include ‘contemptibles,’ as in the description by the Kaiser of the British Expeditionary Force in WW1 as ‘a contemptible little army.’ Having a good, bitter sense of humour, the whole British Army gleefully adopted the name ‘Old Contemptibles!” for itself.
Similarly, the British Army in Egypt in WW2 adopted ‘Desert Rats’ as the bon mot description of themselves; after Lord Haw-Haw the broadcaster for the Germans referred to the ‘poor [trapped] desert rats of Tobruk.’ Strictly the ‘rat’ was a Jerboa and the shoulder symbol only of the 7th Armoured Division:
http://www.desertrats.org.uk/
So the CCC/Deben have ‘misled Parliament’, and given how many have flagged up their ‘fiction’ and for how long, it can only be a deliberate act. The CCC and especially Deben MUST GO.
Back in about 2005 when I was working as a research electrical engineer specializing in More Electric Aircraft and other transports, I became concerned about the enthusiasm for countering Global Warming/Climate Change using the current generation of renewable energy systems which I estimated would be astronomically expensive.
To inform myself about the issues I bought James Lovelock’s book, “The Revenge of Gaia” [Ref. 1]. Lovelock confirmed my fears, “According to the Royal Society of Engineers 2004 report, onshore European wind energy is two and a half times, and offshore wind energy over three times, more expensive per kilowatt hour than gas or nuclear energy. No sensible community would ever support so outrageously expensive and unreliable an energy source were it not that the true costs have been hidden from the public by subsidies and the distortion of market forces through legislation.”
Thus the truth has been hiding in plain sight for years, but the mainstream media and the politicians (plus the civil servants that brief the latter) have been deliberately looking the other way thereby selling the public a mightily expensive pig in a poke.
Lovelock’s comments have been reinforced by the work of prof. Gordon Hughes, formerly of Edinburgh University, who has compiled a database of the costs of some 350 windfarms [Ref. 2]. Hughes is particularly critical of the civil service’s cost estimates for wind suggesting that they do not stand up to scrutiny.
Hughes writes, “Stop pretending! The projections of the costs of achieving Net Zero put out by government bodies and many others rely on cost estimates that are just wishful thinking. They have no basis in actual experience and a realistic appraisal of trends in costs. As a very broad brush calculation the cost of meeting the Net Zero target by 2050 is much more likely to be 10+% of annual GDP than the claimed 1-2% of GDP.”
Hughes further writes, “Bailouts of wind farms and financial institutions are inevitable. The Government is creating a situation in which it will have no option other than to bail out failed and failing projects simply to ensure continuity of electricity supply. There will be a game of pass the parcel over how the losses will be distributed but ultimately they will fall largely on taxpayers and energy customers. Any business investor outside the renewable energy sector should plan on the basis that electricity prices in 2030 will be 3-4 times in real terms what they are today.”
Reference
1. James Lovelock, “The Revenge of Gaia”, Penguin Books, 2007, especially the section on Wind Power on pages 102 to 107.
2. Follow links from https://www.ref.org.uk/ref-blog/365-wind-power-economics-rhetoric-and-reality
Regards,
John.
“electricity prices in 2030 will be 3-4 times in real terms what they are today”, not as the govt claim, the global wholesale price of gas is rising, but firmly and squarely because of government, civil service and CCC gross incompetence and ‘being economical with the truth’ (to put it mildly). This also has Kwarteng spouting complete untruths about fracked gas’ effect on prices, from an Industry Secretary who you’d think would understand basics like ‘supply and demand’.
‘Parliament was tricked’
Now that’s funny, I don’t care who you are.
Parliament isn’t responsible, because they were ‘tricked!’ Any person would have looked at the CCC numbers and believed they were real, so don’t blame Parliament! They are good people who love you and are working on your behalf.
Exactly so! Just like Putin, who is sending his Peace Corps volunteers into Ukraine to improve the lot of the Ukrainian people
Putin said he had to take Ukraine to keep NATO from expanding to his border.
So he is extending his border out til it meets NATO’s.
Tricked also by COVID computer models, oh and vaccine safety, oh and diesel cars, oh and Iraq WMD… yeah! Get rid of the rotten lot.
So we now wait for the inevitable “but the costs of not doing net zero are x times more”.
The CCC should be disbanded immediately and Deben sacked.
Not sure just sacking Deben is enough! A complete disbarring from direct and indirect government and related commercial activities for life, would be the minimum (although he’d no doubt find some way around it). Anyway, such people are often promoted because they’ve done their master’s bidding, not sacked, such is the corrupt world we live in.
Gov being misled is nothing new after all they miss lead us every 5 years. There will be some huge bluff coming in the future with regards to the Net Zero costs.
This may be good news in the fight against misinformation on both Climate Change and Net Zero,
However, it is almost guaranteed, like Prof Ferguson of sham COVID modelling fame, we will continue to see and hear Lord Deben and friends in the MSM.
The Govt should now disband The Climate Change Committee or at the very least overhaul its membership and terms of reference,
Why throw more good money (at he CCC) after bad? They, i.e. Deben, have singularly misled us all the way through with absolutely disgraceful and deliberate lies, and as they say, a leopard can’t change its spots.
Disbandment would need legislation. The question now is whether these revelations are sufficient to get a parliamentary majority to repeal or substantially amend the Climate Change Act.
In practical (in this case, political) reality, this may not change much. The argument is that the Committee lied about costs, not that what these costs are aimed to achieve is wrong or unnecessary.
Until we can debunk totally the argument that continued use of fossil fuels and the consequent continued emission of CO2 is damaging to earth’s climate — a claim for which Earth’s long history provides no scientific evidence at all — this is only a minor ripple.
The eco-argument makes perfect sense if you turn it on its head and pay attention to the quotes of the likes of Maurice Strong — “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”. We are being required to abandon fossil fuels (and civilisation) because CO2 (for the first time EVER) is going to have a major detrimental effect on the climate.
In reality this unscientific conjecture is being used as a raison d’être to bring about the collapse of the existing order. Were it otherwise the eco-warriors would be gung-ho for nuclear generation as the only non-CO2 emitting source of reliable electricity.
Strong and his neo-Malthusian cronies have given the game away!
This episode will certainly make their lives more difficult short-term but the fight to get the anti-Luddite message across is far from won.
Can I suggest this link?
https://www.c3headlines.com/global-warming-quotes-climate-change-quotes.html
Brilliant . . . !
I would correct this one…
Quote by Robert Stavins, the head of Harvard’s Environmental Economics program: “It’s unlikely that the U.S. is going to take serious action on climate change until there are observable, dramatic events, almost catastrophic in nature, that drive public opinion and drive the political process in that direction.”
…to this…
“It’s unlikely that the U.S. is going to take serious action on climate change until we have repeated that there are dramatic events, almost catastrophic in nature, often enough to manufacture public opinion and drive the political process in that direction.”
Even Better . . . !
That Parliament was misled by the Climate Change Committee must be true because I haven’t heard it on the BBC. But we knew this all along.
Is there anyone it hasn’t misled? ‘Climate Change Committee’ sounds like something from a dodgy autocratic state…oh…
I was not surprised when I read Paul’s headline that parliament had been misled by the Climate Change Committee (CCC). In fact I was reminded of the final paragraph of Montford’s book, “Hiding the Decline” [Ref. 1] which says, albeit in respect of Climategate rather than the CCC:-
“… it was an extraordinary failure of the institutions and of the people who are paid to protect the public interest – a failure of honesty, a failure of diligence, a failure of integrity. Their failure to seek the truth and to speak the truth condemns them utterly.”
Let us hope that this Public Accounts Committee report is a step in the direction of correcting all the falsehoods and wishful thinking that have surrounded renewable energy for decades.
Reference
1. A.W. Montford, “Hiding the Decline”, Anglosphere Books, 2012, page 308.
Regards,
John.
Bea,
One item I mentioned. For me this pertains the CCL also, although I cannot imagine many CCLers feeling that way.
Alan
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