How governments and the cult of net zero wrecked the energy market
By Paul Homewood
I wonder why we do not see common sense like this from the Telegraph’s business reporters, such as the naive Ben Marlow?
Ten years ago, I flew to Texas to take a tour of the US’s most productive gas field. The Anglo-Australian mining giant, BHP Billiton, had spent $20 billion buying a slice of the Eagle Ford shale field and was trying to convince investors, via the media, that it had been a good idea.
BHP’s oil chief, Mike Yeager, a genteel, walrus-moustached Texan, hosted us on a flight over the woods and meadows of Eagle Ford in a helicopter, took us to see production wells, and introduced us to officials in a county (population 20,000) generating $71 million in gas tax revenues. BHP would spend a further $20 billion developing the field before eventually selling it to BP for just $10 billion. It had bought at the top.
This investment rollercoaster has been on my mind because it was the last time serious new money was put into oil and gas development. Since then, investment has fallen 60 per cent. With it, the stock of proven “reserves” – fossil fuels found and viable for extraction – has fallen more than 50 per cent.
Now the reckoning has come. With Russia cutting supply, prices are rocketing. Since January last year, US gas prices have risen nearly threefold. European gas is up sevenfold. Bills are following suit. Proximately, this is because of Putin. But the reason we are so exposed to the whims of a murderous dictator is under-investment.
Why has there been such dramatic under-investment and why is it that producers are hesitating, when they would normally respond to soaring prices by pushing up production and investment? Well, after the shale writedowns, governments and corporate governance busybodies didn’t just leave the losers to lick their wounds. They mounted a campaign to shut down investment permanently in the lifeblood of the global economy – energy – in the name of saving the planet. What we are now facing are the consequences of these decisions.
The mistakes span governments, continents and decades. They are going to cause untold hardship for millions. They threaten not just our economy and health, but the durability of the Western alliance. Most ludicrously, they risk making semi-permanent the role of coal as an emergency back-up when it’s the dirtiest fuel of them all.
The original error was not with the science of climate change. It was not with the notion that we should phase out coal. But sometime around 2014-16, regulators, lawyers and politicians began to run with the idea that the trashing of “big oil” (and so on) led by students in feathered war bonnets was costless, popular and green.
What followed was a co-ordinated effort to run down fossil fuel production, seemingly without a thought for the vastly different environmental impacts of gas versus coal or the need for Western economies and people to enjoy a reliable supply of energy. In 2015, the then Bank of England governor Mark Carney (yes, him again) gave a speech talking up the risk of climate “stranded assets” – energy investments that would be rendered worthless by climate change legislation.
The EU excluded gas and nuclear from its list of “green” technologies eligible for “sustainable” grants, investment and the like. The UN issued ethical investment guidelines that discouraged putting new money into fossil fuels. Theresa May rammed net zero through Parliament without scrutiny of the cost and slapped the “price cap” on utility firms, which soon after began to go bust by the dozen. Last year, Rishi Sunak added “supporting the net zero transition” to the Bank’s mandate. And the more production we shut down, the more virtuous we felt.
It wasn’t just in Europe. US officials also took up the mantle. States passed net zero laws that, like ours, had no accompanying energy production strategy. Bureaucrats from California to New York began to pressure insurers and oil firms to account for fossil fuel investments or answer in the courts for “climate fraud”. The Keystone XL oil pipeline was blocked. Investors, taken over by righteous and economically illiterate “environmental, social and governance experts”, pressured oil firms to stop investing and banks to stop funding them, and then went on a marketing binge to sell expensive “ethical” investment products.
Industry saw the writing on the wall. Utilities shut down their long-term gas contracting departments and began to buy gas at the going price on the day, fatally undermining security of supply and making new investment un-financeable. Fossil fuel producers began handing money back to investors. Even state-owned producers, like Qatar, cut investment on the basis that Europe (the UK included) had become an unreliable customer. In the first half of this year, even as Russia began to turn the screws, the West’s seven biggest oil firms spent more on dividends and share buybacks than on capital investment. They were only doing as they were told.
And now? Well, now, as “big oil” might say: “We just walked in to find you here with that sad look upon your face.” Europe needs gas. It is pleading for gas. Instead of flying media to gas fields to court capital, the oil and gas men are being flown to the capitals of Europe and begged to invest. Despite the incredible prices, they hesitate.
The meeting goes like this: “We need you!” say the politicians. The producers scratch their heads as they mull $20 billion, 20-year investments, and wonder whether, when the war is over and the green bandwagon rolls back into town, the politicians will still sound so sweet on them. “Your green targets still say we need to shut down by 2030,” they point out. To which Europe says: “Well, of course. Fossil fuels are evil!”
The upshot is that the market is broken and it is governments and do-gooders who broke it. They broke it wantonly, recklessly, touting their saintly intentions, and now we are all reaping the consequences. The only way to resurrect it is with more government intervention.
Full story here.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Except the original error is the ‘science’ of ‘climate change’, and the notion of phasing out clean coal. Without application of the null hypothesis all you have is a hunch, or lies.
“The original error was not with the science of climate change.”
It is. Climate Change is a term that was created once Global Warming, a transient oberservation, was fixed in the public’s mind that inferred public guilt. It allowed the panic to spread no matter which way the global ‘average temperature’ went, and is much more friendly than the names of the Scientific specialities that can disprove it.
But yes, it was the media that drove us to where we are now. Maybe they were oblivious to the consequences of their actions but, as paid communicators, they should have known what they didn’t know. That’s what journalists used to do before technology arrived.
Here is an expert who knows his job, knowledgeable and diplomatic:
I posted that, in the media, the BBC were the worst offenders and that ministers weren’t able to judge the quality of their advisors, so the Civil Service should be ashamed. And the post immediately disappeared!
I have read that we rigidly adhere to our NET Zero policies because it is part of our continuing agreement with the EU.
Roll on September 6th!
Yes, it appears that the fleet of perfectly good clean-coal-fired power plants demolished with enthusiasm by Alok Sharma MP and co. — culminating in Ferrybridge last year just for some momentary COP26 PR — were outlawed by an EU directive (the Industrial Emissions Directive).
Of course I don’t know what JS’s real views on the science of climate change are but I’m sure she knows that openly challenging it at the beginning of her article would reduce its credibility in the eyes of some whose views she would like the article to influence. Her point, very well made in my view, is that even if you accept that climate change is a problem that needs to be tackled, the policies of successive governments have been utterly incompetent and irresponsible. They have kowtowed to the fantasies of green activists.
The Telegraph was the only paper ,[ that I know of ], that mentioned the huge rise in the ETS ,[ Green Taxes }, was costing industry a lot of money .https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/02/26/britains-steel-industry-hammered-climate-change-taxes/
But they only mentioned the cost increases to the steel industry .
Has there been a “D” notice placed on the media to stop any mention of the same increases on electricity generation , fuel refining , airline flights etc .
These carbon tax costs have almost certainly been responsible for large rises in the cost of electricity and fuel , but nobody seems to be be allowed to say anything about it .
Almost certainly. Remmember what happened to the Daily Express actually reporting the first ClimateGate.
>>Has there been a “D” notice
Well understood, well written, Keep going. The message needs to be driven home on a daily basis.
“Well understood,…”
Flatly disagree.
As long as all writers start every piece with statements like, “The original error was not with the science of climate change” we know that the chattering classes and the professional big-heads still DON’T GET IT and WE are still totally FU***D.
So dave, let me get this straight. Because she doesn’t start her article with a banner saying that global warming is nonsense on stilts, all the other points she makes, however sensible, are worthless.
“Let me get this straight.”
No, I do not think you have quite got it straight.
Not worthless points, merely useless ones. Useless in a country where 90% of influential people are now acquiescent in ‘the climate science.’
She did not need to mention climate. She could have left it up to the majority side to say, if they wished, that such, otherwise sensible, ideas might derail the climate ‘mission.’ But she displays automatic “anchoring*” and deference to a position** which is highly inimical to the argument she wishes to make. A Reformation which starts off by saying the Church is good, is going nowhere.
* A cognitive bias in which an arbitrary benchmark or starting assumption determines or dominates the conclusion.
**That humans are the main determiners of climate.
The sort of knee-jerk stupidty of the influential in our society was interestingly demonstrated in a programme I saw last night where Gryff Rees Jones was doing one of the modern, silly, travel shows;
where a geriatric celebrity pretends to have deep insights into whatever place they are doing a whistle-stop tour to. It got off to a bad start. He said he was going to do all of Canada from East to West – and started in Niagara Falls, 1400 miles inland from the East Coast! He then displayed an astonishing ignorance, when his guide mentioned the important fighting that took place there during the war with the United States. He exclaimed, “I never knew that the United States and Canada fought a war!” All right, not everybody knows their History. What happened next was the clincher when I changed channels. Five minutes later he was pontificating from a vaguely left-wing stance about the true meaning of this war he never knew happened The burden of it, of course, was that the United States was bad – as always.
Nice to see that Juliet Samuel has at last tiptoed into the sea of the truth. Wet up to the knees. Will she dare to go in further? I am agog!
Actually, whilst there is much merit in her piece (especially compared to gormless twerp Ben Marlow), she need to get her head around these facts:-
(1) The only ‘Climate Crisis’ is the GangGreen policies brainlessly adopted by our idiotic, Arts Grad politicians and promoted by pseudo-scientists who have been assiduously “shutting up” their more sensible and sceptical colleagues.
(2) She omits to mention that the Woke Billionaires stand to make eyewatering amounts of money from this, generating sacks full of very nice “Christmas Cards” to the “right” people (as in ‘right-on-message) in academia, the media and elsewhere.
(3) Putin has again shown himself as more intelligent than most “Western” politicians screwed together. Whatever you think of his invasion of Ukraine, he can’t really be blamed for the entirely predictable consequences of “Net Zero”.
The Big Bad Wolf was a naughty, rumbustuous creature. But do not the hubristic little pigs who built their houses of straw or sticks (whilst seriously warned by ‘bricks’ piglet) deserve some blame?
Getting Gasprom to invest in GangGreen oil pipeline ‘protestors’ in USA & Canada, and Anti Frackers (everywhere – including RT’s agitprop), looks like a shrewd investment to me.
He (Putin) really can be blamed if it’s found that he is actively promoting and funding the gangreen mob who are trying to bring the country down.
There is massive funding from the “progressive” billionaire foundations, like Rockefeller, Heinz, Soros, Hewlett, Gates etc. Then you have bodies like https://europeanclimate.org/about/, also funded by some of the above.
“The ECF is part of a highly supportive global network to stimulate climate-related policy work worldwide. We work alongside the Energy Foundation in the United States, the Energy Foundation China, Iniciativa Climatica de Mexico, Instituto Clima e Sociedade in Brazil, the Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation in India and the ClimateWorks Foundation to align the objectives of the climate community and beyond.”
https://europeanclimate.org/funding-grantmaking/
Putin is a good scapegoat, but the enemy is within, as Maggie said about the miners.
Of course he was funding it, and it can be proven. What are we going to blame him of, being smart while we are being stoooopid?
So Martin, are your current politicians straws or sticks?
I can’t believe that they are really as thick as 2 short planks.
Mind you, we have some challengers in the Australian government.
From what I’ve found on the web there’s not a lot of science/engineering degrees in parliament
Of the 541 MPs with higher education degrees in the 2015-2017 Parliament, only 93 (17%) held degrees in STEM subjects, which covers a lot of subjects under the science, technology, engineering and mathematics umbrella.
Main degree qualifications
Politics – 20%
History – 13%
Law -12%
Economics – 10%
Philosophy – 6%
English – 4%
Asking difficult questions of the “scientific” advisors will be beyond them
Public school education -> useless degree -> prime minister = shambolic leadership but with the ability to make stirring speeches.
So how much intelligence did Putin require to accept the keys passed to him by Angela Merkel after she incarcerated herself?
As Juliet Samuel might say, climate change is only the proximate cause. Mandates to promote renewable energy pre-date net zero by a decade and the argument that we are running out of oil goes back to the 1970s.This is a cycle. In the US both the federal government and states enacted a whole series of stupid and very expensive measures to promote alternative energy sources in the 1970s and 1980s.
I think that the parallel to the early years of the 20th century is instructive. By then it was clear that the dynamism and resources of North America would overtake Europe. World War 1 was, in effect, an orgy of self-destruction that cemented the transfer of geopolitical power across the Atlantic, even in the face of the Great Depression. The events of the early decades of the 21st century herald yet another transfer to geopolitical power to Asia. It can’t be assumed that China will be the sole or primary beneficiary, but it is certain that Europe will just disappear into the rear-view mirror.
Net zero policies, Ukraine, etc are just the manifestations of the way in which (relatively) rich but undynamic countries lose the plot and doom themselves to future irrelevance. Remember that both the Chinese and the Japanese did the same in the 16th & 17th centuries by largely isolating themselves from external contacts and influence. What is happening is neither new nor surprising!
The argument that we are running out of oil goes back to the 1890s.We have reached “peak oil” just about every decade since!
We’re running out if/when the government decides we can’t have it.
In the 1860’s we were running out of coal.
Just like the climate emergency ‘threat’ goes back 100 years:
“The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer, and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard‐of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.” — from an Associated Press report published in the Washington Post on Nov. 2, 1922.
The Global Warming Apocalypses That Didn’t Happen
World population is expected to grow to 10.9 billion by 2100 (UN). India will overtake China in population within the next few years but Africa will see the fastest growth with it’s share of world population rising to 40%. More than 8 in 10 people will live in Africa and Asia by the end of the century.
The priority for Asia and Africa is to improve the lot of their peoples. The easiest and fastest way for them to do this is by using fossil fuels to power their economies just as Europe and the US did to improve their peoples lives. Asia and Africa will be the powerhouses of the world by 2100.
At last a decent appraisal about the real reason for why we are currently paying through the nose for energy. And from a Telegraph writer! Does this mean that I was a little hasty in cancelling my subscription?
Probably not. The fact that you, I and many others cancelled our subs might well be the reason they are starting to change tack.
Net Zero will be dead in the water by February 2023. Southern hemisphere winter has been pretty cold (although not reported in Europe), Maybe we are going to have a severe winter, then the 50% that believe all the climate change rubbish will see the light.
We know that there is no Climate emergency, it is a fabrication started by the UN at the Rio Conference in 1992. Since that time, as Maurice Strong who was a proponent of World Government by the UN. He visualised the best way to accomplish the goal was to collapse Western societies was by creating mass hysteria proselytized by the willing dupes in our education system that CO2 is going to destroy the world because allegedly it will cause the temperature to go up 3*C.
At a recent news conference in Brussels, Costa Rican Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism. “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
So we were warned in 1992 and the politicians with their 5 year foresight did not understand the result of the plan of the Neo Marxist Lefties , the Davos Mutual Admiration Society led by Soros and WEF
Whilst many seek to exonerate her because of her later Damascene conversion, Maggie Thatcher was highly influential in starting the journey:
“This paper recounts Britain’s domestic war on coal, focussing on Thatcher’s formative role; and drawing on archival information released pursuant to the 30-year rule. The paper surveys Thatcher’s substantial exertions to take the fight against the Global Warming phantom into the global arena; and concludes with commentary on Thatcher’s legacy and revisionist final writings.
In the 1970s, British Foreign Office mandarin, Sir Crispin Tickell, took sabbatical to study climatology at Harvard and to write Climate Change and World Affairs – on the perils of global cooling.
At the outset of the 1984 Miners’ Strike, Tickell recommended Thatcher explore Climate Change as a promising anti-coal pretext. Thatcher invited Tickell to Number 10. Tickell advised Thatcher from 1984 onwards.
In New York, Tickell pressed for a new UN agency missioned to persuade governments to tax fossil fuels and subsidize renewable energy. Tickell’s efforts led to the 1990 founding of the International Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change (INC-FCCC) – the forerunner of the de facto world headquarters of the climate campaign: the UN-FCCC.
In September 1988 Thatcher delivered a climate lecture (penned by Tickell) to Britain’s august Royal Society. She addressed Ozone Holes, Acid Rain and Global Warming. Action had begun against Acid Rain (i.e., hobbling coal-power at great expense).
With Thatcher’s integral support the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) co-launched the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in November 1988.
Thatcher’s December 1989 address to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) captured world attention. She warned of “vast increases of carbon dioxide” and related perils.”
johnbillscott, dennisambler.
In twenty years of following this scam here and on other blogs, I have seldom seen a comment and a ‘sub’ comment as accurate and correct as these.
Before I shuffle off this Mortal Coil, I fervently pray that I will see, not just acknowledgement that, maybe the Government response might have been improved; but actual punishment, retribution for all those who tried to eliminate discussion on those who queried “The Settled Science”, whilst calling us “Deniers”, “Flat Earthers”,
“Tobacco Manufacturer’s Shills” and all the rest.
All a bit “Old Testament”, but I expect I’d have to live as long as Methuselah to see that.
To Martin Brumby:
“….but actual punishment, retribution for all those…”
Totally agree. But I would like to include in those getting the punishment, Anglian Home windows.
I don’t buy AGW and I shouldn’t have bought Anglian. An awful company!
(Apologies to Paul…)
Net zero is a very stupid idea and anyone who believes it should stop exhaling CO2, right now!
All of which means we are governed by incompetents. None of this is hard to understand. The only reason is willful ideological blindness.
At the risk of being repetitive, this is the comment I left on the original:
Chris Davie
15 HRS AGO
The lack of understanding among politicians and activists of the economics of resource production is profound. Production is achieved only after huge expenditures of capital that are slowly repaid over many years of production. To achieve production at a particular location typically takes long lead time, sometimes years, so just drilling a new well to increase production doesn’t just happen. If discouraged from producing for environmental reasons, a producer is unlikely to commit to the expenditure just to achieve short term production without the assurance of long term revenues. So dwindling production capability does not quickly get replaced.
Perhaps it is time for politicians to take a sensible, long term view and ignore the shallow virtue signaling of the activists.
REPLY
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Turbulent times has picked up on this as part of recent posts looking at how far back the government’s lunatic energy policy goes and at those who forecast the problems we are seeing a decade or more ago. Good to see the truth getting out there to show the ‘blame Ukraine’ lie for what it is.
These eco-lunatic Gaia worshippers are Luddites in everything but name.
It’s also the price we pay when we let Arts graduates have too much influence over the normal world, where normal sane people live.
Others have pointed out that the mistake in Juliet Samuel’s assertion “The original error was not with the science of climate change”. The science, or at least its credulous acceptance, is very much to blame.
But climate science is not amorphous – there used to be a split between climatologists, mostly from Geography schools, and Meteorologists who had a physics background. The former was mostly descriptive concerning the spatial and temporal features of weather patterns, the latter more into processes in the atmosphere. They even had their own learned societies in UK – Association of British Climatologists, and Royal Meteorological Society – who were often at daggers drawn. ABC were seen to be making a name for themselves through dire prognostications and the Roy Met Soc, though initially sceptical of global warming et al, saw they were missing out and grabbed some of the action.
ABC types tended to be less numerate (a main reason to do geography in the first place) and suffered from “Physics Envy”, but meteorology had its own schism as mathematical modelling made ever greater inroads into the subject. Granted that computer modelling of the dynamics of the atmosphere has been hugely beneficial in improving weather forecasts but that is an entirely different kettle of fish to climate prediction which involves many non-atmospheric processes and feedbacks which are superfluous to weather forecasting performance.
However meteorology is now so much in thrall to those who run the climate simulation models that an apogee has been reached with “attribution” studies where credence is given to the difference between two model runs – one with and one without CO2 – as a believable test of whether CO2 would make a difference to a real-world weather event.
I live about 20 miles north of the Eagle Ford. When development was at its peak, I was driving through the Eagle Ford, oftentimes on a daily basis.
Had I not known it was a major oil and gas development, I wouldn’t even have given it any notice. In Texas, we are used to seeing pump jacks occasionally.
I never “felt” any fracking, but it was occurring almost every day.
Only the western world is committing economic suicide with their insane energy policies.
China, India, Russia and North Korea will be just fine.
The more frightening thing is how those countries (maybe not Russia but certainly just about all of Africa) will treat us when they have achieved full industrialisation and dominate world economics, as they surely must if we, the west, continue with this net zero insanity. We (USA, Europe and Australia) will be basket cases and rightly blamed for trying to impose our stupidity.
The eco-terrorists / “climate” fanatics have already reached politicians in some African countries, but their populations are more likely to fight back than Europeans.
OOPs, the RAC have apparently done some calculations about what the new energy cap means to running an electric car versus an ICE equivalent. I haven’t checked the figures myself but it’s not good news for 2030
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/electric-cars-will-expensive-run-petrol/
” The original error was not with the science of climate change. ”
Of course, it was. Kestrel (above) comments on this. She may be hiding her understanding, or she may have accepted the axiom of CO2/AGW. If the latter, she will likely never recover — there is no cure.
It is beyond disgraceful that politicians, particularly European ones, HATE their own populations.
Usually, Juliet Samuel’s articles are given prominence in the Opinion section.
But this one is tucked away in the Business section —rather disingenuously, I think, by the Telegraph which seems to be holding its nose to let this article through.
What is in it for WEF and people like Carney to kill off Oil & Gas? It must be big.
Bank of England governor Mark Carney (yes, him again) gave a speech talking up the risk of climate “stranded assets” – energy investments that would be rendered worthless by climate change legislation.
Worthless? Carnage Mark can now ponder this…
Europe’s Gas Price Is Now Equivalent To $410 Per Barrel Of Oil
By Tsvetana Paraskova – Aug 20, 2022
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Europes-Gas-Price-Is-Now-Equivalent-To-410-Per-Barrel-Of-Oil.html
‘they risk making semi-permanent the role of coal as an emergency back-up when it’s the dirtiest fuel of them all’
Define ‘dirty.’
‘Proximately, this is because of Putin.’
Nah. He just advanced the timing. It was going to happen. You might even thank him for bringing it up now instead of later.
‘The original error was not with the science of climate change.
Uhhh . . . yeah, it was.
‘It was not with the notion that we should phase out coal.’
Uhhh . . . yeah, it was.
‘Bureaucrats from California to New York began to pressure insurers and oil firms to account for fossil fuel investments or answer in the courts for “climate fraud”. ‘
Nah. It was bureaucrats from California AND New York. In between in MAGAland, we appreciate energy production.
‘The only way to resurrect it is with more government intervention.’
Stupid wrong. The solution is to get government away from it. Leave the producers alone. New PM should announce, “Y’all do what you want to do.”
“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” — Ronaldus Magnus, 1981
Who edits the DTel?
The Critic has an excellent article “British Energy Planning (A Horror Story)” by James McSweeney 26 August 2022.
Apparently the Institute of Mechanical Engineers warned the government that there was a growing energy gap in 2016. The government was advised by the Climate Change Committee that this was wrong because there would be plenty of wind energy as “annual windless days would drop by 2,000 per cent”.
Here is the link
https://thecritic.co.uk/british-energy-planning-a-horror-story/
Good catch. Of course the claims that windless days will drop is a future prediction ‘based on’ climate change models
From your link
‘Look at the estimates of National Grid’s Energy Systems Operator (ESO) and you’ll begin to feel goosebumps. These projections “de-rate” energy generators based on how reliable they are (generators rarely run at 100 per cent efficiency). Applying this method nearly halves generation capacity — from 115 gigawatts to 62. At this level, supply is barely keeping level with demand.’
What is even more crazy are the attacks on oil. Very little gets used for electricity generation. It could be, but it has much better uses for the thousands of products based on it and what is still left as transport fuel.
I like to understand motivations. I repeat the question, why is Carney, the Davos crowd, the ESG investment movement and BlackRock, the investment asset management company managing US$10 trillion trying to kill off the Oil & Gas industry?
They obviously had some financial benefit for themselves in mind and figured that the climate “crisis” had driven politicians who were willing to spend trillions and populations that were acting like scared sheep. But what was their master plan?
Just like the Greens and politicians, they didn’t understand the technology. The are slowly realising that renewables are not replacing gas, they are making gas indispensable. Worse than that, their own actions have made gas supplies limited with no investment likely.
We need to understand the mindset of the money men. These people are powerful. They appear to have got things terribly wrong but we need to understand what they were trying to achieve, and why.
Utterly brilliant article. On point. Should be compulsory reading for politicians and civil servants.
Yet the BBC desperately persists with its subliminal lies and propaganda through its teeth, – blaming the Crisis on Covid and Ukraine when we all know that the disinvestment in fossil fuels which are now in such desperately short supply, began long before. You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. THE TRUTH WILL OUT.!
O/T but not really. Our windmills at one gigawatt
“The original error was not with the science of climate change. It was not with the notion that we should phase out coal. But sometime around 2014-16, regulators, lawyers and politicians began to run with the idea that the trashing of “big oil” (and so on) led by students in feathered war bonnets was costless, popular and green.”
I would take issue with this, and it devalues the remainder of the article.
We cannot talk about a “cult of Net Zero” and, almost in the same breath, suggest that the “science of climate change” is not an error. The two go hand-in-hand: the hard sell of unsubstantiated threats from “climate change” was key to drumming up the stupid.
The phase out of coal was ruinous. It follows directly from drumming up the stupid.
If we had not carried out this act of self-harm, we would have been much less exposed to the products of the O&G industry today. And, the O&G industry would have had much stronger incentivised to fight its corner.
Instead the O&G majors joined in drumming up the stupid. Why would they pass by the opportunity to give the coal industry a good kicking. If coal is not there as a competitor primary energy resource, it can only be a positive for O&G. So they gleefully sang from the climate change hymnbook. Let’s all sing Hymn Number 1, “Beyond Petroleum”. Hymn Number 2, “Gas Fired Carbon Capture and Storage”, etc.
It should be no surprise that the final three paragraphs in the above article depict the O&G industry acting as monopolists. It is now in our interests to respond appropriately.
The UK needs to plan for the longer term supply of “swing fuels” it will need to balance demand with other (lower cost or inflexible) energy sources. The UK cannot plan for gas alone as the sole or main “swing fuel”, as we can see from today’s experience. It doesn’t work economically, and it doesn’t work from a security of supply question – whether that’s due to supply, logistics, or wider geopolitical factors.
Coal REALLY MUST provide a substantial part of this mix.
There is a huge world market for fuel supply, and coal supply has a large share of this market. Therefore having coal in the mix maximises the UK’s reach to available resources – and all the better if a competitive local coal supply industry can be developed around a new coal-fired power station, but this would only be a bonus if it happens.
Coal is ideal as a “swing fuel” because it can be economically stored in large quantities at the power station, where storage provides that important buffer between supply and the vagaries of demand for the “swing fuel”. It is far more flexible than gas (with limited release rates from storage) and it is far cheaper to store coal in large quantities than to manufacture and operate a mountain of limited-life battery storage devices,
The answer is COAL.
All this began with Ed Milliband and the pursuit of Net 0, probably one of the most disastrous policies ever followed in the history of politics. The green ideology is still in the process of brainwashing all politicians on the planet. The ultimate outcome will be devastation and starvation on a scale that this planet has never seen before. In the U.K., the answer lies beneath our feet, coal and shale gas. Fossil fuels first and abolish net 0 now.
This article is right on. Zero thought was forwarded by so called energy professional pundits. Why would any O&G production company invest a nickel into exploration & further production costs with this negative fossil fuel rhetoric.
I’ve been overweight “BigTime” fossil energy & pipelines since I started DIY investing Oct ‘20. The unfortunate Russian War was my catalyst to Double Down on fossil fuel!!
Germany’s previous Russian leadership Cronies, Schroeder & Merkel has sunk Germany with gas energy reliance policy. (They have retired with cushy Russian energy CO’s Directorships.
Current new chancellor Scholz hasn’t got the nerve to revive Nuclear Power. Brutal.
It’s not over…10-15 years to just make a small Renew Energy dent.