Climate change tsar is hauled over the coals after warning Liz Truss against lifting fracking ban amid energy crisis
By Paul Homewood
It is about time the CCC was reminded that they do not run the country:
The Government’s climate change tsar was told he needs to ‘live in the real world’ after he warned Liz Truss against lifting the fracking moratorium despite the energy crisis.
Lord Deben said approving fracking would have no impact on energy prices – and urged her to focus on renewables instead.
The Prime Minister is set to end the ban on the gas extraction method today, after pledging to take action during the leadership campaign.
But Lord Deben, who is chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, warned the PM yesterday the best way to solve the energy crisis was to double down on renewable sources rather than expanding domestic production.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘There is no sliver of a cigarette paper between the fact that if you want to deal with climate change and you want to deal with the cost of living crisis and oil and gas prices you have to do the same things – renewable energy and energy efficiency –they are the answers.
‘If you want energy bills down, you produce your energy in the cheapest possible way. That happens to be by renewables.’
But last night Craig Mackinlay, part of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of Tory MPs, who question the cost of meeting the Government’s climate targets, said: ‘Lord Deben and his Climate Change Committee need to come out of their ivory towers and live in the real world. We are facing an energy cost and supply emergency. It is time we unleashed the full potential of all sources of domestically derived power. Fracking could play a huge role in this. The best time for a UK energy policy would have been ten years ago. The second best time is now.’
Maybe Gummer has forgotten that his own CCC stated just a year ago that we would still be consuming a lot of natural gas for many years to come:
Committee on Climate Change – Sixth Carbon Budget
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2022/01/30/dont-they-know-we-will-still-need-oil-gas/
Where does he suggest we get it from?
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
It is time he went as well as his committee. It might come to that if Liz wants to “deliver”
Deben is retiring as Chairman of the committee – end of term. They are advertising for a replacement. Alas those doing the selecting will be woke leftie Greens so the next idiot in charge may even be more of a moron than debden.
Anyone on here up to applying? Could be a laugh to see how far your application gets before they realise you’ve not been indoctrinated.
To quote Sean Connery, with my feet on your desk: “I’m your man.”
“They are advertising for a replacement.”
I have heard they are having problems filling the vacancy…
I wonder why!
In order to save the money we need to pay the increased costs of energy we should close down the CCC, abandon net zero and repeal the climate change act.
100% — all three. There’ll be some fudging so it will not be exactly as simple as that but the foot draggers and equivocaters will need watching.
That’s an easy question Paul…..but you know this already :-
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/04/23/government-climate-adviser-also-working-qatari-ministers-sell/
“…a company providing advice to Qatari ministers who sell gas to the UK”
So no conflict of interest there!
If the CCA 2008 was repealed (which can easily done, because the science has changed), the the committee would automatically disappear (saving taxpayers a lot of money). Deben is either an idiot or a charlatan or both.
Both
He’s probably heavily invested in renewables just like his colleagues and many others in Parliament. This entire business smells awfully like corruption to me?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/16/newsid_2913000/2913807.stm
As Gordon Hughes comments here I’m sure it would be appropriate to run an article on this
https://www.netzerowatch.com/government-must-decide-save-the-economy-or-save-net-zero/
There needs to be a red team enquiry on the nonsense work that lies behind the CCC ‘s carbon budgets, exposing it for reliance on unicorns, unrealistic scenarios and infeasible, uncosted propaganda.
Where Deben gets his “by 2035, hydrogen generating 20TWh” from, heaven knows! It’s pie-in-the-sky, as (1) Hydrogen has just an ~30% EROI, and (2) we have no ‘excess’ generation capacity to simply throw that 70% loss away.
In the same way as his ‘gas CCS’ is. But he cares not a bit, he won’t be around to see it even if it came true. Then again, if he thinks fracking is not cost-competitive then CCS is most definitely not.
Glad you mentioned EROI because we all need a lesson on EROI. You are absolutely right. Hydrogen is never going to happen and there are countless idiots promoting tecnhology that is lab scale at best. No company has yet built a 1GW electrolyser which could produce about 150 kta hydrogen flat out. It would also require about 1.35 million tonnes of demin water.
Oh dear. Again, again. So boring. UK emits one per cent of global CO2. China 31%. (do check out bp.com). I emailed my MP Flick Drummond about the dangers of the CCC but her reply was supportive and called for the institution of long term solutions to ‘climate change’. She means ‘solutions’ to global warming of course. At 1.3degsC a century I don’t think ‘solutions’ are needed. What ‘solution’ does she have in mind? It’s depressing how few MPs can even follow Paul Homewood on energy subsidies. Because they are too busy or don’t have the math?
Lord Deben, AKA John Selwyn Gummer, is wholly in thrall to the green agenda, he is definitely a man not to be trusted. I’m quite astonished that Truss is moving to get fracking going ASAP, because I honestly didn’t believe that she was brave enough to do it. I’m delighted that she has! The natural gas fields beneath this country can make us energy independent, It’s sitting there in vast amounts, just waiting to be exploited. We already have a fantastic gas distribution network, and if Truss actually pushes this through, Deben’s weasel words will come back to expose him as the facetious, duplicitous creep many of us have always known him to be!
Lord Deben is John Selwyn Gummer!!! THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING.He knows sod all about sod all except being unfaithful to his wife. Are we so short of talent that we appoint cretins like that? Bozo has a lot to answer for.
Anyone who thought he wouldn’t leave a trail of chaos in his wake, including the oven ready Brexit hadn’t been paying attention for the last 30 years.
Don’t think BJ was responsible for appointing him. He was appointed on 2012 so that would be Cameron, the Green fool.
Interesting, Deben takes his title from the river Deben. Now I know why he’s so wet!
I do not wish to dampen your enthusiasm for fracing ( short for fracturing) but I wonder if you have actually worked in the oil and gas business ( I have and still do). There might be gas that exists in tight formations in the UK but whether or not it can be produced economically depends on the resource quality, the cost of extraction and the willingness of the population to allow the countryside to be scarred with many drilling pads. Then there is the problem of processing. We have a gas distribution network in the mainland UK, not a gas gathering network (yet). Gas must be processed prior to distribution in the supply network. That processing invoves acid gas removal, dehydration, condensate removal and ensuring the gas meets the correct calorific value ( removal of C2, C3 and C4 hydrocarbons as required). Worse still we do not have the personnel or equipment at hand to make any meaningful difference for many years. Shale oil and gas resources are characterised by being expensive, short lived and not very productive. Many of the US wells will never reach payout and are effectively dead within 5 years, when flow rates are a trickle of initial production. Recovery factors of the gas (or oil) in place are uninpressive, so many wells are required. It is too early to say definitively that UK shale is viable because too few wells have been drilled and drilling costs have exploded. So irrespective of the hysteria surrounding shale we have to live what we currently have and hope for the best that the shale reserves can be drilled out and produced economically sometime in the future, which is far from certain. Shale is all about rock permeabiity and there is no fix for bad rock. Often is it suitcase quality rock- you pack your bag and go home.
Cuadrilla – who are spending their own money, not holding out their hands for government grants – having already carried out exploratory drilling and evaluation, are of the opinion that there are very viable reserves and they can inject gas into the grid early next year at the latest.
Ineos have similar opinions.
Results from the British Geological Survey would appear to bear out their claims.
We don’t need pessimism, we need imagination and foresight.
Oh, and by the way – as a retired chemical engineer with experience of the petroleum industry I speak from experience too!
Extending the gas grid to include the parts of the country that is not on the mains and encouraging the use of vehicles that use CH4 would move us a long way towards the Net Zero goal at no extra cost. Then when* the climate hysteria dies down we will be quids in.
JF
* For true believers, *if*.
Off thread I’m afraid but golly I’m so glad Named Storm DANIELLE and One Day Only Cat One Hurricane EARLE fizzle out before they get here otherwise we’d have our precious Met Office bleeding all over us about the Hurricane Season.
I found an excellent site for monitoring tropical storms and hurricanes. Click on one and you get a popup with forecast intensities and an info link to another popup with a full discussion. Coverage is global. Time loops can be set. Position predicted every 10 mins. Used it to track Himmanmor, which eventually crossed Busan, Korea at about Cat2 on landfall. This one looks to be following an almost identical track over the forecast period
https://zoom.earth/storms/muifa-2022/#overlays=wind
Zoom out to global perspective to pick up Earl and Danielle in the Atlantic and Javier off Baja California.
Whilst i doubt Rees Mogg will try and kill the “climate emergency” outright im pretty sure we will see a reset of the short term objectives as well as what the govt kicking.
We appear to be at a moment of truth. Do we live in a democracy or a kleptocracy?
The ‘moment of truth’ is that the Conservatives are screwed if they do not ditch
the Green Blob, Bohemian Socialism, Johnson/Carrie madness instantly. They do not have even the traditional 100 days to make a blustering show. It will not matter whether Truss has a clue what she is doing. Her self-preservation gene tells her she has to change course by 180 degrees, do a Barber/Heath dash for growth, spend money she doesn’t have, and hope ‘the horse learns to speak.’
Incidentally, we live in a headlesschickenocracy.
Headlesschickenocracy! Love it! That’s just what we live under. We could even upgrade to Turkiesvotingforxmasocracy!
ChickenLittleFoxyLocracy
Deben is a totally untrustworthy, duplicitous, self-serving grifter of the very worst kind! If Truss sticks to her guns and gets this moving, good for her, and good for us!
And shame on the BBC for giving him the time of day.
The CCC’s response to a pro-fracking policy will be interesting.
Increasing energy supply is now a non-negotiable national emergency and the sensitivities of various climate crusties, grifters and activists mustn’t prevent this policy from being implemented.
If they get in the way she may have to dispense with their services. Go on, Liz, do it!
Have an uptick for ‘crusties’, even though they are a minor part of the problem. Mostly it’s middle-class wassocks with not a single science qualification between them. The scandal is that our ruling class is even more ignorant.
JF
Softly softly catchee monkey…..wait till February next year after a cold winter with energy rationing and much more chance of repealing, or at least watering down, the climate change act. Probably 50% of the population actually believe in ” SAVING THE PLANET” brainwashed by the MSM.
I know this story was run by the BBC but it does point to the way that the tide might be turning against the obscene profits and subsidies being made by renewables.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62832029
It’s not all about renewables of course but to include them in the mix is refreshing. The link between gas prices and electricity prices is explored so maybe some sense is returning to Government.
We only want Debden and the CCC to be sidelined now and perhaps progress could be made. There may be hope yet.
I wish he had literally been hauled over the coals.
Paul,
You could do us all a favour and replay the comments being made by Keir Starmer in parliament today and in response to the govt. action on energy costs. I for one would welcome a riposte to the alarmist claptrap he’s entering into Hansard and I know you are far more able to do so than most.
I am heartily sick and tired of Deben’s little money-spinner committee being described in the media as ‘Independent’!
BBC politics today… discussing the PMs statement.. “What about the end of the moratorium on fracking?” One ambivalent tory and three antis. Fair debate?? What do you think?
Excellent debate so far and at least HoC has returned to some more maturity
Can’t these people read a graph? Wind output goes up and down like a roller coaster. Focus on renewables is utterly moronic.
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT
SEPTEMBER 06, 2022 / 09:01 AM
California power prices soar
to highest since 2020 in
heat wave
But wait! California has all that cheap energy from Wind and solar farms. Yeah, right.
We are constantly told to ‘think of the grandchildren’ by the activists in relation to climate change.
Well, the actions the governments have made so-far have resulted in an energy shortage, humungous price increases AND the actions to mitigate these problems is leaving a massive debt problem for the grandchildren to sort out.
It is time to go back to the drawing board and restart a sensible energy policy, by people who know how to actually make things work instead of playing around with computer models (and are not accountable for the results of their recommendations).
You forgot to mention that the economies being damaged by the various ‘renewable’ scams are turning to fossil fuels, even lignite. The idiot rush to Net Zero is counter-productive.
JF
Truss has already decided the fracking ban must go. She’ll follow that up with implementation, otherwise there’s no point in lifting the ban in the first place.
At last some sanity in No.10! When this is formally announced she deserves acknowledgement.
My worry is that it will be dependent on local approval.
I’ve already made the point (on here and earlier today in a comment at the DT) that that would be carte blanche for the enviro-nuts to turn up and lie their heads off to the locals to stop it happening.
How you counteract that I don’t know but I’m more than ever convinced about a ‘Essential Infrastructure Act’ or the watermelons will have every application tied up in local council debate and then in the courts for years — literally.
There must be somebody in the GWPF who could have a word in Truss’s shell-like (or Rees-Mogg’s; I believe this is going to come into his remit) and explain why this is not something to be left to local decision.
You’re entirely correct.
She didn’t need to qualify fracking with ‘if the locals approve’. Nope, this IS a national emergency and we need energy from all sources. Leadership is calling out what’s required regardless of opposition.
I suspect a healthy bribe, say 25-50% off their gas bills, will do the trick.
The fracking ban has indeed been scrapped today but, as far as I can see, the ludicrous limit of allowable seismic events stays at 0.5 on the Richter scale. This very low limit (likened to dropping a pencil on the floor) was dreamed up by Ed Davey (LibDem Energy Secretary in the Cameron Govt) to effectively stop all fracking and, according to his recent boast, he is still “proud” of it. This limit needs to be raised otherwise they’ll still be no fracking.
I believe the British Geological Society said of one of the supposed ‘earthquakes’ Cuadrilla’s fracking caused was probably a slip of 2 – 3 feet at depth and almost impossible to find
“But Lord Deben, who is chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, warned the PM yesterday the best way to solve the energy crisis was to double down on renewable sources rather than expanding domestic production.”
Does the chairman and his Committee not realize that manufacturing, delivering and installing “renewable sources” requires vehicles that run on fossil fuels…products made from petroleum? It’s not complicated.
“Hauled over coals” is good; sacking the idiot would be even better
I think in the original use of the expression the coals were alight.
In a sack with some with rocks and dropped in the Thames?
Must admit I don’t know the answer to this but various commentators have said that fracking is not the solution because the frackers will sell gas onto the international market at whatever the international rate is. Our gas supplies are not (apparently) big enough to increase the supply sufficiently to lower this rate, so in UK we will not benefit. This argument would presumably also apply to any nuclear energy we created. If this is the case its rather depressing as it implies that only the worlds biggest resource holders ( Russia, Saudi etc) are the ones with the muscle to determine price. I suppose this is what OPEC was all about. Is it an argument for protectionism? I don’t bloody know. I’m not an economist and from what we see even the economists don’t know.
There isn’t a single ‘world price’ for gas. The US is fracking shale and getting gas out to its own people at much lower prices. To buy Liquified Natural Gas from Quatar involves refrigeration and transport that massively boosts the price. Russian gas was the cheapest in Europe – but we don’t know how much of that was priced for political reasons to monopolise the market. If there was a pipeline across the Caspian then Kazakhstan could massively affect the gas price to Europe (Russia blocks it on ‘environmental’ grounds).
The same world price applies also to so-called “sustainable” energy generators. The contacts that previous Governments let to wind farms were so badly written that they allow the operators to sell their electricity at the higher world price instead of the agreed “strike price”. This was, at that time, because Government officials couldn’t imagine world prices ever exceeding the strike price. Regarding gas and nuclear, I can’t see there is anything to stop the Govt granting new licenses on condition that the energy is sold internally in the UK at a price representing the cost of extraction/generation plus a reasonable profit margin.
And since energy prices rose in Autumn last year no new windfarm has taken up its Contract for Difference,CfD, preferring to sell on the open market at high prices and raking in the money. They can delay the CfD for up to 3 years.
So how do you account for the US domestic natural gas prices being a sixth or less of UK prices?
If the UK were to produce enough gas to be (theoretically) self-sufficient for the rest of this century then it would most certainly be sufficient to affect the “world price”. Whyever would it not?
Gummer (Lord Deben) has a lot of investments in so-called “sustainable” energy projects so has a real financial incentive to promote them. It is a serious conflict of interest that he chairs the Climate Change Committee. It’s time this quango was disbanded.
it is time almost all quangos were disbanded. Dave? Dave? Where are you Dave?
bbc headline ‘summer temps shatter record’!
They report 0.4 degree c above the previous average, if correct I think it would be reasonable to say ‘slightly’ above, but hey its the bbc so shatter it is.
Off thread I’m afraid but golly I’m so glad that Named Storm DANIELLE and One Day Cat 1 hurricane
These are the measured productivity levels for Weather-Dependent “Renewable” power generation over the last decade in Europe.
EU+UK 2011-21
Onshore Wind power 22.5%
Offshore Wind power 32.7%
Combined EU Wind power 23.5%
Solar PV 11.6%
Combined Weather-Dependent power: 18.7%
Conventional Generation 90.0%
The US EIA publishes comparative figures power generation both for capital costs and for the long term. When those costs are merged with the measured productivities above and are compared to Gas-Firing for power generation and above the comparisons can be seen for the amount of power actually supplied to the grid. These comparisons assume that European gas prices are four times higher than in the USA.
capital costs of power production accounting for productivity
Onshore Wind ~7 times
Offshore Wind ~15 times
Solar PV on grid ~10 times
long-term costs of power production accounting for productivity
Onshore Wind ~4 times
Offshore Wind ~13 times
Solar PV on grid ~7 times
Would anyone sane buy a car costing 4 – 15 times the normal price that only works one day in five, when you never know which day that might be ? And then insist that its technology is used to power the whole economy.
These simple calculations show that any claim that Wind and Solar power are now cost competitive with conventional fossil fuel generation are patently false.
Appreciating that future “Climate Change” from Man-kind burning fossil fuels is a non-problem and not reacting to that non-problem in an economically destructive manner would be the very best news for the Biosphere, for Man-kind and for the Western world.
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/3-graphs-say-it-all-for-renewables/
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/minor-greenhouse-gasses-co2-ch4-n2o/
These are the measured productivity levels for Weather-Dependent “Renewable” power generation over the last decade in Europe.
EU+UK 2011-21
Onshore Wind power 22.5%
Offshore Wind power 32.7%
Combined EU Wind power 23.5%
Solar PV 11.6%
Combined Weather-Dependent power: 18.7%
Conventional Generation 90.0%
The US EIA publishes comparative figures power generation both for capital costs and for the long-term. When those costs are merged with the measured productivities above and are compared to Gas-Firing for power generation, the comparisons for units of power supplied to the grid. These comparisons assume that European gas prices are four times higher than in the USA.
capital costs of power production accounting for productivity
Onshore Wind ~7 times
Offshore Wind ~15 times
Solar PV on grid ~10 times
long-term costs of power production accounting for productivity
Onshore Wind ~4 times
Offshore Wind ~13 times
Solar PV on grid ~7 times
Would anyone sane buy a car costing 4 – 15 times the normal price that only works one day in five, when you never know which day that might be ? And then insist that its technology is the only way to power the whole economy.
These simple net cost calculations show that any claim that Wind and Solar power are now cost competitive with conventional fossil fuel generation are patently false.
Appreciating that future “Climate Change” from Man-kind burning fossil fuels is a non-problem and not reacting to that non-problem in an economically destructive manner would be the very best news for the Biosphere, for Man-kind and for the Western world.
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/3-graphs-say-it-all-for-renewables/
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/minor-greenhouse-gasses-co2-ch4-n2o/
EDMH,
you said:- “These simple net cost calculations show that any claim that Wind and Solar power are now cost competitive with conventional fossil fuel generation are patently false.”
It doesn’t seem to be well known that we have to run both simultaneously, as our gas generation is what keeps the grid in load and supply balance. If wind is strong, gas ramps down and vice versa. This increases cost for the gas generators and decreases their efficiency and reliability.
Essentially, however much wind generation capcity we have we need an equivalent redaily available capacity which is predominately combined cycle gas plants (gas turbines with steam turbines fed from exhaust heta . Plants like this cannot just be switched on and off like a light switch.
All this is a cost due to renawables’ variability, another reason renawables are so expensive.