Chris Skidmore’s Rubber Stamp Of Net Zero
By Paul Homewood
Surprise, surprise!! The government’s “Independent Report” has rubber stamped its Net Zero agenda!!
Given that it was written by Chris Skidmore, this should come as no surprise! It was Skidmore, you may recall, who signed into law the Net Zero Act in 2019.
As one of the bunch of extreme green Tories, it was inevitable that he would rubber stamp Net Zero. It was always a stitch up job, to placate Tory MPs who were critical of the Act, while at the same time being a sop to greens while Truss was pushing for fracking.
A truly independent review would have critically assessed all of the assumptions, costings and projections for this appalling piece of legislation. Instead we have got a report that might as well have been written by Gummer’s Committee on Climate Change –indeed given the 340 pages in the review, it probably was written by the CCC.
We get all of the same platitudes that we have read many times before in CCC handouts – how cheap renewable energy is, millions of green jobs, the UK’s world leadership, how we will all be better off by 2050 (we have to take Skidmore’s word for this!), how we must not fall behind the rest of the world in the race for Net Zero.
I have searched the report comprehensively, and cannot find a single reference to the costs which will have to be borne in the medium term by the public, things like heat pumps, insulation and electric cars. These costs will be unaffordable for most households, and will act as a brake on economic growth in the same way as high energy prices are doing now. Nobody cares about how well off they may be in thirty years time,and certainly won’t believe anybody who tells them he does know. But people do know that current policies will be extremely expensive.
Neither is there any quantification of the massive costs which will be incurred for upgrading electricity grids and distribution networks, and building hydrogen storage and infrastructure. Or the reliance on unproven carbon capture.
Nor is there any critical assessment as to how the country can actually run predominantly on intermittent wind and solar power, albeit backed up by nuclear power. Instead he seems to simply accept the pie-in-the-sky projections of the National Grid.
The report does mention CCC estimates of the need to spend £50 to 60bn a year by the early 2030s. As it points out, most of this will come from private sector investors, who will want high returns. Skidmore does not mention that it will be the poor old consumer who will end up paying for all this though:
And as many critics, including Dieter Helm, have pointed out, successive projections of costings have been woefully speculative.
A proper independent review would have asked all of these questions.
Since its very inception, the Net Zero Act was enacted as a “good idea”, without any plan as to how it could be carried out, or a clearly costed budget.
This review should have been an ideal opportunity to row back, putting the whole thing on the backburner while these fundamental issues were addressed.
Unfortunately it is a chance missed.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
It is not a chance missed. It was never intended to be such a chance.
I find the paragraph ” this will involve low carbon technologies , or fuels alone in combination with behavoural change ” particularly chilling
‘Behavioral change’ sounds so innocuous, it’s easy to overlook. In fact it goes to the heart of imposing policies on a reluctant populace.
Liz Truss’s Net Zero ‘Review’ to be Led by Creator of Current Policy – The Daily Sceptic” https://dailysceptic.org/2022/09/28/liz-trusss-net-zero-review-to-be-led-by-creator-of-current-policy/
Skidmore is not relenting but maybe he’s been pushed ?
Rather than his excuse of boundary changes to his constituency being the reason for his stepping down at the next lottery – sorry, election.
It all became clear to me, when Rishi Sunak’s first announcement as PM was to restore the ban on fracking. Thus announcing to his boss (Chris Hohn) that control was back with the WEF.
Remember Sunak worked for Chris Hohn and ran the Children’s Investment fund, the one that finances extinction rebellion, Just stop oil etc.
We are really heading in the same direction as Canada, New Zealand, Holland with WEF puppets in charge. Lets see who goes to Davos next week, but unless we have an uprising, like Sri Lanka, we are doomed.
You can get a list of who is going to Davos at Just Stop Net Zero
https://juststopnetzero.com/
It’s downhill living standard wise for a generation or more I fear.
FFS it’s 79 pages Starmer and Shapps also Rachel Reeves are on the list, that is all I can see from UK government. Cannot see a Sunak. Lord Stern is Chair representing Grantham trust.
Geoff,
There’s a shorter list I put on the same site which is the public figures – Badenoch and the MI6 head also (not got list to hand ) but barely a half dozen from UK.
Incidentally, I knew someone who worked for a couple of years at Chris Hohn’s CIF. He’s bonkers and his now ex-wife more so. But very rich – so no end of funding for XR etc.
It really does my BP no good at all to think that a fool like Skidmore, probably fully bought and paid for, will never suffer from the failure of his aspirations. What he is doing is making the ammunition for other politicians to make the changes but it doesn’t absolve him of the awful consequences. In situations like this, where he advocates such life-changing systems for the vast majority of the country WITHIN THEIR LIFETIME then there should be some kind of Nuremburg reckoning for their extremist outcomes. He has to be made to face up to his own responsibility for his actions.
He is a historian, always looking backwards.
It’s not just the electricity grid and distribution network. According to this engineering professor from Cambridge University most of the housing stock will require rewiring since the standard 60A mains fuse would be overloaded once houses run solely on electricity.
He certainly outlines the impossibility of achieving net zero by 2050. Also some realistic costings which Skidmore and CCC are covering up by omission. He makes no comment on climate change at all, just the impossibility of relying on wind and solar electricity for ALL our energy requirements.
In central Washington State with inexpensive electricity, I have an all electric house. Thus, “ housing stock will require rewiring since the standard 60A mains fuse would be overloaded once houses run solely on electricity.” — is something I understand and have repeatedly said when folks mention heat pumps. (AC + heating)
I suspect not only the house would need better wiring, but the local transfer stations would need an upgrade and, importantly, more security.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/washington-power-outage-electrical-substation-vandalism-b2251553.html
Konstantin Kisin rips climate change and wokeness at the oxford union.
Recommended.
Hardly. Kisin is controlled oppostion, clearly.
Utter tosh.
Skidmark was always an appalling appointment for anything resembling an independent review. What was Liz Truss playing at? She knows what nonsense this all is
What makes you think Miss Trussed knows anything, let alone net zero is nonsense?
Her academic qualifications are a PPE degree, of undisclosed grade.
Prefer “spatchcocked”.
Well she was very good at Trade and her statements on growth are spot on. She has more understanding of Economics than any Tory MP I’ve heard in the last few years.
She also became a Chartered Management Accountant; but I suspect she is the type who cram to pass exams to get an entree somewhere and then forget everything.
Indeed she was, P44.
And the first PM since Thatcher with the intention of growing the economy and reversing the policy of managed decline we have suffered under since the 1960s.
I agree that some of Truss’s instincts were almost (warning, dirty word coming) Conservative. But what she tried was really only a retreaded version of Barber’s “dash-for-growth” under Prime Minister Heath.
The Net Zero Strategy on P19 states : “Our power system will consist of abundant, cheap British renewables, cutting edge new nuclear power stations, and be underpinned by flexibility including storage, gas with CCS, hydrogen and ensure reliable power is always there at the flick of a switch.
So why do we need “behaviour change” if our power will be “abundant and cheap….always there at the flick of a switch”?
“cutting edge new nuclear power stations ”
And 25 or so of these will be completed and connected to the grid by the end of next week. Right?
The report tracks about 850,000 Green jobs but I suspect that’s a vast underestimate of what will be needed to achieve these fantasies. If we say 1m people, that’s a vast chunk of the workforce redirected from producing what we want to producing things we don’t want or already have. At £32,000/head in GDP terms, that’s £32 billion/year in lost value. £1,000/household each and every year just by “creating” these pointless jobs.
Bastiat’s broken window economics, P44.
“behavioural change” is public sector spending on a fleet of nuclear power stations. Anybody for Sizewell C? Because that’s what we’re getting, regardless of cost or performance.
Given all the scientific evidence we see here every day, why have BP, Shell, Quadrilla and all the other companies whose future is at risk because of political liars and incompetents, used their huge profits to take legal action against the (so called) Tory government? After all, it’s not like they would be short of highly qualified witnesses.
There’s so much money to be made in renewables and political points to be won.
I’m pals with an ex-Shell geologist who laughs at the nonsense. As he says, in a deep Scottish growl, “Aye Dave, nobody looks closely at the data these days.”
Peter,
the big companies simply cannot fight back.
There is currently a court case in Holland against Shell by FoE (What an apt acronym). This web site goes into much more detail and is frightening in it’s implications :- https://climatecaseofthecentury.org/
“the (so called) Tory government? ” that’s the whole issue in a nutshell Peter.
Who the hell would credit a genuine Conservative government with discussing the likes of “behavioural change”? Whatever happened to personal freedom?
Surely there must be an alternative option out there to vote for that has some sense of reality, but who?
The best option at the moment would be to abstain from voting en masse. Nothing would shake them quite like a dramatic fall in the turnout rendering every MP having no more than 25% or less of the electorate voting for them. Given that the teaching union recently got egg on its face when less than 50% of their members actually voted in the strike ballot rendering the vote null and void, how could the government claim legitimacy when less than half the electorate vote.
If we did that g1298 they would simply assert that as no-one voted for or against anything the electorate were satisfied with their performance and carry on as usual.
Vote for one of the emerging centre-Right parties, Reform is my choice at present.
I would suggest everyone applies for a heat pump installation estimate.
I worked briefly a year ago on a heat pump importer/distributor business.
Made in China (there are about 4 brands but mostly the same innards); landed cost in UK about £500; to installers £1500-2,000 – to you £3,000 to £4,000.
That’s just the noisy aircon size box.
Hey hey everybody! Let’s not forget that CO2 does not affect the weather more than a spit. So all this idiotic economic calamity is pointless. And wot about China? Our uninvented atmospheric carbon (dioxide) capture will be capturing. 31% Chinese!
Have not read the report for fear of an emetic reaction; did the author reveal his conflict of interest i.e his former role?
Cannot possibly be described as independent; only legally binding if not repealed….?
Don’t. It is a truly depressing repetitive shallow document. He did get one thing though, so maybe all is not entirely lost:
“The UK was the first country in the world to develop civil nuclear power plants and for
decades, nuclear energy was the main zero emission energy technology in the UK. However, since the 1990s the role of nuclear in the energy mix has been in decline, with new projects struggling to come through. Currently, about 15% of our power supply comes from nuclear plants, as seen in Figure 2.9. 221 Within the next 10 years, four of five nuclear plants are scheduled to retire, with only one new plant currently under construction and one more in the pipeline. Significant efforts are therefore needed to not only maintain the current role of nuclear energy but also for nuclear to help meet rising energy demand.”
Apart from that nuclear appears always to be mentioned in the same breath as hydrogen, CCS and tidal energy.
Then we get:
“Due to the UK’s relatively high reliance on gas for electricity generation and the higher cost of generation from gas (as compared to generation from coal, nuclear or renewables), wholesale electricity prices in the UK have been higher than in key EU competitors such as Germany, France, and the Netherlands. The UK offers relief for some energy intensive businesses; however, the support offered in EU countries is greater, hindering UK EII businesses’ international competitiveness.”
So gas is more expensive than renewables and all we need to do to be competitive is shake the money tree. (but he agrees coal is cheaper than gas!) I need a Scotch…
“Due to the UK’s relatively high reliance on gas for electricity generation and the higher cost of generation from gas (as compared to generation from coal, nuclear or renewables), ”
Interesting to read that our glorious leaders recognise that electricity generated by coal is cheaper than gas. As previously posted, coal-fired can match CCGT for emissions, coal-fired can load-follow, coal can be stockpiled at the power station and there’s no proof that coal-fired is responsible for dangerous climate change.
Is there any meaningful reason not to build a fleet of coal-fired power stations?
Paul, I jotted a few notes when Skidmore’s review was announced back in September:
It may be of mild historic interest, as might the comments beneath the line.
Raw lunacy, based on totally flawed assumptions, which will cost us all £billions and have NO effect whatever on the world’s climate, but it’ll work wonders for certain bank accounts. Seems that somwhere there are ‘crises’ and ‘catastrophic’ bouts of weather, all of which have happened many times before. It’s flooding again now, as it has every so often for hundreds of years. Soon we might have snow, too, just imagine! -and a few hot days next summer! -HELP.
Goldman Sachs’ Jeff Currie: ‘$3.8 Trillion of Investment in Renewables Moved Fossil Fuels from 82% to 81% of Overall Energy Consumption’ in 10 Years
There is always a market for bullsh*t.
Is that traded “obligations” or “direct purchases’ thereof? I reckon the former might gain a bit more traction amongst the bull*******s
The economic justifications are simply fallacious. There is no benefit to UK consumers of spending their money (via taxes) on being “first.” When we see who makes something best or cheapest, we can buy it from them. That’s why we have trade. The idea that the government will puck not just which technologies but which companies will “win” is so stupid it threatens my health! Have these morons learnt nothing from the bulb fiasco? There is no consideration of the oppprtunity cost of switching perhaps 1 million people from what they currently do to Green jobs, mich if which is replacing things that don’t need replacing. The Stern Report was very clear on this – don’t put Green technologies in place until existing point or equipment needs replacing – or the costs will outweigh the benefits.
We are being stampeded into ever quicker actions for political reason.
Yes, on being first, it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese.
Yes I’d rather be an Apple shareholder than RIM (Blackberry) or Nokia!
It is in trouble on the front cover in stating that the report is to ensure that Nut Zero is pro-business and pro-growth which we all know is impossible if taken as a whole. Some businesses – solar panel cleaners etc – will benefit while other more substantial ones will close down and take growth down with it. It will be good for business and growth in China though as they hoover – or it is Dyson these days – up our manufacturing jobs.
On WUWT recently, Lord Monckton did a calculation showing that the maximum annual amount of wind energy in the UK would only ever reach 25% of the real capacity which nails the idea that the Tory morons have that all we need is more windmills.
Unfortunately that post failed the Feynman test – it was falsified by reality.
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/3-graphs-say-it-all-for-renewables/
O/T. The very premise of ‘climate change’ comes under attack by investors.com
Government could save billions by reading this one article.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/the-stunning-statistical-fraud-behind-the-global-warming-scare/
Over the past couple of weeks spot UK electricity pricing has been binary: either around £0 MWh (usually off-peak) or around £200 MWh (on-peak). Anyone know if this is simply a function of the wind blowing and CFD pricing for the vast majority of windfarms being around £175 per MWh?
The other aspect of electricity generation these past couple of weeks that’s a little odd is the huge amount of imports when we have plenty of gas generation capacity. Is this thanks to the Windfall Tax with it being far more lucrative to import French nuclear than use British produced nat gas?
The MWh price shown on iamkate has been going negative at times.
Prices in the Balancing Mechanism only apply to imbalance positions. If you generate more or less than you contracted for then you are paid or pay the imbalance price on the difference. If your customers as a retail supplier are deemed to have used more or less than you contracted to take again the imbalance is priced in the same way. The rest of the power you supply or offtake is priced at the contract prices you agreed prior to gate closure, an hour in advance of the settlement period. That could have been via a hedge trade conducted months or years in advance, or via a trade in the day ahead market, or indeed any time up to gate closure.
The result is that imbalances can flip between generators with very different costs for raising or lowering their output to balance the grid.
‘Surprise, surprise!! The government’s “Independent Report” has rubber stamped its Net Zero agenda!!’
Which in turn provides much opportunity for the real agenda – embezzlement 🤑🤑🤑
“World leaders in net zero”! That is like being world leader in the race to the bottom of the world’s poorest countries. They are planning our certain implosion. They have no actually practical plans to put us back to work to make exportable products.
Remember recent discussion about becoming a “world leader” in EVs and batteries? So how come BMW are closing their electric Mini production and moving it to China! It is (currently) cheaper there and they control the world supply of lithium and the Germans don’t give a damn about our Oxford PPEs vacuous daydreams.
Just underlines, yet again, that the Tories are hell-bent on losing the next election.
Ed Milliband (no less…) is calling for an urgent investigation into not only vulnerable people being forced on to Pre Payment Meters, but also into general “Energy vulnerability….”. I thought he had started all that with the 2008 Climate Change Act…… https://uk.news.yahoo.com/labour-demands-end-shameful-forced-191213064.html
“Independent”?
They toy with us do they not?
Skidmore understands the viability and economics of all of ‘carbon zero’ guff, not clearly but then neither does hmg. Be aware, this is all about insane politics and never even faintly brushes up against doable, common sense. hmg, they’ve got it in for you, and if you think its hopeless now just wait until the sheeple – a nation votes for the other cheek of the rear.
Drax fined £1.6 million for overcharging the National Grid. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-13/uk-s-drax-fined-6-1-million-for-charging-extreme-energy-prices
“Drax fined £1.6 million for overcharging the National Grid. ”
£6.1 million according to the link.
Who will pay that fine? Will it be the directors of Drax? Or will it be the punters (me) ?
IIRC Jailbird Chris Huhne had a lot to do with setting up the Drax scam.
Sorry… Typo re:the £6.1 million. Soon after completing his Prison sentence Huhne was appointed European Chairman of Zilkha Biomass Energy. Surprise …..
Skidmore is eponymous out for what happens to the country under net zero.