Climate Change Committee boss “should have been fired”
By Paul Homewood
London, 11 January – Campaign group Net Zero Watch has welcomed the resignation of Chris Stark, the chief executive of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), but says he should have been fired years ago.
Stark controversially oversaw the preparation of the Net Zero report, which was the economic and scientific justification for the complete decarbonisation of the economy, but was subsequently shown to have been a deception.[1]
Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:
"The public have remunerated Mr Stark to a total of over a million pounds over his term of office, an astonishing sum for running an organisation with a staff of around 40 people. In return, he oversaw the production of a “dodgy dossier” of policies that have led to the ruin of the economy. It’s good that he is gone, but he should have been summarily dismissed many years ago."
Extraordinarily, it seems that Mr Stark may be moving to an even more lucrative position in the Green Blob, as CEO of the Carbon Trust. But according to Mr Montford, the appointment raises ethical concerns:
"Mr Stark’s colleague at the CCC, Baroness Brown, has apparently appointed him to run the Carbon Trust, where she is chairman, and where the last CEO earned over £400,000. It’s clear that these eco-quangocrats are just lining their pockets. Claire Coutinho needs to institute a programme of reform of all these institutions. It’s obscene, the way ministers allow them to rip us all off."
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Quite right. Stark is just another trougher, with no relevant exertise.
“Chris has wide experience in government. He has designed economic policy in Whitehall, including in HM Treasury and the former Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. He was previously Director of Energy and Climate Change in the Scottish Government, leading the development of the Scottish energy and climate strategies.”
So,
Stark slithers off to an attractively remunerated sinecure at the “Carbon trust”…… Skidmore resigns as an MP to further his career/interests at the Emissions Capture Company…. both conveniently leaving the wreckage of the UK economy behind them……
Are we supposed just to shrug our shoulders ?
‘Carbon’ and ‘Trust’. Two words that, in the context of climate science, have no meaning whatsoever – except in their antithesis.
The way that the elite/ establishment works in the UK has already been fully exposed by the story of the Post Office Horizon scandal in the last few weeks. A network of politicians, bureaucrats, quangos and government agencies in which they each appoint each other on high salaries and if things go wrong they simply get parachuted into another high paid post somewhere else. Meanwhile we plebs are held in contempt and ghosted by these people and punished if we do wrong. And none of our current political parties are interested in tackling the situation.
The real scandal is why has it taken the ITV drama to push this issue when the truth was known about the crap software Fujitsu provided over 25 years ago!!!
Ahh. It may well have been crap software (an App, actually) but is it not strange that every ‘error’ was to the disadvantage of the postmasters? Why is it that none were to their benefit if they truly were thieving?
The same reason that you would have expected at least 1 of the people convicted to appeared to be living it up – where did all this money supposedly go?
There is an alarming decline in critical thinking skills in the west and something needs to be done – fast.
‘Claire Coutinho needs to institute a programme of reform of all these institutions.’
NO! Sushi’s little dolly needs to scrap these institutions – or at least end all taxpayer funding. The fascist slime such as Grantham, or the XR bloke can fund them if they want.
Isn’t Claire Courtinho now the lead actor in looking forward to seeing the complete demise of coal fired power stations? Meanwhile, what is left has been quietly providing power on a regular basis, albeit small.
No sooner has one numptie – Chris Skidmore – resigned in a hissy fit over north sea exploration contracts, than we just get another. And there are plenty more in the Conservative Environment Network lined up.
Good.
I hope my three letters to all MPs, detailing the many errors in their reports, played a part in his downfall.
They were quoting some £410 billion to go fully Net Zero by 2050, while my calculations placed the costs at some £4,500 billion.
And that cost would only hold if we still used (cheaper) fossil fuels for manufacture, and if the world piling into renewables raw materials did not push materials costs through the roof.
Ralph
As I mentioned in another thread, please, write to your MP and ask them if they believe CO2 is a pollutant to be controlled under NZC? Mine thinks so!
I do talks on this too.
With the Jurassic era having 6x the CO2 we have now.
R
These second-rate MPs ought to be fired for not following the “Green Book” which requires all major projects to have a cost / benefit analysis. They lied about the costs then overclaimed on the benefits (particularly lower power prices). Otherwise, Selwyn Gummer and pals did a great job for the UK!
Net zero remains a pure virtue seeking exercise draining what’s left of the UK’s manufacturing base.
With Skidmore quitting and now Stark, hopefully they got wind of a big roll back on the net zero and decided to jump rather than be fired. I don’t think Debden has actually been replaced. Wishful thinking?
Has the Climate Change Committee told us how they propose to decarbonise (ugh) aviation, shipping, motor transport, construction, agriculture? We already know that you can’t decarbonise electricity generation although my conservative MP Flick Drummond thinks you can. And what effect our one percent will have in 2100? Could we have a specific statement about what our Net Zero aims are with some numbers? Oh,it’s all so pathetic.
“Net Zero aims…with some numbers”
As Prof Dieter Helm, Oxford, puts it –
“”a dense mass of overlapping aspirations, strategies and targets over more than 10,000 pages of reports, consultations and white papers. It is now beyond any minister or civil servant to name them all, let alone understand how they interact with each other, and the resulting complexity is the prime route to enable lobbying by vested interests and the consequent capture of each of the technology-specific interventions. The Treasury and the CCC estimates for the costs of net zero assume all the policies are efficiently implemented, an assumption for which there is no supporting evidence”
https://dieterhelm.co.uk/publications/net-zero-electricity-the-uk-2035-target/
They have no idea, because they have no real life energy or climate competence
Claire Coutinho voted for the Energy Act. She should be sacked with all the members of these quangos.
Claire, like all in the CCC, have no competence in climate science or energy – they rely on dodgy data from dodgy activists selling deceit – if Govt was a private enterprise, these fools wouldn’t make the cut
In keeping with modern meteorological parlance, can I suggest that we name the upcoming snow events for reference purposes. I would suggest that on day 1 we name it Viner 1 and index the number for any following days eg day two would become Viner 2 etc.
Stark raving
This was my letter to parliament, regards Stark and his Climate Change Committee:
Re: Reducing Emissions Report
Climate Change Committee (CCC)
Errors in Report.
I read the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC’s) report with dismay (Progress in Reducing Emissions 2023). I am exceedingly disappointed with this report, as it appears to contain the same errors as the recent Royal Society Report on hydrogen storage.
Progress in Reducing Emissions 2023
https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/progress-in-adapting-to-climate-change-2023-report-to-parliament/
Energy Storage Errors:
The report says that the construction of UK energy storage is on track, and goes on to say:
Quote:
The power output capacity of grid storage is currently around 2 GW. This will need to rise to 7 GW by 2025 and 8-9 GW by 2028.
This comment is asinine in the extreme. A gw is not a unit of energy storage, so you cannot use gw units to assess energy storage requirements. It is like saying: “the distance from London to Coventry is 150 miles per hour”.
So lets try and parse what the CCC are trying to say here.
Firstly, in terms of instantaneous output, yes we do have 2 gw of storage (Dinorwig). However, a rise to 9 gw of instantaneous output is insufficient. The winter grid runs at about 45 gw, and at least half of that output will require stored backup to cope with unreliable renewable energy. So we need something like 15 gw of instantaneous output, not 9 gw.
Secondly, we come to the gw problem. For how long will these storage sites generate the claimed 9 gw? A super efficient car battery could in theory give you 9 gw, for a picosecond or two. Is that what the government is building for UK energy storage? One very efficient car battery? Perhaps you can see why this report is so absurd.
In reality, the unit of electrical energy storage is the gwh, and we currently have only 10 gwh of stored energy (Dinorwig). To back up half of the UK grid for 20 days in the winter, we will need something like 10,000 gwh of stored energy. (Note: 20 gw for 20 days = 9,600 gwh.) You might claim that a bit of wind will still be blowing somewhere, so let’s make that 5,000 gwh of stored backup energy. This is a very real 5,000 gwh of stored energy, not a totally meaningless 9 gw.
The present 10 gwh of stored energy comes from Dinorwig in Wales, and Coire Glas in Scotland will shortly add another 30 gwh. So we need to increase energy storage 120-fold. We need to build another 120 Dinorwigs and Coire Glases by 2030 or 2035. Do you really think that is going to happen? Of course it is not.
The report goes on to say:
Quote:
Grid storage capacity in Great Britain will more than double by next winter, as
2.3 gw of new-build battery storage contracts for delivery in 2023/24 (come on-line).
Again, this is a completely asinine statement. As just mentioned, a gw is not a unit of energy storage so we have no idea what the CCC children are talking about. For instance, the new 200 mwh Tesla battery at Cottingham is rated at 100 mw, so it can only power the half the UK grid for 30 seconds.
Taking the Cottingham Tesla battery specifications as a guide, the claimed new 2.3 gw of battery storage may hold just 4.6 gwh of energy. So this new 2.3 gw super-battery will be able to power half the UK grid for just 12 minutes. Of what use is that, when the wind drops for a fortnight or more? Look, we will need something like 5,000 gwh of stored backup energy, not a piddling 50 gwh. (50 gwh being all the mentioned storage facilities combined.)
And where will we build that?
And how long will that take?
And what will it cost?
Remember also that 5,000 gwh is only 1/3 or 1/4 of the UK’s actual requirements. As we move from 2035, towards complete electrification by 2050, we will need approximately 20,000 gwh of energy storage, to cope with all transport, heating and industry. That is 400 times the 50 gwh of storage that (appears to be) planned to be on-line by 2030. You see how pathetic this CCC report is. They say energy storage ‘is on track’, when we have not even scratched the surface of energy storage.
(Note: the Royal Society said that 100,000 gwh of storage would be required, because some whole years are renewables deficient. See the wind-graph below, recording the 2021 wind drought.)
The CCC are (deliberately) oversimplifying the many problems and hurdles that will limit total electrification, presumably to make Green Energy appear more cost-effective and achievable. When in reality unreliable renewables can never power a technological industrial nation, without gas power as a backup or 60% nuclear as a base-load.
Wind Power Errors:
The wind power requirements in this report are also highly deceptive. The report says:
Quote:
A further 2.7 GW of offshore wind was deployed in 2022, which is slightly off track for the Government’s ambitious target to reach up to 50 GW by 2030
While 50 gw of name-plate wind energy (17 gw of actual energy) will power our electrical needs in 2030 (along with assistance from nuclear, bio, and onshore wind), this is just the beginning of renewables problems. Beyond 2030, when we include all transport, heating, and industry energy requirements, we will need to triple or quadruple electrical generation. Thus this barely achievable target of 50 gw by 2030 is merely the tip of the iceberg, and will need to increase to 420 gw of name-plate offshore wind by 2050.
420 gw is 140 Hornsea-3 wind farms, or 28,000 wind turbines. That is about 1,100 turbines a year, or nearly twenty a week. And since none of these turbines or their cabling or batteries will be made in Britain, this project will bankrupt the nation. You know this and I know this, so why will you not tell the public this?
Hydrogen Power Errors:
The CCC report also mentions hydrogen energy storage, presumably for transport, heating, and energy storage:
Quote:
Hydrogen storage capacity will need to ramp up quickly from 2028,
to between 1 and 3 twh by 2030.
At least they are using the right units in this section, although they do not state if this is thermic energy or an electrical energy equivalent. Whatever the case, this brief claim is a technical and construction nonsense. Hydrogen electrolysis on commercial scales is still in its infancy, as is the conversion of vehicles and homes to hydrogen burning. Plus a hydrogen battery loses 70% of its energy in the system, so more wind turbines will be required to make up for those losses.
Also, this confusing quote does not say over what timescale this storage is required. But if we take it as a week’s worth of stored energy, this is the equivalent of up to 17 gw of electrical production. So this is the equivalent of up to 1/3 of our present electrical generation capacity, all to be planned, designed and constructed within two years. That is all the electrolysers, storage caverns, and pipe or transport links to the consumer, plus all the consumer machinery – all within two years. You see what a nonsense this report truly is.
Summary:
This report is a complete waste of space. It is an unbelievable 430 pages long, presumably to convince politicians that it is authoritative, when this verbosity is merely covering up the ineptitude and ignorance of its authors. It also has no coherent direction or layout, jumping from topic to topic without explaining any of them in a rational fashion.
Worst of all, most of the report is padded out with meaningless tables and diagrams, that add nothing to the report. These are wild guesses and meaningless flow-charts, pulled from the author’s arse. Look, if a report is so complex that no politician will read it, it is not worth the paper it is printed on.
You need to sack the entire department that made this report, and start again. The report needs to be slimmed down to 70 pages maximum, focusing on an idealised 2035 grid and then a 2050 grid. It needs to specify from page one the expected proportions of the proposed grid, from nuclear, to renewables, to storage. And then explore each of these topics, with a few pages on each.
The report should start with something like:
Nuclear – expected 20% or 9 gw by 2030.
– expected 33% or 50 gw by 2050.
– ie: another 10 Hinkley Points by 2050.
Wind onshore – expected 13% or 6 gw by 2030. (or 30 gw nameplate).
– expected 4% or 6 gw by 2050. (not enough land area).
Wind offshore – expected 40% or 18 gw by 2030. (or 55 gw nameplate).
– expected 50% or 75 gw by 2050. (or 220 gw nameplate).
PW Storage – expected 33% of grid. Thus 15 gw and 5,000 gwh by 2030. (20 days backup)
– expected 33% of grid. Thus 50 gw and 15,000 gwh by 2050. (20 days backup)
That is all we need.
Plus extrapolations of current build rates to match those totals.
Plus explanations of how these figures were derived.
Plus mention of where the machinery will be manufactured (where is the Green Jobs boost?)
Sincerely,
Ralph Ellis
Golly, thank you, Ralph. I had not realised just how ignorant the CCC is. I must tell my MP Flick Drummond
Thanks Ralph. I’ve just now posted a reference to your comment HERE
Thanks for sharing, but not to take away anything from you, any electrical engineer knows the futility of what the CCC are claiming. It is all pretty basic stuff. Then start bringing in reactive power requirements, spinning mass kinetic energy frequency stabilisation ( I am aware there are some methods of synthetic kVA and frequency stabilisation) and they are just out of their depth. The National Grid are strangely silent on all the pitfalls, considering they will take the blame for the inevitable power cuts, but I guess they are making a lot of money moving power around. Also OFGEM are strangely incompetent in all aspects concerned with electricity, everything they do makes the situation worse. God Help Us.
Pretty basic.
But did you contact your MP?
Did you contact 600 MPs, resulting in the suspension of you email account?
Nothing will happen, if people don’t stand up and push back.
MPs are empty vessels – you have to fill them with truthful facts that they can understand, instead of this fantasy Woke nonsense (which appears very appealing regards votes at the next election).
R
Thanks for sharing your letter ralf. The detail you give is at the standard I should expect from government to explain the practicalities of their net-zero policies. I suspect that your letters will be quickly shredded as they start to look a bit dim.
Do we laugh or cry over these of your comments?
Another 120 Dinorwigs, An extra 140 Hornsea-3 size wind farms, 10 Hinkley Points nuclear by 2050, 1/3 of present electrical generation capacity to make Hydrogen.
Littlejohn of the Daily Mail, would have a field day with these gems.
I am heartened that this Climate Change Committee boss was sacked a month after I specifically complained about them and him. Hopefully, there are some MPs who listen to my lonely crying in the wilderness.
I also wrote scathing letters about the reports from the Royal Society and Oxford University, which were equally pathetic. So I hope we shall see some more dismissals.
The Royal Society report championed hydrogen for energy storage, but their report:
a. Underestimated costs by an order of magnitude.
b. Admitted that hydrogen batteries were only 30% efficient.
c. Forgot to add in a large amount of extra wind generation, to cover the missing 70%.
d. Did not fully explain whether their calculations for storage were twh(e) or twh(t), which made a nonsense of their report.
e = electricity, t = thermic.
The civil service has a habit of doing this. In the annual UK energy consumption report, they claimed that nuclear was 15 gw on average. When I questioned this absurd figure, they said that this was gw(t) not gw(e).
Hey, government children and dunces – I don’t want to know how much energy is going up the cooling towers….!
Ralph
If they had any sense, they should have made units greater than zero in capitals, and units less than zero in lower case.
At least that would have some logic.
R
1. Well said, Ralph! This dangerous and futile stupidity must be checked and nullified as soon as possible.
2. We should also consider the failure of wind in summer. If memory serves, the summer of 1976 gave the UK a drought of rain but also of wind of some 60 days’ duration. Apply a typical engineering safety factor of at least 1.5 and you need a minimum of about 100 days of storage. Fortunately demand in summer tends to be lower than in winter, but as we move towards a more-electric economy summer demand will rise thereby increasing the storage requirement too.
Regards, John.
The only good thing about one of these reports (I think the Royal Society) is that they identified wind and solar deficiencies for some complete years. In fact, wind has been reducing over the last (I think) five or so years.
So they rightly identified that these missing percentages for complete years (say 10%) would also need backup. So the stored backup requirements may well balloon to 100 twh, not the 20 twh I calculated. Now that would be a problem, with costs increasing 5-fold.
Note that the Royal Society claimed costs as £410 billion, for complete electrification of all the UK, including transport, space heating, and industry. This included:
Complete solar and wind generation (20,000 15 mw turbines)
A new electric grid system (cenralised in Yorkshire)
30 gw of hydrogen electrolysers.
Vast deionised water facilities
800 hydrogen storage caverns to be excavated.
60 new 2 gw power stations (burning hydrogen)
My costing, based upon current build-costs, was £4.2 trillion.
R
ralfellis: the hydrogen caverns already exist, they are the salt caverns under Cheshire. That is what they say anyhow.
Hydrogen is better used in fuel cells than burning it, double the efficiency.
Also you are forgetting those good old excuses, demand management, dynamic pricing and interconnectors (i.e importing power).
KZ
There are not many suitable salt caverns in Cheshire. They are too shallow, and are already being used for storage of British Museum artifacts, and government documentation.
All the large salt caverns are at least 2,000 ft down around the eastcoast centered on Yorkshire. Presently there are a dozen at most, and that number needs to be increased to 800, which is a huge engineering project. (Which is why the electrolysers and new power stations will probably be centered on Yorkshire.)
The caverns are pressurised to 2,500 psi, to generate a super-critical fluid of hydrogen. But since hydrogen can escape from any vessel, the caverns have to be at least 2,000 ft down, to prevent widespread leakage. You would not want hydrogen percolating into your home or business.
Still not convinced that these caverns will be hydrogen-tight.
R
I do several talks on these topics.
Here is one on the Local Council climate indoctrination seminars.
Ralph
Ralph, a stunning take-down and one worth saving. However, if you will forgive a small bit of detail which others not so keen on your good work would focus on: you must be consistent and accurate in the use of abbreviations like kWh or MWh (instead of mwh) etc. Then again, I doubt any audience in Westwinster would realise the difference between MWh and mw. Cheers!
I have never agreed with those designations – I think we need a revolution here.
Why are Mega and Giga held in such esteem, verses the lowly kilo, hecto, hour, or gram?
Why are Watt, Ampere, and Kelvin given proper-names capitalisation, when we are not talking about Mr Watt, Ampere, or Kelvin? Not even the poor old speed of light gets a capital.
It is like Egyptologists getting a proper name, when we are not talking about Egypt. They are merely egyptologists, just like historians are merely historians.
R
If they had any sense, they should have made units greater than zero in capitals, and units less than zero in lower case.
At least that would have some logic.
R
Harry it really is not a minor detail to be brushed aside as Ralf is trying to. As you know the difference between mW and MW is a factor of one billion – ralf is risking ridicule by not correcting it. Pity.
Knowing the Royal Society, I would not be surprised if they might use milliwatts.
R
This is somewhat undermined by using lower case for units which should be in upper case.
“mw” is usually understood as “milliwatts”, which I am sure is not what you mean (although the w should really be upper case, i.e. mW)
Similarly it’s not gw and gwh it is GW and GWh.
I’m afraid this subtracts from what is otherwise an educational piece for many.
have never agreed with those designations – I think we need a revolution here.
Why is Mega held in such esteem, verses the lowly kilo, hour or gram?
Why are Watt, Ampere and Kelvin given proper-names capitalisation, when we are not talking about Mr Watt, Ampere, or Kelvin? Not even the poor old speed of light gets a capital.
It is like Egyptologists getting a proper name, when we are not talking about Egypt. They are merely egyptologists.
R
I’m afraid you’ve undermined it even more now. A professional can’t make up their own unit symbols because they don’t like the internationally recognised symbols !
I have never agreed with those designations – I think we need a revolution here.
Why are Mega and Giga held in such esteem, verses the lowly kilo, hecto, hour, or gram?
Why are Watt, Ampere, and Kelvin given proper-names capitalisation, when we are not talking about Mr Watt, Ampere, or Kelvin? Not even the poor old speed of light gets a capital.
It is like Egyptologists getting a proper name, when we are not talking about Egypt. They are merely egyptologists, just like historians are merely historians.
R
If they had any sense, they should have made units greater than zero in capitals, and units less than zero in lower case.
At least that would have some logic.
R
KZ
Idiocy must be challenged wherever idiocy is found, even in S.I., otherwise idiocy will prevail.
You could prostrate yourself before the conclusions of the CCC report, if you wish, but appeasing the idiots will not foster rational thought nor logical arguments.
R
I think I would simply quote the Royal Society study that found a need for 123 TWh of storage at them. Point out that it’s based on optimistic assumptions, and implies over 13,000 Dinorwigs, an unaffordable £61.5trillion in batteries every 10 years, and even their hydrogen alternative assumes costs snd performance of wind and electrolysis that do not reflect reality., and are likely infeasible, especially since it takes a decade to leach a salt cavern and the brine must be transported and disposed of.
Indeed.
But I am still not sure if they were referring to 120 twh(e) or 120 twh(t).
When using hydrogen ‘batteries’, the electric value would only be 30% of the thermic value.
R
With all the increases in demand for electricity as fossil fuels are phased out for heating and transport, I think we are likely to need nearer 20,000 gwh for just a 10 day dunkelflaute. You could also point out that there isn’t enough copper in the world to transform the grid and connect all these wind turbines to it. There aren’t enough engineers to do the work in the next 50 years. Just installing the heat pumps we are told we need would take current installers around 400 years. It just isn’t going to happen. The emperor has no clothes.
There is an obvious reason why the government departments are quite happy to agree these obscene salaries- the MPs and staff involved are simply lining up potential opportunities to jump on the gravy train themselves. It has been the fastest growing and most lucrative sector we have seen so far in the 21st century.