Europe’s green taxes risk destroying jobs and industry, Sir Jim Ratcliffe warns
By Paul Homewood
h/t Doug Brodie
Meanwhile, back in the real world:
Europe’s green taxes are driving away investment and risk destroying its €1 trillion (£860bn) chemicals industry, Sir Jim Ratcliffe has warned.
In an open letter to Ursula von der Leyen, Sir Jim, the chairman and founder of Ineos, said Europe was “sleepwalking towards offshoring its industry, jobs, investments, and emissions”.
Sir Jim said the four key global regions for chemical manufacture were the US, Middle East, China and Europe. But soaring energy prices and net zero policies aimed at cutting emissions meant the Continent was “struggling” while the others flourished.
In a separate speech at the European Industry Summit on Tuesday, Sir Jim said: “The cost of gas in Europe is five times more expensive than in America. And electricity is still four times the price in Europe as in America. We in the chemicals world have to pay for that.
“Carbon taxes, … are a burden that manufacturers in Europe have to carry, but they don’t apply to imports. If you look at Ineos today, we’re paying about €150m, but by 2030 that would rise to €2bn. That’s just not sustainable.”
Sir Jim’s accompanying open letter to Ms von der Leyen warned that without changes in policy there would be “little left” of the European chemicals industry.
He added: “The trajectory for European chemicals has been declining for 20 years. Once the largest chemical sector in the world, it has seen no large builds during this time, unlike the USA, China and the Middle East.
“Unless the European government addresses high energy costs, carbon taxes and renewal there will be little left in another 20 years.”
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I might become a Man United supporter if he carries on like this.
Sir Jim is playing in the common sense league and knows what he’s talking about, unlike climate-obsessed EU commissars.
Sir Jim’s just committed to killing one sixth of the UK’s refinery (Grangemouth), a real self infected wound there, deluded Greenies must love him. I’ll happily burn down his new stadium.
That’s very ignorant comment camacdon18 since Sir Jim is running a profitable business and there have been questions over the costs at Grangemouth for a number of years. Refinery capacity is shrinking because the government make it too expensive in the UK hence when Coryton was sold it became a fuel depot.
Communist China has been driving the Green Agenda through its proxies and useful idiots for decades, to break western economies.
Precisely, Mrs Green. As he says, in essence, when a country off-shores its emissions it off-shores its jobs (and its wealth).
In an open letter to Ursula von der Leyen, Sir Jim, the chairman and founder of Ineos, said Europe was “sleepwalking towards offshoring its industry, jobs, investments, and emissions”.
He is too late with his warning. The sleepwalking started many years ago.
I’m doubtful sleepwalking is involved
True – deliberate policy in accordance with instructions from UN/WEF.
From GWPF Net Zero Watch this morning…
https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/ccc-deceived-parliament-and-british-people
Deliberate policy. Indirect, but deliberate. It strikes me they have a single, tunnel vision policy of ‘reducing CO2 emissions’ by any means, and be damned with the consequences of any action to achieve that.
We can but hope that the next EU Parliament is right wing or far right and rejects Usually Fond of Lying’s plan for another 5 years as EU president. Worth noting that her own German MEPs thought so lowly of her as to abstain last time and she only just scraped through.
That is what they are for……..
Onward comrades with our plan for the destruction of Western Civilization which was born in the 1930’s in (The Frankfurt School) and is being run with by more and more useful idiots every day.
When a civilisation decides to commit suicide there is nothing to be done and it usually follows a similar trajectory. Decadence, falling birthrate , failing military prowess , tolerance of sexual perversion – then the Goths and Vandals sack it. Chinese, Russians and Muslims this time probably.
They already ticked box three. Interesting to hear the woke idiots who front most media outlets talking about the “pro Palestinian” marches that the UK is blighted with every Saturday without acknowledging how many millions of them we have imported and look..who would have guessed, look who comprise the majority of those marching ( aside from the guaranteed virtuous Caucasian useful idiots walk along side, dressed as they are in a celebration of hydrocarbons covered in tattoos, piercings and an air of overall weirdness.
Box 2 is an interesting one. There are A LOT OF them. Now, to get out of China you need a visa…..and a reason….. Come to Norway the number of Chinese is compelling. What is going on (with our soft boil brained politicians complicity)? Could it be that the permanent bureaucracy in every Western Country has been captured and the clowns we call politicians just provide cover for them? If so then Douglas Adams described this in HHGG when he described Zaphod Beeblebrox as a guy who became president to take people’s attention away from those who were really running things…..ho hummmmm.
PMFB – If those marches had been led by a certain person calledRobinson the plod would have been in like Flynn.
As a Vet myself I can really feel for the way our armed forces are being hollowed out – many to be replaced by those who only want to DEI for their country.
In an open letter to Ursula von der Leyen, Sir Jim, the chairman and founder of Ineos, said Europe was “sleepwalking towards offshoring its industry, jobs, investments, and emissions”.
Or poverty and economic misery on a continent wide scale.
Net Zero will destroy the economy and do away with the vast majority of jobs. There is no “right way” to destroy the economy.
Who would have thought that Mad Max 2 was an educational film about our future.
Sir Jim is dead correct. He has closed one refinery in Scotland, the great Welsh blast furnace is or soon will be history. We are heading down into the great unknown where our energy will so expensive for any manufacturing to compete on the global stage. If Sir flip flop wins and stops oil and gas exploration the end will be even quicker.
It hard not to see Labour creating a financial crisis fairly quickly as the global markets react badly to their overspending policies. Just remind me again how many times the non-dom tax has been spent ignoring the fact that they will only get it once or twice if they are slow to depart. The tax extracted from the private schools will barley touch the sides of the cost increases in state education as numbers rise.
Truly, those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.
They first make SOCIALIST! But isn’t that the same thing?
The Socialistic manifest Agenda 2030 …
Shocjk. Horrah. You don’t say!
Yet if you read his book he sounded fully signed up to greenery.
I’m just shaking my head at all this. Take a long and proper look at our recent local elections: … and where did the liberals go? the greens? and if they didn’t really want to vote for a reform, why not then just give the MRL Party a hefty vote – surely they have at least more experience than what is sitting in Parliament this now ?
Seven MRL Party Achievements.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/usvsth3m/7-monster-raving-loony-party-5644717
Seems they are probably more effective than some others!
So am I clever or am I Daft? 7. Abolition of the 11 plus exam ….
Yes I’ve browsed the link, Finger on the Pulse? Ask any Vehicle driver who “has to listen” to the Radio day in day out to break the monotony of 20’s Plenty in the field and on the road ( even now in rural Scotland’s villages) EU gave us eventually the Hi-speed tractors we so long craved, but now we are really going back to the dark ages.
Two things come to mind at this late stage in this Comments column:
One: the Green Party itself seems not to understand that no fracking, no more licensing for oil and gas exploration and a willingness to impose high fuel costs on the manufacturing sector – jobs go overseas – and the domestic consumer – retail sector enfeebled – seriously compromises our living standards.
Two: a growing number of MPs say that they will not stand at the general election. Perhaps their replacements will be better informed about the chimera of Zero Carbon and all that goes with it. Ed Milliband and his generation seemed to have no idea where they were taking the economy. Self righteous ignorance and virtue signalling writ large.
well, those MPs not standing, are the Rats deserting the sinking ship IMHO, they ( in the words of some wordsmith about our SNP/ Labour in the current Chamber fiasco wrt Gaza ) – Have not got the SPINE to stand up and discuss current domestic issues ( ie this stuff ). ( run away to see another day)
I’m suggesting that the leavers may take their ignorance with them.
What really bugs me is who the F is Ursula Van der Leyen – apart from being a baby factory?
Nobody in Europe voted for her. She really represents nobody. The UK left the EU to get away from this sort of crap. She should be totally bypassed and the individual heads of state contacted.
Ray, you’ve B**Well said what I didn’t dare say about her….. so it’s the Pedigree of them …. saying no more here …. So long as there are self deluded Stags around in the EU ….. and I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments. Bravo.
And if any EU country head of state says “talk to my EU hand”, they are spineless and have ended democracy in their country. You are right, UVdL should be completely ignored.
C’mon Ray, see Wikipedia’s extensive entry. U v d Leyen was not well regarded by her countrymen and others before being moved upstairs.
I dare say Ratcliffe will gain a few plaudits for closing down Grangemouth Oil Refinery, to the general detriment of the Scottish economy but it might further our attempts to meet some specious “climate targets”. This is the only UK refinery supplied by pipeline from domestically produced crude so it’s a strategic asset. Scotland and a good chunk of Northern England gets it’s diesel from a source fairly insulated from the vagaries of geopolitics. So obviously that’s got to go!
I notice that Sir Jim’s personal fortune is up a decent £15billion over the last 5 years, I dare say killing Grangemouth sends a message to the rest of his workforce.
If all industrial manufacturing shuts down due to Climate Crazy punitive taxes, where are all the mythical Green jobs going to come from?
All Europe and GB are doing is raising industrial output in China, India, Vietnam etc, increasing living standards in those countries while simultaneously destroying the very economic base they rely on at “home”. It would not surprise me if in ten years the East faces the same migrant problem Europe currently faces, people desperate to get to China etc. in order to earn a living, be it at starvation wages.
We are sacrificing Europe to a cult belief that has no proven scientific basis just a theory and a computer “model” – if the science exists it can be proven by scientific experiment, time and time again- no such proof exists.
UK one per cent. CO2 doesn’t affect the weather
UK one per cent. CO2 doesn’t affect the weather
In the UK, real political change in the short term re “net zero” needs a single issue party to stand at the next GE. Perhaps that single issue could be “no deceit” .
This is not a potential risk it is actually happening right now.I work in the oil and petrochemical industry and it is the worst period I have ever known.
Britain has already lost two thirds of its petrochemical businesses and is likely to loose more. Just look at Teesside- it is now an industrial waste land.
The Grangemouth refinery is due to close in 2025. Most of this is due to idiotic policies on carbon emissions, and yet we have to import finished products even before Grangemouth closes.