By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
Manufacturers have warned that high levels of discounting for electric cars cannot continue “indefinitely” amid a downturn in household sales.
Electric vehicle sales rose overall by around 6pc in May, compared to a year earlier, taking their share of the market from 16.9pc to 17.6pc.
That represented a faster rate of growth than the entire car market but the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) warned that the majority of the sales are still to businesses and are being boosted by aggressive price-cutting.
Discounting has reached record highs this year, with the average price cut on a new electric vehicle reaching 10.6pc in April, according to online dealer Auto Trader.
Despite this, the share of EVs sold to private consumers fell from 20.2pc to 18.6pc in May – continuing a trend seen in previous months.
By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
A slow-motion collapse in the offshore wind industry continues to grow as sticky inflation and supply chain challenges force developers to delay or cancel major projects. In particular, progress towards the Biden administration’s goal of building large amounts of floating wind off the northeastern US coast is just about stalled.
Shell, which invested in a series of offshore wind projects in recent years, including offshore the northeastern United States, announced last week it would lay off much of its offshore wind business staff as the oil giant advances its program of refocusing on its core oil and gas business.
“We are concentrating on select markets and segments to deliver the most value for our investors and customers,” a Shell spokesperson told Bloomberg. “Shell is looking at how it can continue to compete for offshore wind projects in priority markets while maintaining our focus on performance, discipline and simplification.”
Wind turbine maker Siemens Gamesa announced even bigger layoffs, saying it would cut 15 per cent of its global staff to adjust to a slowing market. The announcement comes after the company reported a €4.6 billion loss for 2023, a losing trend that has continued over the first half of 2024…..
Hottest May! Believe Us, Not Your Lying Eyes!
By Paul Homewood
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command"
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https://x.com/metoffice/status/1797631245666423247
The Met Office has now shredded the last bit of credibility it had.
By Paul Homewood
Roger Pielke Jr has long challenged the fraudulent “billion dollar” disaster disinformation campaign.
Now he has gone one step further with this peer reviewed paper:
Abstract
For more than two decades, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has published a count of weather-related disasters in the United States that it estimates have exceeded one billion dollars (inflation adjusted) in each calendar year starting in 1980. The dataset is widely cited and applied in research, assessment and invoked to justify policy in federal agencies, Congress and by the U.S. President. This paper performs an evaluation of the dataset under criteria of procedure and substance defined under NOAA’s Information Quality and Scientific Integrity policies. The evaluation finds that the “billion dollar disaster” dataset falls short of meeting these criteria. Thus, public claims promoted by NOAA associated with the dataset and its significance are flawed and at times misleading. Specifically, NOAA incorrectly claims that for some types of extreme weather, the dataset demonstrates detection and attribution of changes on climate timescales. Similarly flawed are NOAA’s claims that increasing annual counts of billion dollar disasters are in part a consequence of human caused climate change. NOAA’s claims to have achieved detection and attribution are not supported by any scientific analysis that it has performed. Given the importance and influence of the dataset in science and policy, NOAA should act quickly to address this scientific integrity shortfall.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44304-024-00011-0
Roger has also written an explanatory post here.
No Potatoes, Warns Irish Times
By Paul Homewood
I though the British press was bad enough!
The latest climate change predictions for Ireland – with temperatures no higher than 10 degrees in summer, and as low as -15 in winter – would have a disastrous impact on agriculture. A climate similar to Iceland’s would make it impossible to grow vegetables such as potatoes and carrots, which means that food prices will soar.
Labour’s energy plan doesn’t add up
By Paul Homewood
So, we have a little more flesh on the bones of Labour’s energy policy, with the party giving more details of Great British Energy, the state-owned company it wants to set up to invest in wind and solar energy. But there are still gaping holes in Labour’s promise to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030 – and save consumers money in the process.
First to note is that Labour seems drastically to have toned down the claims as to how much its energy policies will supposedly save consumers. Until today it was claiming that it would save us ‘up to £1,400’ a year. Given that under Ofgem’s price cap the average household is currently paying £1,690 a year on a dual gas and electricity bill, and that this is due to fall to £1,568 in July, this did seem a little unlikely – it was based on the very high energy prices of the winter 2022/23. Labour’s new claim is that it will save us £300 a year. But it also claims: ‘Labour pledges that Great British Energy will cut energy bills for good, as families face threat of £900 annual energy price spikes under the Tories.’
By Paul Homewood
h/t Russell Hicks
You could not make it up!!
What a pathetic excuse! There was no reason at all why this announcement had to be made in Scotland, other than sheer politicking.
And there was certainly no reason why it could not have been made a few hours later, allowing him to travel by train.
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
According to former motoring journalist, now Net Zero lobbyist, Quentin Willson, slow consumer take-up of EVs is due to “myths and misinformation”. Concerns about fires, battery degradation, range, charging and servicing costs are all groundless, the former Top Gear host claims, or easily fixable by policy. “By 2035, if we enact the right policies and the right information for consumers, it will be achievable,” he claimed, alluding to the ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars by that year. His comments – evidence given to a recent Select Committee on Transport session – appear to be driven by green ideology and funding from the usual Green Blob suspects.
Full story here.
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
Sir Patrick Vallance has thrown his support behind Labour’s green energy proposals, warning that the race to net zero should be treated with the same immediacy as the search for a Covid vaccine.
Sir Patrick, who became a household name during the pandemic as Britain’s chief scientific adviser, backed Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to decarbonise Britain’s electricity supplies by 2030.
“I am often asked which of Britain’s many pressing public policy challenges need a vaccine-style approach,” he said.
“I believe that one such priority is the urgent need to end the era of excessive carbon emissions, high energy bills and energy insecurity by accelerating the net zero transition to clean, homegrown energy.”
I’ll leave it to the commenters!
Labour’s Great British Energy Sham
By Paul Homewood
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It sounds like it is the SNP who have really rumbled Starmer’s Great British Energy sham:
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LABOUR’S plans for a “home-grown energy company” have unravelled spectacularly after Keir Starmer was forced to admit Great British Energy was “not an energy company”.
The SNP have branded the flagship pledge a “sham” after Starmer dramatically scaled back Labour’s plans during a visit to Scotland on Friday.
Speaking to BBC Good Morning Scotland, Starmer admitted the publicly-owned company would be an “investment vehicle” to pump money into the private sector.
He said: “It’d be an investment vehicle, not an energy company, it’s an investment vehicle in the energy of the future.
“The money going into it would be public money but used to trigger private investment alongside it.”
The Labour leader said he expected it to be profitable and that it would create jobs.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 