The cheapest way to produce electricity (in history) is by solar. When compared to gas, wind and coal and taking into account the cost of panels, extraction, production plants, finance and maintenance as well as fuel prices (solar and wind are free!) solar is the cheapest.
However the price of fuel to the consumer tracks the price of the most expensive, so even if you get some green energy, you will still have high energy bills.
People complain about subsidies for green energy but they are outweighed by subsidies for fossil fuels, which cover pipelines, excavation and production as well as reducing the price direct to the consumer. The tax payer is giving money to companies who make $billions in profits. When implicit costs of fossil fuels to the environment and health are added in, we discover that the tax payer covers the oil billionaires to the tune of $7 trillion per year, far outweighing subsidies to renewables by miles.
People talk about withdrawing subsidies to green energy because they are now making money; subsidies to fossil fuels are continuing though the profits are in the $billions.
Not only are we giving fossil fuels money to cover some of the cost of production and artificially make them cheaper than renewables; industry is also using these $millions to block green energy policies, block investment in renewables and to spread climate denial misinformation!
What happened to bankrupt Germany? Only 6% of its energy came from nuclear making the cost of upkeep uneconomic. Neither closing nuclear nor its green policies were involved in bankrupting Germany, the cause was years of de-industrialisation, funding a proxy war (directly lining the pockets of the oil and arms industries) and cutting themselves off from affordable gas from Russia to avoid over-reliance on them. Germany has now made itself reliant on LNG from the States instead. The US blew up some NS1 pipelines as well as NS2 to ensure that the Germans didn’t change their minds, and created an enormous release of methane into the bargain.
Rising inflation and the unfunding of public services is caused by enriching a few tax and liability dodging, heavily subsidised wealthy industries at the expense of everyone else.
If we stop funding the profits and covering the cost of emissions of fossil fuels, divest them from savings and pensions, not only would they become uneconomic and unable to continue polluting, this money could be invested into grid infrastructure and EV charge points. Abandoning net zero and saying it’s OK to do so is demented nonsense. Actual net zero, not industry bullshit net zero, will save money as renewables become cheaper and cheaper as the market expands, as well as helping to save the planet.
When taking into account imports as well as territorial emissions, the UK accounts for about 2.7% of emissions, even though we are only 0.08% of the population. What we do matters.
However, we’ve left it too late. From the Environmental Journal in September;
‘Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s declaration that current UK green targets risk bankrupting a nation fails to take responsibility for financial failings at leadership level.
You could easily argue that over the past 15 years of austerity-based governance, British politics has adopted a policy of toe-dipping. Our elected representatives test waters of change via off-the-cuff statements about flagship policies, and media leaks from ‘anonymous sources’. Depending on responses, they may formally act, or not.
So the idea Prime Minister Rishi Sunak may now back peddle on a range of net zero pledges was inevitable. According to Home Secretary Suella Braverman, the UK can’t really afford to meet environmental goals in the allotted time. The impact on finances would be too great for the public and essential services to cope with, having endured rocketing inflation, cost of living, energy bills, and the economic fallout of a pandemic since 2020.
The tragedy is, the only way out of all those situations involves correcting the past. Not least healthcare. The NHS has been underfunded for so long few can remember anything else, and that shortfall long-since reached devastating proportions. Doing nothing before means we need to do a lot now, very quickly. And so the very real spectre of systemic failure appears.
Perhaps if things had been different in the past, the economic pain of (fake) Covid-19 (which lined the pockets of pharma and their friends in government to the tune of $billions) would have also been easier to carry, as it has been for other countries with better financed hospitals and clearer evidence of a bounce back today. It’s a chilling mirror image of net zero. A huge leap we knew was coming by the end of the last millennium, the very survival of ecosystems now hangs in national bank balances, and countries would be much further down the line had they not shirked responsibility during administrations gone by.
Those keeping an eye on the cross section of environmental and political news will have seen this coming. In 2023 alone, we’ve heard non-stop arguments among cabinet ministers as to whether their own party’s green policies are realistic. But lifting the velvet curtain for closer examination of Westminster’s machinations reveals just what a mess we’re in.
At Environment Journal recent months have seen us focus on redundant ‘levelling up’ promises independent analysis shows fail to embrace the potential of turning sites of old industry into green tech powerhouses. Certainly not at the scale we need to rebalance regional inequalities, let alone compete in net zero global economics. And we’ve monitored countless studies criticising slow rollout of electric vehicle (EV) charge points. Disproportionately favouring London and the South East is one thing, but even those regions and their large populations are well behind where they need to be if a 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel car sales could realistically be achieved.
In June, we ‘celebrated’ Clean Air Day like it was a positive, rather than an organisational-level attempt to raise awareness about the fact most of us are still breathing-in dangerous levels of greenhouse gases. The fact our op-ed focused on a protest against Theresa Villiers, Environment Secretary under the Conservative Party between 2019 and 2020, and her role in allowing the spread of climate disinformation, is another case in point.
More recently, the Bill to prevent local authorities from making procurement choices based on human rights and environmental justice doesn’t look like a very green agenda. And, after successive court battles in which the Government has been forced to defend its environmental failings, this week a new legal fight has been tabled for the very public failure to tackle the raw sewage dumping undoing decades of coastal clean-ups in the late-20th Century.
Of course, the idea that net zero is going to be very, very expensive is bang on the money. As is the notion that UK finances are in a precarious place. Just yesterday, Birmingham City Council leaders stood aside for Downing Street to take control of England’s second city-proper by population size. Mismanaged for a long time, that doesn’t explain why more councils are predicted to file Section 114 orders to the same effect before January.
After years of deep cuts in the name of rebuilding Britain’s reserves and economic resilience, what cash local leaderships are given is no longer enough to provide the most basic services, debts have been mounting and credit is running out. This is despite spending on average 20% less today than in 2010. Quite how much more is expected to be reined-in is anyone’s guess. Sadly, the UK’s coffers don’t seem to have benefited from any of this, with national debt now higher than it was pre-austerity.
The numbers always take inflation into account, and so should we. Leaving politics for a second, we’ve seen in entertainment, music and hospitality what happens when things take several calendars to complete. Costs associated with running a venue or a festival today are up to 40% higher than 2019, hence so many in these sectors going bankrupt or cancelling plans after reopening. With such levels of inflation, honouring tickets for gigs scheduled before lockdowns began isn’t easy. So, is it any wonder projects and infrastructure to move 67million people towards net zero also now look much, much less affordable?
Nevertheless, at least some blame for this should be levelled at Number 10. Or rather 11. Almost 12 months ago to this day then-Prime Minister Liz Truss and renegade Chancellor Kwasi Kwartang unveiled economic doomsday with a ‘non-budget’. Markets spun out, pensions were almost lost, and the duo responsible were forced out of office, while the public was left with increased mortgage and loan repayments.
Now beginning to ease, it’s hard not to wonder why inflation has looked significantly higher in the UK, and for longer, than many comparable countries. Even post-Truss, criticism has been widespread over ineffective fiscal policies that fail to take the steps needed to regain control.
In 2019, then-Bank of England Governor Mark Carney quipped that businesses ignoring climate change were doomed to bankruptcy (banks may well end up invested in stranded assets such as coal production in the US which dropped by 90%). Surely the same applies to governments? We have seen, time and again, how pledges and speeches fade into grey memory, and directives are updated, watered down, made more ‘realistic’. A cycle of inaction which is the root cause of boiling anger levels among scientists. Not to mention campaigners now handed criminal sentences for causing economic disruption in bid to force stubborn hands.
The countdown to a world only partially liveable has already begun, and seen in this context a lifetime’s worth of non-commitment offers only one lesson. When you skirt subjects and decisiveness, preferring u-turns to straight lines, boasting green credentials while handing out new fossil fuel licenses and subsidising polluters, the overall bill for environmental progress really does start to look impossibly high within the timeframe. Of course dates can easily be moved, providing you’re willing to detract from the predictions and modelling of a scientific community all-but-ignored for a generation.’
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PS. Although I do value freedom of speech on Substack; I am sick of hearing the same old, tired old tropes of climate denial that I’ve addressed over and over (such as the ‘Medieval warm’ period; very localised and not hotter than today) and the ‘have you considered the effects of Milankovitch cycles and volcanoes’. Yes I have.
Climate is not like covid; there is no censorship of climate dissent at all. Quite the opposite. It’s actively funded by industry who have turned carbon taxes into vote losers and now neither right nor left dare touch them.
I am also tired of hearing that the hypocrisy of COP 28 shows that climate change isn’t real. Yes the promoting of investment in carbon capture is a money maker for big oil as it a allows them to greenwash at the same time as being able to extract more oil (over 80% of captured Co2 is released again into the bargain) and continue to burn it. We know the whole discussion has been perverted by industry. However the scientific evidence for climate change doesn’t have to answer to puffed-up numbnuts who have found that flying around the world telling other people what to do makes them feel important.
The richest 1% are responsible for 25% of emissions. I’m sure they know this but don’t want to give up their lavish lifestyles. Who would? In the global north we feel we deserve them, whatever they’re doing to the global south. That’s why we get so defensive about climate change. Perhaps the rich feel it’s their calling to have private jets so they can spread the word of climate change to the masses. Deluded Di Caprio has actually said something very similar to this.
As it stands the plan is to replace with electric power and delicious organic plant foods, not to give anything up. As GDP rises and women are emancipated, the birth rate and populations naturally decrease. When women are allowed into positions of power they also tend to be greener than men. The plan could work.
Whatever the problems with electric transition and population decrease, which everyone is aware of thank you, the fact that big oil and animal ag/pharma/pertrochemicals is refusing to let go, is going to scupper everything.
If you repeat to me the deliberately put about industry scam that falling populations (due to greater equality between men and women), and a future free from fossil fuels, factory-farming, pharma, fertilisers, famines, floods and a thermaggedon is a left wing plot by the UN/the WEF/Jews to control and bankrupt us, I will block you.
After income tax, taxes on petrol are the government's biggest source of revenue. That might have something to do with their love affair with fossil fuels. Its a lot more difficult to tax solar power. Other than a sales tax on the panels the rest is free....