The green squeeze

telemachus'

The governments role in energy needs to be to drive down the crippling bills the poor have to pay and abolish the crime of fuel poverty. Why do we all need to feed the pockets of greedy energy shareholders? Is there a role for looking at re-nationalisation?

David Boycott

Subsidies are always wrong. Their benefits are concentrated, so there is a huge lobbying power for their creation and maintenance. They are therefore very difficult to withdraw.

This is bad enough in any case, but in this instance, where we want to find alternatives to fossil fuels, it is extremely bad. The government has bet the farm on wind power, yet there are millions of potential alternatives, some of which would undoubtedly be vastly superior to wind power.

A tax on the bad stuff would have encouraged research and development of these potential alternatives. A subsidy on wind power simply helps price other potentially better alternatives out of the market.

porkbelly

How much research will it take to solve the whole sun-going-down-at-night problem?

Heartless Curmudgeon

An equation to help solve this puzzle may be :

(Total Common Sense) / (H2B + ecoloons) = ∞

Where 1 H2B has a cognitive equivalent of 0.1 ecoloons and a PR quotient of 0.5 Merkozys.

Robert Christopher

"How much research will it take to solve the whole sun-going-down-at-night problem?"

The Spanish solved it by using diesel/petrol driven generators. It was also how they were caught: solar power generation, and subsidies, at night!

Fergus Pickering

Is there a role for looking at renationalisation? Telemachus, how could you write a sentence like that? Do you think in lego-chunks.

Sally Forth

Good for the Germans. If it is as big a middle class subsidy over there as it is here I'm glad they're questioning it. High guaranteed returns for those with large lump sums hanging around so that those that haven't can pay more for their fuel.Only a true Green could fail to notice just how deeply regressive this is. Classic self righteous ideology - the end justifies highly unacceptable means.

Now, if they want low cost and efficient green energy (not as oxymoronic as it sounds)they should check out developments in hydrogen fuel cells.I know of some being tested in Germany right now. What's more we could use them as well on our shale gas.We might yet square this circle.

Nickle

How much research will it take to solve the whole sun-going-down-at-night problem?

==========

The Germans have already solved this.

You get your neighbour who isn't on PV tariffs to turn on his arc lights, so your PV cells work. That way you collect the high price, and he pays a low price. It's everyone else who isn't in on the scam who funds it all.

PV cells do work at night. It's the ultimate perpetual money making scheme.

PS. It's more efficient if you just rewire his house into yours, and say its PV generated.

Trapped

Not so sure about re-nationalisation, but I can definitely see a case for turning the energy market into one more akin to how BT is aggressively held in check by Ofcom. Ultimately the problem is that the energy companies have been given too much leeway, if they were given the marching orders in relation to price increases and the number of possible tariffs, it'd probably result in the best of both worlds.

TrevorsDen

An appalling catalogue of lies are being perpetrated on a dim and gullible public and the likes of the BBC are cruelly and bigotedly leading the charge. There is no such thing as man made global warming so the 130 billion euros have not even saved a single second of warming.

daniel maris

Firstly, let's dispense with the rather odd idea that the Germans are in a state of energy anarchy. From Wikipedia:

"The German government has set a target of 66 GW of installed solar PV capacity by 2030,[6] to be reached with an annual increase of 2.5–3.5 GW.[7]" So, all the German government will have been saying here is that they have exceeded the target. (Which kind of goes against the idea put about by some that the German targets are impossible.)

daniel maris

Porkbelly -

Probably not as much as you think. People are working on infrared panels which will convert nightime infrared radiation into energy in the same when that conventional PV panels work on other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.

daniel maris

David Boycott,

There are hardly "Millions" of alternatives. There are a handful: hydro, solar, tidal, sea current, wave, energy from waste, bio fuels and bio mass, geothermal...that's about it.

Photovoltaic panelling is one of the most expensive - but it has the advantage of being sited close to where it is consumed and also, that it can be built on to existing roof space in many cases.

Cold fusion might be about to break out...we will see.

But wind energy is going to be a major component of any green energy strategy.

libertarian

@telemachus

Seeing as a huge proportion of the cost of energy is made up of green levies, duties, tax and vat nationalising the energy suppliers wouldn't do a thing to help those in fuel poverty.

Phil Chuds

Two words . Shale gas .

daniel maris

More nonsense from Lomborg -

The global warming figure (assuming there is the sort of direct connection he implies) is clearly related to global temperatures. If Germany becomes a non-carbon energy based economy then all one can say is they have done their bit and China, the USA or whoever bear teh moral responsibility for further global warming.

daniel maris

We haven't got Lomborg's calculations in front of us, but I would point out that what he has done is take a total figure and lump it into one year - a bit like saying your mortage payments will be £300,000 per annum if you buy a house for £300,000. The reality is that from day one, consumers are getting virtually free electricity from their panels and also earning money from selling electricity back to the grid.

daniel maris

If you took out a ten year loan to buy your panels, I think the average household would
probably be paying something like $10-$30 per annum for this additional capacity over 20 years. But PV Panels can continue functioning well beyond 20 years so the real price is probably much lower even than that.

2trueblue

David Boycott, Subsidies are always wrong, as it distracts the alternatives or logic from moving forward. It is amazing how the 'wind' farms grabbed the pace on all other alternatives. Or not so amazing when you consider that 111 of the 18 on the panel looking at alternative energy were directly involved in windfarms. It should not have happened, and it was on Labours watch. Who are these people?

2trueblue

Daniel maris, why is wind energy going to be a major component of any green strategy? Because we are too soft and stupid to speak the truth. Wind does not work. on the coldest days it does not work. When it works to excess we have no way of harnessing it, in fact it costs us money.
Denmark have been using wind farms for 30 yrs and during that time have not closed one coal fired power station. say it all.

porkbelly

My suspicion is that the best brains are not the scientists trying to find new ways to generate energy from moon waves or unicorn wings, they are instead the businessmen working out new ways to generate money by sticking it to the ever-unfortunate taxpayer.

If ever government subsidies are removed from the equation the whole "green energy" industry would collapse into dust.

daniel maris

2trueblue -

I can see there are arguments over who should benefit from wind energy. Some large landowners have done well out of the system whereas local communities have not benefitted. In Germany rural communities can come together in co-ops to benefit from PV installations.

daniel maris

Telemachus -

There's a painless way to square the circle.

Let's have stamp duty-style levy on house purchases. Say 3%. That is then used to install PV panels (or other renewables) at the purchased house and also to contribute to a general renewables fund to invest in other forms of energy (but with part of the earnings coming back to the home owner).

I don't think this would lead to increased house prices because we are already at the upper limit on house prices. It would be an unusual tax in that the tax payer would then get a direct benefit which would reduce their household outgoings.

Meanwhile the surplus could be used to fund insulation and PV installations on council housing and in public areas.

Fergus Pickering

Dear me, daniel, you are in a fearful lather about all this. Remember you and I will die in not so many years. They're all out to fleece us AND THEY WILL. Trust in God and take short views.

Clear Memories

Long post - lets see if it goes.
Nope - Pt.1
The sixteen names of the scientists who jointly signed the article in The Wall Street Journal, “No Need to Panic About Global Warming” on January 27th are mostly unknown to the general public. Perhaps the best known would be Harrison H. Schmidt, a former Apollo 17 astronaut and U.S. Senator. Others might recognize Burt Rutan, an aerospace engineer and designer of Voyager and SpaceShip One.

Moreover, not only were the signers distinguished scientists, but they came from places like Paris, France and Cambridge, England, Jerusalem, Israel, and Geneva, Switzerland. Mostly climatologists and meteorologists, some were physicists and astrophysicists. Antonio Zichichi, one signer, is president of the World Federation of Scientists. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the combined credentials of these men represent some of the best minds on planet Earth in their respective fields.

Clear Memories

Pt.2
What brought them together? On the surface it was just another of the countless articles that have been published over the years as scientists of real merit and courage took on the juggernaut of those for whom global warming had become a vast flow of government and foundation funding.

The effort was to “prove” that carbon dioxide (CO2) was building up in the atmosphere and would soon incinerate Earth by trapping the heat from the sun. It had not done that in the 5.4 billion years of the Earth’s existence, but the “warmists” claims came day after day and year after year. They permeated every aspect of society and you can go into any school in America and find textbooks still selling this garbage.

daniel maris

Phil Chudds,

I'll up you two:

It will not happen.

Clear Memories

Pt.3

Until, that is, 2009 when thousands of emails between the small clique of scientists working for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were leaked on the Internet and it became clear that even they knew the Earth had entered a cooling cycle around 1998. The challenges to their bogus computer “models” were coming like cannon balls against their academic castles in America and England.

Starting in 2008, The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based 27-year-old, non-profit research organization, sponsored four international conferences on climate change, attracting the top scientists and world leaders courageous enough to speak out against the global warming hoax. The momentum of opposition began to build against those who, from the late 1980s had warned that, in Al Gore’s words, “the world has caught a fever.”

The Wall Street Journal article said, in the plainest language, that candidates for public office “in any contemporary democracy…should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true.”

Clear Memories

Pt.4
In fact, scientists had been signing petitions opposing the global warming hoax for a very long time. The problem was that the mainstream media either paid them no attention or dismissed them as "skeptics" and "deniers".

With a light touch, the Wall Street Journal article noted that “Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over ten years now.” It wasn’t as if the warmists did not know it. It was more like they regarded it as a problem to be solved by changing references to global warming to “climate change.”

Their current dying gasps have to do with warnings about “extreme climate events” that have been occurring for eons; tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, floods and earthquakes; now all routinely attributed to too much carbon dioxide.

The article calmly said, “The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant.” Indeed, more CO2 in the atmosphere is a good thing, aiding increasing crop growth and healthier forests and jungles worldwide.

Clear Memories

The last!

Someone needs to tell that to the Environmental Protection Agency that is striving mightily to shut down coal-fired energy plants for emitting CO2. Add their efforts to do the same to a wide swatch of American industry and you get an agency that is in great need of being abolished.

“There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy.

In time, historians may look back and conclude that the January 27th article was, in fact, global warming’s death certificate, signed by an international group of scientists who could not be disputed no matter how many times the warmists jump up and down and cry that the sky is falling.

It has taken a very long time for most of the public to come to the conclusion that they have been the object of an elaborate hoax. In America polls demonstrate that global warming is at the very bottom of their concerns these days. In time, wind and solar power, electric cars, biofuels, and other environmental delusions will join that list.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

daniel maris

Fergus,

I've no problem if you want to go into the desert and live on roots, ants and honey...

However, I like - indeed love - a great deal about this country, meaning its people and its landscape, and I want the best for us. I've no intention of trusting in God while Ahmadinejad is trusting in God as well.

Some choices are better than others by a mile. Union freedom was better than Confederate slavery. Churchillian defiance was better than Baldwinian appeasement. I believe green energy is better than oil or nuclear by a mile as well.

Yes, I am all lathered up. :@)

daniel maris

Porkbelly -

Well we can agree that if government subsidies including limitless guarantees were removed, the nuclear industry would have to close down overnight. That would be a result.

daniel maris

2trueblue

Do you know anything about the work undertaken in Germany in converting wind and solar energy into storable methane? This makes a nonsense of your argument.

This might help your understanding:

*ttp://www.dw.de/dw/article/2008/0,,15512001,00.html

Herbert Thornton

I haven't the faintest idea whether obtaining energy from solar panels is always going to be prohibitively costly or destined to be a producer of abundant energy very cheaply.

But this article makes a striking contrast to what Mr Forsyth seems to be telling us -

http://hanlonblog.dailymail.co.uk/

xenophon

Leaving aside the (iniquitous) subsidies, how much energy is consumed in manufacturing, delivering and installing a photovoltaic panel?

Will that energy ever be recovered during the working life of the panel?

strapworld

Global warming proved to be a lie, so they changed it to Climate Change. Another lie.
Yet governments such as Cameron's green coalition and here in Australia will do anything so they can show the other disciples of this mangled science how well they are doing. Carbon footprints led to Carbon Tax and it is seriously affecting businesses here in OZ.

So unemployment, created by the carbon tax brought about by the zealots who try to push it down our throats (BBC first and foremost),is obviously considered a price worth paying.

Time for that weak man Cameron to join the Green Party and leave the Conservatives to bring in a leader of substance and one who will reject all this nonsense. Eric Pickles perhaps?

David Ramsbotham

Why are so many politicians obsessed with climate change? An easy vote catcher until it dawns on the electorate that it is yet another pink elephant?

Are you disillusioned by rising electricity prices, over dependence on the "green" dream [especially uneconomical and inefficient wind farms] and the destruction of our countryside then please register your objection to the Government by GOOGLING "E-PETITION 22958" and following the link.

John Clegg

daniel maris

There are hardly "Millions" of alternatives. There are a handful: hydro, solar, tidal, sea current, wave, energy from waste, bio fuels and bio mass, geothermal...that's about it.

You've forgotten my hamster with his little wheel.

HFC

denial maris: The modest but steady income from my oil shares offsets the increase in my energy costs by a considerable margin.

Just thought you'd like to know that since you seem to be better informed that anyone else on the subject of energy.

daniel maris

For me the issue of global warming is of secondary importance.

Green energy is about energy independence, economic development (creating good jobs here for working people), clean air and protecting the environment.

Carbon control is more a precautionary matter I think.

Generally, I don't think feed in tariffs have been the best way to proceed. It would be much better if we had made a political decision to invest in green energy and covered the capital cost by other means. In other words instead of investing say £20 billion in high speed rail, lets put it into green energy for instance.

daniel maris

John Clegg -

Aplogies to your hamster.

Fergus Pickering

daniel, a bottle of claret and a cassoulet will do very well. In my own house. I don't like too much sun.

Barbara

"He had been eight years upon a scheme for extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers"*

*Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (way ahead of his time)

Eight years! Imagine the grant funding on that one!! Shhh, don't tell UEA ...

daniel maris

Xenophon -

The energy payback period for photovoltaic panels is quite short - 2-3 years - and not to be confused with the financial payback period.

daniel maris

HFC -

Good for you, but they might be worth a lot less next year if cold fusion technologies are actually about to come to market as some claim.

Herbert Thornton

Daniel et al -

Another interesting development is the growing use of compressed natural gas. It has been in use in road vehicles in some countries for many years. From all accounts it is both much cheaper - and safer - than petrol. (This should make us very suspicious of the strange opposition to it that we hear from environmentalists. Who is really behind it? Is it being financed by conventional oil producers especially the Saudis?)

However, cheap as compressed natural gas is, there is another fascinating - and related - and so far little known - development.

Apparently, there is now a compressed natural gas fuel cell. It produces electricity to drive an electric vehicle even more efficiently than an internal combustion engine using compressed natural gas.

To find out more about it, Google compressed natural gas and compressed natural gas fuel cell.

2trueblue

My post disappeared so here goes again. As we are sitting on tons of coal why can we not reverse the decision to decommission our coal fired power station and concentrate on making it a cleaner process? Cheaper. more efficient, pretty instant and it would sure help the economy. The Germans are busy building new coal power stations. What is wrong with our government that we have gone so far down the line in developing something that is inefficient, expensive and very costly. We know that global warming is a scam so why are we being so reckless and going this route?

gina dean

One thing you all seem to be forgetting is the companys involved if they hear about new technology which would put them out of business would be in there like a shot to close it down so that it does not harm the money they make. So it will be many years before we get help to bring down energy prices. The university's could do with more money for investigation into R&D projects. What about the hydrogen beads they were looking at which we were told could replace fuel in a few years time how is that going!

daniel maris

I agree that clean coal should be developed but it is more expensive than land based wind energy. But clean coal has a role to play in bridging the gap to fully green energy future.

One area where we could do more is to exploit low wind energy in an urban setting. There's a lot of energy flying around! Also we should be moving more quickly on wave energy. One thing that many people don't realise is that miscalcualtions were made on assessing the original wave energy devices from the 70s and they were in fact far more efficient than then thought. Using coastal air pressure chambers to capture wave energy is probably the way forward.

Land based wind energy with conversion to methane storage during periods of excess production is probably the best way forward.

daniel maris

Also read this:

*ttp://energydynamicslab.com/business-areas/electric-transportation

With this system we can have much smaller batteries in electric cars and we don't have the bother of refilling in petrol stations or worrying about running out of fuel on the motorway.

This is definitely the way forward I feel.

Drayner

I don't want anything to do with solar panels until they are being old for under a fiver at Lidl. I learned my lesson with the Betamax debacle.

Robin of Bagshot

To quote from the Ruhr University study published last year:

"Hence, although Germany’s promotion of renewable energies is commonly portrayed in the media as setting a “shining example in providing a harvest for the world” (The Guardian 2007), we would instead regard the country’s experience as a cautionary tale of massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic and environmental benefits. As other European governments emulate Germany by ramping up their promotion of renewables, policy makers should scrutinize the logic of supporting energy sources that cannot compete on the market in the absence of government assistance."

HFC

"Good for you, but they (oil shares) might be worth a lot less next year if cold fusion technologies are actually about to come to market as some claim."

There you go again, denial maris, using 'might' & 'if' to bolster your claims for the fanciful concept of cold fusion.

I'll take my chance and hold onto my oil shares...at least until I hear that patents have been granted to 'some claimants'.

daniel maris

HFC -

Did you know NASA patented a Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (aka cold fusion - the jury's still out on what is actually happening at the sub-atomic level)? That was in October last year.

*ttp://coldfusionnow.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/review-of-nasa-zawodny-us-patent-application-published-october-20-2011/

No ifs or mights about it.

HFC

denial maris:

I followed your link and found that NASA applied for a patent last March but that it has still not been granted.

NASA, or anyone else for that matter, applying for a patent is one thing but having it granted is quite another.

In any event, many patents have been granted over time for, amongst many other things, various perpetual motion machines - but still they never have or ever will work.

So, even if a patent were to be granted it wouldn't prove that the invention works - it would just shows that the patent examiner thinks it might work.

daniel maris

Countryman -

You got it wrong on the patent. It was granted in October 2011. It's not a perpetual motion machine any more than a nuclear fission reactor is. Time you read up on the subject I think rather than arguing from ignorance.