GWPF | 21 Nov 2014
Ineos: UK’s Industrial Future Is Bleak If Energy Prices Don’t Come Down Soon
Ukip won a landmark victory in Rochester and Strood today, overturning a Tory majority of 10,000 to secure its second MP. David Cameron’s failure to hold a seat the Tories won four years ago with 49 per cent of the vote is a major blow for the prime minister, who visited the seat five times in the run-up to yesterday’s poll. –Laura Pitel, The Times, 21 November 2014
Plans for the government to donate (sic) hundreds of millions of pounds to a new Green Climate Fund could lead voters away from the Tories in an upcoming by-election. Senior Tories fear that the contribution has jeopardised the party’s chances of obtaining votes from potential UKIP supporters – skeptical of climate change claims and opposed to foreign aid. –Nicholas Reilly, Metro News, 17 November 2014
David Cameron is to hand at least £650 million to help undeveloped countries cope with climate change on the day the Conservatives will fight a crucial by-election battle with Ukip. The prime minister had hoped to avoid attention being drawn to the UK’s contribution to the Green Climate Fund until after the Rochester & Strood by-election, according to government insiders. The timing is deeply awkward for Mr Cameron, highlighting controversial commitments to both foreign aid and green measures, with Ukip set for another coup in winning its second parliamentary seat. —The Times, 17 November 2014
Jim Ratcliffe, Ineos chairman, claimed that a glut of cheap domestically produced shale gas could solve the country’s energy and manufacturing crises and secure the future of the UK’s largest privately owned company. Mr Ratcliffe warned that its plastics manufacturing plant at Runcorn, in Cheshire, which employs 1,300 workers and uses as much electricity as Liverpool, would eventually have to close. If Ineos cannot cut its energy bill with domestically produced shale gas, he said that the group’s future in the UK, along with the rest of the country’s remaining industrial base, was bleak. –Tim Webb, The Times, 21 November 2014
Around 3.5 million older people are worried they will not be able to stay warm this winter. An older person dies every seven minutes from cold weather each winter, and those living in the coldest homes are hit most by excess winter death rates and illness, according to Age UK. A third of over-65s are concerned about how they will heat their homes this winter and 70 per cent have fears over the high cost of energy, according to new research from Age UK. Escalating energy bills is one of the main concerns over the winter months for around five million over-65s, the research says today. —Yorkshire Post, 11 November 2014
Subsidies that will cost households £14 a year and hand energy companies windfall profits to keep the lights on will be “challenging to defend politically”, a credit rating agency has said. Companies will receive the payments to stop them closing power stations, even though in many cases they would remain open anyway. Moody’s suggested that politicians could scrap the capacity market subsidy scheme if there is another backlash against green energy levies. –Tim Webb, The Times, 21 November 2014
It is right for rich countries to assist the developing world in their efforts to adapt to climate impacts, but they should not burden them with costly decarbonisation schemes. The UK and other rich nations should no longer fund decarbonisation in the developing world. In the short to medium term, developing countries need access to plentiful, cheap and reliable electricity. Britain should therefore press for the Green Climate Fund to help poor countries adapt, rather than waste billions on costly and ineffective decarbonisation measures. –Benny Peiser and Daniel Mahoney, City A.M., 21 November 2014
1) Blow For Green Tories As Climate Sceptics Party Wins Another By-Election – The Times, 21 November 2014
2) Ineos Warning: UK’s Industrial Future Is Bleak If Energy Prices Don’t Come Down Soon – The Times, 21 November 2014
3) Green Britain: Millions Of Pensioners Fear Losing Battle With Winter Cold As Energy Costs Soar Nationwide – Yorkshire Post, 11 November 2014
4) ‘Scrap Subsidies For Energy Firms’, Credit Agency Says – The Times, 21 November 2014
5) Peiser & Mahoney: The Poorest Will Suffer If We Force Renewable Energy On The Developing World – City A.M., 21 November 2014
1) Blow For Green Tories As Climate Sceptics Party Wins Another By-Election
The Times, 21 November 2014
Laura Pitel
Ukip won a landmark victory in Rochester and Strood today, overturning a Tory majority of 10,000 to secure its second MP.
Mark Reckless, the former Conservative who defected on the eve of the party’s conference, will return to Westminster wearing Ukip colours after beating the Tory candidate, Kelly Tolhurst. He won with a majority of 2,920 votes, or 7.3 per cent, a result closer than polls had predicted.
David Cameron’s failure to hold a seat the Tories won four years ago with 49 per cent of the vote is a major blow for the prime minister, who visited the seat five times in the run-up to yesterday’s poll.
At the start of the campaign he was “absolutely determined” to win the contest triggered by Mr Reckless. “We are coming for you in by-elections and we are going to throw everything we can at you,” he said earlier in the month. His efforts were not enough to stop the insurgent party from gaining its second MP in two months just five months from a general election.
It was a point not lost on a triumphant Nigel Farage, speaking to reporters he said: “(David Cameron) put his own personal reputation on the line to fight this by-election and lost, so there you go.”
Mr Reckless also hammered home the point, rallying supporters in his acceptance speech telling them that the election was now up for grabs.
“If we can win here, we can win across the country. If you vote Ukip, you get Ukip,” he said.
Telling voters: “You remain my boss, don’t let me forget it.”
Mr Reckless said his victory had proved that Ukip could win nationwide and urged voters to ensure enough MPs were elected to hold the balance of power after 2015.
2) Ineos: UK’s Industrial Future Is Bleak If Energy Prices Don’t Come Down Soon
The Times, 21 November 2014
Tim Webb
The owner of the Grangemouth chemical site has vowed to become the UK’s largest shale gas player after pledging £640 million to invest in fracking projects.
Ineos plans to drill hundreds of exploration wells near the site in central Scotland and across the north of England, aiming to produce enough shale gas to supply its operations with energy. The remainder would be used to power homes and businesses.
Jim Ratcliffe, its chairman, claimed that a glut of cheap domestically produced shale gas could solve the country’s energy and manufacturing crises and secure the future of the UK’s largest privately owned company.
“We are a believer in shale,” he said, hoping that the UK can replicate the American shale gas boom, which has triggered an industrial revival and left manufacturers, such as Ineos, struggling to compete.
Mr Ratcliffe was scathing about Cuadrilla’s aborted attempt to frack the country’s first well near Blackpool in 2011, which had to be abandoned after triggering minor earthquakes.
“The US has drilled 1.1 million wells. The UK has drilled one and that was not drilled very well, frankly,” he said.
Asked why Ineos felt it necessary to act when specialist companies like Cuadrilla and IGas claim they will soon start producing the UK’s first shale gas, he replied:
“There is not a great deal of evidence that it’s going to happen.”
Ineos, which has operations across the US and Europe and headquarters in Switzerland, is one of the biggest users of gas and electricity in the UK.
It pays three times as much for its gas and twice as much for its electricity as US competitors. Even German firms, who enjoy generous exemptions from renewable energy levies, pay half as much as Ineos for electricity.
Mr Ratcliffe warned that its plastics manufacturing plant at Runcorn, in Cheshire, which employs 1,300 workers and uses as much electricity as Liverpool, would eventually have to close.
“We are buying the most expensive electricity in Europe. Runcorn is not going to survive long term if we are paying twice what Germany and the US are paying,” he said.
If Ineos cannot cut its energy bill with domestically produced shale gas, he said that the group’s future in the UK, along with the rest of the country’s remaining industrial base, was bleak.
3) Green Britain: Millions Of Pensioners Fear Losing Battle With Winter Cold As Energy Costs Soar Nationwide
Yorkshire Post, 11 November 2014
Around 3.5 million older people are worried they will not be able to stay warm this winter.
An older person dies every seven minutes from cold weather each winter, and those living in the coldest homes are hit most by excess winter death rates and illness, according to Age UK.
Every winter, 25,000 older people in England and Wales do not survive the cold, amounting to 206 deaths a day, or one death every seven minutes.
Many of these could be prevented and are known as “excess winter deaths”. Age UK said countries which experience much colder temperatures, such as Finland, Germany and France, have significantly lower winter death rates, because the UK has the oldest houses in the EU.
Doctor William Brehaut, 76, lives in a 200-year-old property near Peterborough. Last winter he could not afford adequate heating on his basic pension and Pension Credit and would be left without heat for days. He said: “My thermometer card showed that my living room was only 6C. I had to wear a coat indoors on the worst days.”
William Evans, 82, an ex-Navy sailor, lives in Cambridgeshire. He led the British Legion’s service on Remembrance Sunday by St Nicholas Church, Manea, Cambridgeshire.
He said: “It’s creating hardship but I just about scrape through. I don’t smoke or drink or do anything like that. I haven’t been to the cinema for 50 years, I haven’t had a holiday in 20 years, which is tragic after a busy life. Any penny you’ve got has to go into your basic living. I do feel a bit sad, that I don’t have the wherewithal to do more, having been in the services you don’t become rich.”
A third of over-65s are concerned about how they will heat their homes this winter and 70 per cent have fears over the high cost of energy, according to new research from Age UK. Escalating energy bills is one of the main concerns over the winter months for around five million over-65s, the research says today.
Just under one million older people live in fuel poverty and many cannot afford to heat their homes to a sufficient temperature to keep warm. The new research suggests 41 per cent of older people believe the Government should do more to ensure UK homes are made more energy efficient.
4) ‘Scrap Subsidies For Energy Firms’, Credit Agency Says
The Times, 21 November 2014
Tim Webb
Subsidies that will cost households £14 a year and hand energy companies windfall profits to keep the lights on will be “challenging to defend politically”, a credit rating agency has said.
Companies will receive the payments to stop them closing power stations, even though in many cases they would remain open anyway.
Moody’s suggested that politicians could scrap the capacity market subsidy scheme if there is another backlash against green energy levies.
The agency said in a report: “While for a few plants, the capacity market may make the difference between closing and staying open, the concept and cost of paying many other already economic plants even when they are not running may be challenging to defend politically in the context of the recent debate around the affordability of energy bills.”
The first tranche of the subsidies, which will be paid to energy companies from 2019, will be awarded in an auction next month.
The government wants to make sure that enough power stations are available to avert blackouts, acting as a back-up to wind farms if there is not enough wind.
The original idea was that gas plants, which are able to be quickly turned on when needed, would be the major beneficiaries.
However, because the subsidies are not allowed to “discriminate” against technologies under EU competition rules, nuclear reactors will also be able to bid, even though they operate all the time and are forecast to remain open into the 2020s.
Coal plants will also be in line for the windfall even though many will still be operational at the end of the decade anyway.
5) Peiser & Mahoney: The Poorest Will Suffer If We Force Renewable Energy On The Developing World
City A.M., 21 November 2014
Benny Peiser and Daniel Mahoney
Britain should help poor countries adapt, rather than waste billions on costly and ineffective decarbonisation measures.
YESTERDAY, the UK announced a contribution of about £720m to the Green Climate Fund, a UN initiative designed to help poor countries cope with climate change. It is right for rich countries to assist the developing world in their efforts to adapt to climate impacts, but they should not burden them with costly decarbonisation schemes.
Past international climate finance programmes, however, suggest that a pragmatic approach is unlikely. Instead of focusing aid on schemes that increase the resilience of poor countries to the recurrent impacts of the climate (adaptation measures), the rich world is guilty of a vast misallocation of resources towards costly renewable energy programmes, with disastrous consequences for the world’s poorest.
Take the UK’s recent contributions. Just over a quarter of UK climate aid from 2011 to the beginning of 2014 went to adaptation measures, whereas well over 50 per cent was allocated to renewables, according to the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. The World Resources Institute estimates that, between 2010 and 2012, of a total of $35bn in global climate aid, a mere $5bn was allocated to adaptation.
This emphasis on decarbonisation over adaptation is damaging, diverting vital resources away from measures that can lift people out of poverty and save lives. It also ignores the overriding need to help poor countries become more resilient to climate impacts, whether these are exacerbated by global warming in the future or not.
Bangladesh’s investment in cyclone shelters, better weather forecasts, and smarter construction practices is a prime example of how effective adaptation can be. The country has learnt how to prepare for the threat of cyclones, succeeding in significantly reducing related deaths. The two deadliest cyclones in Bangladesh’s history occurred in 1970 and 1991, killing up to 500,000 and almost 140,000 respectively. Through adaptation investment, in the last two decades the country has been able to reduce deaths and injuries from such disasters 100-fold.
Aside from misallocating resources away from such schemes, promoting decarbonisation is itself a bad use of money. One of the biggest impediments to alleviating poverty in developing countries is the lack of access to electricity – over 1bn people lack access to it globally, including as much as three quarters of the population of sub-Saharan Africa. Yet rolling out renewables in the developing world is making energy poverty even worse.
By promoting expensive forms of electricity – and discouraging cheaper forms, as the World Bank has done by, for example, refusing to finance coal-fired power plants – the West is burdening poor countries with the most expensive ways of generating power. The growing fleet of renewables in Europe, particularly in Germany and the UK, is leading to an increase in fuel poverty. Such an approach would be even more damaging in poor nations, which desperately need cheap and reliable energy and growth to alleviate poverty.
The UK and other rich nations should no longer fund decarbonisation in the developing world. In the short to medium term, developing countries need access to plentiful, cheap and reliable electricity. In any case, promoting renewables in the developing world is not an answer to dealing with the effects of the climate system.
Britain should therefore press for the Green Climate Fund to help poor countries adapt, rather than waste billions on costly and ineffective decarbonisation measures.
Dr Benny Peiser is director of the Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF). Daniel Mahoney is a senior researcher for the GWPF.
