Government’s green energy policy is a “national disaster”
Net Zero Watch | September 1, 2022
London – Net Zero Watch has condemned the Government’s green energy policies as “a national disaster.”
This follows the announcement that a major offshore windfarm will not activate an agreement to sell power at a much lower cost to the grid.
The Times has reported that the Hornsea 2 windfarm, which had a contract to sell power at £73 per megawatt hour, will instead sell in the open market, where prices have averaged £200 per megawatt hour this year, and reached £508 last week.
Britain’s struggling energy consumers are likely to end up paying a billion pounds extra for Hornsea’s electricity over the next 12 months.
The new Prime Minister should urgently look into the legal options for cancelling or revoking these poorly written contracts, the spirit of which are being grotesquely abused to the huge disadvantage to British consumers.
By 2026, there could be more than 16GW of offshore windfarms exploiting the perverse loophole (Moray East, Hornsea 2, Triton Knoll, InchCape, Seagreen Phase 1, Neart na Gaoithe, Dogger Bank A, Dogger Bank B, Dogger Bank C, Sofia, Hornsea 3, Norfolk Boreas, Moray West and East Anglia Three.)
Assuming they deliver 50% of capacity each year, and the differential between market price and CfD price remains at £130/MWh, the cost to consumers will be £9billion per year, at a cost of £337 per household.
Onshore windfarms, solar, and remote island windfarms will raise that figure still higher.
Reacting to the news, Net Zero Watch Director Benny Peiser said:
In the midst of the worst energy crisis since World War II, wind companies are milking the system by using a perverse loophole.
And just a few weeks ago, Kwasi Kwarteng signed the contract for Hornsea 3, which contains the same loophole, as does the contract for every other offshore windfarm on the horizon.
The Government is putting every household on the hook for hundreds of pounds more, every year. Energy policy is lurching from one rip-off to another. It’s a national disaster.”
Finnish Prime Minister Declares Transition to ‘War Economy’ Amid Energy Crunch
By Ilya Tsukanov – Samizdat – 01.09.2022
Finland has joined its European Union allies in shooting itself in the foot economically by unilaterally slashing energy purchases from Russia. Helsinki added to its troubles by restricting visas for Russians – who ordinarily make up a big chunk of the country’s income from tourism.
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin has compared the exceptional energy crisis being faced by her country to a “war economy.”
“We seem to be living in a war economy. This is not a normal economic situation,” Marin said, adding that the current crunch is the third calamity faced by her government since she came into office in 2019.
Marin laid the blame for the crisis at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s feet.
“The first [crisis] was the pandemic, the second was the tide of war coming in Europe, and the third is the energy crisis, which both Finland and all other European countries in the grip of, due to the war and the fact that Putin is using energy as a weapon against Europe,” Marin said.
The Finnish prime minister did not elaborate on how the Russian president, who has repeatedly said that Moscow remains ready to sign new long-term gas contracts with European countries, is responsible for the energy crunch pummeling the Nordic nation.
Economists expect the Finnish economy to slide into a recession in 2023 amid a downturn caused in part by a spike in energy prices and the country’s rejection of low-priced and reliable Russian supplies after refusing to pay in rubles.
Before the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis, Finland depended on Russia for nearly 70 percent of its natural gas and 35 percent of its oil, as well as 14 percent of its electricity. Along with the halt in imports of Russian gas, Helsinki joined its EU partners in banning Russian oil.
Tourism Losses
Helsinki poured salt on its economic wounds by placing restrictions on Russian tourists by cutting visa applications in half from an average of 1,000 per day to 500 per day starting September 1, and setting quotas on tourism visas to about 100, with the rest reserved for family ties, work and study.
Finnish authorities sounded the alarm about the potential implications of the loss of Russian tourists at the beginning of the summer. Russians typically make up about 20 percent of the country’s tourism earnings and its 15 billion euros-a-year in revenue. Earlier this year, Travel/Visit Finland director Kristiina Hietasaari estimated that the sector could lose over 600 million euros without Russian travelers.
In addition to curbing Russian energy purchases and cutting access to Russian tourists, Finland has applied for NATO membership, and is expected to become a formal member of the bloc together with Sweden if and when all 30 of the alliance’s current members ratify the Nordic nations’ bids for entry. Russian officials have emphasized that Moscow has no qualms with either Finland or Sweden when it comes to security matters, but warned that if NATO infrastructure was deployed near Russia, Moscow would respond in kind to “create the same threats in the territories from which they threaten us.”
Russia warns G7 about oil supplies
Samizdat – September 1, 2022
Russia will embargo countries that support the Washington-proposed price cap on its oil, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Thursday.
“In my opinion, this is a complete absurdity… To those companies or countries that will impose restrictions, we will not supply our oil and oil products, because we are not going to work under non-market conditions,” he told reporters, commenting on a plan to limit prices on Russian oil currently being discussed by the Group of Seven (G7) countries.
Establishing a price ceiling on Russian oil is conceived as a means of slashing Moscow’s revenues from exporting the commodity while avoiding shutting the country’s crude out of the market. The proposal is due to be discussed at a meeting of G7 finance ministers on Friday.
According to Novak, such a plan would jeopardize the market mechanisms of “such an important industry as oil,” and could only lead to the destabilization of both the industry and the oil market.
“And European and American consumers will be the first to pay for it, while they are already paying high prices today because of the destabilizing measures [their governments] are implementing. In particular, the sanctions restrictions,” Novak said.
The official added that Russia is currently pumping as much oil as it has the ability to produce and sell at the moment, but if global market conditions stabilize and Russian producers could be confident in finding buyers, output could be raised. He noted that Russian oil producers are preparing for the upcoming EU oil embargo due to take effect in December, but they plan to maintain current levels of production regardless.
Russia has enough gas for at least 100 years – Gazprom
Samizdat | August 31, 2022
Russia has huge natural gas reserves that could last for more than a century, the head of state-owned Gazprom, Alexey Miller, said on Wednesday at the International Business Congress.
“Our consumers, Russian citizens, will have access to [this] cheap, reliable energy resource. It is especially important to note that they could be optimistic about the country’s gas future. Why? Because we are provided with reserves for 100 years ahead,” Miller said, noting that some of Gazprom’s fields will still be providing gas even in 2120.
The energy giant’s chief executive attributed such an optimistic forecast to the development of the vast resources in Russia’s northern Yamal Peninsula, adding that Gazprom is currently preparing to launch the Kharasavey gas field and has also started developing the deep deposits of the Bovanenkovo field.
Russia holds the world’s largest natural gas reserves, estimated at 48 trillion cubic meters.
Who Owns UK’s Offshore Wind Farms?
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | August 30, 2022
https://ref.org.uk/generators/search.php
I wrote yesterday about the ownership of the London Array offshore wind farm, To recap, London Array is jointly owned by the German owned RWE, the Canadian investor CDPQ, Orsted the Danish state owned energy company and he strategic investment company of the Government of Abu Dhabi, MASDAR. At current wholesale prices, London Array is making about £800 million a year more than they would have at 2019 prices.
None of the consortium are retail electricity suppliers in the UK, so would be shielded from any windfall tax on or nationalisation of energy suppliers, as has been suggested.
I thought I would look at some of the other big wind farms, which are subsidised by ROCs. The chart above is provided by the Renewable Energy Foundation, and I have listed below the owners of the eight other wind farms with capacity of 300 MW and over.
Race Bank – Macquarie, Orsted, Sumitomo Bank
Greater Gabbard – RWE Renewables, SSE Renewables
Gwynt y Mor – RWE Renewables, Stadtwerke Munchen, UK Green Investment Bank
Rampion – RWE Renewables, Enbridge, Offshore Wind Company
Galloper – RWE Renewables, Siemens, Macquarie, ESB, Spring Infrastructure
West Duddon – Scottish Power, Orsted
Thanet – Vattenfall
Sheringham – Equinor, Statkraft, UK Green Investment Bank
In short, they are nearly all wholly owned by a mix of foreign energy companies, banks and other infrastructure investors. As with the London Array, all of these wind farms/owners would be unaffected by taxes on energy retailers, with the exception of SSE and Scottish Power.
The combined output of these eight and London Array is about 16 TWh a year. At current prices of £375/MWh, the excess profit now being “earned” is around £5 billion a year.
Europeans Paying for Brussels’ ‘Irrational and Absurd’ Energy Policy While US Profits: Kremlin
By Ilya Tsukanov – Samizdat– 30.08.2022
The European Union and individual bloc members have taken a series of measures in recent months to reduce reliance on Russian oil, gas and coal. These efforts sent energy prices skyrocketing, and are threatening to plunge the bloc into a cold winter. Russian President Vladimir Putin has characterized European policymakers’ actions as “suicidal.”
Ordinary Europeans are being made to pay for their leaders’ “irrational” policies in relation to Russia, while Brussels’ American allies get rich from an energy bonanza, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
“Step by step, unfortunately, both Brussels and individual European countries are demonstrating their absolute lack of reason,” Peskov told reporters on Tuesday.
“This is demonstrated in such anti-Russian impulses, outbursts of hatred for our country, through absolutely irrational and even absurd actions in the the energy field, for which the publics of European countries – the EU, Britain and so on, have to pay, but which make it possible for American companies to turn a profit, for example,” Peskov said.
Asked to comment on Brussels’ potential discussions of banning tourist visas for Russians, the Kremlin spokesman suggested that the possibility of even discussing such ideas at the EU level demonstrates the “set of irrational bordering on insanity” prevalent among the bloc’s political elites.
The United States and the European Union dramatically reduced purchases of Russian coal, oil and gas in the spring after Moscow launched a special operation to “demilitarize” Ukraine amid fears of an imminent push by Kiev to crush the fledgling Donbass republics. The measures have since been complemented by additional restrictions, including sanctions targeting equipment used by the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, and the closing down of overland pipelines running through Poland and Ukraine delivering energy to Europe. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was completed late last year and prepared for operation, remains dormant.
The deficit in Russian energy has resulted in a dramatic spike in prices, with European consumers forced to pay through the nose for utilities, while countries scramble to find alternative sources to fill up underground gas reserves to prepare for winter.
President Putin has characterized Brussels’ policies as “suicidal,” saying the self-imposed energy crisis will undermine the EU’s competitiveness vis-a-vis the United States and China.
Iran opens $1bn worth of projects in gas-rich Bushehr region
Press TV – August 29, 2022
Iran’s Oil Ministry has launched some $1 billion worth of development projects in the gas-rich region of Bushehr in the south of the country.
Oil Minister Javad Owji and his senior aides traveled to Bushehr’s port city of Asaluyeh on Monday to inaugurate several key projects that they said will boost Iran’s capacity to produce and process natural gas.
Asaluyeh, located on the western-most coast of the Persian Gulf, is home to some huge gas processing and petrochemical facilities that feed on the natural gas supplied from South Pars, the world’s largest gas field that is shared between Iran and Qatar.
The projects opened on Monday included several power plant units that will boost electricity supply to gas refineries as well as to Iran’s single natural gas liquefaction plant, known as Iran LNG.
The Oil Ministry’s news service Shana said the government had spent more than $450 million to bring on line a first unit of the Be’sat combined cycle power plant with a capacity of 160 megawatts (MW).
It said Iran’s Oil Pension Fund had invested some $360 million to finish three more units of a 1,130 MW power plant that supplies electricity to the Iran LNG project.
Other projects included a $12-million pipeline for transferring condensates from Asaluyah refineries to a storage facility in the region and a $74-million project for thiol treatment from condensates produced in several South Pars refineries.
Oil Minister Owji said the projects opened in Bushehr on Monday will create some 5,000 permanent jobs for the people of the region.
He said the government had already started works on some $2 billion worth of new development projects related to the South Pars gas field and its subsidiaries.
German Green Party Minister Calls For Tax on Meat
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | August 29, 2022
Even as the people of Germany struggle with a serious cost of living crisis, they are being told by a Green Party minister that there should be a new tax on meat.
Yes, really.
With Germans already facing soaring food inflation and energy bills as a result of gas shortages caused by the war in Ukraine, the last thing they need is another tax to pay.
But that doesn’t seemingly concern Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture Cem Özdemir (Greens), who complained that people were eating the wrong food.
“We should eat less meat overall and make sure it comes from animals that are kept in a species-appropriate manner,” said Özdemir, adding that the country should be “adapting meat consumption to planetary boundaries and for the sake of our health.”
“It is healthier, good for the climate, and helps the global food situation because areas get freed up that we previously needed for cultivating animal feed,” the minister asserted.
Özdemir said that too much cheap meat was being produced, vowing to address this apparent problem with a new tax on meat products.
The agenda to levy a new tax on meat in the name of alleviating climate change has long been a desire of globalist technocrats.
Back in March, Bloomberg News received a massive backlash for offering ‘tips’ to Americans who might struggle with the rising cost of living which included letting their pets die and eating lentils instead of meat.
As we reported earlier this year, a group of environmental economists in Germany demanded that huge taxes be imposed on meat products to fight climate change, with calls for beef to be 56 per cent more expensive.
As we previously highlighted, the World Economic Forum published two articles on its website which explored how people could be conditioned to get used to the idea of eating weeds, bugs and drinking sewage water in order to reduce CO2 emissions.
Despite insisting that everyone else reduce their living standards and ration their meat eating to save the planet, during last year’s Cop 26 summit, attendees enjoyed a menu full of animal-based dishes that were at least double the carbon footprint of the average UK meal.
Another Green Party official recently caused controversy by suggesting Germans use washcloths instead of taking showers, as well as buying expensive eco-heating systems that are unaffordable for the average person.
Germany wants EU unanimity rule scrapped
Samizdat | August 29, 2022
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday called on EU members to abandon the right to veto in favor of majority voting in a number of key areas. Such a move could facilitate the bloc’s future expansion.
Speaking at the Charles University in Prague, Scholz argued that changing voting practices may help to grow the EU, given that currently any bloc member can veto the accession of a candidate country. He also suggested introducing majority voting on a number of pressing matters, including sanctions and human rights.
“Where unanimity is required today, the risk of an individual country using its veto and preventing all the others from forging ahead increases with each additional member state,” the German chancellor said.
According to Scholz, “the principle of unanimity only works for as long as the pressure to act is low,” citing the example of Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine, which has challenged the way the EU approaches policymaking.
The German leader also wants the EU to switch to majority voting in areas such as taxation and foreign policy, adding that he knows “full well that this would also have repercussions for Germany.”
Scholz noted that Berlin supports enlargement of the EU, adding that he believes that the western Balkan countries, as well as Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia would eventually join the bloc and that this will inevitably bring more differences among members.
Hungary Urges Foreign Ambassadors to Act Like Diplomats, Not Viceroys
By Ilya Tsukanov | Samizdat | August 29, 2022
Hungary has stood alone among its neighbors in refusing to slap new sanctions on Moscow, and has rejected demands by Brussels to rapidly cut dependence on Russian energy supplies. Budapest has also denied access to its territory for Western arms delivery to Ukraine, saying the security crisis can only be resolved through talks.
Hungary will independently determine what policies it will pursue, and foreign ambassadors should do their duty instead of lecturing Budapest, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has urged.
“We do not send viceroys to other countries, but ambassadors…and receive ambassadors, not viceroys,” Szijjarto said in a meeting with Hungarian diplomats.
“And in the future we will not tolerate it if a representative of some other country decides that that they can teach us about a different or better life. Thanks very much, but we aren’t asking for that. We can determine ourselves how we should live in Hungary. The Hungarian electorate regularly decides this question in elections,” the foreign minister said.
Szijjarto warned foreign diplomats stationed in Budapest that any ambassador who sees themselves as a viceroy rather than a diplomat will “have difficulties,” because Hungary will not bow to any “bad compromises.”
Hungary, Szijjarto said, has based its foreign policy on mutual respect, and will continue to do so. “This means that we have behaved as representatives of a national government with a thousand year history and the corresponding self-confidence, giving respect to our partners and expecting the same respect in return.”
Hungary summoned Estonia’s ambassador to Budapest earlier this month over what Hungary’s Foreign Ministry characterized as “unacceptable’ comments made by politicians in Tallinn, who have criticized Hungary over its foreign policy vis-à-vis Ukraine and Russia.
Budapest has demonstrated its domestic and foreign policy independence for more than a decade, with the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban getting into spats with Brussels on a broad range of issues from immigration to a move to kick a George Soros-funded university out of the country.
After the escalation of the Ukraine crisis in February, Hungary hesitated in signing on to the raft of new European Union sanctions against Russia, refused to allow convoys of NATO military equipment to use the country to transfer weapons to Kiev, and has continued to buy Russian oil and gas, warning that the Central European country’s economy would collapse otherwise.
Last month, summarizing the impact of months of Brussels’ policy, Orban reveled in the correctness of his approach, comparing the West’s policy vis-à-vis Russia to a “car with flat tires on all four tires” and pointing out that sanctions had made no change in Moscow’s course, but only cost Europe four governments.
Orban also warned last month that Europe would be turned into a “war economy” by October if Brussels didn’t change course on its “ineffective” sanctions against Russia and weapons deliveries to Ukraine. “You do not usually put out fires with flamethrowers,” he stressed.
Hungary’s unique approach to the Ukrainian crisis also stems in part from Budapest’s bad blood with its neighbor over its treatment of ethnic Hungarian Ukrainians following the 2014 Maidan coup, after which the minority gradually lost its right to receive an education in its native tongue.
In June, a vicious back-and-forth war or words broke out between Ukrainian and Hungarian officials after Hungarian parliamentary speaker Laszlo Kover suggested that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was suffering from a “mental problem” accounting for his government’s undiplomatic approach to asking Western countries for help against Russia.
Johnson Predicts Harsh Months for UK Due to ‘Eye-Watering’ Energy Bills
Samizdat – 28.08.2022
Outgoing UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in an op-ed that a few coming months will be tough for the British due to high energy prices.
“The months ahead are going to be tough, perhaps very tough,” Johnson wrote in an article, published by Daily Mail newspaper on Saturday. “Our energy bills are going to be eye-watering,” he said, adding “for many of us, the cost of heating our homes is already frightening.”
According to Johnson, the beginning of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine significantly affected the energy markets. However, he claims that the UK will emerge from the crisis stronger and more prosperous.
The UK prime minister said, referring to the confrontation with Russia, that “in this brutal arm-wrestle, the Ukrainian people can and will win. And so will Britain.”
The outgoing prime minister promised that whoever will be his successor, they will announce new measures of financial support for fellow citizens to tackle surging electricity prices.
On Friday, the UK energy regulator Ofgem announced an 80% increase in the energy price cap to 3,549 pounds ($4,194) per year starting October 1 due to rising global energy prices. Since its last revision in April, the energy price cap has stood at 1,971 pounds. In October 2021, the price cap was 1,277 pounds.
Ofgem chief executive Jonathan Brearley warned that energy prices are likely to continue to rise, and called on the country’s future prime minister to take new measures to tackle the problem.
Natural gas pipelines reach Zabol in Iran’s far east
Press TV – August 28, 2022
Natural gas pipelines have reached Iran’s far eastern city of Zabol near the border with Afghanistan as Iran’s Oil Ministry pushes ahead with an ambitious plan to make natural gas available to almost the entire population in the country.
Oil Ministry authorities and local officials attended a ceremony in Zabol on Sunday to celebrate the city’s connection to the Lane 7 of Iran’s nationwide gas pipeline network.
Reports in the local media said that the government had spent 2.5 trillion rials ($85 million) to finish the 219-kilometer gas pipeline connecting the provincial capital of Zahedan to Zabol, a large population center located 20 kilometers from the Iran-Afghanistan border.
Authorities said the arrival of gas to Zabol will enable all villages and towns in the relatively impoverished region to access natural gas through pipelines.
The inauguration came as the Oil Ministry launched several major gas projects, including the connection to the gas pipelines of 16 towns, some 1,091 villages and 1,959 manufacturing units.
Oil Minister Javad Owji said the gas projects opened on Sunday had cost the government some 10 trillion rials ($335 million).
Iran has one of the largest natural gas supply networks in the world. Official figures show that natural gas is currently available to more than 87% of the population in the country through a pipeline network that is more than 37,000 kilometers in length.
The Iranian government has an ambitious plan to further expand the pipeline network to supply natural gas to almost the entire population, including all villages with more than 20 households.
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