Switching Renewable Subsidies To Gas Will Make Little Difference
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | October 14, 2021
It is not only the UK that is thinking of switching green levies from electricity to gas.
But this analysis inadvertently highlights why the whole idea is so ludicrous:
In the UK, consumer prices for electricity are five times more expensive than for gas. It is a disincentive to adopt electric heat pumps. To make things harder, 23% of the electricity price comes from climate and social levies. It’s just 2% for gas. No wonder the UK continues to install about 1.7 million gas boilers a year. Jan Rosenow and Richard Lowes at RAP call for changes that will incentivise customers to buy heat pumps while having a minimal effect on their total bill or the revenues raised, according to their calculations. One way is to simply move the levies from electricity to gas. The Netherlands and Germany are planning to do just that. Sweden has done it for decades. But such changes require serious policy reform and may face political barriers. Much simpler would be to minimise taxes on the electricity consumed by a heat pump, as Denmark started doing this January. Despite heat pump sales rising, without a drastic change it’s difficult to see how the UK will reach its target of 600,000 new heat pumps per year – it’s only in the tens of thousands now.
Every year households in the UK install about 1.7 million gas boilers. In May, the Heating and Hotwater Industry Council reported that 2021 looks to be a record year for gas boiler sales, with year-to-date sales up 41 per cent from 2020. So far, low-carbon heating occupies a small — although growing — niche in the heating market.
One important factor supporting a booming boiler market is quite simple: Gas is cheap and electricity is expensive. Residential electricity prices per kilowatt hour are currently around five times higher than gas prices. This means that switching to a heat pump, even with an efficiency of 300 per cent, does not offer bill savings for customers on a standard tariff.
This is partly a political choice. Legacy policy costs drive part of the difference in price. Most of levy-funded energy and climate policies, which make up 23% of the total household bill, are presently paid for through electricity bills. In the UK, these legacy costs include charges for policies such as feed-in tariffs, the Energy Company Obligation, Contracts for Difference, the Renewables Obligation and the Warm Home Discount.
https://energypost.eu/redesigning-uk-electricity-taxes-to-boost-heat-pump-sales/
For a start, let’s get away from the misleading use of the term, levies and taxes, which are intended to distract attention from the truth.
Apart from the tiny Warm Homes Discount, all of these added costs are SUBSIDIES for renewable electricity. It is therefore perfectly logical that they should be included in the cost of electricity, so that the price reflects the cost of generation.
There is no logic in adding the cost of subsidies to the price of gas any more than adding them to the price of food or petrol.
In any event, the switch will make little difference to the relative cost of heat pumps. Subsidies currently cost domestic customers about 2.5p/KWh, a total of £2.6bn a year. This brings the electricity price up from 12.5p to 15.0p/KWh. (These figures are probably out of date now, but the comparison remains the same)
Annual domestic gas consumption is 300 TWh, so £2.6bn would equate to 0.9p/KWh, increasing gas prices from 2.5p to 3.4p/KWh.
In other words, electricity will still cost nearly four times as much as gas. With heat pumps working at 300% efficiency, that still means they will be more expensive to run.
In any event, the reason why barely anybody wants heat pumps has nothing to do with the running cost, as people have no idea what they cost to run. It is the fact that they will have to fork out £10,000 plus to install one, not to mention the cost and hassle of insulation and replacing radiators.
There is, however, one fatal flaw in the argument employed by the authors of this study. They claim that switching the subsidies to gas is a zero cost option. It may be in the short run, but eventually, when nobody uses gas anymore, the subsidies will have to revert to being added onto electricity bills.
Under that scenario, homeowners will have paid out £20000 for heat pumps, but will still have to pay the cost of subsidies on their electricity bills. In other words, a double whammy.
Zinc Hits 14-Year High As European Smelters Halve Output Amid Energy Crunch
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – October 15, 2021
The energy crisis is bleeding into other parts of the commodity space, such as industrial metals, as smelters from Asia to Europe are knocked offline, resulting in a tightening supply with prices for zinc at 14-year highs.
Zinc jumped as much as 7% on the London Metal Exchange to the highest levels since 2007 after producer Nyrstar announced plans to halve output at three European smelters due to soaring energy prices.

“It is zinc’s turn” to surge as the energy crisis spreads through Europe and forces large-scale shutdowns or production cuts at smelters, said Jia Zheng, a trader with Shanghai Dongwu Jiuying Investment Management Co. She said soaring coal and natural gas prices have made power prices astronomically high and uneconomical for energy-intensive smelting plants to produce the industrial metal.
China has already curbed power to energy-intensive zinc and aluminum smelting plants amid an energy crunch fueled by record-high coal prices. In total, 20 Chinese provinces and regions making up more than 66% of the country’s GDP have announced some form of power cuts.
Industrial metal prices may stay high as the energy crisis continues to ravage Asia and Europe, researcher Shanghai Metals Market told clients in a note. According to the International Lead and Zinc Study Group, a surplus in global zinc will be whittled down in 2022 due to the latest production cuts.
“If production were to be reduced for any prolonged period, this would presumably have a massive impact on the zinc market, which would then no doubt be seriously undersupplied,” Daniel Briesemman, an analyst at Commerzbank, wrote in a note. “The price response certainly makes sense against this backdrop.”
The market is concerned about the industrial metal supply, reflected in a record high for the CRB BLS U.S. raw industrials spot index.
Insulate Britain is in bed with the establishment
It’s no surprise that one of its activists is married to a TfL boss

Picture by: Twitter / LBC.
By Ben Pile – spiked – October 13, 2021
The tabloids have had a field day with the revelation that an Insulate Britain activist is married to a director of Transport for London (TfL). Cathy Eastburn of Insulate Britain has been busy trying to bring transport to a standstill. She has been arrested four times for acts such as blocking roads and gluing her hands to a train. Meanwhile, her husband, Benedict Plowden, is in charge of ‘getting London moving after the pandemic’.
The press is finally starting to realise that Britain’s green road-blockers are drawn from the upper echelons of society. The rag-tag crusties of Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain might present themselves as the political establishment’s opponents, but they have always been its bedfellows. Literally, in this case.
Not every green activist is married to a public-sector executive on £170,000 per year. But most do come from households that bring home many times the average family income. They come from a class of people for whom it is relatively easy to take activist sabbaticals. They can afford to pause their vegan yogurt-weaving workshops and take to the streets whenever it takes their fancy.
The class make-up of the green movement helps to explain why the police and courts have so much difficulty bringing an end to the disruption these activists cause. Were these protests populated by the lower orders, they would be cleared from the roads without hesitation. Those engaged in the protests would be charged, sentenced and put behind bars in short order. But the police and the courts are reluctant to use their powers against retired doctors, vicars and the grandchild of a baronet.
Green protesting has become a hobby of the leisured classes, drawing ‘nice’ people to it who present well in court. Their legal teams have the resources of billionaire-backed NGOs. Celebrity scientists fly across the Atlantic to give evidence in their defence. MPs and journalists intervene, declaring it a travesty that such well-meaning people are being tried as criminals. Of course there is no equivalent sympathy for the ordinary people whose lives are being disrupted and who are prevented from working.
Ordinary people need to be able to get to work. Society needs them to get to work. That’s why the police and the courts are usually expected to facilitate this. Benedict Plowden’s job at TfL is supposed to facilitate this, too. Yet Plowden, like his wife, has a long history of trying to stop people from getting from A to B.
Before joining TfL on a hefty salary, Plowden was director of the anti-car Pedestrians Association, which was later renamed Living Streets. It styles itself as ‘the UK charity for everyday walking’.
In fact, plenty of one-time anti-road anarchists from the 1990s have somehow made it as well-paid suits in the 2020s. Green activists have been turned from Swampies into civil-service bosses, instituting elite green ideology within our institutions. Plowden and Eastburn’s marriage, then, is not quite so bizarre as it seems.
TfL may not quite be signed up to every Extinction Rebellion pledge. But despite being in charge of keeping London moving, it is forever designing new policies to prevent Londoners from driving anywhere. Green ideology comes ahead of the transport needs of Londoners.
There is little difference between the street-level green activist and the establishment environmentalist – and not just because they sometimes snuggle up together at night. We might expect important public officials to serve the public’s needs and wants but, like the green activists on the streets, they are more interested in constraining us.
Ben Pile blogs at Climate Resistance.
Investors Are Steering Away From Oil & Gas
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | October 14, 2021
This item appeared in the Wall Street Journal’s daily 10-point guide to the top stories yesterday.
It goes to the heart of the energy crisis:
Large swings in energy markets are nothing new. Because demand is so inelastic, even small changes in either supply or demand can cause big price changes.
We saw similar price spikes in the oil and gas markets in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crash. Indeed, it was arguably those price rises which triggered the crash. The cause of these rises was the increased demand from Asia, as China and other economies there began their rapid growth, thus increasing demand for energy.
Normally the energy market reacts by increasing capital spending to increase output. After 2008, it did just that, and, as tends to happen, the market swung the other way with surplus production and prices falling to economically unviable levels a few years ago.
However, this time around energy companies appear to be more reluctant to commit to new investment, as the WSJ notes, thanks to a combination of shareholder and government pressure, share buybacks and the easy money to be had from heavily subsidised renewable energy.
We have a similar situation in the UK and Europe, with companies like Shell keen to move away from oil and gas, along with political pressure to block North Sea oil development.
It is absolutely clear that, despite climate policies and renewable energy, global demand for fossil fuels will remain high, and probably increase, for at least the next decade. But if new investment does not come forward to maintain output levels, energy markets will become tighter still, driving up prices to crisis levels.
The knock on effect this will have on the world’s economy could be frightening.
The Green Agenda or How This Energy Crisis is Different from All Others

By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 11.10.2021
The price of energy from all sources conventional is exploding globally. Far from accidental, it is a well-orchestrated plan to collapse the industrial world economy that has already been weakened dramatically by almost two years of ridiculous covid quarantine and related measures. What we are seeing is a price explosion in key oil, coal and now especially, natural gas energy. What makes this different from the energy shocks of the 1970s is that this time, it is developing as the corporate investment world, using the fraudulent ESG green investment model, is dis-investing in future oil, gas and coal while OECD governments embrace horrendously inefficient, unreliable solar and wind that will insure the collapse of industrial society perhaps as early as the next months. Barring a dramatic rethinking, the EU and other industrial economies are willfully committing economic suicide.
What only a few years ago was accepted as obvious was that ensuring an abundant, reliable, efficient and affordable energy defines the economy. Without efficient energy we cannot make steel, concrete, mine raw materials or any of the things that support our modern economies. In the past months the world price of coal for power generation has doubled. The price of natural gas has risen by almost 500%. Oil is headed to $90 a barrel, highest in seven years. This is a planned consequence of what is sometimes called the Davos Great Reset or the Green Agenda zero carbon madness.
Some two decades ago Europe began a major shift to mis-named renewables or Green Energy, mainly solar and wind. Germany, the heart of EU industry, led the transformation with former chancellor Merkel’s ill-conceived Energiewende, where Germany’s last nuclear power plants will close in 2022 and coal plants are rapidly being phased out. This all has now collided with the reality that Green Energy is not at all able to deal with major supply shortages. The crisis was entirely predictable.
Green Chickens Come Home to Roost
With the widespread covid lockdowns of industry and travel in 2020 EU natural gas consumption fell dramatically. The largest EU gas supplier, Gazprom of Russia, in interest of an orderly long-term market, duly reduced its deliveries to the EU market even at a loss. An unusually mild 2019-2020 winter allowed EU gas storage to reach maximum. A long, severe winter all but erased that in 2021.
Contrary to EU politicians’ claims, Gazprom has not played politics with the EU to force approval of its new NordStream 2 gas pipeline to Germany. As EU demand resumed in the first six months of 2021, Gazprom rushed to meet it and even exceed record 2019 levels, and even at the expense of replenishing Russian gas storage for the coming winter.
With the EU now firmly committed to a Green Energy agenda, Fit for 55, and explicitly rejecting natural gas as a long-term option, while at the same time killing coal and nuclear, the incompetence of the think-tank climate models that justified a 100% CO2-free, electric society by 2050 has come home to roost.
Because financial investors on Wall Street and London saw the benefit of huge profits from the Green energy agenda, working with the Davos World Economic Forum to promote the laughable ESG investing model, conventional oil, gas and coal companies are not investing profits in expanded production. In 2020 worldwide spending on oil, gas, coal dropped by an estimated $1 trillion. That is not coming back.
With BlackRock and other investors all but boycotting ExxonMobil and other energy companies in favor of “sustainable” energy, one exceptionally cold and long winter in Europe and a record lack of wind in northern Germany, triggered a panic buying of gas on world LNG Markets in early September.
The problem was the restocking was too late, as most available LNG from the USA, Qatar and other sources that normally would be available had already been sold to China where an equally confused energy policy, including a political ban on Australian coal, has led to plant closings and a recent government order to secure gas and coal “at any cost.” Qatar, US LNG exporters and others have flocked to Asia leaving the EU in the cold, literally.
Deregulation of Energy
What few understand is how today’s Green energy markets are rigged to benefit speculators like hedge funds or investors like BlackRock or Deutsche Bank and penalize energy consumers. The headline prices for natural gas traded in Europe, the Dutch TTF futures contract, is sold by the London-based ICE Exchange. It speculates on what future wholesale natural gas prices in the EU will be in one, two or three months hence. The ICE is backed by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Société Générale among others. The market is in what are called gas futures contracts or derivatives.
Banks or others can speculate for pennies on the dollar, and when news broke on how low EU gas storage for the coming winter were, financial sharks went on a feeding frenzy. By early October futures prices for Dutch TTF gas had exploded by an unprecedented 300% in only days. Since February it is far worse, as a standard LNG cargo of 3.4 trillion BTU (British Thermal Units) now costs $100-120 million, while at the end of February its cost was less than $20 million. That’s a 500-600% rise in seven months.
The underlying problem is that, unlike the case for most of the postwar period, since the political promotion of unreliable and high-cost solar and wind “renewables” in the EU and elsewhere (e.g. Texas, February 2021) electric utility markets and their prices have been deliberately deregulated to promote Green alternatives and force out gas and coal on the dubious argument that their CO2 emissions endanger the future of humankind if not reduced to zero by 2050.
The prices borne by the end consumer are set by the energy suppliers who integrate the different costs under competitive conditions. The diabolical way EU electricity costs are computed, allegedly to encourage inefficient solar and wind and discourage conventional sources, is that, as French energy analyst Antonio Haya put it, “the most expensive plant of those needed to cover demand (marginal plant) sets the price for each hour of production for all the production matched in the auction.” So today’s natural gas price sets the price for essentially zero cost hydro-electric electricity. Given the soaring price for natural gas, that is defining EU electricity costs. It’s a diabolical pricing architecture that benefits speculators and destroys consumers, including households and industry.
A fundamental aggravating cause for the recent shortages of abundant coal, gas and oil is the decision by BlackRock and other global money trusts to force investment away from oil, gas or coal—all perfectly safe and necessary energy sources—to buildup of grossly inefficient and unreliable solar or wind. They call it ESG investing. It is the latest rage on Wall Street and other world financial markets ever since BlackRock CEO Larry Fink joined the Board of the Klaus Schwab World Economic Forum in 2019. They set up front ESG certifying companies that award ESG “politically correct” ratings on stock companies, and punishing those who do not comply. The rush into ESG investing has made billions for Wall Street and friends. It has also put the brakes on future development of oil, coal or natural gas for most of the world.
The ‘German Disease’
Now after 20 years of foolish investment into solar and wind, Germany, the once-flagship of EU industry, is a victim of what we can call the German Disease. Like the economic Dutch Disease, the forced investment into Green Energy has resulted in the lack of reliable affordable energy. All for an unproven 1.5C claim of IPCC that is supposed to end our civilization by 2050 if we fail to reach Zero Carbon.
To advance that EU Green Energy agenda, country after country with a few exceptions have begun dismantling oil, gas and coal and even nuclear. Germany’s last remaining nuclear plants will permanently close next year. New coal plants, with latest state-of-art scrubbers, are being scrapped even before being started.
The German case gets even more absurd.
In 2011 the Merkel government took an energy model developed by Martin Faulstich and the state Advisory Council on the Environment (SRU) which claimed that Germany could attain 100% renewable electricity generation by 2050. They argued that using nuclear longer would not be necessary, nor the construction of coal-fired plants with carbon capture and storage (CCS). With that, Merkel’s catastrophic Energiewende was born. The study argued, it would work because Germany could contract to buy surplus, CO2-free, hydro-electric power from Norway and Sweden.
Now with extreme drought and a hot summer, the hydropower reserves of Sweden and Norway are dangerously low coming into winter, only 52% of capacity. That means the electric power cables to Denmark, Germany and now UK are in danger. And to make it worse, Sweden is split on shutting its own nuclear plants which give it 40% of electricity. And France is debating cutting as much as one-third of its clear nuclear plants meaning that source for Germany will also not be sure.
Already on January 1, 2021 because of a German government mandated coal phase-out, 11 coal-fired power plants with a total capacity of 4.7 GW were shut down. It lasted only 8 days when several of the coal plants had to be reconnected to the grid due to a prolonged low-wind period. In 2022 the last German nuclear plant will shut and more coal plants will permanently close, all for the green nirvana. In 2002 German nuclear power was source for 31% of power, carbon-free electric power.
As for wind power making up the deficit in Germany, in 2022 some 6000 wind turbines with an installed capacity of 16 GW will be dismantled due to the expiration of feed-in subsidies for older turbines. The rate of new wind farm approvals is being blocked by growing citizen rebellion and legal challenges to the noise pollution and other factors. An avoidable catastrophe is in the making.
The response from the EU Commission in Brussels, rather than admit the glaring flaws in their Green Energy agenda, has been to double down on it as if the problem were natural gas and coal. EU Climate Czar Frans Timmermans absurdly declared, “Had we had the green deal five years earlier, we would not be in this position because then we would have less dependency on fossil fuels and natural gas.”
If the EU continues with that suicidal agenda, it will find itself in a deindustrialized wasteland in a few short years. The problem is not gas, coal or nuclear. It is the inefficient Green Energy from solar and wind that will never be able to offer stable, reliable power.
The Green Energy Agenda of the EU, US and other governments along with the Davos-promoted ESG investing will only guarantee that as we go forward there will be even less gas or coal or nuclear to fall back on when the wind stops, there is a drought in hydroelectric dams or lack of sunshine. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize this is a road to economic destruction. But that’s in fact the goal of the UN 2030 “sustainable” energy or the Davos Great Reset: population reduction on a massive scale. We humans are the frogs being slowly boiled. And now the Powers That Be are really turning the heat up.
Hungary’s Orban blames Brussels & its climate change policies for soaring EU gas prices
RT | October 8, 2021
The EU should withdraw its policies aimed at tackling climate change as they’re the reason for the record surge in energy prices on the continent in autumn, Viktor Orban, Hungarian Prime Minister, has said.
Energy bills have been spiking for customers across Europe because of bad decisions made by “bureaucrats in Brussels,” who are fighting for ecology by continuously raising the price of energy generated from coal and gas, Orban insisted in a radio interview on Friday.
“These decisions must be withdrawn… at present gas prices are where they should be in 2035. Brussels isn’t the solution today, they are the problem,” he said. “Poles, Czech and we Hungarians demand that the rules should be withdrawn.”
According to the PM, the difficult situation on the energy market would top the agenda at the next EU summit, with Budapest, Warsaw and Prague to present a unified front at the meeting and offer their solutions to the crisis.
Orban again blasted EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans, who is pushing hard for the EU to cut net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030. He recently warned that the rising emissions from Europe’s transport sector may prevent the bloc from achieving that goal.
“It’s a commissioner called Timmermans, who is posing the biggest threat to us,” the PM said.
The Hungarian leader already attacked Timmermans during his visit to Slovenia on Thursday, saying that “his calculations were incorrect and the EU residents must pay the extra price.” He also slammed the EU’s climate change policies as “foolish.”
Those not paying “the extra price” are actually the Hungarians, as caps on gas and power price hikes for households have been in place in the country after being introduced by Orban’s government in 2010.
The spike in energy bills in the EU, which the experts say was driven by rising gas prices and soaring cost of permits on the bloc’s carbon market, have only increased the split on green transition policies within the 27-member union. While wealthy nations see it as a sign to boost action against climate change, the poorer countries are voicing increasing concerns about the economic fallout of such measures.
Midweek, European gas prices have set a scary record by rising above$1,900 per 1,000 cubic meters – nearly three times higher than in September. The price dropped significantly after Russia said that it was going to boost gas supplies to the bloc, but the situation still remains harsh.
More News On The Progress Toward Eliminating Fossil Fuels
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | October 3, 2021
The bureaucrats of the world, particularly in the UN and developed countries, have the idea that they are going to eliminate all use of fossil fuels by somewhere around 2040-50. They have no conception of how to accomplish that, other than to order from on high that it shall occur and assume that somebody else will figure out the details. This gives the rest of us the opportunity to sit on the sidelines and observe how bureaucratic fantasy gradually runs into the brick wall of physical reality.
Back in June I covered the Report just out from Ren21 Renewables Now wherein we learned that in the ten years from 2009 to 2019, despite hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies for intermittent wind and solar power, the percent of world final energy consumption coming from fossil fuels had dropped all the way from 80.3% to 80.2%. Oh, but world final energy consumption was substantially up over that decade from about 320 to 385 exajoules, so despite all the strenuous efforts to reduce their use, in fact annual fossil fuel consumption had increased from about 260 to 310 exajoules.
And then just two weeks ago I covered the unfolding energy crisis in the UK. There, the mad rush to close coal plants and build wind turbines had left the country completely subject to just-in-time natural gas deliveries from others, particularly Russia. When a period of calm hit the North Sea wind farms, gas prices spiked by a multiple, and Britain was left closing factories and begging Russia for supply.
And there is plenty more news coming out on the same subject. Here are a couple of examples for today:
China. With the waning of the pandemic, all the rich countries of the West are back to wanting to consume lots of manufactured stuff. But of course the obsession with eliminating fossil fuels has gradually made the industrial energy supply of the rich countries more expensive and less reliable. (This is more true in Europe than in the U.S., but California and New York are doing their best to keep up.). Anyway, no problem, we’ll just get the stuff from China. So in recent months China has been in the mode of ramping up production. That will of course require much more energy. Do you think that it is going to come from wind and solar? Don’t be ridiculous. On September 27, Reuters reported that the ramp-up is causing massive energy shortages around China, and the solution is — coal. “China provincial governor urges more coal imports to resolve power shortages”:
China should work to import more coal from Russia, Indonesia and Mongolia in order to resolve supply shortages now crippling large sections of industry, said Han Jun, governor of the northeastern province of Jilin, one of the worst-hit regions. Speaking to local power firms on Monday, Han said “multiple channels” needed to be set up to guarantee coal supplies, according to the province’s official WeChat social media account. He said the province would also dispatch special teams to secure supply contracts in the neighbouring region of Inner Mongolia.
OPEC World Oil Outlook. On September 28 OPEC came out with its annual World Oil Outlook. This Report looks forward through the year 2045. It’s becoming increasingly impossible to get any straight information out of the American and European oil companies, as threats of lawsuits and regulatory actions cause them to mouth green groupthink and to pretend that they are planning to go out of business over the next couple of decades. But OPEC isn’t subject to the same pressures, so their Report is a much better indication of where knowledgeable people think things are going.
And where might that be? Here is OPEC’s chart of projected demand growth for petroleum from now to 2045:

In short, it’s continued growth in consumption all the way through 2045, albeit with the growth leveling off toward the end of the period. But basically, OPEC projects that any and all decreases in oil consumption achieved by the OECD nations (developed countries) will be offset and more by increases in the rest of the world.
OPEC also tries its hand at projections of demand for coal and natural gas over the same period. Here’s their chart of projected demand for natural gas:

It’s increases as far as the eye can see. Yes, they project that demand from the OECD countries will remain essentially flat at just under 30 mboe/d over the whole period; but meanwhile demand from the rest of the world is projected to go up dramatically from about 35 mboe/d to around 55 mboe/d.
In another chart relating to coal, they project a small decline in world demand from around 70 mboe/d today to around 60 mboe/d by 2045. Substantial declines in OECD nations will be offset by almost equivalent increases in places like India and Africa.
Do the people at OPEC know what they are talking about with these projections? I think that these figures are far more likely to be close to the mark than the fantasies coming out of the UN, where the talk is that the entire world economy will reach “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050. For example, here is the UN’s IEA, November 17, 2019, discussing what they call a “1.5 °C scenario that does not rely on negative emissions technologies”:
This . . . [scenario] means a reduction in emissions of around 1.3 billion tonnes CO2 every year from 2018 onwards. That amount is roughly equivalent to the emissions from 15% of the world’s coal fleet or from 40% of today’s global passenger car fleet. The year by which different economies would need to hit net-zero in such a scenario would vary, but the implication for advanced economies is that they would need to reach this point in the 2040s. . . . [D]eveloping economies . . . would all need to be at net-zero by 2050.
Not happening. Do they have any idea how completely absurd this is?
With blackouts looming, German government’s disaster preparation day promotes ‘cooking without electricity’
RT | October 1, 2021
High demand and the transition to green power has left much of Europe at risk of blackouts. In Germany, state authorities are teaching the public to heat their homes with candles and get used to “cooking without electricity.”
State authorities in North-Rhine Westphalia will hold their first ‘Disaster Protection Day’ on Saturday, with instructors in the city of Bonn teaching citizens how to get by “in the event of a long power failure.” An advert by the federal Civil Protection Office gives a hint of what’s in store, and features an elderly woman wearing several layers of clothing, heating her apartment with candles burning under an upturned flower pot and sealing her windows with reflective foil.
The Civil Protection Office on Friday unveiled an ad campaign focusing on all aspects of crisis preparation, and will soon release a targeted strategy addressing “stockpiling, extreme weather, power failure and emergency baggage.” Meanwhile, officials will present a new book entitled ‘Cooking Without Electricity’ at the event in Bonn on Saturday.
Based on these official communications, blackouts are coming to Germany soon. While the idea of the world’s sixth-most developed country being unable to power itself may seem ludicrous, the problem is Europe-wide, and is the result of a number of factors.
Germany relies heavily on natural gas for heat and power, and supplies were depleted following an unusually cold winter and spring. Globally, gas markets are tight, with increased demand in Asia and an upsurge in air-conditioner use during a hot summer in Europe driving prices to record highs.
Compounding the problem, wind-power generation fell this year, literally due to a lack of wind in Germany. Coal burning has increased to make up this shortfall, yet the cost of European Union ‘carbon credits’ on this fuel is passed on to consumers, with the end result being a spike in energy costs for ordinary Germans, who already pay the highest price per kilowatt hour in the world.
Both the EU and the German government want to rely more heavily on wind and other renewables for power in the future. The EU’s 2030 plan calls for 32% of all energy to be generated from renewable sources, and while Germany already exceeds this target with 44%, the German government plans on eliminating nuclear power by next year and coal by 2038.
Combined, nuclear and coal account for 39% of all electricity generated in Germany. Unless the country can dramatically expand its renewable sector, and count on the wind to power it, their elimination will likely result in even higher prices, and more ‘Disaster Protection Days’ in the coming years.
The same mismatch of supply and demand, coupled with a costly and unreliable transition to green power, has also been seen in other European countries in recent months.
Italians’ electricity bills to rise by 30%, gas up 14%
By Max Civili | Press TV | September 30, 2021
Rome – On Friday, the Italian Energy Authority ARERA announced that electricity bills will rise by almost 30% while gas bills will increase by over 14%, effective from Friday.
Italians are not pleased at all. Some consumer associations have estimated that the sharp rise may cost Italian families up to 2,000 euros a year due to a ripple effect on the entire productive system.
On one side, ARERA has pointed out that without government intervention to stem the rises, spikes in electricity and gas bills would have been 45% and 30% respectively, on the other, people are saying that the executive should have been able to predict the increase and handle the situation more effectively.
In its bid to tackle climate change, the European Union has adopted an Emission Trading Scheme which covers more than 12,000 polluting (sic) companies across the old continent, today.
It consists in the establishment of a market where firms trade emission allowances to cover their annual CO2 emissions, increasing, this way, their expenditures.
Analysts are warning the world is heading into an energy crunch that will likely affect global economies. The prices of fossil fuels such as coal, carbon and gas have all hit record highs lately. This is while crude oil has pushed above 80 dollars a barrel.
Energy price could go much higher if the weather is as cool this winter as some meteorologists predict. It’s not only the people that are worried. Several European energy-intensive industries have claimed that the adoption of the Emission Trading Scheme may entail a significant loss of international competitiveness due to increases in production costs.
This Week in the New Normal #6
This Week in the New Normal | OffGuardian | September 19, 2021
1. IS THE UK HEADING FOR A WINTER BLACK-OUT?
This week it was reported that a fire at a power relay station has damaged a cable running electricity from France to the UK. The cable apparently can’t be fixed until March (although I have yet to see any explanation as to why), which means electricity prices are set to jump up this winter.
Real fire or no, you can be sure the power companies don’t mind the bump in revenue. But is there more to it?
We’re already seeing warnings of potential “blackouts” this winter, as the electrical supply fails to keep up with demand. Power shortages during cold weather could easily cause a heavy spike in the number of elderly or vulnerable people dying over the winter.
Those deaths, as pretty much all deaths are these days, could then be attributed to “Covid”, and used to enforce booster shots or another lockdown… or anything else they want.
Further, it’s conceivable that, just as lockdowns were sold as being good for the environment, any blackouts could be accompanied by news stories talking up the idea of living with less electricity.
Can’t you just picture the Guardian’s opinion section? “In the future rolling blackouts will be the new normal. And that’s a good thing.” or “temporary electricity outages are a small price to pay for healing the earth” and even “Back to nature: How the blackouts forced us outside to reconnect with our planet and our neighbours.”
It’s also possible, of course, that there was no fire, and there will be no blackouts, and that they’re just freaking people out to make them worry and stop them complaining when their electricity prices are hiked for no reason.
2. DOCTORS SHOULD “GIVE PRIORITY” TO VACCINATED PATIENTS
Ruth Marcus, a deputy editor at the Washington Post, has had enough of people pussy-footing around this issue and is going “come right out and say it” – unvaccinated people deserve healthcare less than vaccinated people.
She at least admits this “conflicts radically with accepted medical ethics”, which is completely true but for some reason that doesn’t seem to change her mind:
under ordinary circumstances, I agree with those rules. The lung cancer patient who’s been smoking two packs a day for decades is entitled to the same treatment as the one who never took a puff. The drunk driver who kills a family gets a team doing its utmost to save him
To be clear then – Ruth considers the unvaccinated as morally inferior to a drunk driver who ran over some kids. Which says a lot more about her, than the unvaccinated.
This is one of the feeler pieces. An antennae article, gently feeling the ground to see if it can bear the weight of the agenda coming behind it. It’s setting up the conversation. Because once we’ve established “anti-vaxxers” don’t deserve healthcare, those other people she’s so careful to mention – smokers and drunk drivers – they’re next. Along with the obese, or the clumsy, or the religious, or the politically inconvenient.
If you don’t believe me, just check the comments under the article. The WaPo has one of the most scripted comments sections on the internet, whose usual job is to play the “bad cop” to the author’s “good cop”. And, sure enough, BTL is full of hundreds of supposedly real humans saying the author doesn’t go far enough, and we should ration all kinds of healthcare based on personal choices.
This particular talking point is already being aired on CNN and by late-night talkshow hosts too. Expect it to spread quickly, especially when the flu season starts.
3. THE CAMPAIGN TO DE-FUND INDEPENDENT MEDIA CONTINUES
A Guardian article from today is warning that big companies might be “funding misinformation” through internet advertising. There’s a lot of words there, but you don’t need to read most of them, the agenda is clear from the headline:
Nike and Amazon among brands advertising on Covid conspiracy sites
The article is based on a report from the Bureau of Independent Journalism, which claims to be an “independent” non-profit, but which is funded by an entirely predictable list of billionaires. Seriously, check their “about us” page and play NGO Bingo with their donor list.
According to this “independent” report, internet advertising is too “opaque” and we need to increase the “transparency” of the system so that major companies don’t unintentionally back “misinformation” and only give money to “benign” websites.
This is a continuation of an ongoing campaign to make it harder for any independent content creators to exist. We’ve already seen PayPal team up with the ADL to “Fight Extremism and Protect Marginalized Communities”. You don’t need me to tell you what that means.
It’s not just political either, YouTube demonetises basically everyone for basically anything these days, turning their formerly public platform into a corporate desert devoid of individuality or creativity.
There’s a reason OffG has always resisted putting ads on the site, over the years that decision has cost us a lot of money, but we have our independence and don’t live under threat. For any independent media out there who do rely on advertising income, now might be a good time to develop a plan B.
… More at OffGuardian.
Florida & Texas fume as Biden seizes and RATIONS supply of life-saving Covid treatments
RT | September 16, 2021
Seven southern US states, mostly led by Republican governors, say they are now facing shortages of monoclonal antibody treatments for Covid-19 after the federal government took over the distribution, citing the need for “equity.”
Monoclonal antibodies (MAB) are lab-created proteins that help those already infected deal with the virus. They have been intensively deployed in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas – states dealing with the recent surge of Delta-variant cases. With the exception of Louisiana, they are all run by Republicans.
On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced it would take over the distribution of these treatments using the Defense Production Act and would be centralizing them under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). A HHS spokesperson said this was being done to avoid shortages, as the seven states account for 70% of all orders.
“Given this reality, we must work to ensure our supply of these life-saving therapies remains available for all states and territories, not just some,” the spokesperson told CNN.
“HHS will determine the amount of product each state and territory receives on a weekly basis. State and territorial health departments will subsequently identify sites that will receive product and how much,” the spokesperson said. “This system will help maintain equitable distribution, both geographically and temporally, across the country – providing states and territories with consistent, fairly-distributed supply over the coming weeks.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican who has clashed with President Joe Biden on Covid policies – from mask mandates to compulsory vaccination – said that the move has resulted in cutting the supply to his state by more than 50%.
The federal government has allocated fewer than 31,000 doses to Florida this week, while the average need for hospitals and state clinics is 72,000, his office said.
DeSantis said on Thursday that he has reached out to GlaxoSmithKline, another pharmaceutical company, to purchase their MAB treatment in order to make up the shortfall.
In Texas, the Biden administration told the state “to reduce its use of the therapeutic treatment that has literally been saving lives and reducing hospitalizations,” Mark Keough, a judge in charge of Montgomery County, just north of Houston, said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
“The manufacturer has confirmed supplies are ample but due to the Defense Production Act, the White House and it’s agencies are the only entities who can purchase and distribute this treatment,” Keough added.
“So, less than a week after the president tells us his patience is wearing thin and he is mandating vaccines to millions of Americans, his administration limits and all but removes a non-controversial and highly successful treatment from our war chest of combating this virus,” he said.
One DeSantis aide said that the HHS hasn’t adequately explained its move, or given a warning.
“They had a vague statement about ‘equity’ but sorry that doesn’t cut it,” the aide told Real Clear Politics. “No explanation of how the allocation was determined. No explanation of why it’s only Florida and a few other red states being restricted. No warning.”
“How is it equitable to only send treatment for HALF the Floridians who need it, & NO state sites in Alabama?” DeSantis’s press secretary Christina Pushaw asked on Twitter.
She also pointed out that, just weeks ago, Democrats and their allies in the corporate press were claiming that MAB treatments were a scam to enrich a DeSantis donor – prompting a war of words – but have now suddenly pivoted to claiming that Florida is using too many doses.
Some pundits are going so far as to speculate that the move is part of a “civil war” in the US, since six out of seven states hardest-hit by HHS rationing are run by Republicans, and incumbent Donald Trump won all of them in the 2020 election.


