Will massive rises in energy prices affect Mr Huhne’s personal  financial situation? It appears that the answer is probably not:

The Independent carried a story on 27 February 2006 alleging that his shareholdings include, or have included, mining companies, oil companies, and tax shelters.

Huhne owns seven houses—five that he purchased just as investments and that he makes money on as rental properties and two in which he lives. (One in Eastleigh, his constituency, and a town house in Clapham, south London): “I have investments in five homes for rent, which is basically my pension fund from my time in the City; and we have two homes we actually use, which is one in Eastleigh and one in London.”

Huhne has erected a wind turbine rising 8 feet above the roof of his constituency home in Eastleigh where he spends his weekends.

His wealth is estimated at £3.5 million.

Huhne is not alone though – 23 out of 29 members of the Tory/Lib Dem coalition cabinet are worth more than £1 million – the £60 million cabinet. Nice to know that they will share the electorate’s financial pain, not!

Read much more at Wikipedia: Chris Huhne

Mail Online: Has any minister in history seemed more hopelessly unfit to do his job?

Sir Reginald Sheffield, 63, who is worth at least £20million, splits the profits with the project’s developers.
 
Around half of the income comes from a government scheme to make power companies use more renewable energy, much of it bought from private generators. It is subsidised by every household, via their electricity bills.

Sir Reginald’s eight 400ft turbines were switched on last August at Bagmoor, part of the 3,000-acre Normanby Hall estate near Scunthorpe that has been in his family since the 16th century.

He plans a second development at nearby Flixborough Grange, despite fierce opposition from locals.

The renewable energy scheme is adding an estimated £13.59 a year to the average household power bill.

CRN comment: I bet that the 8 wind turbines aren’t generating anything like £3.5 million worth of electricity. So, we’re all paying an average of around £14 per year to support inefficient wind power.

Read more in the Daily Mail: How SamCam’s super-rich father is coining £3.5m from taxpayer… to fund wind turbines

Source: National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC)

A 2006 report concluded meat production was responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions – more than transport.

But a new analysis, presented at a major US science meeting, says the transport comparison was flawed.

”’curbing meat production and consumption would be less beneficial for the climate than has been claimed, said Frank Mitloehner from the University of California at Davis (UCD).

“Smarter animal farming, not less farming, will equal less heat,” he told delegates to the American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting in San Francisco.

“Producing less meat and milk will only mean more hunger in poor countries.”

Leading figures in the climate change establishment, such as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chairman Rajendra Pachauri and Lord (Nicholas) Stern, have also quoted the 18% figure as a reason why people should consider eating less meat.

The 2006 report – Livestock’s Long Shadow, published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – reached the figure by totting up all greenhouse-gas emissions associated with meat production from farm to table, including fertiliser production, land clearance, methane emissions from the animals’ digestion, and vehicle use on farms.

But Dr Mitloehner pointed out that the authors had not calculated transport emissions in the same way, instead just using the IPCC’s figure, which only included fossil fuel burning.

“This lopsided ‘analysis’ is a classical apples-and-oranges analogy that truly confused the issue,” he said.

One of the authors of Livestock’s Long Shadow, FAO livestock policy officer Pierre Gerber, told BBC News he accepted Dr Mitloehner’s criticism.

“I must say honestly that he has a point – we factored in everything for meat emissions, and we didn’t do the same thing with transport, we just used the figure from the IPCC,” he said.

“But on the rest of the report, I don’t think it was really challenged.”

FAO is now working on a much more comprehensive analysis of emissions from food production, he said.

Read more – BBC News Website: UN body to look at meat and climate link

Related CRN post – ACS: Eating Less Meat and Dairy Products Won’t Have Major Impact on Global Warming

“Ernst & Young, the professional services firm, says that in the next three years energy companies must put £35bn-£50bn of investment in power stations, wind farms and gas storage, to hit government objectives for cutting carbon dioxide emissions while guaranteeing reliable electricity supplies.

Uncertainty over energy policy and the regulatory framework, the firm argues, could cause an “investment hiatus” that would lead to strain on the electricity system later in the decade.”

The uncertainty isn’t driven by any particular disagreement between the parties – they all have pretty similar platforms in this area – or a lack of clarity on the kind of policies they favour – the most important policies are the renewable energy targets and Renewables Obligation (RO), the Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD) and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).  They are all in place already and no party is pledging to scrap them.  The uncertainty is whether the parties will be able to maintain those policies in the face of popular resentment at rising energy prices and a fiscal crisis.

The problem is that, as Citigroup Investment Research reported (not available online), current policies probably require energy prices and energy company profits to double (to pay for all the investment they need to make).  At the same time families are also going to be dealing with the policies needed to address the fiscal crisis, and the pressure that is likely to put on their budgets.  There is no way that is politically sustainable.  We’ll go over this in more detail in our upcoming book, but it is pretty clear that if ordinary families are struggling to make ends meet and see energy companies making big profits as prices rise then enormous pressure will grow for one of two things to happen:

1. A big windfall tax on energy companies.

2. The abolition or alteration of one of the big energy policies like the Renewables Obligation.

Either of those options would mean that energy companies wouldn’t make the returns they expect on investments to meet the Government’s targets.  They are walking into a political trap.  As they realise that, they will need even bigger returns to justify such a risky investment.

Huge amounts of taxpayers’ money is being spent trying to buy support for expensive climate change policies.  A new IPN report shows that the EU is providing huge funding to European green NGOS.  Recently, we released this video exposing DEFRA funding of climate propaganda:

http://www.youtube.com/user/TaxpayersallianceUK#p/a/u/0/rACzK_i3CEw

Despite all that the public aren’t convinced.  The only reason climate change policies haven’t faced a bigger backlash is that consumers aren’t aware of the extent to which they are pushing up prices.  Energy companies know that the big risk is that the affordability crisis will become such a big issue that the next Government – of whatever party – just can’t maintain expensive climate change policies.

The only reliable climate change policies are affordable ones.  As Shellenberger and Nordhaus set out back in 2008, you’ll only really be able to cut carbon emissions in a big way, around the world, when low carbon energy is cheaper than high carbon energy:

“Carbon caps have failed to reduce emissions all over the world because fossil-fuel alternatives are still much more expensive than current polluting energy sources, and voters and policy-makers are not willing to make fossil fuels so expensive that clean-energy alternatives are economically viable.”

Politicians should be focused on making climate change policy more affordable, not making grandiose new pledges.  We set out how in a report last year.

TaxPayers’ Alliance – Matt Sinclair: Expensive climate change policies are heading for a crash

“People do not like being lectured. You have to take people with you, and the way to do that is to connect individual behaviour and rewards, and help people see the advantages of going green. We have to have carrots as well as sticks.”

Cameron sees the idea for a “localist green revolution” as an answer to his fear that what he describes as the current top- down climate change agenda is “in danger of starting to lose people”.

Cameron starting to sound sensible? Swapping ‘top-down’ for ‘bottom-up’ policies? Sadly he goes on to spoil it by supporting Prime Minister Gordon Brown giving away £1.6 billion of UK tax payers’ money at Copenhagen without asking us, and wanting to make any Copenhagen agreement into a legally binding document. Then he shows his ‘top-down’ approach to his own party: Faced by a mini-revolt from climate change sceptics within his own party, he said: “A very small number of people take a different view on the science, but the policy is driven by me, and that is the way it is going to be.”A very small number? Not exactly – actually about 75% of Conservative voters.

Cameron’s main plan is to spend £20 billion (I wonder where that money will be found?) insulating homes by offering £6,500 to 6 million homes, with an initial investment of £1500.  The hope being that energy savings would fund repayments. The trouble is that, as seems highly likely, if the cost of energy continues to soar, any savings will be eaten up by increased energy bills. I wonder if Cameron has thought of that?

Anyway, it probably won’t help me. My house was built in 2000 to modern insulation standards, including cavity wall insulation, double glazing, and polystyrene slab in the concrete floors. My gas central heating boiler is 9 years old, and about 75% efficient. A new bolier would cost about £1500 and be 90% efficient, but I wouldn’t spend that until the current boiler needs replacing, although if Cameron wants to give me the money then I certainly would replace it. That would be nice Dave, but don’t confuse energy and climate – they aren’t related in any big way and climate certainly won’t be influenced by the UK’s less than 2% contribution to global man-made CO2 emissions.

The Guardian: ‘Cameron’s £20bn plan for green homes’

The rationing scheme will be based around individuals being allocated a carbon account with a unique code which will have to be quoted when buying products such as petrol, electricity or airline tickets. Lord Smith thinks that rationing is fairer than taxing carbon because increasing taxes could make activities more expensive.

This is true and obviously the Taxpayers’ Alliance would oppose any form of higher tax on carbon. However this scheme’s fundamental flaw is that it forgets how much Britons pay for carbon already, which is consistently higher than the social cost of carbon.

For example under this scheme when an individual buys petrol a certain amount of their carbon allowance would be used. Theoretically this would discourage people from using high levels of petrol in order to keep their carbon allowance for other activities. Those people who use large amounts of petrol and exceed their allowance will be hit by a financial penalty.

Lord Smith hasn’t made it clear what will happen if people who have allowances left at the end of month. An allowance trading scheme would be too complicated to sustain. For that reason, initially the rationing scheme won’t affect low emitters, meaning that emissions cuts aren’t made where they are most affordable.

Lord Smith stated

‘A lot of people who do cycling will get money back. It will probably only be bankers and those on extravagant lifestyles who would lose out.’

But this position is incredibly misguided as ordinary families spend, as a share of their income, more than the rich on things like motor fuel and electricity.  The carbon products being targeted under this scheme are used by ordinary taxpayers and are necessities in their everyday lives.
Did Lord Smith forget that the cost of buying petrol and paying Fuel Duty and VAT on that purchase already encourages drivers to limit their consumption of petrol? Britain’s fuel duty is one of the highest in Europe. Therefore drivers are discouraged from using excessive amounts of petrol and those who do pay more fuel duty. In fact our research shows that drivers already pay £18.4 billion over the social cost of road transport greenhouse gas emissions and road spending.

Similarly our research shows that excessive green taxes drives up the price of electricity, which hits the poor and individual incomes hardest as they spend more of their gross income on electricity. Climate change regulation makes up 14 percent of domestic electricity bills and 3 percent of domestic gas bills.

This encourages poorer households and the elderly, in particular, to keep their homes at lower temperatures during winter months, which contributes to excess winter mortality. If a rationing scheme was introduced that would make the situation even worse, if a poor elderly person runs out of permits then they might be forced to choose between turning off their heating – with huge risks to their health – or facing a financial penalty that could leave them destitute.

“Polluters” are ordinary families and manufacturing industries.  They already pay more than enough to drive, heat their homes and do other things that create carbon emissions.  Rationing would be a completely unacceptable addition to that burden.

TPA, Jennifer Dunn: ‘We’re already paying for carbon- and we’re paying too much’

10th November 2009

The Guardian reports the IPCC’s annoyance with the latest Indian ‘discussion paper’ on galciers here: India ‘arrogant’ to deny global warming link to melting glaciers

H/T to Roger Pielke Jr’s blog.

The European Union risks driving industry out of the region if it continues to push for deeper cuts in carbon dioxide emissions than other economies, according to the chief executive of Eon, one of the world’s biggest renewable energy companies. Wulf Bernotat, Eon’s chief executive, told the Financial Times that the EU was imposing higher energy costs on its industry than competing regions. Ed Crooks, Financial Times, 30 June 2009.

And,

“The best fit was with models that assumed that human activities including the burning of fossil fuels and depletion of ozone had played a part.”

John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama, had his say in The Canadian Press: Clouds, for example, can dampen warming in the real world, but he said models have been shown to amplify warming. “They overstate the confidence of what they have in that result because we have too many examples of models that fail,” Christy said from Huntsville. “We have shown that climate models just don’t have the variability that nature provides to us.” Christy too disputed whether the bulk of continental Antarctica is warming, saying that it is, in fact, cooling. The report looks largely at the Antarctic peninsula – which makes up two per cent of the continent – and the eastern and western coastal regions, where they have found warming. The report focuses on temperature changes going back to 1900 and up to the present, but doesn’t include earlier periods when areas in the Arctic were actually warmer than they are today and were not affected by man-made greenhouse gases, said Christy. “Just 1,000 years ago the Arctic was much warmer than it is today so it’s interesting that they would use the term conclusively,” he said. “Natural variability can account for warming since the Arctic has been warmer before.”

I wrote this for Jennifer Marohasy’s blog on 30th May 2008, which is very relevant to the Antarctic:

There is an interesting News Focus story in this week’s Science journal, that helps to confirm the different climate histrories for the East and West Antarctic ice sheets – a phenomenon that persists in modern times:

ANTARCTICA: Freeze-Dried Findings Support a Tale of Two Ancient Climates

A surprising cache of ancient plant material adds evidence for divergent climate histories of the East and West Antarctic ice sheets over the past 14 million years.

Excerpt: These findings appear to be contradictory at first glance, but in fact they buttress an evolving view among scientists that the two major features of the continent, the western and eastern ice sheets, have experienced vastly different climate histories. Data from the Dry Valleys reveals an East Antarctic Ice Sheet that is high, dry, cold, and stable, at least in its central area. And the ANDRILL cores suggest a more volatile West Antarctic Ice Sheet that is subject to the changing temperatures of the sea in which it wades. “It reaffirms the fragility of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet [WAIS] and the stability of the central part of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet,” says Peter Barrett, a sedimentologist at the Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) in New Zealand, who advised the ANDRILL project.

Ozone hole science isn’t settled either, as I pointed out in another post on Jennifer Marohasy’s blog on 27th September 2007:

New Research Challenges Established Ozone Hole Theory

See also Climate Research News: Winds are Dominant Cause of Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheet Losses