Carbon Scam!

Wind and Solar Are Not Environmentally Friendly, Or Financially Feasible

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Big Wind’s Dirty Little Secret: Toxic Lakes and Radioactive Waste

OCTOBER 23, 2013
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The wind industry promotes itself as better for the environment than traditional energy sources such as coal and natural gas. For example, the industry claimsthat wind energy reduces carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.

But there are many ways to skin a cat. As IER pointed out last week, even if wind curbs CO2 emissions, wind installations injure, maim, and kill hundreds of thousands of birds each year in clear violation of federal law. Any marginal reduction in emissions comes at the expense of protected bird species, including bald and golden eagles. The truth is, all energy sources impact the natural environment in some way, and life is full of necessary trade-offs. The further truth is that affordable, abundant energy has made life for billions of people much better than it ever was.

Another environmental trade-off concerns the materials necessary to construct wind turbines. Modern wind turbines depend on rare earth minerals mined primarily from China. Unfortunately, given federal regulations in the U.S. that restrict rare earth mineral development and China’s poor record of environmental stewardship, the process of extracting these minerals imposes wretched environmental and public health impacts on local communities. It’s a story Big Wind doesn’t want you to hear.

Rare Earth Horrors

Manufacturing wind turbines is a resource-intensive process. A typical wind turbine contains more than 8,000 different components, many of which are made from steel, cast iron, and concrete. One such component are magnets made from neodymium and dysprosium, rare earth minerals mined almost exclusively in China, which controls 95 percent of the world’s supply of rare earth minerals.

Simon Parry from the Daily Mail traveled to Baotou, China, to see the mines, factories, and dumping grounds associated with China’s rare-earths industry. What he found was truly haunting:

As more factories sprang up, the banks grew higher, the lake grew larger and the stench and fumes grew more overwhelming.

‘It turned into a mountain that towered over us,’ says Mr Su. ‘Anything we planted just withered, then our animals started to sicken and die.’

People too began to suffer. Dalahai villagers say their teeth began to fall out, their hair turned white at unusually young ages, and they suffered from severe skin and respiratory diseases. Children were born with soft bones and cancer rates rocketed.

Official studies carried out five years ago in Dalahai village confirmed there were unusually high rates of cancer along with high rates of osteoporosis and skin and respiratory diseases. The lake’s radiation levels are ten times higher than in the surrounding countryside, the studies found.

As the wind industry grows, these horrors will likely only get worse. Growth in the wind industry could raise demand for neodymium by as much as 700 percent over the next 25 years, while demand for dysprosium could increase by 2,600 percent, according to a recent MIT study. The more wind turbines pop up in America, the more people in China are likely to suffer due to China’s policies. Or as the Daily Mail put it, every turbine we erect contributes to “a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China.”

Big Wind’s Dependence on China’s “Toxic Lakes”

The wind industry requires an astounding amount of rare earth minerals, primarily neodymium and dysprosium, which are key components of the magnets used in modern wind turbines. Developed by GE in 1982, neodymium magnets are manufactured in many shapes and sizes for numerous purposes. One of their most common uses is in the generators of wind turbines.

Estimates of the exact amount of rare earth minerals in wind turbines vary, but in any case the numbers are staggering. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences, a 2 megawatt (MW) wind turbine contains about 800 pounds of neodymium and 130 pounds of dysprosium. The MIT study cited above estimates that a 2 MW wind turbine contains about 752 pounds of rare earth minerals.

To quantify this in terms of environmental damages, consider that mining one ton of rare earth minerals produces about one ton of radioactive waste, according to the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. In 2012, the U.S. added a record 13,131 MW of wind generating capacity. That means that between 4.9 million pounds (using MIT’s estimate) and 6.1 million pounds (using the Bulletin of Atomic Science’s estimate) of rare earths were used in wind turbines installed in 2012. It also means that between 4.9 million and 6.1 million pounds of radioactive waste were created to make these wind turbines.

For perspective, America’s nuclear industry produces between 4.4 million and 5 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel each year. That means the U.S. wind industry may well have created more radioactive waste last year than our entire nuclear industry produced in spent fuel. In this sense, the nuclear industry seems to be doing more with less: nuclear energy comprised about one-fifth of America’s electrical generation in 2012, while wind accounted for just 3.5 percent of all electricity generated in the United States.

While nuclear storage remains an important issue for many U.S. environmentalists, few are paying attention to the wind industry’s less efficient and less transparent use of radioactive material via rare earth mineral excavation in China. The U.S. nuclear industry employs numerous safeguards to ensure that spent nuclear fuel is stored safely. In 2010, the Obama administration withdrew funding for Yucca Mountain, the only permanent storage site for the country’s nuclear waste authorized by federal law. Lacking a permanent solution, nuclear energy companies have used specially designed pools at individual reactor sites. On the other hand, China has cut mining permits and imposed export quotas, but is only now beginning to draft rules to prevent illegal mining and reduce pollution. America may not have a perfect solution to nuclear storage, but it sure beats disposing of radioactive material in toxic lakes like near Baotou, China.

Not only do rare earths create radioactive waste residue, but according to the Chinese Society for Rare Earths, “one ton of calcined rare earth ore generates 9,600 to 12,000 cubic meters (339,021 to 423,776 cubic feet) of waste gas containing dust concentrate, hydrofluoric acid, sulfur dioxide, and sulfuric acid, [and] approximately 75 cubic meters (2,649 cubic feet) of acidic wastewater.”

Conclusion

Wind energy is not nearly as “clean” and “good for the environment” as the wind lobbyists want you to believe. The wind industry is dependent on rare earth minerals imported from China, the procurement of which results in staggering environmental damages. As one environmentalist told the Daily Mail, “There’s not one step of the rare earth mining process that is not disastrous for the environment.” That the destruction is mostly unseen and far-flung does not make it any less damaging.

All forms of energy production have some environmental impact. However, it is disingenuous for wind lobbyists to hide the impacts of their industry while highlighting the impacts of others. From illegal bird deaths to radioactive waste, wind energy poses serious environmental risks that the wind lobby would prefer you never know about. This makes it easier for them when arguing for more subsidies, tax credits, mandates and government supports.

IER Policy Associates Travis Fisher and Alex Fitzsimmons authored this post. 

What Climate Alarmists Will Do, To Try To Scare You!

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July 21, 2014

Faulty and False Global Temperature Readings

By Jonathan Moseley
 

Temperature measurements that are the basis for claims of global warming are defective and wrong.  That’s the finding of a scientific team led by Anthony Watts.  Watts is a meteorologist, editor of “Watts Up With That,” founder of the “Surface Station Project,” and my personal hero for his style and bravado.

When global warming alarmists claim that the Earth is warming or that this was the hottest (year, month) ever, they are totaling up readings from rather simplistic, low-budget, small, automated weather stations scattered around the nation and the world.  But about 90% of those weather stations violate the officially-published standards required for accurate measurements.

In 2007, meteorologist Anthony Watts stumbled onto an official weather station, where hot air was blowing onto the sensor from an air-conditioner’s exhaust, located on an asphalt parking lot heated by the sun. 

Curious, Watts started the “Surface Station Project” to survey weather stations around the world.  The “crowd sourced” response from trained scientists documented with photographs that about 90% of the weather stations are faulty.  This sparked the “How Not to Measure Temperature” series highlighting individual faulty stations.  Note that when Watts and his team refer to finding “siting issues” with the stations, you should read that as them discovering “royal screw ups.”

Watts was a presenter at the 9th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-9) organized by the Heartland Institute, held in Las Vegas, Nevada.  Watts explained in a call in to our radio show, Conservative Commandos, from the conference on July 9, 2014, that a weather station (about the size of a modest camera tripod) standing next to a brick building will give inaccurate readings, because the brick building will radiate heat at night absorbed during the day.  This raises the average temperature over 24 hours above what a properly sited station far away from any building or heat source would have registered.  In other cases, air conditioning exhaust, heat from factories, and even jet exhaust at airports blow onto the weather stations measuring temperature.

Furthermore, the errors have changed over time.  Airports were originally located out in the countryside away from cities, to serve small propeller planes.  Today, those airports are surrounded by urban sprawl, with lots of concrete and asphalt creating a local “heat effect” environment that is artificially hotter than the countryside that once was there.  And those airports are now serving large jet-engine aircraft spewing much-hotter exhaust in the direction of badly sited temperature stations.  Therefore, the changing local conditions have increased the temperature readings over time, having nothing to do with global climate. 

Similarly, installations of ever-more-elaborate equipment increase temperature readings over the decades.  More-powerful, modern industrial air conditioning units on the roofs of office buildings blow hot air on to the rooftop weather stations near by.  The growth of cell phone facilities has caused low-budget locations like a rural fire station to bring in extra revenue by hosting both a cell phone transmitter – cooled by air conditioner – and a weather station tripod next to the air conditioner.

So about half of the temperature trend claimed by alarmists is completely artificial (false).  Watts’ team finds that the accurate temperature trends show a rise of about 0.18 degree Centigrade per decade.  NOAA is claiming an increase of 0.32 degrees Centigrade per decade. 

It may not sound that bad that half of the claimed temperature rise is wrong.  However, the scientific debate concerns the sensitivity of the global weather systems to carbon dioxide.  Discovering that half of the alleged temperature increases are fictitious dramatically changes the projections, and our understanding of positive or negative feedback mechanisms in the world’s atmospheric systems and biosphere. 

Anthony Watts and his fellow researchers are about to publish a peer-reviewed study and analysis on the falsehood of temperature readings that global warming alarmists are relying upon.  The news in the near future about climate alarmism should continue to be very interesting.  It is about to get hotter for Al Gore, Tom Steyer, and other climate propagandists.

UK’s Guardian, Talks About the Left’s Faux-Green Agenda!

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UK Guardian Admits That Climate Change Is A Left Wing Agenda

JUL 21

Posted by 

After years of being told, contrary to all the available evidence, that Climate Alarmism was embraced by all political spectruns, the UK Guardian now admits that the right have a problem with it.

The repeal last week of Australia’s ill conceived Carbon Tax has had the Big Green propaganda machine running around in circles trying to perform a damage limitation exercise.

The warming alarmists, Green rent seekers and crony capitalists know there is more bad news coming for their sacred Emissions Trading Systems (ETS) and Carbon taxes, New Zealand is likely to dump its ETS, one of oldest ETS in the world. South Korea is also getting cold feet about its ETS with the deputy Prime Minister Choi Kyung-hwan saying his country’s ETS was “flawed in many ways“.

The warming alarmist industry have always maintained that the irrational fear of CO2 was embraced by all political spectrums, though as time has gone by this particular Green Lie, like so many other Green lies that have come before and after it, has been shown to be just that, a lie.

The UK Guardian in a strong piece of wish projection journalism, by Gaia’s representative on Planet Earth, Damian “Head of Environment” Carrington now admit that the right have a problem with Anthropogenic Global Warming.

Writing about Owen Paterson’s departure from the UK Government, and the subsequent interview Paterson gave to the Daily Telegraph Carrington really the describes the worsening problems awaiting the Greens belief systems:

When the foundation of your world view is crumbling under the weight of inconvenient truths, you can do one of two things: revise your world view or descend into paranoia.

Oh the irony.

The problem is that every government and science academy on the planet agree that climate change is a dangerous problem caused by fossil fuel burning and that emissions must be slashed quickly. Given the choice between accepting this reality and the socialist masterplan that Paterson and his ilk believe is inextricably tied to it, they opt for the less torturous mental path of denial.

Every government and science academy? Really?

So Australia has not dumped its Carbon Tax?

Canada has not walked away from Kyoto II?

Poland, Russia, Japan, India, Brazil the list of countries that will not commit economic suicide with UN Agenda 21 is growing, but when your science is based on consensus, and not observed empirical evidence, then every no longer means, all, it really means a few. Though in a rare moment of Green success Afghanistan has signed up for Kyoto II.

In this parallel universe, Paterson can praise prime ministers Tony Abbott in Australia and Stephen Harper in Canada for their courage in tackling the green conspiracy.

The secret of lying Damian is to be consistent and tell the same story, in one paragraph you say every government, then two paragraphs later you show that at least two governments do not agree, makes a bit of a mockery of every don’t you think?

Then there the endless stream of death threats that Paterson received:

 

I soon realized that the greens and their industrial and bureaucratic allies are used to getting things their own way. I received more death threats in a few months at Defra than I ever did as secretary of state for Northern Ireland. My home address was circulated worldwide with an incitement to trash it; I was burnt in effigy by Greenpeace as I was recovering from an operation to save my eyesight.

 

Greenpeace have a history of making violent threats to those that stand in the way of the Green Dream, back in 2010 there was Gene for India who embarrassed Greenpeace with his “We know where you live” post on their web site.

Aussies Dump the Regressive Carbon Tax!

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Carbon Tax Gone – RET to Follow

July 19, 2014 by  

Australia has started to dismantle the ‘green’ policies that have sabotaged its economy and fuelled the wind turbine industry – all with no perceivable environmental benefit – yet generating widespread annoyance across rural Australia. The first to go was the Carbon Tax – which Tory Aardvark has described so well in his post below – next will be the RET.

oz_no_carbon_tax

Australia Dumps Carbon Tax
Tory Aardvark
18 July 2014

One thing you can be absolutely sure of, globally, there will be a huge number of outraged Greens and warming alarmists because Australia has dumped it’s carbon tax.

This as the saying goes really is a double whammy, Australian PM Tony Abbott is a politician who has actually kept his word and dumped the hugely unsuccessful and deeply unpopular Carbon Tax, that Labor PM Julia Gillard promised voters she would never introduce, and then promptly broke her word.

The Carbon Tax was ill conceived, it generated virtually no revenue because of its negative impact on productivity and led directly to the downfall of the Gillard Labor/Green coalition, so it wasn’t all bad really.

Alarm bells will be sounding across the Green world as those that believe that crippling Green taxation will allow the human race to select a climate of its own choosing, can see their belief system about to come crashing down. In the immortal words of EU Climate Commissar Connie Hedegaard ‘A world you like. With a climate you like’, delusional thinking even by 15th Century standards, frankly bizarre in the 21st Century.

The response from the Green rent seekers, crony capitalists, left wing politicians and others complicit in the AGW scam has been, well what you would expect really:

EU climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard said the European Union regretted the repeal of the tax just as new pricing initiatives are emerging around the world.

“The EU is convinced that pricing carbon is not only the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions, but also THE tool to make the economic paradigm shift the world needs. This is why the EU will continue to work towards global carbon pricing with all international partners,” she said.

“With today’s repeal of the Carbon Pricing Mechanism, the discussions to link the Australian system and Europe’s carbon market will evidently be discontinued.”

Assorted Green NGOs are muttering darkly about irresponsibility, catastrophic climate change, rising sea levels and Green Armageddon because a country that emits just 1.19% of global CO2 emissions has repealed a job and wealth killing tax. To obfuscate the tiny global percentage of CO2 that Australia emits the warming alarmist cabal have invented CO2 emissions per capita to overstate their case and make Australia appear to be a bigger “polluter” than it actually is.

Climate scientists say the country is also likely to expect more extreme weather events as the plant warms, including prolonged periods of drought and more wildfires.

This Green tax definitely had mythical properties being able to control the weather, prevent wildfires and drought.  Where will the Unicorns be able to drink now?

WWF-Australia CEO Dermot O’Gorman said the move ensured polluting would now be “free”.

“This will see carbon pollution go up, not down,” he said.

“Without an effective mechanism to cut carbon pollution, Australia is unlikely to meet its international commitments to cut pollution by 5-25% by 2020 and tackle global warming.”

There is more bad news looming if you are possessed of an irrational fear of CO2, it appears that the world’s oldest Carbon Market is about to join Australia’s Carbon Tax in the dumpster:

Another looming setback to connecting markets and eventually setting a global price on polluting carbon is the possibility that New Zealand’s ETS, small but one of the first to be established, will be scrapped after a September election.

In remains to be seen how many other countries will further remove themselves from the UN backed AGW scare, Canada is a  likely candidate, in a devastating blow to the UNFCCC process Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol stating “Kyoto was not the way forward for Canada or the world” just one day after COP18 finished.

Japan is also wavering on committing Green economic suicide now, then of course there is Putin’s Russia which will play along with the AGW scam for as long as it suits Gazprom and not 1 second longer.
Tory Aardvark

The mandated biannual RET review is due to present its findings in a few weeks –  but STT hears that the current version of the RET will disappear and the planned adjustments will promote renewable energy but also spell the end of the wind industry in Australia. For we all know – wind turbines don’t run on wind – they run on subsidies. Take away the subsidies  – and the problem will disappear.

Unicorn Drinking from a River

Faux-Greenies Long for a New World Disorder!

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A Future without Electricity 
That’s what radical Greens want — and President Obama’s policies are moving us toward. 

Back to the Future?: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
 
 

 

 
 

Stephen Moore 

Could the radical-Green movement in America make mankind’s future resemble a science-fiction Earth ruled by apes?

This weekend I went to the see the blockbuster movieDawn of the Planet of the Apes, and an Investor’s Business Daily editorial this week got me thinking about a bleak scenario. Our future won’t have ape rulers, but, IBD points out, a world without energy might well look similar.

In the movie, bands of humans are resisting a global government of super-intelligent monkeys, gorillas and the like. The humans lack access to electricity, making their struggle — let along the normal life we know today — nearly impossible.

They are rendered powerless — literally. The simian despots understand that depriving the humans of access to electricity will keep them underfoot. (The climax of the movie, as IBDexplains, has humans in San Francisco — of all places — heroically reopening a power plant and bringing electricity back to the whole city.)

 I wonder how many Americans got the subtle message here: Energy is the master resource. Without it, we return to a Stone Age existence. Life in its absence is nasty, brutish and short.

Is that where the radical Greens, one of the most influential political forces in America today, would take us? If we continue to follow their advice, electric power and fuel will become more expensive (as President Obama has admitted). TheInvestor’s Business Daily editorial noted, “as the Sierra Club, billionaire Tom Steyer and the Obama administration rage war against coal and other fossil fuel,” we could end up seeing “rolling brownouts and even blackouts in the years ahead.”

In other words, the apocalypse confronting America may not be the havoc of “climate change,” but a slow-motion return to a medieval lifestyle.

Consider the Obama administration’s ongoing war on coal, marked most recently by new Environmental Protection Agency regulations requiring dramatic reductions in carbon emissions from power plants. America gets about 40 percent of its electricity from coal-fired plants, as IBD notes.

The greens say, no problem, we will shift to renewable energy. But it’s not so simple, as IBD points out: States with onerous renewable-energy standards such as Colorado and California are still relying heavily on coal to fill in the gaps during bad weather or periods of high demand.

There is a reliable, green, economical alternative: natural gas. It’s become cheap and abundant due to new smart drilling technologies. But the environmentalists are busy devising strategies to shut down natural gas as an energy source as well, raising unsupported objections to fracking, one of the methods used to extract it. The Sierra Club says we have to move “beyond natural gas,” even though natural gas is reducing carbon emissions.

And as IBD notes, the Left has little love for other sources of electricity, either, such as nuclear and hydro. In fact, the editorial notes, we get about 90 percent of our power from sources that the Left is trying to shut down.

Sorry, for the foreseeable future, we aren’t going to get our power for our $18 trillion economy from wind turbines and solar panels. And if we begin to try, prices are going to skyrocket.

As for our major transportation fuel, the Greens think oil is a “dirty” fuel that causes global warming. They’re trying to stop domestic drilling anywhere they can. They say we should move to electric cars. Fine. But where are we going to get the electricity to power the batteries?

Last summer our suburban home in northern Virginia lost power for two days during a storm. No lights, no computers, no air conditioning, no TV, no iPods or iPhones. To my three sons, this was like hell on earth. How did people live without electricity? They wondered. Very poorly, I told them.

I wonder how many young people will be so excited about “green energy” when such outages are commonplace and they come to the realization that life without those “dirty” sources of power won’t be so wonderful.

We don’t need apes to destroy our planet. The green humans seems to be doing a fine job of it all on their own.

— Stephen Moore is chief economist at the Heritage Foundation.

 

Hey Ho, the Carbon Tax Witch is Dead…. Yaaayyy!!!!

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Finally! Carbon Tax Gone – Australia gets rid of a price on carbon

As of today, Australia no longer has the most expensive “carbon” price in the world. The voters didn’t ask for a tax in 2010,  but it was forced on them in 2011. They rejected it wholeheartedly in 2013 but it still has taken months to start unwinding this completely pointless piece of symbolism which aimed to change the weather. The machinery of democracy may be slow, but this is a win for voters.

11:15am EST today: The Australian Senate passes the carbon tax repeal bill.

“Australia has become the first country in the world to abolish a price on carbon, with the Senate passing the Abbott government’s repeal bills 39 votes to 32.“ SMH

Now we need to turn off the tap to all the other green gravy rent-seekers who ignore the evidence.

h/t Matthew

Other news services are starting to cover this.  All the cross-benchers except Nick Xenophon (who was absent) voted for the repeal. Labor and the Greens opposed it. News.com

Soon big companies will stop paying a penalty on carbon emissions, currently just over $25 a tonne, ending Australia’s most controversial policy implementation since the 2003 decision to join the Iraq invasion.

Labor dragged out the final debate stages with questions about the Palmer United Party’s amendment to ensure price cuts from the carbon tax repeal are passed fully onto consumers and businesses. The Greens took a similar line of questioning and quizzed the finance minister about the government’s promised $550 saving for households from the repeal of the carbon tax.

On the question of $550 per household per year — just as it was impossible to know exactly how much more everything cost with a carbon tax, it will be impossible to know exactly how much less we will have to pay, and it will take months for savings to be passed through the supply lines. And billions of dollars wasted will never be recovered.

 

 
 

Aussies Axe the Carbon Tax! Finally! It’s Gone!

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Posted on July 16, 2014 by 

Carbontax_tombstoneAn ill-fated foray that never made much sense

Guest opinion by Phillip Hutchings

With perhaps a few more grandstanding shenanigans in our Federal Senate this week, Australia’s two-year experiment with a Carbon Tax will soon end. Legislation to kill the tax, which was brought in by the left-leaning Labor-Greens coalition in mid-2012, is now being finalised by our one year-old conservative Government.

 

That carbon tax has cost three prime ministerships, confused the voting population, and achieved pretty much nothing. Other market dynamics have been far more important in changing Australia’s greenhouse emissions, yet it’s politically insensitive to mention them.

The sanctimoniousness of such a tax in Australia is breathtaking. We are an energy heavy-weight, the world’s largest exporter of coal. Soon we will also be the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. At the same time as our Labor prime ministers were being successively culled by infighting over the carbon tax, the world’s biggest oil & gas companies were directing more than two-thirds of global investment in LNG production into Australia, the biggest investment boom ever in this country.

We are an economy built on the world’s hunger for fossil fuels. Yet with our gas and coal sources being either offshore or in remote locations, these vital export industries are mostly hidden from Australian voters.

The carbon tax itself was a lightweight. The theory underlying a carbon tax is to provide a long term price signal to drive a change in the industrial and consumer behaviour. On this score, the Australian tax was doomed to failure. After all, politically it had to appeal to the latte-sipping lefties, but without affecting their wallets.

The outcome – a watered-down policy that was all noise and no effect.

To minimise the economic fall-out, the Labor-Green Government limited the carbon tax to large industrial emitters (more than 25,000 CO2e/yr). Road transport and agriculture was exempt. Put together, that meant only about 185 companies in Australia’s US$ 1.5 trillion economy had to comply. And even those few were only lightly touched.

Industries which are “trade exposed” such as cement or aluminium smelting were mostly excused. They got either 66% or 94.5% of their carbon cost covered by the award of free units.

Just over one-third of Australia’s carbon emissions come from coal-fired electricity generators. And the dirtiest electricity comes from the aging brown-coal plants in Victoria – with almost double the emissions of modern gas-fired plants. Yet being located in a Labor-voting union heartland, they too got off lightly with the first half of their emissions effectively carbon- tax free. Nice.

None of which gave much incentive at all for carbon reduction. It’s hard to see any evidence at all of industries making long term investments in lower carbon-emitting factories or generating plants.

The domestic airlines got slugged with an extra 6 c/litre fuel excise, surely as crude a carbon tax as you can get. How was that supposed to reduce emissions? Yep, sure, aircraft fleets get renewed over time, and you bet, fuel efficiency is a factor when selecting alternative aircraft. But a surcharge on fuel itself was not going to change Qantas’ emissions.

So as a policy instrument, Australia’s carbon tax was never going to change emissions itself. It was a neutered program, raising Government revenue but not effective in changing behaviour.

https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/clip_image0024.png?w=640

Source – Quarterly Update of Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory: December 2013 Australia’s National Greenhouse Account

Yet, Australia’s greenhouse emissions have been declining for almost eight years. After decades of steady increase, that pause in carbon emissions since 2007 is striking. And it started six years before the carbon tax was implemented. It’s pretty easy to find the main reason for that – a steady fall in national electricity consumption. Latest figures show that Australia’s electricity use is at the lowest level since 2006. And with three-quarters of Australia’s electricity coming from carbon-intensive coal-fired sources, the fall in electricity use has led directly to a pause in carbon emissions.

But what caused Australian consumers to wind back their power use over the past eight years? Simple price elasticity, that’s what. There’s been huge investment in the network, the poles and wires to deliver (as opposed to generate) electricity. In most states, that led to a doubling of retail electricity prices. And yes, consumers did respond to that price signal, changing from electrical profligacy to parsimony. Nothing to do with the carbon tax, it was the regulated electricity supply industry recouping their capital investment.

What did we learn from this? The theory behind a carbon tax works fine – provide a price signal, and the consumer responds. It’s just that in this case, it was nothing to do with the carbon tax and all to do with regulated utilities doubling power prices as they caught up on network investment.

Here’s another little perverse change. Some years ago, I helped a fledgling gas producer negotiate a long term gas sales contract for electricity generation. The customer was a state Government-owned electricity generator, then setting up a new flagship and clean gas-fired generation plant. That helped shift the state’s generation sources ten years ago away from dirty coal, and into cleaner gas.

Yet earlier this year, that generator announced the closure of its gas generation in favour of dirtier coal generation. The reason? With three large export LNG plants now being commissioned for export, that gas is worth more for sale to China than for powering my fridge. In effect, a state Government snubbed its nose at the intent, let alone the price signal, from the Federal carbon tax.

So as a policy instrument, Australia’s carbon tax has been a failure. It never could have worked. And politically, it’s been a graveyard. Let’s hope politicians and bureaucrats from more enlightened jurisdictions study it and learn.

Australia’s carbon tax – no wonder it’s about to be buried.

Renewable Energy Targets Must Go….It’s a SCAM!!!

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Burchell Wilson: Sectors Should Join to Beat the RET

July 16, 2014 by  

 

Together we can protect small business and mums and dads from the burden of bad energy policy

Burchell Wilson is an extraordinary economist and holds the chief economist role at the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He writes today in the Australian;

Sectors should join to beat RET
Burchell Wilson
The Australian
17 July 2014

A QUIET but effective lobbying campaign is under way by the Australian Aluminium Council to deflect the unnecessary economic damage being inflicted on the industry by a dramatically expanded renewable energy target.

Rather than tackle Labor’s hidden carbon tax head-on, representatives of the aluminium industry understandably are seeking to exempt themselves from the fatal toll the RET is inflicting on Australian producers of aluminium.

From a political economy perspective the strategy adopted by the sector makes sense and would appear to be an attractive option, at least as far as the aluminium industry is concerned.

However, exempting aluminium refiners and smelters alone from the RET has the effect of shifting the cost of the scheme on to other energy users. It may allow aluminium producers to save hundreds of millions of dollars in energy costs, yet it unfortunately heaps the cost burden of the scheme further sideways on to mums and dads and small-business operators at the expense of the broader community.

The likelihood that those who would be asked to bear the cost of these exemptions will provide sufficient political resistance to these proposals is limited. Small businesses are too busy keeping their heads above water to be overly engaged in policy machinations and most households are focused on putting food on the table and ensuring their kids get the best chance in life.

Similar behaviour by sectoral interests was seen around the imposition of the carbon tax. Rather than opposing bad policy outright, many focused instead through necessity on carving themselves out of the policy to minimise exposure. As a political dynamic this is one reason so many policy failures get up in the first instance. There can be only limited effective opposition to bad policy when industry sectors focus instead on narrowly targeted campaigns to moderate their own impacts.

All of which serves to highlight the importance of broad-based industry associations in the political environment as advocates for good economic policy. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry represents the interests of a large base of energy users in the business community covering 300,000 businesses and acts on their behalf to ensure their views are considered in the national policy debate. The broad interests of industry in relation to the RET also happens to largely coincide with those of household energy users; both groups would benefit considerably from the scheme being phased out or scaled back.

The RET operates to drive up electricity prices for the sake of high-cost carbon abatement opportunities. Soon to be released modelling for ACCI by Deloitte Access Economics shows this will not only impose costs on energy consumers directly, it will also lead to broader economic damage to the Australian economy to the tune of $30 billion across the remaining life of the scheme. Jobs and investment will also be a casualty of the RET due to the loss of competitiveness it inflicts on Australian industry. The chief bene­ficiaries of the RET are in the wind industry, which will pocket $37bn in subsidies until 2030, or about $2.5bn a year on average.

Rather than seeking an exemption for individual sectors, ACCI is seeking wholesale reform of the RET on behalf of all energy users. Just as Palmer United Party senator Jacqui Lambie wants to see the entire state of Tasmania exempted from the scheme, ACCI believes the most appropriate exemption is one for the entire country.
The Australian

A reminder of Burchell’s cracking interview on the ABC’s 7.30 with Sarah Ferguson broadcast on 17 February 2014 (see our post here) – transcript follows.

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Transcript:
SARAH FERGUSON, PRESENTER: A day after US Secretary of State John Kerry described climate change as perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction, the Abbott Government has today taken another step towards overhauling the climate policies left over from Labor’s years in power. The Government has announced a major review of the impact of clean energy on retail power prices. It’ll be headed by a self-confessed global warming sceptic, businessman Dick Warburton. And it’s widely expected to result in a decision to wind back the current Renewable Energy Target, which aims to ensure that 20 per cent of Australia’s power comes from renewable sources like wind and solar by the year 2020. Industry groups are lobbying for the target to be abolished or cut. Among them is the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Its chief economist, Burchell Wilson, joined me earlier from Canberra. Burchell Wilson, thank you very much for joining the program.

BURCHELL WILSON, AUST. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE & INDUSTRY: You’re welcome.

SARAH FERGUSON: There was a substantial review of the Renewable Energy Target in 2012. Why do we need another review so soon after?

BURCHELL WILSON: Well the review is scheduled by legislation to take place in 2014, so obviously it has a parliamentary mandate to take place. But the other thing about the scheme is there needs to be more clarity around the cost it’s imposing on consumers, the cost it’s imposing on industry and the sort of inefficiencies it’s giving rise to in the energy sector.

SARAH FERGUSON: What about those people who are investing in the renewable sector, are they not part of the Chamber of Commerce as well?

BURCHELL WILSON: Look, the problem with the Renewable Energy Target is it’s imposing a cost of $1.6 billion across the economy. It amounts to about five per cent of household energy costs now and that’s just going to mushroom over time as the scheme continues to be rolled out.

SARAH FERGUSON: Let’s just talk about the domestic cost for a minute because the Climate Change Authority did look at the consequences of scrapping the target, if that were to happen as a result of the review, and they found that the effect on domestic energy prices would be negligible. Why do you say it’s such an important factor in this decision to review the target then?

BURCHELL WILSON: Look, you’ve had a range of regulatory authorities around the country come out in recent – in recent months and say – and tell us that the cost of the RET to average households is around $102 per annum, which is about five per cent of their electricity bill …

SARAH FERGUSON: And how much of that is covered by government compensation?

BURCHELL WILSON: None of it. It’s all – it’s a consumer subsidy. Taxpayers don’t foot the bill, energy users do. That just makes it more insidious. It’s not on the budget anywhere. It’s a cost to consumers that they don’t really know that they’re wearing.

SARAH FERGUSON: Is $100 a year a good enough reason to consider scrapping the Renewable Energy Target, if that is indeed one of the factors at play here?

BURCHELL WILSON: Look, the problem with the Renewable Energy Target is it’s a very inefficient way of abating carbon. The Productivity Commission’s told us – told us this. It’s costing up to $525 per tonne to abate carbon under the renewable energy target. There are low-cost alternatives available and, effectively, we’re undermining our emissions reduction effort by persisting with the Renewable Energy Target.

SARAH FERGUSON: Would you like to see it scrapped?

BURCHELL WILSON: Ah, we need to see it wound back in terms of its ambition and gradually phased out would be desirable from the perspective of industry and energy users.

SARAH FERGUSON: Phased out over what period? What are you actually calling for here?

BURCHELL WILSON: Look, this has to be examined as part of the review. There needs to be some provision made for the sunk investment under the scheme, but over time we should be winding this back, allowing the sunk investment to naturally decay and fall away and allow the renewable sector to compete on an even – on a level footing with baseload generators and efficient sources of energy.

SARAH FERGUSON: And is that something that you can realistically expect, were you to wind back the Renewable Energy Target in the short term, as you propose?

BURCHELL WILSON: Look, if people want to consume renewable energy, there are schemes available for them to opt in on a voluntary basis, but mandating this cost on consumers without providing any sort of level of clarity around the costs they’re imposing is bad policy and it’s bad for energy users.

SARAH FERGUSON: Let’s just have a look at the make-up of the panel who are going to consider this review. Dick Warburton is a self-avowed sceptic. His views on the subjects are well known. Is he an appropriate person to be leading this review?

BURCHELL WILSON: Absolutely. Dick led the charge against Australia having the highest carbon tax in the world. You’ll realise that Australians per capita pay $380 per head under the carbon tax, whereas Europeans under the ETS, they’re paying about $1.50. So there is no comparison between what we’re doing domestically and the efforts that are taking place abroad. We are an outlier.

SARAH FERGUSON: Just stay with the make-up of the panel for the moment. We’ve also got Brian Fisher, who has a long history of being opposed to pricing mechanisms in this area. It does sound as though the outcome of the review is to some extent preordained?

BURCHELL WILSON: Brian Fisher is a first-rate economist, one of the best in the country. If he – I don’t think he has any predetermined views on the matter, but he will approach this like an economist and he will …

SARAH FERGUSON: But a long history of opposition to pricing mechanisms for tackling climate change.

BURCHELL WILSON: Well, I don’t know if that’s true, but what he will tell you is the Renewable Energy Target is high-cost, it’s inefficient as a means of abating carbon, and if that’s your primary objective with respect to the RET, then we should scrap it altogether.

SARAH FERGUSON: What do you expect the outcome of the review to be?

BURCHELL WILSON: Look, we’re hopeful that at least the scale of the ambition for the Renewable Energy Target will be scaled back, but also hopeful that there’ll be some provision made for phasing the thing out over time and putting the renewable sector on a competitive footing with other forms of generation.

SARAH FERGUSON: It’s not going to be an an even footing though because if you remove the mandated target, that’s going to harm investor confidence in the renewable sector, isn’t it?

BURCHELL WILSON: Look, the Renewable Energy Target is – it’s corporate welfare on a massive scale directed towards the renewable sector. I don’t know why anyone would have any level of sympathy for businesses that – they don’t employ many people, that they don’t export anything and they’ve surreptitiously imposed these massive costs on energy consumers for the sake of lining their own profits.

SARAH FERGUSON: Do you have any sympathy for investors in the renewable energy sector in Australia tonight?

BURCHELL WILSON: Ah, well, they’ve run quite a disingenuous campaign in recent years, they’ve hidden the cost of the RET and they’re finally experiencing a level of accountability. I think that’s entirely appropriate and it’s strong leadership from the Prime Minister, the Industry Minister and the Environment Minister in putting the RET on the table and having an honest examination of the issue.

SARAH FERGUSON: Thank you very much indeed, Burchell Wilson, for joining us. We’ll see how the review pans out.

BURCHELL WILSON: Thanks very much.
ABC 7.30

STT says: “Hats off Burchell.”

A Light at the End the Tunnel, for Americans!

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Checkmate, ObamaCare

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Rob

imageThe collision is unavoidable. Barack’s pathological narcissism will ultimately face the fierce, direct opposition of the political best interests of Hillary (and Bill) Clinton, most House Democrats and virtually all Senate Democrats in 2014 and 2016. These two massive, ideological forces will rip apart the Democrat Party and badly weaken the mainstream media’s corrosive influence in America. The widespread toxicity of ObamaCare will impact all federal elections, driving the majority of office seeking Democrats to choose self-preservation and party-preservation over saving Obama’s personal legacy.

Checkmate. America wins.

The expanding nightmare of ObamaCare, with policy cancellation victims exceeding five million in 2013, will explode to an estimated one hundred and twenty million policy cancellation victims in 2014. The mounting political pressure on all politicians to reverse and repeal the wealth evaporating impact of Obama’s healthcare tyranny is absolutely unavoidable. Within one month of the disastrous, public debut of the “Affordable” Care Act, thirty-nine Democrats (approximately 20 percent of all House Democrats) swiftly turned their back on Barack’s legacy legislation.

Thanks to Harry Reid and Barack Obama recently exercising the “nuclear option” in the Senate, Republicans and Democrats need only cast 51 Senate votes to repeal ObamaCare in January, 2015. This repeal vote will happen. And Obama will veto this effort, attempting to spin the vote as an egregious assault on his legacy. He will also enlist his fellow travelers to decry this bi-partisan Senate repeal effort as further evidence that America is an inherently racist nation. Desperation is all that remains. He will fail as even his media cheerleaders capitulate to reality.

Not Iran, immigration reform nor gun control diversions will wag this dog from biting Obama and the Democrat party in their rear ends.

Could This Be the Dawning of Better Days for the UK? End the Greenscam~!

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UK’s new energy and environment ministers opposed green energy

Matthew Hancock called for cuts to wind power subsidies while Liz Truss claimed renewable power was damaging the economy…

Britain's new minister for energy, nusiness and enterprise, Matthew Hancock at 10 Downing Street on July 15, 2014.
Britain’s new minister for energy, business and enterprise, Matthew Hancock, at 10 Downing Street. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

The new set of Conservative environment and energy ministers announced on Tuesday bring a track record of opposing renewable energy, having fought against wind and solar farms, enthusiastically backed fracking and argued that green subsidies damage the economy.

New energy minister, Matthew Hancock, signed a letter to David Cameron in 2012 demanding that subsidies for onshore windfarms were slashed. “I support renewable energy but we need to do it in a way that gives the most value for money and that does not destroy our natural environment,” he said at the time.

Hancock, who takes over from Michael Fallon, also opposed new turbines in his Suffolk constituency, arguing: “The visual and other impact of the proposed turbines is completely unacceptable in this attractive rural corner of Suffolk.”

New environment secretary and former Shell employee, Liz Truss, dismissed clean renewable energy as “extremely expensive” and said it was damaging the economy during an appearance on BBC Question Time last October.

“We do need to look at the green taxes because at the moment they are incentivising particular forms of energy that are extremely expensive,” she said. “I would like to see the rolling back of green taxes because it is wrong that we are implementing green taxes faster than other countries. We may be potentially exporting jobs out of the country as our energy is so expensive.”

In 2009, as deputy director of the free-market thinktank Reform, Truss said energy infrastructure in Britain was being damaged by politicians’ obsession with green technology: “Vast amounts of taxpayers’ money are being spent subsidising uneconomic activity,” she said. Research from the London School of Economics recently concluded that green policies were not harming economic growth.

Truss will have a key role in regulating the environmental safety of shale gas exploration and has said fracking would benefit people living nearby. “We need to make sure shale gas is being exploited in this country, which will benefit local communities,” she said on BBC Question Time. As well as fracking, Truss backed “renewable” nuclear power as a way to “hit green targets”.

In her first statement since being appointed as environment secretary, Truss said: “I look forward to tackling the important issues facing our rural communities including championing British food, protecting people from flooding and improving the environment.” She did not mention fracking or the controversial badger cull, which she has supported in parliamentary votes.

Truss, Hancock and another new appointee to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Amber Rudd, all face conflicts between their new ministerial responsibilities and their previous constituency work.

Truss has spoken out about insufficient flood protection for farmland in her Norfolk South West constituency. But she is now responsible for flood defences and faces a £500m hole in the budget needed to keep pace with the rising flood risk being driven by climate change.

Truss has also been a vocal opponent of an energy-from-waste project – an incinerator – at Kings Lynn. She has opposed solar farms being built and also complained the energy secretary Ed Davey that subsidies helping crops to used to generate energy was making straw difficult to get for pig farmers.

One of the most contentious issues Truss faces will be over the badger
cull. Her East Anglian constituency is far from the bovine TB hotspots in
the west of the UK, but she has been keenly involved in rural issues – for
instance, she is pro-hunting.

Lord Krebs, chair of the sub-group of the Committee on Climate Change that
looks at adaptation to the effects of global warming, said at a meeting of
the all-party environment group in Westminster on Tuesday that he would
wait for a private conversation with Truss before advising her on that.

But he did say that he would offer his advice on badgers and bovine TB – a
subject which the prominent zoologist examined in detail for the previous
Labour government, finding that a cull was not likely to solve the
problem.

He told the Guardian: “I would say don’t be so focused on killing badgers
(as a way of controlling the disease) but go back and look at all the
policy options.”

Hancock has opposed both windfarms and new housing developments, while Rudd has raised her constituents safety fears about the Dungeness nuclear power plant in her constituency. Rudd, whose represents the coastal constituency of Hastings and Rye, has been praised by campaigners for supporting sustainable fishing and has raised questions about how government energy efficiency programmes would help social housing.

The Renewable Energy Association said it looked forward to working with Truss, Hancock and Rudd. The trade body’s chief executive, Dr Nina Skorupska, said of the outgoing Greg Barker, who Rudd replaces: “Not only did he bring stability to the department, he also brought passion and enthusiasm.”

Truss, Hancock and Rudd appear not to have made any public statements about climate change.