By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
This article is well worth a read. It concerns a recent BBC interview with Dieter Helm:
Something very strange happened today. I sat down to listen to the radio, and happened upon “You and Yours” on BBC Radio 4. Often, the radio stays on for a few moments before being switched off again as I tire of being lectured by the BBC about climate change, diet, net zero, or any one of a number of variations on those themes. But not today. Instead, I listened with increasing incredulity, as the BBC allowed a viewpoint that has been missing from its TV and radio programmes and its website for a long, long time now. It was an interview with Professor Sir Dieter Helm about the costs and implications of the UK Government’s “net zero” policy, and it can be found on BBC Soundsi, with the interview starting at around 32 minutes 10 seconds (thank you, Richard Drake, for supplying the details during a discussion about this on Open Mic).
It went like this:
Winifred Robinson: Now it’s been a week since the huge rise in energy bills was announced by the regulator, OFGEM. From April the average bill in Britain will rise by 54%; that’s an increase of £693 a year for every household. In the past week, we’ve been hearing on this programme some detail about how the Government plans to cushion this blow with loans and discounts on our bills will work out in practice. But are high energy bills the new normal? Some people are warning that they are. And it’s because of the cost of cutting carbon emissions. Professor Sir Dieter Helm says that. He’s an economist at Oxford University. He’s advised the UK and European Governments on energy policy. He was knighted for services to the environment, energy and utilities policy. I started by asking him why he’s called the current spike in energy prices the first net zero energy crisis.
Professor Sir Dieter Helm: Well, there are two reasons at play here. The first is that transforming an economy which is overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels to one that going to be net zero by 2050 and indeed the power sector, the electricity sector is supposed to be completely net zero by 2035 in thirteen years is a massive task. And it’s quite naïve to believe that something on this scale could be done other than at considerable cost. We should do it, but it’s going to be expensive. And then there’s the particular issue which comes up now. Yes, gas prices have risen, but there’s a fundamental question as to why the rise in gas prices globally has hit the UK so badly and part of that is because we are extremely reliant on gas to back up the intermittent renewables, particularly the wind, and we haven’t thought through how to do the back-up bit, the security of supply bit, while we’ve been at the same time pursuing decarbonisation.
Full story here.
Throughout the interview, Helm emphasises that to transform the economy to Net Zero will be extremely expensive, and that anybody claiming otherwise is lying.
But I loved this bit at the end:
WR: We’ve also been told that if we do cut carbon, we’ll avoid the costs that come with climate change, you know, the flooding, the storms, all that stuff. Is that true?
DH: It’s complete nonsense, right! You know, the UK is responsible for about 1% of global emissions.
The BBC won’t be inviting Dieter back on in a hurry!!
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
February 11, 2022 at 05:12AM
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