Late yesterday someone leaked Rishi Sunak’s plans to water down the UK’s Net Zero measures to the BBC. He was not, everyone was at pains to note, discarding the overall 2050 target. The leaked changes were all about softening and delaying the pain.
Here is the BBC’s list of the eight rumoured policy changes:
Push back the ban on petrol cars to 2035 from 2030
Soften the ban on gas boilers from no new gas boilers in 2035 to 20% of new boilers still gas in 2035
Rescind looming energy efficiency regulations for homes
Push back the ban on oil boilers from 2026 to 2035
No new taxes to discourage flying
No interference in people’s diets
No measures to encourage carpooling
Not implementing a recycling strategy requiring householders to operate 7 bins.
Updates will follow here when Sunak makes his speech.
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Cutting emissions is proving harder than committing to cut emissions
Climate progress at big companies is hitting a wall. The world’s largest companies have committed to slashing their emissions to address climate change. Many of them have overpromised and underdelivered because of higher costs, slow advances in technology and political pressure.
One big factor is a lack of trust in voluntary carbon markets. Many companies had intended to use carbon credits to offset emissions that are hard to reduce, such as the burning of jet fuel by airlines. Those credits were supposed to cover short-term commitments. Companies are now backing off of these goals while maintaining they are committed to long-term targets. It is a sobering conclusion two years after the 2021 United Nations climate summit in Glasgow jump-started several climate initiatives.
Mining giant Rio Tinto can’t hit a near-term emissions target without using carbon offsets. Delta Air Lines and other carriers are under similar pressure. Shell and BP dialled back green-investment plans under pressure from investors. Amazon.com recently shelved a target to slash delivery emissions by 2030.
“Many companies are learning that the beginning of decarbonization is easy,” said Günther Thallinger, a board member at insurer Allianz who chairs a U.N. climate-focused investor group. “The moment you really need to go into true transformation, the work becomes quite difficult.”
Companies jumped on the bandwagon at the outset, partly out of the desire to virtue signal and partly due to pressure from environmentalist shareholders. But it was always obvious that there was little they could do to substantially cut emissions, without massively expense and disruption. Even then they would still remain stuck with the energy supplied to them by the State.
Rio Tinto, for example, still needs mining equipment, earth movers and shipping, which all run on fossil fuels.
Carbon offsets were an easy, relatively inexpensive way to show immediate “emission savings”. But increasingly it is evident that most offsets actually do not cut emissions at all.
I suspect that many companies and investors are growing tired of spending money for no good reason at all.
The wind and solar ‘transition’ was always going to end in a dystopian nightmare, but Brits are already living it. Power is routinely rationed whenever the wind drops and, perversely, households are encouraged to use electricity when wind speeds pick up.
The simple truth is that Britain has destroyed its reliable and affordable power supply, thanks to a suicidal attempt to rely on wind and solar.
If authoritarian control is your thing, then Britain is the place for you. Wind power shortages now require micromanagement of an insidious, Orwellian kind. And householders and businesses face time in the slammer if they don’t play ball.
The team from Jo Nova outline the rules of a new form of monopoly, where the only option is going straight to jail.
Now the UK government wants to control your kitchen fridge or send you to jail
Jo Nova Blog
Jo Nova
6 September 2023
The UK government is absolutely not asking you to ration electricity, to give up control of your own appliances, to pay more for less, and go to jail if you get it wrong.
Ministers are pressing ahead with new legislation that could see families made to adopt “smart” appliances to ease pressure on the grid. Tory MPs are opposing the proposals, contained in the contentious Energy Bill which will come back before the Commons on Tuesday.
Are they your appliances or the state’s? If you don’t control the power switch you know the answer.
When they call something “smart” we know it’s stupid — and the mind-boggling complexity of central agencies switching on and off ovens and heaters across the country to “fit” with the weather is a dystopia we don’t need to have. Do you need 90 minutes to roast a chook, or 120? It depends on the wind strength in Scotland. If the kids can’t get to bed early, or you can’t wash their clothes, they can just miss the first hour of school right?
Every word is a lie:
The Government insisted it was “in no way asking people to ration electricity” and that consumers will benefit in the form of cheaper bills.
“Cheaper than what?” Consumers will pay less than the highest pagan-witchcraft energy prices they might otherwise have had to pay, but they’ll pay more than what they would have if they had a free market in energy.
The problem with trying to control the weather with our energy grid is that it’s impossible, so no request aimed at reaching into your home and bossing you around is “too much”. There is no natural endpoint. No moment when the weather will be perfect and not in need of changing somehow. No day when they can declare, “We stopped the storms — you can have your fridge back”.
The demand for power and control over the masses will just keep increasing until they revolt. So save time, revolt now.
If you like your old fridge you can keep it, but we’ll send you jail
If you think they will let you run the diesel gen and have your own heater, think again:
Property owners who fail to comply with new energy efficiency rules could face prison under government plans that have sparked a backlash from Tory MPs.
Ministers want to grant themselves powers to create new criminal offences and increase civil penalties as part of efforts to hit net zero targets. Under the proposals, people who fall foul of regulations to reduce their energy consumption could face up to a year in prison and fines of up to £15,000.
Tory backbenchers are set to rebel against the plans, which they fear would lead to the criminalisation of homeowners, landlords and businesses.
The proposals are contained in the Government’s controversial Energy Bill, which is set to come before the Commons for the first time when MPs return from their summer break on Tuesday.
When a two star water heater might send you to jail:
Craig Mackinlay, the head of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, has tabled an amendment to strip the “open-ended and limitless” powers out of the legislation. He told The Telegraph: “The Bill is festooned with new criminal offences. This is just unholy, frankly, that you could be creating criminal offences
“The ones we’ve found most offensive are where a business owner could face a year in prison for not having the right energy performance certificate or type of building certification.”
Iowa Climate Science Education 