By Paul Homewood

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.”

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This was always highly predictable!

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.

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September 19, 2023 at 11:39AM

By Paul Homewood

More bad news for  the EV rollout:

Britain’s car industry has urged the government to dish out tax breaks or other incentives to encourage people to buy electric vehicles (EVs), amid fears that consumer enthusiasm is on the wane.

The government will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030, but has wound back incentives for buyers – just as motorists have started to fret more about how much EVs cost and whether there is enough charging infrastructure.

Mike Hawes, chief executive of the British car industry’s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, said EV makers had now made all the early, easier gains, and needed more public support to keep the 2030 target in sight.

Full story

Volkswagen’s managing director has warned the sale of electric vehicles is ‘stagnating’ as a poll revealed just 2 per cent of drivers would buy one in the near future.

Alex Smith warned there are currently few incentives to buy EVs.
He claimed sales are in ‘stagnation’ with EVs still ‘relatively expensive’ compared to petrol and diesel cars, adding: ‘It’s true to say that with the retail price of an electric car, you will find a premium.’

It came as a poll of 2,375 UK motorists found that just 2 per cent would buy an EV right now.
The survey, carried out for industry body the Society for Motor Manufactures and Traders found more than half are not planning to buy one until 2026 or later.

The figures led to growing calls for more support for private buyers to switch to EVs ahead of the planned ban on new petrol and diesel car sales from 2030.
Full story

And things are no better in Germany:

Volkswagen AG is cutting temporary workers at its main electric-vehicle factory in Germany because of waning orders for its EVs in Europe.

The manufacturer plans to let go nearly 300 people at the Zwickau plant when their contracts expire in October, according to people familiar with the matter. The fate of around 2,000 additional temporary staff remains uncertain, the people said, declining to be named because a final decision hasn’t been made yet.
Volkswagen is having a tough time selling enough mostly made-in-Germany electric cars to challenge Tesla Inc.’s global dominance. Lackluster economic growth as well as higher energy, living and borrowing costs in Europe have weighed on demand for its ID fleet of EVs.

The company hired around 2,700 temporary workers at the Zwickau facility near the Czech border to meet expected surging EV demand. But orders from corporate clients — which account for around 70% of the IDs built at the plant — have been plummeting since a federal subsidy for battery-powered company vehicles expired this month, one of the people said.
Full story

When will the motor industry and government get the message that the vast majority of drivers don’t want the useless things?

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September 19, 2023 at 11:21AM

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September 19, 2023 at 10:16AM

Antarctica [credit: Wikipedia]

The BBC once again trying to pull the wool over the unsuspecting public’s eyes on climate? Surely not! Or…guilty as charged? With Arctic sea ice scare stories looking increasingly hollow, something along apparently similar lines at the other end of the globe proved irresistible.
– – –
Antarctica sea ice is at a “mind-blowing” record low winter area of 17 million square kilometres, reports a three-person BBC “News Climate & Science and Data Journalism Team”, as lower levels than those recorded in the recent past provide the cue for yet more media climate hysteria, says The Daily Sceptic.

Of course, the BBC headline is clickbait nonsense, not least because it has been generally known in scientific circles that early NASA Nimbus satellites showed even lower winter levels around 15 million sq. kms in 1966.

But the BBC story does provide an excellent example of how science is twisted to fit the political narrative supporting the collectivist Net Zero agenda.

Any unusual variation in weather and natural events is treated as evidence of a climate collapse requiring urgent human intervention.

The BBC reports that according to satellite data, sea ice surrounding Antarctica is well below any previous recorded winter level. It is said to show a worrying new benchmark for a region “that once seemed resistant to global warming” — that last phrase of course is a reference to the fact that Antarctica has shown little or no warming over the last 70 years.

Dr. Walter Meier, who monitors sea ice with the Colorado-based National Snow and Ice Data Centre, helpfully added: “It’s so far outside anything we’ve seen, it’s almost mind-blowing.”

This would appear to be the same Dr. Walter Meier who was part of the science team that cracked open the secrets of the early Nimbus data that revealed significant Antarctica sea ice variability in the 1960s, including a high in 1964, not seen again until 2014, and the low for 1966.

Full article here.

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September 19, 2023 at 09:15AM