3 July 2024
Interesting times

From the director

Dear readers, donors and subscribers

This will be the last Samizdat before the election. While the campaign has mostly been as dull as ditchwater, the rise of Reform UK has at last allowed a conversation about the UK’s Net Zero policies to begin. The mainstream media’s omertà on the subject has finally been breached.

During the debates and interviews, interviewers signally failed to land any serious blows on Reform’s thoroughly sceptic stance. The position, long espoused by us at Net Zero Watch, that ‘you can say what you like about the science, but the policy is irrational’ is making sense to a lot of people, and is hard to rebut, because it is intuitively (and actually) correct.

We are still likely to get a Labour government of course, and we wait in some trepidation to see whether the energy portfolio will be handed to Ed Miliband, or some other zealot. The feeling among the NZW team is that Mr Starmer must be well aware of the concerns of the unions decarbonisation’s effects on jobs. We can only hope, therefore, that with a big majority, he feels free to put a pragmatist in charge. If he doesn’t, the times are going to become…interesting.

Best wishes

Andrew

As always, please don’t reply to this email address, which is not monitored.

The headlines

UK elections

• Miliband out of touch?

• Claire Coutinho sticks with differentiation

Around the world

• EdF rips up SMR design

• Brakes on at biofuels plant

• Thai insurer’s ban on covering EVs

Decarbonisation

• Drop in number of apprentices threatens Net Zero drive

• Battery startup woes

• Google’s emissions rise

• London congestion charge to be expanded to EVs

Etcetera

• Another coral-cover record

• Farage bursts the green bubble

• Follow the green money

UK elections

Miliband out of touch?

Ed Miliband promised to put climate policy ‘front and centre’ of Labour’s plans for government. Unimpressed, social media pundits pointed to recent polling from Ipsos, which finds that climate is no longer among the top ten concerns of the British public (PDF).

Claire Coutinho sticks with differentiation

The Energy Secretary continued to attack Labour’s Net Zero plans as dogmatic, maintaining also a blind eye to the close similarities to her own plans.

Around the world

EdF rips up SMR design

French state electricity company EdF announced that it was abandoning its SMR design due to cost concerns. It wants to start again with a new partner.

Brakes on at biofuels plant

Shell halted construction of a biofuels plant near Rotterdam, ‘to address project delivery and ensure future competitiveness given current market conditions’.

Thai insurer’s ban on covering EVs

Thailand’s second largest insurer explained to perplexed customers that it would no longer insure EVs as a matter of course, but would instead consider applications on a case-by-case basis. High claim costs were blamed.

Decarbonisation

Drop in number of apprentices threatens Net Zero drive

Industry associations have warned the UK faces a shortage of skilled workers because there has been a huge drop in the number taking up apprenticeships.

Battery startup woes

Northvolt, the EU’s great hope for battery manufacturing, reported $1 billion of annual operating losses, as competition from the Far East and the loss of a huge order from BMW hit home.

Google’s emissions rise

Google blamed demand for AI for an unexpected increase in its greenhouse gas emissions. Posturing is always the easy part.

London congestion charge to be expanded to EVs

Cash-strapped mayor Sadiq Khan struck announced that EVs would be brought into the congestion charge regime. Their owners might reasonably feel that they had been tricked.

Etcetera

Another coral-cover record

Coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef reached another record high.

Farage bursts the green bubble

Writing in The Critic, James Compton finds that the costs of renewables are rather higher than most people would have you believe.

Follow the green money

The green policy community’s addiction to the long-since discredited RCP8.5 emissions scenario seems to have a great deal to do with their private financial interests.

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