Never stand between rent seekers and a fat pile of taxpayers’ money. The wind and solar industries were built on lies and myth, but they can only survive when there’s a steady stream of massive and endless subsidies. Cut the subsidies and rent seekers disappear in a heartbeat.
BP was once the head of the ‘renewable’ energy rent-seeking queue. However, as Paul Homewood explains below, its management has seen the writing on the wall.
The climate scaremongers: BP gets real about Net Zero illusions
Conservative Woman
Paul Homewood
10 February 2023
IN LAST week’s column, I wrote about BP’s warning that the world would still be needing fossil fuels in three decades’ time. The Telegraph reported the claim of their Chief Economist Spencer Dale that the world would still be reliant on fossil fuels for a fifth of its energy in 2050, despite adopting radical climate policies, according to BP’s latest Energy Outlook.
It turns out this forecast was Alice in Wonderland stuff. The Energy Outlook makes projections based around three different scenarios. The one on which Dale’s claim was based is called Net Zero, and it assumes that the whole world has virtually eliminated carbon dioxide emissions by then, down by 95 per cent from today. Plainly this is nonsense: there is no way that Asia or the rest of the developing world will give up on economic growth and improvements in standards of living, which are dependent on cheap, reliable energy. The second scenario, called Accelerated, is barely more credible, with emissions falling by about 80 per cent. The only realistic projections are in the New Momentum scenario, which as the name suggests still assumes that decarbonisation efforts will have to be ratcheted up.
Under this New Momentum scenario, the world will still be needing fossil fuels for over half of its energy by 2050. And because total energy consumption will continue to increase, fossil fuel use is expected to be only 18 per cent less than now.
Interestingly, just a few days after the Outlook was published BP’s Chief Executive Bernard Looney announced that the company was going to dial back on green investments and refocus on maximising returns from oil and gas.
Renewables were only ever attractive to the likes of BP because of all the subsidies that went with them. Now there is a realisation that fossil fuels cannot be replaced by renewables for the foreseeable future, and BP’s ultimate duty is to its shareholders, not those pushing for Net Zero.
https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/energy-outlook.html
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Gas keeps New England warm in record cold spell
NEW England was hit by a brutal blast of Arctic weather last weekend, bringing some of the lowest temperatures seen for decades. No doubt it will soon be blamed on global warming!
Fortunately for New Englanders there was plenty of natural gas to keep them warm and the power grid running:
https://www.eia.gov/dashboard/newengland/electricity
The fossil fuels that Joe Biden has promised to eliminate from the grid by 2035 supplied 65 per cent of New England’s electricity at 8pm on Friday. The wind and solar that he thinks the US can run on managed a paltry 4 per cent.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: If Biden gets his way, how many millions of Americans are going to die as a result?
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Wind farm profits aren’t the problem, subsidies are
POLITICIANS in Scotland are getting worked up about the profits made by Chinese and other foreign companies who own the offshore wind farms there.
According to the Herald:
‘Foreign governments including China and overseas firms with interests in Scotland’s offshore wind farm revolution are already enjoying more than £200million in annual profits.
‘There is concern that governments in China and the United Arab Emirates which have presided over human rights concerns are among the beneficiaries of Scotland’s green revolution.
‘The array of state government-controlled firms that are making millions from having a key stake in Scotland’s collection of offshore wind farms also include France, Norway, Sweden and the Republic of Ireland. The Scottish Government has no stake in any company reaping the green rewards, even though it is in the nation’s waters that the farms are being constructed. Controlling interests are also being held by privately-owned energy firms in Germany, Spain, Holland and Japan.
‘Kenny MacAskill, the MP the for East Lothian and Alba Party deputy leader, said: “It’s galling enough that state energy companies from the likes of France, Sweden and even Ireland have ownership of Scotland’s natural bounty. What should benefit our own folk in this energy crisis has been given to those who treat their own folk appallingly. This is a failure on all counts and to our own and other people”.’
Politicians like Kenny MacAskill seem to think that because the wind is free Scotland should reap the rewards. He does not seem to realise that the foreign companies he complains about invested billions into building their wind farms in the first place. Instead of aiming his ire at foreign companies for high electricity prices, maybe he should direct it towards the obscene subsidies paid to renewable generators, all financed via energy bills.
For instance, the Beatrice wind farm, which is mentioned in the Herald article, is Scotland’s second biggest and is part owned by the Chinese state. Situated off the Caithness coast, it cost £2.5billion to construct. Last year it made £98million profit, not an unreasonable return on the capital outlay. Since it began operations in 2019, however, Beatrice has received subsidies of £614million, far outweighing the profits made.
Beatrice is not the only one to be paid such massive subsidies. Robin Rigg, for example, the monstrosity which despoils the Solway Firth, earns £50million a year in subsidies and is owned by the German energy giant, RWE. The Aberdeen wind farm, owned by Swedish Vattenfall, pulls in another £40million, and the Hywind floating wind farm gets another £24million.
It was of course Alex Salmond, now leader of the Alba Party, and the rest of the SNP who were pushing as hard as anybody for renewable energy in Scotland some years ago. In 2012, for instance, Salmond boasted about the growth of renewable energy in Scotland, and set a target for renewables to supply 50 per cent of electricity there by 2015, claiming it was a ‘massive economic opportunity’. Now they object to paying the bill!
Conservative Woman
About stopthesethings
STOP THESE THINGS 
Reality is a beech!
Unreliable and expensive, without subsidies nobody would invest in this ideology.
The mugs in the street don’t seem to understand that they are paying for this madness. Stupid. Just stupid!
“If Biden gets his way, how many millions of Americans are going to die as a result?”
If Biden gets his way then fertiliser production which is dependent on natural gas supplies will decline drastically, and much of the increased numbers of people in the Global population that has taken place as a result of cheap plentiful fertiliser will die too.
The illusion of 95% reduction in emissions is another marketing trick on the mind. Many hear that and think it’s like clearing the air of 95% of all carbon dioxide which because of their other marketing tricks they think carbon is a poison. Correct me if I am wrong but if we did that trees would all die. Food sources would all die such as vegetables and grains. Although the atmosphere is only 1/2500 ratio of co2 to all other natural air composites (NAC) the marketing departments label as “gasses” to instill fear and caution, the 95% reduction would net wipe out all plant life as it needs co2 for it’s “oxygen”. This would bring co2 level down to 1/237,500. Maybe this wouldn’t do anything to harm plant life as maybe it simply knows how to get by with whatever amount of floatly fluffy 1 part carbon with 2 part oxygen is in the air but what about humans? Does our body work in a balance with the 1/2500 ratio? Would a co2 ratio in the air of 1/237,500 unbalance our oxygen delivery system? Obviously “more study is needed” and to do that we will need to use more EBF (Earth Based Fuels).
To highlight the problems with “the science” I just presented of calculations and claims, I fell right into that same trap. I applied the formula to the total balance of co2 in the atmosphere. I should have applied it to EMISSIONS. The total sum of man made emissions would be reduced 95% according to these marketing claims. The amount of co2 in the air on average is 1/2500 but what is the percentage of that number being man made? Since the number fluctuates like the weather up and down maybe by guess right now it’s by 100 so then the change in Carbon In The Air (CITA) would then be the amount of co2 reduced from that if we net zero down 95% of man’s emissions and that would total out to a non-whopping reduction of co2 in the air that brings the change of what’s in the air to be instead of 1/2500 to be 1/2405 which is totally INSIGNIFICANT to say the least. Actually when we study this further the change would be more like from 1/2500 down to 1/2499.
But here’s another twist, Mother Nature deals with c02 herself probably the only one in the world who knows how and no cost to us and does so keeping it in balance most effectively at like a rate of 99.99% efficiency, using of all things, climate. So with that kind of rate of handling it without us having to do anything, that effective reduction of 95% comes out to a reduction of ZERO as mother nature is basically dealing with carbon emissions from man in the .000001% of what co2 is there without man’s emissions.
So the planet of misled humans implements all their energy wasting carbon reduction nonsense and thus achieves a result of effectively reducing co2 by 95% using mostly EBF to do so to obtain an ABSOLUTE ZERO change in co2 in the air and when the public realizes after every square inche of open space where we could always go to “recharge” is ruined by Garbage Energy (GE) asks why we still have issues with climate after spending trillions of green $$$ energy on “fixing” what does not need fixing the Hustlers In Climate Con Upending Power Sources (HICCUPS) finally move on to their next scam and place blame on the plan not working on something or someone else as that is their game.