How To Con Your Population About Electric Water Heaters
Canada’s Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault Xed out last Wednesday that “#DYK that in 2022, more heat pumps were shipped to BC (37,800) than natural gas furnaces (30,700)? This was a first for the province and shows us that the clean energy future is rolling in!”
No. It shows that the subsidies are rolling in; as one firm in the business puts it:
“The terms of heat pump rebates in Canada vary from program to program. They are constantly changing, providing incentives to larger groups of citizens.”
And a day later Blacklock’s Reporter informed us that:
“The federal cabinet yesterday approved $103.7 million in subsidies for homeowners who switch from natural gas furnaces to electric heat pumps, but only in British Columbia.”
The province’s Trudeau-friendly NDP government faces an election this fall and is slipping behind in the polls. And the federal NDP is propping up Guilbeault’s minority regime.
So the ‘clean’ energy future looks like more of the dirty politics past.
The grift even extends to a government-subsidized advocacy tank which says:
“Existing federal and provincial rebate programs, as well as the price of carbon, support the cost competitiveness of heat pumps.”
Which of course really means that they are not cost competitive, which is why they need rebate programs. Like, arguably, government-subsidized advocacy groups.
In keeping with which, Canary Media’s news-of-the-future section tells us “Why heat-pump water heaters could soon take off” and sure enough market forces have nothing to do with it.
Instead “New federal efficiency standards, local air quality regulations, and government incentives are spurring a shift toward the up-and-coming clean energy tech.”
The piece goes on to claim that electric water heaters are way too expensive, which makes an economist wonder why anyone would buy one even without new “efficiency” standards, the whole price system being the most amazingly efficient efficiency standard anyone could imagine, or want.
Whereas instead “A final factor spurring the popularity of heat-pump water heaters is the bevy of incentives available.” Imagine that. People like it when you throw money at them.
https://principia-scientific.com/how-to-con-your-population-about-electric-water-heaters/
***********************************************Swiss parliamentary committee rejects European climate ruling
A Swiss parliamentary committee on Tuesday rejected a ruling by a top European court that said Switzerland had violated the human rights of its citizens by not doing enough to prevent climate change.
In April, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg found in favor of a group of elderly Swiss women who took their government to court over its record on tackling global warming.
The decision, which was expected to embolden more people to bring climate cases against governments, indicated Switzerland had a legal duty to take greater action on reducing emissions.
The ruling received widespread criticism in Switzerland, and the legal affairs committee of the upper house of parliament voted to rebuff it on the grounds the country was taking enough action, said Andrea Caroni, a lawmaker on the committee.
The Swiss government had pushed back against the Strasbourg court's decision, with the environment minister saying the ruling was hard to reconcile with direct democracy.
Switzerland, where referendums regularly test the limits of national policymaking, has committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 from 1990 levels.
The government had proposed stronger measures to deliver the goal, but Swiss voters rejected them in a 2021 referendum
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UK: Politicians must drop their ‘Comical Ali’ approach to offshore wind costs
According to officials at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), offshore wind power is around half the cost of electricity from gas turbines. But in Parliament recently, David Frost exposed the problem with this claim. If what DESNZ says is true, he observed, it is hard to understand why we still have to subsidise windfarms. And harder still to understand why we have just had to give them a 70 per cent increase in the guaranteed price they receive.
It was striking that the energy minister Martin Callanan, responding for the Government, failed to answer the question, merely reiterating the claim that wind is cheaper than gas. His evasion tells a story, and highlights the great deception at the heart of the Net Zero policy.
For years, governments have told us of a revolution in windfarms costs. Developers may even have believed it themselves, submitting extraordinarily low bids into the renewables auctions. But for the sums to add up, costs had to go down and output had to go up. So developers shaved engineering margins to the bone and moved to bigger turbines and windier sites far from shore.
The results have been an almost complete disappointment. In the hostile environment of the North Sea, operating costs have soared, and those big turbines have worn out much faster than expected. It seems that engineering margins had been cut too far. This is the real reason developers forced such an astonishing price increase from the Government. They can’t get the costs down in the way that was claimed.
So while DESNZ says that offshore wind has been cheap for many years, the sums demanded at auction, and the hard data from windfarm financial accounts, tell another story.
This leaves Callanan and the officials who briefed him, looking foolish, if not mendacious. They can’t have it both ways. If wind is cheap, it doesn’t need subsidies, let alone the astonishing largesse now on offer. Either the Government is making consumers vastly overpay for wind power, or they are not telling us the truth about the costs. It should be a resigning matter either way, or would have been, in the absence of the election.
Nevertheless, ministers have to maintain the charade. Offshore wind is the sine qua non of the Net Zero project. Almost every transition – from petrol cars to electric, from gas boilers to heat pumps – depends on the availablity of cheap offshore wind power. Without it, the cost of Net Zero soars.
The official estimate of that cost, from the Climate Change Committee, assumes that wind power can be had for around half the price currently on offer in the renewables auctions. That claim has always been absurd, and is just one of a series of scandals around the CCC’s cost estimates, which are now entirely discredited. It is perhaps not surprising that Claire Coutinho, asked a few weeks ago by GBNews’s Camilla Tominey for her current estimate of the cost of Net Zero, chose to dodge the question. One thing we can be sure is it is that it is much more expensive than we have been led to believe.
Few who were alive at the time of second Gulf War can forget the TV performances of Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (‘Comical Ali’), Saddam Hussein’s Information Minister, who hilariously explained, night after night, that US forces were being driven back by the heroic Iraqi resistance, his insistence in Uncle Sam’s impending rout continuing entirely unabashed, even as US troops were knocking at the gates of Baghdad.
That extraordinary moment, when the truth finally became undeniable, has parallels in Coutinho’s announcement that she had surrendered to the windfarm developers and decided to award them the extraordinary price increase they wanted. Suddenly the idea of “cheap renewables” was exposed as a lie once and for all.
As the American tanks rolled into view, Comical Ali kept up the charade for a few more hours before disappearing forever. So, I imagine, Comical Callanan will continue to insist that wind power is cheap for a little longer, before he too will be swept away, consigned to the history books as a ridiculous figure of fun.
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The hopeless mission of the Australian Energy Market Operator
This year 2024 Daniel Westerman will become a well-known if not much-loved public figure.
In his role as the energy czar – the CEO of the Australian Energy Market Operator – his mission is to mastermind the great transformation of our energy system to deliver clean, reliable, and affordable energy to your home, business, and in due course, your car.
In fact, the decision to pursue that transformation is the greatest policy blunder in our history, wartime included. To anticipate the punchline of this bad joke: ‘It’s the wind supply, stupid!’ That is explained below.
Westerman’s predecessor laid the foundations for this ‘Great Reset’ of the energy market with a cultural revolution in AEMO, stacking the organisation with green activists and model builders to generate the Integrated System Plan for the transformation. This received high praise from the Net Zero industry and scathing criticism in a forensic review by a team of scientists and engineers associated with the Energy Realists in the parallel universe of energy policy.
The interaction between the two worlds is much like the dispute between two fishwives observed by Boswell and Johnson (literary lions of the time) shouting at each other from their front windows across a narrow street. Johnson remarked, ‘They will never agree. They are arguing from different premises.’
Perhaps a shared perception of impending disaster can provide a common premise for a constructive exchange between the two worlds. The possibility is there since the latest update of the AEMO Electricity Statement of Opportunities in late February flags an impending shortage of supply after Liddell power station closes in April to be followed by the biggest unit in NSW, Eraring, two years later. In less diplomatic language, get ready for blackouts! This is old news for energy realists, still, with the threat officially acknowledged, the time has come for an urgent review of the transition plan.
The role of Daniel Westerman will be crucial in that process. What manner of man is he? Does he have the qualifications and experience to lead a gruelling and divisive campaign to keep the lights on? Can he keep his head while all about him are losing theirs and blaming it on him?
He was born in Australia, graduated in Mechanical Engineering, and gained MBAs in Melbourne and London. He did some time consulting on energy at McKinsey before he moved to England in 2014 and rose to be the Chief Transformation Officer and President of Renewable Energy at London-based National Grid. He also ran the England and Wales electricity system as part of National Grid’s dual responsibility as electricity market operator. The UK was on a ‘rapid energy transformation pathway’ based on large-scale wind and solar, especially wind.
In 2021, he was appointed as the CEO of AEMO, arousing great expectations. The Financial Review reported that the AEMO chairman and the board members were very pleased with Mr Westerman’s experience. The voice of the Energy Network of Australia was effusive: ‘The northern hemisphere’s loss is Australia’s gain as we chart the path towards a clean, reliable and affordable energy future.’
Sarah McNamara of the Australian Energy Council opined that his knowledge of markets in the UK will be invaluable as we navigate the challenges, ‘Protecting the future security of the National Electricity Market and balancing the energy needs of today with the necessary changes for the future.’
What happened in Britain under his leadership to arouse so much hope for our future? Warning: We are now entering the parallel universe where the former Prime Minister of Britain, Theresa May, proudly legislated for Net Zero with practically unanimous support in the House.
Consequently, Britain went into free fall on the energy front, well over a year before the war in Ukraine started. Power prices went through the roof and energy-intensive industries are closing down or heading for the Exit door. Subscribe to Net Zero Watch from the Global Warming Policy Foundation to get a gruesome week by week account of the deindustrialisation of Western Europe, especially Britain, and Germany.
Can we expect to do better? The answer at present appears to be, ‘No!’ At the release of the Electricity Statement of Opportunities, Mr Westerman quickly resiled from the full implications of the report and reverted to the official script, calling for ‘urgent and ongoing investment in renewable energy, long-duration storage, and transmission to reliably meet demand’. This reflects the government commitment to more wind and solar, more ‘big batteries’, completing Snowy2.0, re-wiring the nation, and getting rid of coal.
What don’t they get about the Iron Triangle of Energy Supply? That is the nexus of wind droughts and lack of storage that guarantees blackouts on windless nights unless there is 100 per cent of conventional power available? Surely they appreciate the need for continuous input to the grid…
As for wind droughts, AEMO has all the information they need to document the phenomenon because they have continuous records of the output from all the registered windmills attached the grid. In 2012, Paul Miskelly documented wind droughts across SE Australia when highpressure systems linger, sometimes for days.
Anton Lang drew on the AEMO data to keep tabs on the wind supply and the performance of the other generators, which he documented in thousands of blog posts on his site from 2018 to the present.
It seems that nobody with influence in energy planning and policy took any notice of these public records which clearly signal that the green energy transition is impossible with existing technology. This means that the Net Zero policy is the greatest blunder in our history, wartime included.
Wind literacy is the key to public appreciation of the Iron Triangle. Regular weather bulletins could easily include the amount of wind power in the energy mix at the time. The figures at night and at breakfast and dinnertime, when there is little or no solar power, should be a wakeup call. Similarly, glancing at the NemWatch widget at those times signals how much we depend on coal and gas for hot meals and air conditioning.
The reporters and commentators in the mainstream media have scandalously kept people ignorant of the basic facts pertaining to the Iron Triangle, facts that are required to enable informed public debate. If the news doesn’t travel fast enough to stimulate timely remedial action, be prepared to move to Tasmania or hoard wood and animal dung for the time when household generators are banned or our diesel stocks run out.
https://stophumansacrifice.substack.com/p/rafe-champion-power-policy-in-parallel
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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