Guardian Hypes Miniscule Amount Of Drax ‘Carbon’ Emissions

Last week, that bastion of accurate reporting; The Guardian, made a big deal about how much ‘carbon’ emissions the Drax power station produced

The article carried the headline ‘Biomass power station produced four times emissions of UK coal plant, says report’

It is not a long article, so I reproduce it in full:

The Drax power station was responsible for four times more carbon emissions than the UK’s last remaining coal-fired plant last year, despite taking more than £0.5bn in clean-energy subsidies in 2023, according to a report.

The North Yorkshire power plant, which burns wood pellets imported from North America to generate electricity, was revealed as Britain’s single largest carbon emitter in 2023 by a report from the climate thinktank Ember.

The figures show that Drax, which has received billions in subsidies since it began switching from coal to biomass in 2012, was responsible for 11.5m tonnes of CO2 last year, or nearly three percent of the UK’s total carbon emissions.

Drax produced four times more carbon dioxide than the UK’s last remaining coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, which is due to close in September. Drax also produced more emissions last year than the next four most polluting power plants in the UK combined, according to the report.

According to the Coal Countdown website, Ratcliffe is ‘fully compliant with current emissions regulations’, yet it is still being closed next month.

Issued in October 2001, the Large Combustion Plant Directive aimed to reduce ‘carbon’ emissions throughout Europe. The deadline of 1st January 2008 allowed plants that did not comply with the strict emission limits to opt-out, whereby they could operate for a further 20,000 hours or until 2015 at which point they had to close.

Frankie Mayo, an analyst at Ember, said: “Burning wood pellets can be as bad for the environment as coal; supporting biomass with subsidies is a costly mistake.”

The company has claimed almost £7bn from British energy bills to support its biomass generation since 2012, even though burning wood pellets for power generation releases more emissions for each unit of electricity generated than burning gas or coal, according to Ember and many scientists. In 2023, the period covered by the Ember report, it received £539m.

The government is considering the company’s request for billpayers to foot the cost of supporting its power plant beyond the subsidy scheme’s deadline in 2027 so it can keep burning wood for power until the end of the decade.

Drax has won the support of the government thanks to claims that its generation is “carbon neutral” because the trees that are felled to produce its wood pellets absorb as much carbon dioxide while they grow as they emit when they are burned in its power plant.

The company plans to fit ‘carbon-capture’ technology at Drax using more subsidies, to create a “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage” (BECCS) project and become the first “carbon-negative” power plant in the world by the end of the decade.

A spokesperson for the company dismissed the thinktank’s findings as “flawed” and accused its authors of ignoring its “widely accepted and internationally recognised approach to carbon accounting”.

“The technology that underpins BECCS is proven, and it is the only credible large-scale way of generating secure renewable power and delivering carbon removals,” the spokesperson added.

A government spokesperson said the report “fundamentally misrepresents” how biomass emissions are measured.

“The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change is clear that biomass sourced in line with strict sustainability criteria can be used as a low-carbon source of energy. We will continue to monitor biomass electricity generation to ensure it meets required standards,” the spokesman said.

Climate authorities, including the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK’s Climate Change Committee, which provides official advice to ministers, have included BECCS in their long-term forecasts for how governments can meet their climate targets.

The government’s own spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, has warned that ministers have handed a total of £22bn in billpayer-backed subsidies to burn wood for electricity despite being unable to prove the industry meets sustainability standards.

Mayo said: “Burning wood for power is an expensive risk that limits UK energy independence and has no place in the journey to net zero. True energy security comes from homegrown wind and solar, a healthy grid and robust planning for how to make the power system flexible and efficient.”

The FTSE 100 owner of the Drax power plant made profits of £500m over the first half of this year, helped by biomass subsidies of almost £400m over this period. It handed its shareholders a windfall of £300m for the first half of the year.

The article concludes with the usual Guardian guff about the planet never being hotter, and how only alarmist propaganda is ‘science’.

It should not be forgotten that human activity only produces four percent (39 billion tons annually) of the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 96 percent of it (920 billion tons annually) comes from natural processes, which we have no control over.

Achieving global ‘net zero’ would do two things. First, it would reduce the amount of CO2 by four percent, and second, it would destroy our civilisation, with the survivors eking out a subsistence-level existence without electricity, akin to where we were three or four hundred years ago.

If we did actually achieve ‘net zero’, nine out of ten people wouldn’t survive the first winter, but it seems this is what the powers that be wish to be our fate.

https://principia-scientific.com/guardian-hypes-miniscule-amount-of-drax-carbon-emissions/

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UK Leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch was in the north-east to hear where the Conservative government had "gone wrong"

Conservative leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch claims she didn’t back her party’s decision to extend the windfall tax on oil and gas firms – and accused Labour of “doubling down” on their “mistake”.

The former business secretary was in Aberdeen on Thursday as part of a UK-wide “listening tour” to hear where the Conservative government had “gone wrong”.

Speaking to the P&J, she warned Labour’s plan to increase and extend the energy profits levy will be “catastrophic”.

The MP admitted her former Tory government had made a mistake by extending the windfall tax by an extra year.

She said: “I think Labour is doubling down on one of the mistakes we made. “Where we got things right, Labour is not doing those things. Where we got things wrong, Labour is doubling down.”

She added: “I think Labour is operating on a mindset from the 1970s and 1980s, that if you just tax things, the money will come in freely. “They don’t understand that sometimes businesses will go elsewhere.”

The Conservative MP said she was keen to meet industries such as the oil and gas sector because she had a “different view when I was in government”.

On Thursday, she took part in talks with trade body OEUK, followed by a visit to Hunting Energy Services in Portlethen, and an event with members.

Badenoch hits out at GB Energy

Mrs Badenoch also dismissed Labour’s plans for GB Energy, a new publicly-owned clean energy company, which will be headquartered in Scotland.

Labour says it will own, manage and operate clean power projects up and down the country, backed by £8.3 billion over the new parliament.

“I have no idea what exactly it is they’re setting up,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Tory MP was also asked about comments by Scottish Tory leadership contender Murdo Fraser who took a brutal swipe at outgoing leader Douglas Ross.

He said the party had been failed by him and by the last three Conservative prime ministers.

Mrs Badenoch said: “It is clear that we are not in government anymore and that must be because we got some things wrong.

“Whether it’s specific individuals or specific policies, we should have a debate about that.”

The former business secretary is an early frontrunner in the race to replace Rishi Sunak as Conservative Party leader.

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/politics/6553387/kemi-badenoch-windfall-tax-aberdeen/

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Extremist Special advisers on energy policy in Britain

Labour SpAd teams are coming together and beginning normal operation

Miliband is retaining his long-term advisers. Guiding the UK’s energy policy operation will be climate activist Tobias Garnett, the former coordinator of Extinction Rebellion’s legal strategy team who represented the road-gluing activists in court.

Garnett believes our trajectory is currently “descending swiftly into a politics of ecofascism forged in the crucible of scarce resources, droughts, floods, climate wars and forced migration.” Doesn’t quite sound like politics that will “tread lightly on people’s lives”…

Also on the team is Jonty Leibowitz, whose passion is arguing for socialist reforms to football that include:

A 100% tax “imposed on transfers from abroad“. Just like China’s…

Extra 2% tax on all transfer fees with higher rates from Premier League clubs.

To fix “the deep wealth inequalities between the men’s and women’s games“, introduce a “mandatory wealth tax or levy for all clubs which do not promote equal resource and pay for both games“. An own goal against your own national sport…

When it comes to his energy brief Leibowitz’ contribution is a policy paper which argues that “regional banking” should be forcibly re-oriented to “financing the energy transition“. Ideas shared by radical Corbynite and “green” bank devotee Miatta Fahnbulleh – recently appointed energy minister…

SpAd Eleanor Salter’s focus is “integrating nature into the climate offer“. Salter thinks a “fundamental shift” is required to deal with the “climate breakdown“, which includes “taking many cars off the roads altogether.”

Her other “nature” proposals include allowing anyone to traipse across private property to make “the countryside open to all” but especially to gypsies, whose “access rights are already under threat from the authoritarian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which seeks to criminalise trespass.”

And who would have guessed that Salter once said our “best sources of hope” come from Jeremy Corbyn, and that Extinction Rebellion has been “hugely successful… a great accelerator for activism”…

SpAds are often relied on to temper the barmy ideas of their Cabinet Minister. No chance of that in Ed’s team…

https://order-order.com/2024/08/12/revealed-milibands-extreme-left-policy-team/

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Outrage as Aussies are slugged with "Sun tax"

A hidden 'sun' tax slugging Aussies who have made the switch to solar has been slammed by energy advocates as 'madness' and a 'rip-off', accusing energy companies of 'wanting to charge people' making energy from sunlight.

Distributors in some Australian states have moved in the sneaky tariff, known colloquially as a sun or solar tax, as households begin to embrace the shift to renewables in the hopes of power bill relief.

But the new measures will result in those households being slugged for sending the solar energy they generate back to the electricity grid during peak times - something providers hope will encourage households to store their self-generated power and use it, rather than hoping for a credit if it is exported back to the grid.

Renewable energy advocate Heidi Lee Douglas has been highly critical of the plan, saying it was 'not a bright idea' to penalise people for 'taking control of their power bills with cheaper, cleaner solar' during a cost of living crisis.

'Energy companies want to charge people with solar panels to make energy from sunlight, and that's simply not fair,' Ms Douglas, the chief executive of renewable advocacy organisation Solar Citizens, said.

'The new two-way tariff is a blunt instrument that charges people with solar panels for feeding their energy into the grid during the day, rather than supporting them to store their energy or feed it back into the grid at another time.

'Rather than stick people with penalties for not having batteries they can't afford in a cost of living crisis, households need more support to access the benefits of battery storage.

'People in NSW were absolutely furious, and Queenslanders will be livid when they find out more about the big tariff rip-off planned for households with solar panels.'

A sun tax refers to a new export tariff for customers using solar, part of a two-way pricing structure where users are effectively penalised for exporting solar-generated energy when the network is overloaded - such as in the middle of the day.

According to Canstar, the tariff also rewards people who export the energy produced by their solar panels back to the electricity grid during times of high demand.

Energy providers mostly pay households for electricity fed back into the grid in the form of rates called solar feed-in tariffs (FiTs).

Canstar states the tax is designed to prevent gridlock on electricity networks, encouraging households to use their own solar energy first, rather than sending it back to the grid.

Ms Douglas said one of the biggest impact of the sun tax was the message it sent to households thinking about installing solar.

She explained it would discourage them from doing so, saying: 'It's madness to charge people for sunlight.'

'What we really need to do in a cost of living crisis is accelerate the rate of rooftop solar installations by providing access to solar for those who have so far missed out - like renters, social housing, and apartments,' Ms Douglas said.

While the tariffs came into place in mid-2022, most households and businesses won't see any major change until next year.

This is due to distributors needing to submit a price proposal to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) to demonstrate why they need it.

Some distributors in NSW and the ACT have already outlined the changes and how the costs would look for the average household or small business.

Ausgrid, the largest energy provider on Australia's east coast, revealed they were imposing such a two-way tariff in July - charging customers 1.2c/kWh for the electricity they produce during the peak export period of 10am-3pm.

The company said customers would receive a payment of 2.3c/kWh for electricity exported to the grid during peak demand hours between 4pm-9pm each day.

In a statement, Ausgrid said they wanted to encourage customers to use their self-generated electricity while providing a 'safe, reliable supply' to everyone.

Solar batteries are widely viewed as a way to store the unused energy generated from solar panels - so it can be used at another time.

But the measure is costly, setting households back anywhere from $8750 to more than $20,000 depending on the scale of the battery and the provider.

The NSW State Government has said it will introduce a rebate starting at $1600 for battery storage systems from November 1.

Queenslanders will not be slugged with a sun tax until 2025 but the state government rolled out a rebate on home solar battery systems allowing people to offset the cost of purchase and installation.

However, it closed in May.

'The Queensland government must find ways of getting more households powered by solar and create the incentives to shift people into having solar and batteries,' Ms Douglas said.

'About 60 per cent of the community is currently locked out of the benefits of solar, including renters and people living in apartments or social housing, and they have among the most to gain from reduced energy bills.

It comes as data from the clean energy regulator reveals many of Sydney's outer suburbs are embracing solar and battery storage.

In Marsden Park, in Sydney's west, households are 87 per cent more likely to have these systems in place, followed by Tumbulgum and Tweed Heads at an uptake rate of 71 per cent.

But in more established suburbs across the state, those rates were far lower.

Only 2.9 per cent of dwellings in Elizabeth Bay, Potts Point, Rushcutters Bay and Woolloomooloo had solar energy and battery storage in place.

In Ultimo, only 4.8 per cent of households had embraced the new technology while Darlinghurst and Surry Hills had 5.3 per cent of dwellings taking up solar.

David Sedighi, chief operating officer of power solutions provider VoltX Energy, said these figures could be put down to government mandates for new home constructions.

'Energy savings aside, solar has made these new homes more energy efficient, enabling people to meet compliance for a Building Sustainability Index (BASIX) certificate,' he said.

'We know having solar makes a new home more attractive to prospective buyers in the future too, as the cost of energy increases.

'The so-called sun-tax where energy providers charge customers a tariff for rooftop solar exported to its network will also drive demand for batteries.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13753959/Sun-tax-solar-panel-green-energy.html

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