(This post was programmed to appear automatically while I was away, but for reasons that I have failed to discover, did not do so. In light of what I have come across in the reading that I have done since my return, there seems to have been few developments since I wrote it, including some press comments that are unlikely to keep Mr Huhne smiling.)
In the aftermath of the general election, Chris Huhne has succeeded Ed Miliband at the helm of the Department of Energy and Climate Change. There can be no doubt that he will be navigating in some extremely stormy waters.
Of all the cabinet posts other than those relating to the public finances, this is probably the one that will come with the highest risks attached. I am not going to rehearse the evidence that, unless the UK gets a viable energy policy together immediately, there is a very real likelihood that we will be suffering a third-world type energy crisis within as little as five years, the intended lifetime of the current parliament. Huhne’s post at the DECC needs to be filled by someone who can think straight, think big and think fast. It is by no means certain that the present incumbent possesses all these qualities.
There is no reason to think that Huhne is a fool. He was educated at Westminster School, like his party leader Nick Clegg, before going on to the Sorbonne and then Oxford where he took a first in PPE. As a student he was active in Labour politics.
He went of to become an economist in the CIty of London, rising to be the managing director of Fitch ratings, an international credit ratings agency, so it would seem that someone thought that he had management abilities; no bad thing for a minister. He has also had a successful career as a journalist, rising to be financial editor of the Independent and the Independent on Sunday.
After unsuccessful attempts to enter parliament in 1983 and 1986 he turned his attention to Europe and became a Liberal Democrat MEP for South East England from 1995 to 2005, when he was elected to Westminster as member of parliament for Eastleigh. Since then, his rise has been meteoric.
Less than a year later, he challenged Sir Menzies Campbell for the leadership of the party, and although he lost, he received 21,628 votes to the winner’s 29, 697. Not a bad score for a new boy who started as a rank outsider. Huhne stood for the leadership again in 2007 when he lost to Nick Clegg by just 511 votes. He has served as his party’s environment spokesman.
The picture one has of Huhne is that of an extremely capable, ambitious and successful man in a hurry to get to the top.
For the British, coalition politics are a new experience. We have entered a political era in which some things are certainly being done very differently, but it is far too early to even begin to consider whether they are being done any better. For all the avowals of unity in the face of apocalyptic fiscal problems that we have heard during the last three weeks, there is little reason to suppose that the new Prime Minister, David Cameron, is playing the game so very differently from his predecessors. The pressures to watch your back if the keys of 10 Downing Street are to stay within your grasp haven’t gone away, and certainly not when there is someone like Chris Huhne about.
The formation of a coalition made it inevitable that some senior cabinet posts would go to Lib Dems, and there were quiet chuckles in Conservative ranks when one of the new prime minister’s first appointments was David Laws as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. ‘No bad thing’, said the Tory wiseacres, ‘to have one of those other people playing hatchet man during a time of austerity. It helps keep our hands clean if there is a surprise election’. Perhaps the thinking was similar where Huhne’s appointment was concerned.
Energy and climate change is likely to provide a very rough passage for whoever is in charge over the next few years, and Huhne is possibly the most unlikely person to be able to cope with this and keep any semblance of integrity.
There are two major problems that will face him. As a committed green, he cannot back-pedal on the reduction of carbon emissions. Yet even if clean energy was not a consideration, he would be facing colossal problems keeping the lights on. Can he possibly deal with the problem when many of the obvious solutions are already ruled out?
Also as a committed green, Huhne is anti-nuclear. He has already had to perform some fancy footwork where this is concerned, and it looks as though there will be a lot more to come.
In a recent newspaper article he is reported as saying that:
I am not an ideological ayatollah against nuclear power per se.
I am simply a sceptical economist about the record of nuclear power on delivering on time and to budget in a way that can make returns for investors.
He now claims that his objection to nuclear is entirely based on cost and the possible need for subsidies; merely the reservations of a shrewd economist. This sounds unconvincing.
I wonder whether he will use his fluent French to talk to his French counterpart, who presides over an electricity grid that is nearly 80% supplied by nuclear, with no fears of the lights going out, and supplies abundant enough to export large amounts of electricity to southern England.
Huhne certainly has a point about not subsidising nuclear generators. But he makes no mention of the vast subsidies to wind power, which are being taken straight out of the public’s pockets in the hope that no one will notice that this inefficient, unreliable, environmentally devastating, and very expensive form of generation can appear to be free of subsidy. Instead he talks about the rising cost of carbon eventually making nuclear, and presumably wind power too, competitive and able to stand on its own two feet. Of the obvious consequence that the consumer will have to pay more for electricity in any case, he says nothing,
Few people who have thought about Britain’s parlous economic plight are now in any doubt that we face years – perhaps even decades – of austerity. Rising costs are likely to be on everyone’s mind, and particularly where something so ubiquitously necessary as electricity is concerned. Celebrating the supposed economically therapeutic effects of rising energy costs is likely to be very short-lived phenomena.
Given that all the opinion polls I have seen recently show an accelerating rise in scepticism about climate change, Chris Huhne’s first venture into public office looks doomed. Only a globally binding agreement on carbon emission reduction at Cancún in the autumn could make relying on green energy even begin to look credible, and if what one sees on the net is even half true, this is not a lifebelt anyone should rely on.
From a purely political point of view, Chris Huhne’s position is a very interesting one. His past activities in European politics must make him aware that present energy policy in the UK is dictated not by Westminster, but by emissions targets imposed from Brussels. The combination of climate scepticism and Euro-scepticism on the Tory back benches is likely to make any discussion of energy policy highly volatile, and this cannot have escaped David Cameron when he made the appointment. Presumably it was agreed with Nick Clegg, and one can hardly blame him for not intervening to protect an ambitious rival who has already tried to get his job twice, and only just failed to do so quite recently.
This all looks like high-risk politics of the most ruthless kind, with the future of the UK economy at stake. No industrialised nation can survive without an abundant, reliable and cheap supply of electricity. No country that is in the midst of a potentially catastrophic debt crisis can contemplate a vast hike in the cost of energy that will jeopardise its competitiveness.
As things stand at the moment, our energy policy is on a collision course with reality, and reality doesn’t usually chicken out.
_________________
If anyone is wondering about the title of this post, my spelling skills are very poor in English and non-existent in German.
TonyN, as usual an excellent, if extremely sobering, post. Whatever else can be said about Chris Huhne, he clearly does not lack brains, and has an impressive CV. Which makes his position all the more puzzling – can he not see that wind turbines and loft insulation are not going to suffice? Idly speculating here – could the high intelligence of some people actually be a liability, causing the owner of said intelligence to over-value their own conclusions and be unable to countenance the possibility that they might be wrong?
Here’s a website which presents up to date information about how the UK’s electricity is being generated, from moment to moment (apologies if everyone’s already seen this.) It’s a rather complicated site and I’ve got the graphs to display properly when in Internet Explorer but not in Google Chrome (currently my default.) About halfway down the page is a graph called Generation by Fuel Type, and as it appears right now, roughly, coal is providing about 7500 MW, CCGT (gas) a whopping 18500 or so MW, nuclear about 5300 MW, imported French electricity about 1920 MW and pumped storage about 1000 MW.
Wind energy is providing around 280 MW. About 0.8 percent of the total.
If Chris Huhne doesn’t like coal and won’t stomach nuclear; I suggest going for natural gas. If he doesn’t like that either, we… er… don’t appear to have that many options left.
I am at a complete loss to know what Britain-one of the worlds largest economies and a huge consumer of energy-is supposed to do for power in the near future.
Anything with carbon is an obvious no-no. That’s all very well, if you live in the fantasy land that warmists do you merely remove carbon sources. However can someone take Mr Hunne aside and point out you then need to replace those sources with a grown up power supply not subject to the whims of nature?
To believe that wind turbines will power one of the worlds greatest economies is foolish in the extreme. If you want to ban everything else you simply must urgently invest in nuclear.
Tonyb
TonyN,
You say:
As things stand at the moment, our energy policy is on a collision course with reality, and reality doesn’t usually chicken out.
The bigger picture is:
As things stand at the moment, the Earth’s GHG emissions policy is on a collision course with reality, and reality never chickens out.
As Nigel Lawson said last week: “CND was a more intelligent form of unilateralism than carbon unilateralism”. And he was no supporter of CND.
Peter M, #3:
This response has nothing to do with theology, so it is not an invitation to a theological argument.
PeterM
You wrote to TonyN:
I think a more accurate re-wording of your statement would be:
We’ve defined “GHG emissions policy” as a (direct or indirect) carbon tax to be levied ultimately on all the inhabitants of the (industrialized) nations of this world.
But let’s also define “reality”.
“Reality” in this case is 1) the observed fact (an avid AGW-supporter has called it a “travesty”) that the atmosphere as well as the upper ocean are cooling, rather than warming, despite record increases of atmospheric CO2 and 2) the increasingly apparent fact that no empirical data can be shown in support of the hypothesis, upon which the need for a global GHG emissions policy (i.e. carbon tax scheme) is justified, namely that a) AGW, caused principally by human CO2 emissions, has been a primary cause of past warming and b) that AGW represents a serious potential threat.
“Reality” trumps the most beautiful hypothesis, Peter.
Max
There’s an interesting article about wind farms by Andrew Gilligan in today’s Sunday Telegraph (h/t EU Referendum). Good comments too.
‘…wind turbines are visible, tangible symbols of political commitment and moral righteousness. Mr Clegg’s party wants 15,000 of them, and the Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, also a Lib Dem, has described them as “beautiful”.’ Ye gods, and we thought the Milibands were mad!
The Government’s target is to source 15% of our electricity supply from renewables by 2020 – roughly the percentage we get from nuclear at the moment. Is that doable? Well, how are they doing so far? It looks overwhelmingly like they will fail to achieve the target of 10% by end of 2010, which was set in 2000; here’s an online article at ClickGreen which cites a recent National Audit Office report:
‘The National Audit Office found that government-funded direct support for renewable energy technology had totalled £265 million between 2000 and 2009. This funding is separate from support provided through fiscal and regulatory measures, including the Renewables Obligation, which in 2008-09 provided financial support worth around £1 billion.
The Government’s target, originally set in 2000, was to obtain 10 percent of UK electricity supplies from renewable sources by the end of 2010.
However, according to the NAO report the latest available data from 2008 shows that only 2.3 percent of UK energy was generated from renewable sources, and it writes: “… To meet the 2020 renewable energy target the Department will have to drive a seven-fold increase.”’
According to Amyas Morse, head of the NAO: “At present the 2020 target looks optimistic.” Masterly understatement.
Back to the Andrew Gilligan article: “Last year, Mr Miliband announced that renewables – very largely wind – would be expected to provide “over 30 per cent” of the UK’s electricity by 2020, as part of ambitious new Europe-wide targets.”
Even to someone as mathematically challenged as myself, right now the odds for that actually happening look… rather unpromising.
Max,
You’re making it far too complicated. Emissions policies don’t necessarily have anything to do with taxes. Its simply about how much CO2 is emitted into the atmosphere in any defined unit of time.
Reality is represented by the combined laws of Physics which always trump economic laws.
PeterM
You made two points:
What planet do you inhabit, Peter?
Here on Planet Earth, emission policies have EVERYTHING to do with (direct or indirect) carbon taxes amounting to hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars. That’s what it is all about, Peter. Open your eyes!
Your second point was
Your general observation cannot be denied.
However, “reality” is not just “the combined laws of Physics”, Peter. “Reality” is “the combined laws of Physics”, as physically observed or validated by empirical data.
In the case of our planet’s recent climate, “reality” is a warming of barely 0.7C over the past 150 years, which occurred in 30-year oscillations with 30-year cycles of slight cooling in between, at the same time that atmospheric CO2 increased gradually, with no such oscillations, at an accelerated compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 0.4% after WWII.
“Reality” is also a cooling, which started after 2001 despite record increase in atmospheric CO2 and has affected both the atmosphere and upper ocean.
Whether or not “the combined laws of Physics” “always trump economic laws” is a moot point, Peter.
If the “laws of physics” are being so interpreted or bent to benefit certain “economic laws” (or “political agendas”) , then “physics” has been trumped by “economics” or “politics”.
The second moot point to consider is: does the so-called “mainstream” view (as espoused by IPCC) represent “the combined laws of Physics”? If so, on what basis is this claim made?
I would go with empirical data based on physical observations every time over the theoretical “combined laws of Physics” as interpreted by one political group, such as the iPCC, which may well be working in support of a political agenda involving major economic considerations, such as oppressive carbon taxes.
I’ll go back to my statement:
And “reality” is based on empirical data derived from physical observations rather than simply theoretical deliberations or model simulations and assumptions.
Max
TonyN another thought provoking post and I will come back on some the points later.
But tonight I just want to comment on the so called intelligence of some of this countries “Managers”, and in particular Chris Huhne. His high flying CV and rapid rise to power would I guess owes more to ambition and politicking than to any overt ability to do the job. As I have found to my own cost if you are too good at your job, especially in highly technical fields, you become a threat to you superiors, especially when they are not as qualified as you are, and rather than try to understand you, they tend to side-line you rather than listen, and this often results in conflict. It also hampers your ability to progress. It’s only when performance can be transparently linked to the bottom line that those who are clever and know what they are talking about get the recognition they deserve. Unfortunately these opportunities are now few and far between.
Given what I have seen and experienced from managers over the last 30 years or so I would be pessimistic in hoping that someone such as Chris Huhne has the slightest clue about Power and how it is generated. I doubt he even cares about it. For him it’s about power and control, and the feeling of big noting over in Brussels. So for me I don’t think Chris Huhne will work anything out for himself other than political survival, which does not bode well for our energy security. And I would say we should not confuse political cunning with intellect.
Max,
Human GHG emissions up to the mid 20th century were probably within acceptable limits. No taxation was required to achieve that. I’m not sure why you’re taking issue with that. If I’m open to criticsm its on the grounds of staing the obvious!
Again its just a statement of the obvious to point out a slight flaw your argument ” ‘reality’ is not just the combined laws of Physics…Reality is the combined laws of Physics, as physically observed or validated by empirical data.”
That would be good if it were true. We could protect from just about anything ourselves by not looking to hard at any potential problem and simply choosing to remain in ignorance!
PeterM
Says who? What actual evidence do you possess that backs up that statement. At what point did we move from acceptable to unacceptable, and how do we see this in the scientific evidence?
Lets face it Peter there is no statement of the obvious here, only a repeat of the same old rhetoric with little or no joined up thinking.
PeterM
You wrote (11)
Hmmm.
How do you account for the observed fact that the linear temperature increase from 1910 through 1944 was 0.53C, while that from 1976 through 2000 was only 0.4C (and it has cooled after 2000, despite record CO2 increase)?
Temperature increase must not have very much to do with CO2 increase, based on physical observations or “reality” (as you put it), right?
So let’s forget about a silly CO2 tax.
Max
PeterM
Let’s see if we can have a serious and sensible discussion related to the topic of this thread.
Here’s a counterproposal to your globally imposed “carbon tax” (which we both know will do nothing to change our planet’s climate).
Inasmuch as our planet has been cooling slightly (after 2000 in the atmosphere, both at the surface and in the troposphere, and starting in 2003 in the upper ocean, based on the Argo measurements), let’s not rush into anything too precipitous to allegedly combat warming, until we can really understand and explain this and figure out what is going to happen next with a bit better degree of certainty than we have gotten from the IPCC reports.
If the current cooling continues and becomes the beginning of another 30-year cooling half cycle, as we have already seen twice since 1850, then the specter of 2-6C warming by year 2100 will have vanished by itself.
If it starts warming again at a rate of more than 0.2C per decade over a decade or two (as IPCC has projected for the early decades of this century), then let’s reevaluate our options.
By then we will know quite a bit more about what makes our climate tick than we do today, so we will have a better idea of whether or not we can do anything to change our climate in any significant way.
At the same time let’s foresee and plan the necessary investments to be prepared to adapt to any unusual development we actually see happening as it develops.
Let’s also make sure that we have an energy policy in the developed and developing world that will enable our standard of living to continue to grow and improve (i.e. “keeping the lights on”, as TonyN has called it).
We should also make sure that those parts of the world that do not as yet have a viable energy infrastructure will be able to develop a cost effective and efficient one as rapidly as possible, using local energy resources where these exist.
This policy should include a continuation or even acceleration of current efforts toward the elimination of waste and real pollution, improvement in efficiency, localized use of renewable power sources, where these are economically viable, etc.
I would call this approach “hedging the bets” on all fronts rather than “betting the whole fortune on one hypothetical long shot” (which may turn out to be a “bubble”).
Does this approach make sense to you, Peter?
If not, why not? (Please try to be specific.)
Max
Max:
Do you really expect to have “a serious and sensible discussion” with Peter or for him to give you a “specific” reply? If so, it’s a prime example of hope triumphing over experience.
Robin
You ask
I suppose I have to agree with you, based on our combined experience on this blog.
But it was more than just a “trial balloon”.
If Peter is required to explain why, in his mind, he believes that a global “carbon tax” plus lower CO2 emissions are the only solution to a problem that will otherwise have disastrous consequences, it may just open his eyes to the “reality” of the situation.
Because the next step is to describe exactly what the consequences of enacting and enforcing this global carbon tax will be.
What will be the added cost of “carbon based” energy to the average household in the developed world, expressed as a percentage of the average income, in other words, what percentage reduction in standard of living will the average household see?
Almost all studies I have seen on this show that lower income households will be hit harder than those with a higher income. How would Peter, as a “defender of the underdog” ensure that all households suffer the same?
What reduction in CO2 emission levels should be the target of this carbon tax? Some studies talk about going back to 1990 levels, some to 20% below 1990 levels; what level would Peter think could solve the AGW problem?
What specific actionable programs would Peter envision in order to reach the CO2 emissions targets a) for the industrialized world, i.e. the G-10 nations including all of the EU plus Russia, b) for the large developing nations, such as China. India, Brazil, etc. c) for the energy producers, such as Saudi Arabia, etc, and finally d) for the very poorest nations, which do not yet have a viable energy infrastructure.
By “actionable program” I do not mean simply setting an “emissions target”, but listing specific plans of how to achieve this target. James E. Hansen and Al Gore have mentioned one such actionable plan for the USA: stop all construction of new coal-fired plants after 2020 and shut down half of the existing coal-fired power plants by 2050, replacing these with non-fossil fuel plants (presumably nuclear is the primary viable alternate today with maybe an optimistic 10% being replaced by wind and solar together).
Another would be (for example): switch all automotive traffic in the extended G10 nations listed above away from petroleum by 2050, with 50% going to electric power (based on new nuclear power source) and 50% to natural gas. Again, the net “investment” would be the difference in investment cost for nuclear power plants versus fossil fuel fired plants for the electric portion and some estimated minimum added investment to convert the rest of the automobiles and service stations to natural gas. One could assume, for a start, that these automobiles will be no more expensive to produce than today’s gasoline driven vehicles.
I do not believe that conversion from gasoline to hydrogen (produced by water electrolysis from nuclear power) makes sense either from an economic or safety standpoint, but Peter might possibly want to investigate this, as well.
Once one had a list of specific actionable proposals for the extended G10 to start off, for example, one could calculate the cost of implementing them, as well as the reduction in CO2 emissions that would result.
Then one could extrapolate this across the world, to see what the global reduction in CO2 emissions would be, at the same time calculating what the CO2 emissions of the poorest nations would be, once they had viable local electrical power infrastructures.
From this information one could calculate what the change (compared to projected “business as usual” growth) in atmospheric CO2 would be. Finally, one could calculate the theoretical reduction in globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature that would result from this reduction, using various assumed climate sensitivity levels.
Then one could calculate the total investment cost (to the world’s citizens) per degree of warming avoided, to see how good an investment it all was.
By moving Peter into this direction (if it is at all possible) one could get away from repeated empty claims based on theoretical model simulations, deja vu visions of disaster and repetitive emotional topics, and stay strictly with the facts, resolving the question of whether or not a carbon tax plus specific investments to move away from fossil fuels and CO2 emissions make sense.
If Peter is REALLY interested in solving what he believes to be a REAL PROBLEM, he should welcome this approach.
If he is AFRAID, however, that such a study will demonstrate that a carbon tax plus specific mitigation actions to reduce global CO2 emissions will not affect our climate in any significant way, THEN HE WILL AVOID THIS DISCUSSION.
Let’s see where he stands on this. It should tell us a lot.
Max
Alex (7)
It would interesting to know the value of the renewable energy generated as a result…
Max and Robin,
A carbon tax and/or a carbon cap and trade scheme are the two suggested methods of reducing CO2 emissions. I notice that you tend to lump them both together as ‘carbon tax’.
I don’t like paying taxes any more than you do! So I’m open to other suggestions as to how CO2 and other GHG emissions may be reduced.
I sometimes tend to think though, that the way your minds work is along the lines of:
“we really hate paying taxes therefore GHG just don’t need to be reduced!”
Tell me that isn’t so!
Peter Geany,
You do raise a good point when you ask about the level of GHG emissions which are acceptable.
It is important not to confuse emissions of CO2 and other GHGs with amounts or concentrations of GHGs which are present in the atmosphere. To know what emissions are allowable we first have to answer the question of what concentration of CO2 is allowable?
The pre-industrial level of CO2 was about 280ppmv. Its now risen to 385ppmv and rising at a few ppmv per year.
How high should we allow it to go?
PS,
Max is suppoese to be “away from his copmuter for a couple of weeks” and Robin has an “important” project that he should be getting on with, rather than wasting his time writing nonsense about ‘the scientific method’, so how about we allow PG to answer this one for himself?
And you can’t really do that without first quantifying the effect it will have! Since even Phil Jones admits that significant warming hasn’t occurred in the last 15 years, while the CO2 level has been increasing slowly but steadily, one has to wonder about the correlation.
James P, re your #17, yes it would be good to know what returns we are currently getting for our investment in wind power; I don’t have the figures but my uneducated guess is: not very much.
The situation won’t get much better with wind power unless they figure out a way to overcome the issues of intermittency and storage. A “smart grid” might be developed to improve the situation, but that idea is still in its early stages – who knows how long it will take and how much money it will devour before wind power gets to become more competitive?
On the subject of smart grids, by the way, does anyone know if these are being planned with extreme solar storms in mind? It would be rather silly to spend years and vast sums of money developing a brand new infrastructure for electricity generating and distribution, only to find that it was just as vulnerable to Carrington events as the old one.
What Phil Jones actually said when asked if there was no significant warming in the last 15 years was
“Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.”
This statement does illustrate the danger of being too open and too technical and leaving open the possibility of contrarians to twist the real meaning to suit their own purposes.
So no-one is prepared to give a figure of X ppmv by volume of CO2 ( and equiv GHGs) ?
Re renewables in the UK, here’s a press release from economic analysts Cambridge Econometrics from May this year (linked to in this blog about carbon taxes in The Economist); interestingly, their projections suggest that while renewables will account for only 6% of the country’s total energy demand (electricity supply, transport and heat supply) by 2020, they will account for 15% of electricity generation by then (far short of Mr Miliband’s somewhat ambitious 30% but still a giant increase from today’s levels). Feasible or not? We’ll be able to find out soon enough.
Peter M, re your question about safe CO2 levels, I think it’s safe to say that we shouldn’t let them go above 10,000 ppm (even Cambrian-era levels of up to 7,000 ppm can cause headaches and drowsiness, so not ideal, as this would lead to more car accidents and low productivity at work.) Yes, I’m being silly, this is just while we’re waiting for someone with more scientific cred than myself to respond. :o)
I heard about this funding decision on Radio 4’s Yesterday in Parliament last week. According to this article, written back in April:
“Last month’s announcement that Sheffield Forgemasters had secured £80m of government funding to buy and install a 15,000-tonne forging press was rightly seen as a coup for UK manufacturing. As well as helping to secure hundreds of jobs, this large device – one of a handful around the world – could propel the UK to the summit of the global nuclear supply chain. Currently, the only manufacturer able to produce all of the large components required for the next generation of nuclear reactors is Japan Steelworks.”
In May, Chris Huhne said: “The Energy Bill… will kick-start the transformation to a real low-carbon economy and help to drive the country out of recession by creating thousands of new green jobs.” (More here.)
So, jobs in the nuclear industry are not really green jobs, I’m assuming (?)