FOX NEWS
"White House's Karine Jean-Pierre stumbles when pressed on Biden absence at King Charles coronation"
Story by Brandon Gillespie
5 APRIL 2023
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stumbled Wednesday while trying to respond to reporters pressing her over President Biden's decision not to attend from the coronation of King Charles III.
When asked on three separate occasions about Biden's planned absence at the event, Jean-Pierre fumbled her words and gave a rambling answer repeatedly touting the president's "good relationship" with the king while avoiding directly answering why he decided not to attend.
"The President had about a 25-minute, 30-minute call with the King Charles III, during which he congratulated the King – I think we put that out last night – to his upcoming coronation, and they have a very friendly conversation," Jean-Pierre told one reporter who asked why Biden was not attending as head of state.
"They have a good relationship with the King."
"He talked about how he enjoyed meeting – visiting – the Queen, I should say, back in 2021 – he and the first lady – at Windsor."
"And he hoped to visit again soon."
"Actually, during that call, the King offered for him to come and do a state visit, which the president accepted."
"And so they will see each other again very soon, and I'll just leave it there," she added.
"But again, they have a very good relationship."
"They are many things that they both care about – key shared values, key shared issues that they want to continue to discuss, like climate change."
"And that conversation will continue, and there will be a visit in the near future."
Jean-Pierre also said she could not provide a timeline to when a state visit would actually take place.
Later in the briefing, another reporter asked Jean-Pierre if she could explain why First Lady Jill Biden would be in attendance at the coronation rather than Biden himself.
The White House confirmed the first lady would be attending in a Tuesday statement.
"Look, the president is looking forward – He had a great conversation – has a good relationship with King Charles III," Jean-Pierre responded.
"As you know, they've met before, and there is a lot of shared interests, shared values, of issues that they want to discuss, and will continue to discuss, one of them being climate change."
"And at some time in the future, the king invited the president for a state visit."
"He accepted and that will happen, I just don't have anything further to share on that."
Another reporter then asked if Jean-Pierre was "concerned" that the British people might see Biden's absence as "a snub," noting that even though past U.S. presidents had not attended coronations, that was before the invention of airplanes and modern technology.
"No, they should not see it as a snub."
"Not at all."
"Again, the president has a good relationship with the king."
"They had a friendly conversation, and I will leave it at that."
"It is not a snub," she said.
No U.S. president has ever attended any of the seven coronations of a British monarch since the country declared independence in 1776.
The most recent was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on June 2, 1953.
The coronation of King Charles will be held on Saturday, May 6.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/wh ... e876&ei=46
THE BRITS
Re: THE BRITS
The Telegraph
"The green agenda has become an embarrassing failure"
Story by Ross Clark
14 APRIL 2023
David Cameron’s best-remembered comment while in office was not even intended for public consumption.
We’ve “got to get rid of all the green crap,” he told aides against a backdrop of rising levies on energy bills in 2013.
This from a man who several years earlier had tried to convince us he was taking climate change seriously by driving a husky-pulled sled in Svalbard and promising us the “greenest government ever”.
It may well be that Rishi Sunak is experiencing similar sentiments.
The government’s initiative to rationalise recycling bin collections, with the result that all homes could end up having up to seven wheelie bins or other containers, seems to have been binned itself.
Meanwhile, the government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which seeks to persuade us to rip out our boilers and install heat pumps instead, has turned out to be a miserable failure, with only 10,000 installations in its first year.
The government had made enough money available for three times that number – and by the end of the decade is counting on 600,000 installations every year.
Nor is the great switch to electric cars exactly going to plan: the proportion of car sales made up by pure electric vehicles has stalled at 16 per cent, with petrol cars still accounting for a stubborn 41 per cent in March.
Sunak is rapidly finding out what Cameron previously discovered: while the public is generally very concerned about the environment, we are not going to tolerate badly thought-out policies which make us poorer and turn our lives into a misery.
Sadly, that is exactly what so many green policies do.
While they offer huge handouts to a lucky few – such as Cameron’s father-in-law Sir Reginald Sheffield, who was reported to be earning £350,000 a year from wind turbines on his Lincolnshire estate -- for the greater mass of humanity green policies too often mean vast expense and a large amount of bother.
Is it really any wonder that take-up of £5,000 vouchers for heat pumps should have turned out to be lukewarm?
Lukewarm, indeed, is how many early adopters have described their homes after shelling out £10,000 or more for a heat pump.
Even the handout won’t bring the cost of a heat pump down to parity with a new gas boiler in all but a few cases.
Moreover, if you have a gas boiler which is functioning perfectly well, why risk changing it?
Heat pumps may be suitable for well-insulated, newly-built homes which don’t need a lot of heating of any kind, but even Bosch, which manufactures them, has said they are not suitable for older properties – at least not without spending at least another £10,000 stripping them back to the walls and insulating them.
As for expecting us to sort our rubbish into up to seven recycling bins, why on Earth did any government minister think that would be a good idea?
There are some environmentalists, it is true, who love the idea of people being forced to go through their rubbish with a fine tooth comb every week because they see it as doing penance for the damage human societies’ are wreaking on the natural world.
But it is so unnecessary.
The technology to sort out recyclables from a single waste stream has existed for many years, is widely used in the US and many other countries – and even in parts of Britain.
My own local authority uses an automated plant outside Cambridge – with the result we need only one bin for dry recyclables and have one of the highest recycling rates in the country.
It rose from 37 per cent to 56 per cent after the new plant was opened.
The lesson of recycling is pretty clear: when you make it easy for people, they will do it.
The local authority with the highest rate, the East Riding of Yorkshire, sends a van around to collect disused computer equipment from businesses, free of charge.
Too many other authorities go around calling waste a “resource” but then want to charge us for handing it to them.
]It is the same for all green policies: if they make financial sense, the public will take the bait.
But where many struggle is in adopting flawed technologies which don’t keep us warm, or which we can’t charge because we have to park it off the street.
The government has made its bed by agreeing on an arbitrary emissions target, but we shouldn’t have to sleep in it.
Rather than pressing ahead with top-down, costly schemes, it should trust the market to find innovative solutions to our climate change or environmental challenges.
Crap stuff won’t cease to be crap just because it’s green.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/th ... 7370&ei=45
"The green agenda has become an embarrassing failure"
Story by Ross Clark
14 APRIL 2023
David Cameron’s best-remembered comment while in office was not even intended for public consumption.
We’ve “got to get rid of all the green crap,” he told aides against a backdrop of rising levies on energy bills in 2013.
This from a man who several years earlier had tried to convince us he was taking climate change seriously by driving a husky-pulled sled in Svalbard and promising us the “greenest government ever”.
It may well be that Rishi Sunak is experiencing similar sentiments.
The government’s initiative to rationalise recycling bin collections, with the result that all homes could end up having up to seven wheelie bins or other containers, seems to have been binned itself.
Meanwhile, the government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which seeks to persuade us to rip out our boilers and install heat pumps instead, has turned out to be a miserable failure, with only 10,000 installations in its first year.
The government had made enough money available for three times that number – and by the end of the decade is counting on 600,000 installations every year.
Nor is the great switch to electric cars exactly going to plan: the proportion of car sales made up by pure electric vehicles has stalled at 16 per cent, with petrol cars still accounting for a stubborn 41 per cent in March.
Sunak is rapidly finding out what Cameron previously discovered: while the public is generally very concerned about the environment, we are not going to tolerate badly thought-out policies which make us poorer and turn our lives into a misery.
Sadly, that is exactly what so many green policies do.
While they offer huge handouts to a lucky few – such as Cameron’s father-in-law Sir Reginald Sheffield, who was reported to be earning £350,000 a year from wind turbines on his Lincolnshire estate -- for the greater mass of humanity green policies too often mean vast expense and a large amount of bother.
Is it really any wonder that take-up of £5,000 vouchers for heat pumps should have turned out to be lukewarm?
Lukewarm, indeed, is how many early adopters have described their homes after shelling out £10,000 or more for a heat pump.
Even the handout won’t bring the cost of a heat pump down to parity with a new gas boiler in all but a few cases.
Moreover, if you have a gas boiler which is functioning perfectly well, why risk changing it?
Heat pumps may be suitable for well-insulated, newly-built homes which don’t need a lot of heating of any kind, but even Bosch, which manufactures them, has said they are not suitable for older properties – at least not without spending at least another £10,000 stripping them back to the walls and insulating them.
As for expecting us to sort our rubbish into up to seven recycling bins, why on Earth did any government minister think that would be a good idea?
There are some environmentalists, it is true, who love the idea of people being forced to go through their rubbish with a fine tooth comb every week because they see it as doing penance for the damage human societies’ are wreaking on the natural world.
But it is so unnecessary.
The technology to sort out recyclables from a single waste stream has existed for many years, is widely used in the US and many other countries – and even in parts of Britain.
My own local authority uses an automated plant outside Cambridge – with the result we need only one bin for dry recyclables and have one of the highest recycling rates in the country.
It rose from 37 per cent to 56 per cent after the new plant was opened.
The lesson of recycling is pretty clear: when you make it easy for people, they will do it.
The local authority with the highest rate, the East Riding of Yorkshire, sends a van around to collect disused computer equipment from businesses, free of charge.
Too many other authorities go around calling waste a “resource” but then want to charge us for handing it to them.
]It is the same for all green policies: if they make financial sense, the public will take the bait.
But where many struggle is in adopting flawed technologies which don’t keep us warm, or which we can’t charge because we have to park it off the street.
The government has made its bed by agreeing on an arbitrary emissions target, but we shouldn’t have to sleep in it.
Rather than pressing ahead with top-down, costly schemes, it should trust the market to find innovative solutions to our climate change or environmental challenges.
Crap stuff won’t cease to be crap just because it’s green.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/th ... 7370&ei=45
Re: THE BRITS
The Telegraph
"Me-me-me Britain’s only growth areas are entitlement and laziness"
Story by Camilla Tominey
26 MAY 2023
Britain has found a new heroine in the lady who set a hose on the Just Stop Oil protesters who vandalised a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show.
When several ecomaniacs started throwing orange powder paint across the plants of a display showcasing sustainability on Thursday, one middle-aged woman grabbed a hose and ever so casually soaked the intruders until she was stopped by a security guard.
As this most irritating of scenes unfolded at one of the most civilised events on Earth, I’m sure you were thinking the same as me: if only she had been within arm’s reach of a water cannon.
Yet her remarkably restrained response to the selfish outrages committed by radical activists sums up the dignity of ordinary, decent people in the face of this offensive bunch of over-privileged rabble rousers.
The well-deserved drenching was emblematic of a Britain that has had it up to here with the sublime entitlement of campaigners who think they can spoil someone else’s hard work – and a day out to Chelsea – because they have something to shout about climate change.
We later learnt that the garden spoilers included Naomi Goddard, 58, a reported “flood expert” from Hebden Bridge, who warns of disaster in her quiet corner of West Yorkshire while apparently struggling to acknowledge the area has been prone to flooding for centuries.
She was joined by charity worker Stephanie Golder, 35, an activist from Southend, Essex, and support worker Rosa Hicks, 28, who doesn’t appear to see the hypocrisy in hectoring about the environment while having reportedly taken a year out to study in Australia.
Privilege doesn’t even cover it.
Don’t these women have jobs to go to?
While the Chelsea Flower Show was being shamelessly oranged, another trio of mimseys were kidnapping lambs from the King’s Sandringham estate, supposedly in the name of animal welfare.
Seemingly oblivious to the potential distress caused to the lambs by being separated from their flock, militants Rose Patterson, 33, Rosa Sharkey, 23, and Sarah Foy, 23, filmed themselves holding the animals in a van in a stunt anyone with any knowledge of farming knows will have left the bleaters terrified.
Despite apparently lacking understanding of livestock care, these morons actually think they are in a position to lecture others on animal welfare.
Indeed, many “animal rights” activists appear blissfully unaware that being a herbivore does not make you an expert on anything, except perhaps vitamin B-12 deficiency.
Yet on they go, ramming their marginal and extremist views down everyone else’s throats.
Sadly, entitlement seems to be becoming something of a running theme in this country.
This week, we learnt that borrowing has risen to the second highest level ever for April, driven in part by surging welfare payments.
More than five million people are now on out-of-work benefits according to some estimates, despite there being hundreds of thousands of job vacancies.
We all thought the era of people being better off by not working had ended with the introduction of Universal Credit.
And yet, in this strange post-pandemic period, some people who could work are simply choosing not to.
While that may be their right in a free society, where does it leave the rest of us?
All those people shunning jobs are necessitating an immigration policy that sees hundreds of thousands of workers imported into the country to plug the shortages.
As Thursday’s immigration figures from the Office for National Statistics confirmed, net migration stands at an unprecedented 606,000.
This, in turn, is fuelling a mass housing shortage and sky high rents along with a scarcity of school places and doctors’ appointments.
It will inevitably place enormous pressure on Britain’s infrastructure, but our culture has become so consumed by me-me-me that nobody wants to connect the dots.
Of course, successive governments are to blame for creating a high tax, low wage economy where younger generations can no longer afford to get on the housing ladder.
And, as well as failing to build enough houses, our elected representatives have been remiss in neglecting to train more homegrown medics, preferring the cheaper solution of issuing health visas to foreigners instead.
Similarly, by allowing campuses to be flooded with overseas students, they might well be limiting the number of British university entrants in a bid to keep tuition fees down for those lucky enough to gain a place.
Still, it is not just the fault of the powers that be that, to ape the famous Saatchi & Saatchi slogan from the 1970s, Britain isn’t working.
These days, people seem to need to be actively encouraged to go out to work when it used to be a given.
Once upon a time, Britons had a moral impulse to work because they didn’t want to become a burden on the state.
The consensus was that you shouldn’t take something out if you hadn’t put anything in, yet that seems to have evaporated into a narcissistic presumptuousness that you can do as little as you want and expect others to pick up the tab.
People increasingly seem to think they are entitled to an easy life – paid for by the rest of us.
While I appreciate there has been a troubling rise in mental health issues and anxiety, particularly among the young, I cannot help but think that some of this could be down to a lack of purpose in life.
For it used to be thought that work was positive for helping to manage conditions like mild depression by giving sufferers a sense of belonging and accomplishment.
Work was also a calling, a chance to help yourself, your family and even strangers.
And thankfully, some young people – the most ambitious of them – still understand this.
Ask a graduate trainee or an apprentice if they would like to work hard in an office and they will probably say yes.
But their voices are drowned out by a metropolitan elite that appears so hooked on the convenience of Zoom that it has forgotten it is supposed to be passing on knowledge to the next generation.
These lazy elites were given a leg up, but now it’s a case of pull the ladder up, and damn the rest.
Why should they care that others don’t have the luxury of working from home, so long as they can get their recycling bins emptied on time, and their organic food boxes delivered straight to the door?
Some will be cheering on the antics of a small minority of Greta Thunberg devotees, who seem intent on getting in the way of people with actual jobs.
Many of the ills in this country today, from its sinking economy to the troublemaking of radical protestors, can be associated with our wider social crisis.
Frankly, it’s a miracle that the fury of the sensibles has so far been contained to a bit of hose-waving.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/me ... 848a&ei=25
"Me-me-me Britain’s only growth areas are entitlement and laziness"
Story by Camilla Tominey
26 MAY 2023
Britain has found a new heroine in the lady who set a hose on the Just Stop Oil protesters who vandalised a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show.
When several ecomaniacs started throwing orange powder paint across the plants of a display showcasing sustainability on Thursday, one middle-aged woman grabbed a hose and ever so casually soaked the intruders until she was stopped by a security guard.
As this most irritating of scenes unfolded at one of the most civilised events on Earth, I’m sure you were thinking the same as me: if only she had been within arm’s reach of a water cannon.
Yet her remarkably restrained response to the selfish outrages committed by radical activists sums up the dignity of ordinary, decent people in the face of this offensive bunch of over-privileged rabble rousers.
The well-deserved drenching was emblematic of a Britain that has had it up to here with the sublime entitlement of campaigners who think they can spoil someone else’s hard work – and a day out to Chelsea – because they have something to shout about climate change.
We later learnt that the garden spoilers included Naomi Goddard, 58, a reported “flood expert” from Hebden Bridge, who warns of disaster in her quiet corner of West Yorkshire while apparently struggling to acknowledge the area has been prone to flooding for centuries.
She was joined by charity worker Stephanie Golder, 35, an activist from Southend, Essex, and support worker Rosa Hicks, 28, who doesn’t appear to see the hypocrisy in hectoring about the environment while having reportedly taken a year out to study in Australia.
Privilege doesn’t even cover it.
Don’t these women have jobs to go to?
While the Chelsea Flower Show was being shamelessly oranged, another trio of mimseys were kidnapping lambs from the King’s Sandringham estate, supposedly in the name of animal welfare.
Seemingly oblivious to the potential distress caused to the lambs by being separated from their flock, militants Rose Patterson, 33, Rosa Sharkey, 23, and Sarah Foy, 23, filmed themselves holding the animals in a van in a stunt anyone with any knowledge of farming knows will have left the bleaters terrified.
Despite apparently lacking understanding of livestock care, these morons actually think they are in a position to lecture others on animal welfare.
Indeed, many “animal rights” activists appear blissfully unaware that being a herbivore does not make you an expert on anything, except perhaps vitamin B-12 deficiency.
Yet on they go, ramming their marginal and extremist views down everyone else’s throats.
Sadly, entitlement seems to be becoming something of a running theme in this country.
This week, we learnt that borrowing has risen to the second highest level ever for April, driven in part by surging welfare payments.
More than five million people are now on out-of-work benefits according to some estimates, despite there being hundreds of thousands of job vacancies.
We all thought the era of people being better off by not working had ended with the introduction of Universal Credit.
And yet, in this strange post-pandemic period, some people who could work are simply choosing not to.
While that may be their right in a free society, where does it leave the rest of us?
All those people shunning jobs are necessitating an immigration policy that sees hundreds of thousands of workers imported into the country to plug the shortages.
As Thursday’s immigration figures from the Office for National Statistics confirmed, net migration stands at an unprecedented 606,000.
This, in turn, is fuelling a mass housing shortage and sky high rents along with a scarcity of school places and doctors’ appointments.
It will inevitably place enormous pressure on Britain’s infrastructure, but our culture has become so consumed by me-me-me that nobody wants to connect the dots.
Of course, successive governments are to blame for creating a high tax, low wage economy where younger generations can no longer afford to get on the housing ladder.
And, as well as failing to build enough houses, our elected representatives have been remiss in neglecting to train more homegrown medics, preferring the cheaper solution of issuing health visas to foreigners instead.
Similarly, by allowing campuses to be flooded with overseas students, they might well be limiting the number of British university entrants in a bid to keep tuition fees down for those lucky enough to gain a place.
Still, it is not just the fault of the powers that be that, to ape the famous Saatchi & Saatchi slogan from the 1970s, Britain isn’t working.
These days, people seem to need to be actively encouraged to go out to work when it used to be a given.
Once upon a time, Britons had a moral impulse to work because they didn’t want to become a burden on the state.
The consensus was that you shouldn’t take something out if you hadn’t put anything in, yet that seems to have evaporated into a narcissistic presumptuousness that you can do as little as you want and expect others to pick up the tab.
People increasingly seem to think they are entitled to an easy life – paid for by the rest of us.
While I appreciate there has been a troubling rise in mental health issues and anxiety, particularly among the young, I cannot help but think that some of this could be down to a lack of purpose in life.
For it used to be thought that work was positive for helping to manage conditions like mild depression by giving sufferers a sense of belonging and accomplishment.
Work was also a calling, a chance to help yourself, your family and even strangers.
And thankfully, some young people – the most ambitious of them – still understand this.
Ask a graduate trainee or an apprentice if they would like to work hard in an office and they will probably say yes.
But their voices are drowned out by a metropolitan elite that appears so hooked on the convenience of Zoom that it has forgotten it is supposed to be passing on knowledge to the next generation.
These lazy elites were given a leg up, but now it’s a case of pull the ladder up, and damn the rest.
Why should they care that others don’t have the luxury of working from home, so long as they can get their recycling bins emptied on time, and their organic food boxes delivered straight to the door?
Some will be cheering on the antics of a small minority of Greta Thunberg devotees, who seem intent on getting in the way of people with actual jobs.
Many of the ills in this country today, from its sinking economy to the troublemaking of radical protestors, can be associated with our wider social crisis.
Frankly, it’s a miracle that the fury of the sensibles has so far been contained to a bit of hose-waving.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/me ... 848a&ei=25
Re: THE BRITS
The Telegraph
"Biden’s Anglophobia is now a threat to the West"
Story by Con Coughlin
6 JULY 2023
Joe Biden, the US president, makes little effort to conceal his visceral animosity towards the UK, as was evident from his insulting behaviour in Ireland when marking the anniversary of the Good Friday Accords and his no-show at the Coronation.
The idea, though, that he is prepared to block Ben Wallace’s perfectly respectable bid to become Nato’s next secretary-general in favour of appointing Ursula von der Leyen, the underwhelming president of the European Commission, takes his Anglophobia to an entirely new level, one where he seems intent on committing a grievous act of self-harm.
Von der Leyen has hardly covered herself in glory during her Brussels stint.
Her incompetence was brutally exposed in her handling of the pandemic in 2020 when, after reportedly taking “personal charge” of the EU’s response, she oversaw the implementation of a vaccination programme that lagged well behind much of the rest of the world.
Similarly, her inability to provide strong and effective leadership has been evident in her response to the Ukraine conflict, where she has failed to give a precise timetable for Kyiv’s long-term ambitions to join the European Union.
Her failings in Brussels, though, are modest by comparison with her record as Germany’s defence minister between 2013-19.
It was during this period, when Angela Merkel was chancellor, that Berlin almost seemed to take pride in the fact that it consistently failed to meet the minimum Nato spending requirement of 2 per cent of GDP.
With Germany’s close energy and trade ties with Moscow, Merkel and Von der Leyen apparently convinced themselves that Vladimir Putin posed no serious threat to European security, so there was no need to waste money on expensive military kit.
This resulted in the Bundeswehr becoming the laughing stock of Nato.
When on exercise, its soldiers had to resort to using their own mobile phones because the military communications kit lacked proper encryption.
The army’s standard-issue assault rifles were unable to shoot straight in high temperatures and, at one point, equipment shortages became so acute that soldiers were forced to conduct military exercises with broomsticks instead of guns.
Her track record at the German defence ministry makes Von der Leyen’s subsequent appointment as Brussels supremo all the more remarkable, even though it later emerged she got the job because the European Council simply wanted a weak commission leader who would be amenable to its demands.
Making her Nato secretary-general, though, at a time when the alliance is facing the greatest challenge in its 74-year history with the war in Ukraine, would be a promotion too far for someone with such an undistinguished career.
The fact, moreover, that the Biden administration could even contemplate such an inappropriate appointment demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding at the White House of the major challenges Nato faces if it is to preserve Western security.
One of the key pillars that enabled Nato to maintain peace in Europe is the transatlantic alliance, where the US and Europe have worked in tandem to provide an effective military deterrent to any potential aggressor.
Washington’s dominant role in the alliance, particularly in the military sphere, has long been resented by European elites who would prefer the EU to develop its own defence capabilities.
For example, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has made no secret of his desire to create what he calls a “true European Army” to protect its interests.
Appointing Von der Leyen to run Nato would not only place the West’s defence in the hands of a lightweight politician with questionable credentials: it would open the way for Euro-zealots to fulfil their dream of having a defence force focused on defending European interests at the expense of the wider Western alliance.
If the Biden administration was really interested in maintaining the strength and effectiveness of the Western alliance, it would understand that maintaining the distinction between Nato and the EU was paramount.
Yet, such is Biden’s antipathy towards Britain, that he seems willing to ignore this important distinction simply because he cannot tolerate the notion of a British defence secretary getting the position.
Fortunately, the prospect of an EU takeover of Nato has been averted for the immediate future, as Nato leaders have agreed to give a one-year extension to Jens Stoltenberg, the former Norwegian prime minister who has done sterling work encouraging member states to display a united front in confronting Russian aggression.
Norway, of course, enjoys Nato membership, but is not a part of the EU, a fact that will have helped Stoltenberg to keep his distance from Brussels’ efforts to increase its influence over the alliance.
When choosing the next Nato leader, therefore, alliance leaders should avoid picking a representative of Brussels’ ruling elite, and instead look for a candidate from somewhere like Poland or the Baltic states who can be guaranteed to safeguard the alliance’s independence from an EU power grab.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/bi ... 15d7&ei=41
"Biden’s Anglophobia is now a threat to the West"
Story by Con Coughlin
6 JULY 2023
Joe Biden, the US president, makes little effort to conceal his visceral animosity towards the UK, as was evident from his insulting behaviour in Ireland when marking the anniversary of the Good Friday Accords and his no-show at the Coronation.
The idea, though, that he is prepared to block Ben Wallace’s perfectly respectable bid to become Nato’s next secretary-general in favour of appointing Ursula von der Leyen, the underwhelming president of the European Commission, takes his Anglophobia to an entirely new level, one where he seems intent on committing a grievous act of self-harm.
Von der Leyen has hardly covered herself in glory during her Brussels stint.
Her incompetence was brutally exposed in her handling of the pandemic in 2020 when, after reportedly taking “personal charge” of the EU’s response, she oversaw the implementation of a vaccination programme that lagged well behind much of the rest of the world.
Similarly, her inability to provide strong and effective leadership has been evident in her response to the Ukraine conflict, where she has failed to give a precise timetable for Kyiv’s long-term ambitions to join the European Union.
Her failings in Brussels, though, are modest by comparison with her record as Germany’s defence minister between 2013-19.
It was during this period, when Angela Merkel was chancellor, that Berlin almost seemed to take pride in the fact that it consistently failed to meet the minimum Nato spending requirement of 2 per cent of GDP.
With Germany’s close energy and trade ties with Moscow, Merkel and Von der Leyen apparently convinced themselves that Vladimir Putin posed no serious threat to European security, so there was no need to waste money on expensive military kit.
This resulted in the Bundeswehr becoming the laughing stock of Nato.
When on exercise, its soldiers had to resort to using their own mobile phones because the military communications kit lacked proper encryption.
The army’s standard-issue assault rifles were unable to shoot straight in high temperatures and, at one point, equipment shortages became so acute that soldiers were forced to conduct military exercises with broomsticks instead of guns.
Her track record at the German defence ministry makes Von der Leyen’s subsequent appointment as Brussels supremo all the more remarkable, even though it later emerged she got the job because the European Council simply wanted a weak commission leader who would be amenable to its demands.
Making her Nato secretary-general, though, at a time when the alliance is facing the greatest challenge in its 74-year history with the war in Ukraine, would be a promotion too far for someone with such an undistinguished career.
The fact, moreover, that the Biden administration could even contemplate such an inappropriate appointment demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding at the White House of the major challenges Nato faces if it is to preserve Western security.
One of the key pillars that enabled Nato to maintain peace in Europe is the transatlantic alliance, where the US and Europe have worked in tandem to provide an effective military deterrent to any potential aggressor.
Washington’s dominant role in the alliance, particularly in the military sphere, has long been resented by European elites who would prefer the EU to develop its own defence capabilities.
For example, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has made no secret of his desire to create what he calls a “true European Army” to protect its interests.
Appointing Von der Leyen to run Nato would not only place the West’s defence in the hands of a lightweight politician with questionable credentials: it would open the way for Euro-zealots to fulfil their dream of having a defence force focused on defending European interests at the expense of the wider Western alliance.
If the Biden administration was really interested in maintaining the strength and effectiveness of the Western alliance, it would understand that maintaining the distinction between Nato and the EU was paramount.
Yet, such is Biden’s antipathy towards Britain, that he seems willing to ignore this important distinction simply because he cannot tolerate the notion of a British defence secretary getting the position.
Fortunately, the prospect of an EU takeover of Nato has been averted for the immediate future, as Nato leaders have agreed to give a one-year extension to Jens Stoltenberg, the former Norwegian prime minister who has done sterling work encouraging member states to display a united front in confronting Russian aggression.
Norway, of course, enjoys Nato membership, but is not a part of the EU, a fact that will have helped Stoltenberg to keep his distance from Brussels’ efforts to increase its influence over the alliance.
When choosing the next Nato leader, therefore, alliance leaders should avoid picking a representative of Brussels’ ruling elite, and instead look for a candidate from somewhere like Poland or the Baltic states who can be guaranteed to safeguard the alliance’s independence from an EU power grab.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/bi ... 15d7&ei=41
Re: THE BRITS
The Telegraph
"Biden has just made his worst decision on Ukraine so far"
Story by Bob Seely
6 JULY 2023
500 days ago this Saturday, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, beginning Europe’s conventional largest war since Germany invaded Poland in 1939.
Militarily and politically, the war has reached a pivot point.
Perhaps 200,000 are dead or injured already.
The fate of millions more, in Ukraine, in Russia and perhaps further afield, depend on the outcome.
On the battlefield, Ukraine is making slow, but important, progress through the morass of mine fields, trenches and tunnels dug and shaped by Russian military engineers.
Politically, whilst support in weapon and money still flow, the stark question for Western leaders is: does the EU and the United States want Ukraine to win, and are we doing enough to bring it about?
This fundamental question explains, in part, the battle over who becomes the next Nato Secretary General.
Whilst the role requires delivering consensus and consultation within the Alliance, it also has an important leadership function.
Do Nato nations want an uncompromising champion of the Ukrainian cause, such as our Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace, or a representative of Europe’s consensus politics, Ursula Von Der Leyen?
Do we prioritise delivering an epoch-defining task of systemically supporting Ukraine in the coming months whilst preparing for the necessary containment of Russia dictatorship, or do we prioritise the superficial preservation of unity, even if it aids Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in the long term?
These are nuanced arguments, but sadly it appears that Wallace’s more honest approach has cost him US support.
By contrast, if Von Der Leyen is chosen, uncompromising mediocrity may seal the deal.
After a failed stint at German Defence minister, and a period as head of the EU Commission when the EU’s failure to deliver vaccines was painfully clear, Von Der Leyen may again be about to fail upward.
What is confusing is why the President Biden would support this type of candidate at such a critical time.
The US is by far the biggest supplier of weaponry to Ukraine, without which Ukraine’s military would have been unable to fight anything other than a glorified resistance.
Yet again, it is the arsenal of democracy.
But there is a difference between giving Ukraine the kit not to lose and giving it the kit to win, defeating Russian forces on the battlefield and driving them from Ukraine’s territory.
The overriding US concern, and it is an understandable one, is that the Ukraine war must stay in Ukraine and that at all costs direct conflict between Nato and Russia is to be avoided.
Therefore, US thinking appears to run, Russian forces must be weakened until such time as the Kremlin is forced to the negotiating table.
The problem with this laudable argument is that it may be based on a misunderstanding of the Russian regime and a sense of wishful thinking that Russia will negotiate without keeping significant chunks of Ukrainian territory, effectively the country’s east and south.
Not only is Putin happy turning his nation into one in perpetual conflict with the West – it plays to his fantasy Slavophile belief that Russia is a nation martyred by Western decadence and greed – but also the longer the war continues the greater the danger to us all as Russia becomes more unstable, more dangerous and more willing to escalate.
Currently, Putin’s strategy in Ukraine is three-fold.
First, make life unbearable for Ukrainians by targetting the infrastructure of basic civilian life.
Second, hold a line – and the territory Russia seized in the opening phase of the war.
Third, break the Western military and financial umbilical chord by which Ukraine survives.
As to the first, I’ve been back to Ukraine four times since the war began, and civilian attacks only embolden Ukrainians, much as they did to our nation in World War II – indeed they look to our experience as a model of calm stoicism.
As to the second, Ukraine will push back Russian forces this summer, but whether we will witness a general collapse of the kind we saw last September in Kharkiv, is unclear.
Russian engineers have done their job well, and their layered defence will slow Ukrainian progress.
But there is no doubt that in morale and fighting tactics, Ukraine has by far the superior forces.
Third, can Putin break the alliance?
That now is his hope, especially if an isolationist Republican President changes the dynamic of the war anyway.
The answer to all these questions remains that which Ben Wallace and Ukraine’s champions in the West have long said.
The least dangerous of all the dangerous courses before us is to give the Ukraine the tools to finish, and the sooner the better.
Anything else increases uncertainty, increases danger, divides Ukraine society, and ultimately emboldens Putin.
Ironically, the only person truly happy should the roll of Nato’s head go to a product of Brussels mediocrity is likely to be Putin, who is now pinning his hopes on delivering a political victory where his soldiers have failed to deliver a military one.
A long war suits no one apart from the Russian dictator.
Bob Seely is the Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight and sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/bi ... 0cef&ei=36
"Biden has just made his worst decision on Ukraine so far"
Story by Bob Seely
6 JULY 2023
500 days ago this Saturday, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, beginning Europe’s conventional largest war since Germany invaded Poland in 1939.
Militarily and politically, the war has reached a pivot point.
Perhaps 200,000 are dead or injured already.
The fate of millions more, in Ukraine, in Russia and perhaps further afield, depend on the outcome.
On the battlefield, Ukraine is making slow, but important, progress through the morass of mine fields, trenches and tunnels dug and shaped by Russian military engineers.
Politically, whilst support in weapon and money still flow, the stark question for Western leaders is: does the EU and the United States want Ukraine to win, and are we doing enough to bring it about?
This fundamental question explains, in part, the battle over who becomes the next Nato Secretary General.
Whilst the role requires delivering consensus and consultation within the Alliance, it also has an important leadership function.
Do Nato nations want an uncompromising champion of the Ukrainian cause, such as our Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace, or a representative of Europe’s consensus politics, Ursula Von Der Leyen?
Do we prioritise delivering an epoch-defining task of systemically supporting Ukraine in the coming months whilst preparing for the necessary containment of Russia dictatorship, or do we prioritise the superficial preservation of unity, even if it aids Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in the long term?
These are nuanced arguments, but sadly it appears that Wallace’s more honest approach has cost him US support.
By contrast, if Von Der Leyen is chosen, uncompromising mediocrity may seal the deal.
After a failed stint at German Defence minister, and a period as head of the EU Commission when the EU’s failure to deliver vaccines was painfully clear, Von Der Leyen may again be about to fail upward.
What is confusing is why the President Biden would support this type of candidate at such a critical time.
The US is by far the biggest supplier of weaponry to Ukraine, without which Ukraine’s military would have been unable to fight anything other than a glorified resistance.
Yet again, it is the arsenal of democracy.
But there is a difference between giving Ukraine the kit not to lose and giving it the kit to win, defeating Russian forces on the battlefield and driving them from Ukraine’s territory.
The overriding US concern, and it is an understandable one, is that the Ukraine war must stay in Ukraine and that at all costs direct conflict between Nato and Russia is to be avoided.
Therefore, US thinking appears to run, Russian forces must be weakened until such time as the Kremlin is forced to the negotiating table.
The problem with this laudable argument is that it may be based on a misunderstanding of the Russian regime and a sense of wishful thinking that Russia will negotiate without keeping significant chunks of Ukrainian territory, effectively the country’s east and south.
Not only is Putin happy turning his nation into one in perpetual conflict with the West – it plays to his fantasy Slavophile belief that Russia is a nation martyred by Western decadence and greed – but also the longer the war continues the greater the danger to us all as Russia becomes more unstable, more dangerous and more willing to escalate.
Currently, Putin’s strategy in Ukraine is three-fold.
First, make life unbearable for Ukrainians by targetting the infrastructure of basic civilian life.
Second, hold a line – and the territory Russia seized in the opening phase of the war.
Third, break the Western military and financial umbilical chord by which Ukraine survives.
As to the first, I’ve been back to Ukraine four times since the war began, and civilian attacks only embolden Ukrainians, much as they did to our nation in World War II – indeed they look to our experience as a model of calm stoicism.
As to the second, Ukraine will push back Russian forces this summer, but whether we will witness a general collapse of the kind we saw last September in Kharkiv, is unclear.
Russian engineers have done their job well, and their layered defence will slow Ukrainian progress.
But there is no doubt that in morale and fighting tactics, Ukraine has by far the superior forces.
Third, can Putin break the alliance?
That now is his hope, especially if an isolationist Republican President changes the dynamic of the war anyway.
The answer to all these questions remains that which Ben Wallace and Ukraine’s champions in the West have long said.
The least dangerous of all the dangerous courses before us is to give the Ukraine the tools to finish, and the sooner the better.
Anything else increases uncertainty, increases danger, divides Ukraine society, and ultimately emboldens Putin.
Ironically, the only person truly happy should the roll of Nato’s head go to a product of Brussels mediocrity is likely to be Putin, who is now pinning his hopes on delivering a political victory where his soldiers have failed to deliver a military one.
A long war suits no one apart from the Russian dictator.
Bob Seely is the Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight and sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/bi ... 0cef&ei=36
Re: THE BRITS
The Washington Post
"Europe blinks in its commitment to a great green transition"
Story by William Booth, Anthony Faiola
6 AUGUST 2023
LONDON — Europe made big, bold promises to slash carbon emissions to slow global warming, but now the bill is coming due, and governments are starting to blink at the cost — political and economic — needed to power the great transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewables.
Once far-off goals are getting more real, as Europe wrestles with how to tell Germans which cars they can drive, Italians which stoves are acceptable, Polish miners why they must abandon coal, and Britons why they can’t keep exploiting their country’s massive oil and gas reserves.
Britain and the European Union have pledged to go “net zero” by 2050, with steep cuts by 2030.
But across Europe — where this summer has brought brutal heat waves and raging fires in the Mediterranean region — a backlash is simmering against some of the world’s most ambitious green targets.
Last week, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak traveled to Scotland to announce with a big splash his decision to open the North Sea to more oil and gas drilling.
This got Sunak’s private mansion in the Yorkshire countryside draped in “oil-black fabric” by Greenpeace activists who warned that his plan to “max out” fossil fuel reserves could destroy Britain’s chance of meeting its emissions commitments and risk tipping the climate into a danger zone.
Climate activists drape British prime minister’s home in ‘oil-black’ fabric
Sunak’s gambit to commit to more domestic drilling was inspired in part by the results of a one-off parliamentary election in the London suburbs — for the seat that former prime minister Boris Johnson abandoned when he quit the House of Commons.
There, voters signaled they were opposed to the pollution charges ordered up by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, from the opposition Labour Party, to limit the number of petrol cars allowed into the central city.
The E.U., too, has been fighting about cars.
Last fall, the 27-nation bloc reached a world-leading political agreement to effectively end the sale of nonelectric cars by 2035.
But this year, a group of countries sought to water down the rules.
The regulations have remained largely intact, though Germany secured an exception for conventional vehicles that would run on carbon-neutral e-fuels.
Such fuels are not yet economically viable for mass use.
But the push suggested the rising discontent among auto industry executives and workers across the continent over a total switch to electric vehicles, and the end of cars using internal combustion engines — whose production is linked to tens of thousands of jobs in Germany, Italy and beyond.
As the world boils, a backlash to climate action gains strength
Italy and other E.U. nations are also taking aim at “Euro 7” regulations that, by 2025, are meant to tighten vehicle exhaust emissions.
“Italy, with France, Czech Republic, Romania, Portugal, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary, have the numbers to block this leap in the dark,” Italy's hard right Transportation Minister Matteo Salvini told a May car dealer conference in Verona.
“We're now a blocking minority, we want to become a majority.”
Despite those claims, analysts say that rolling back already agreed-upon E.U. rules remains a long shot.
But new agreements are more vulnerable.
During a speech on how to revive French industry, President Emmanuel Macron in May called for “a European regulatory break.”
“We have already passed lots of environmental regulations at the European level, more than other countries,” Macron said.
“Now we should be implementing them, not making new changes in the rules or we are going to lose all our [industrial] players.”
When every day somewhere is a climate record
Macron said Europe was doing its part and is “ahead of the Americans, the Chinese and of any other power in the world.”
The E.U. has reduced its per capita emissions by 29 percent since 1990 but still has far to go.
Overall, the top emitters today are China, the United States, the E.U., India, Russia and Japan.
The prevailing notion of climate justice suggests that wealthy countries that grew their economies while spewing carbon for a century need to do more than poorer, less developed countries that are historically less responsible for climate change.
Surveys show strong support for reducing emissions in Britain and Europe.
But the zeal dampens when the pollsters ask more detailed questions about the people’s willingness to make lifestyle changes or spend a lot of money.
Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, pointed to the new right-wing government of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, which is pushing back on bloc-wide efficiency standards that could require mass renovation of buildings across Europe.
“Meloni and others say, ‘Look, why should we force our citizens to retrofit their buildings?'"
"'We cannot impose this on ordinary people,’” Tagliapietra said.
He said, “This is the kind of pushback you see when climate policy really enters the daily life of people."
"And it can be pretty successful.”
Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, rising far-right star, gets White House welcome
Meloni — who is rapidly emerging as a guiding light for the European right — has walked a cautious line on the environment.
She has artfully dodged the toxic label of “climate denier” — arguing instead for “pragmatic” solutions that don’t run Europe’s economies into the ground.
(Her alliance partners in Italy have been far less careful. “I do not know how much climate change is manmade and how much of it is due to the Earth’s [natural] climate change,” her environmental minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin told Britain’s Sky News last week.)
Britain’s prime minister, too, is careful to call his new North Sea oil policy “proportionate and pragmatic.”
As the U.K. transitions away from fossil fuels — toward wind, solar and nuclear power, which it is doing at pace — it will still need oil and gas for decades to come.
So why buy foreign oil, asks Sunak, who says he is still committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
To balance out his oil-and-gas play, he also announced billion-dollar bets on carbon capture technology.
But the right wing of Sunak’s Conservative Party is filled with climate skeptics, who argue that a warmer world will not be so bad for damp, cloudy Britain.
They deride climate activists as the “eco-woke” and warn that the costs of the transition to net zero are too high — especially when top polluters like China and Russia are not following the West’s lead.
David Frost, a former government minister and top Brexit negotiator, told the House of Lords last month that rising temperatures “are likely to be beneficial” for Britain, because more people in the United Kingdom die from cold than from heat.
Frost said rather than spend billions on renewable energy, the U.K. should adapt to the warming climate, “so we can adjust to the perfectly manageable consequences of slowly rising temperatures as they emerge.”
“We must put aside the current mood of hysteria and try to assess the choices logically,” he said.
Frost’s go-slow appeal comes against a dizzying streak of record-breaking heat waves in Europe, the United States and Asia, as well as shrinking sea ice at the poles and hot-tub ocean temperatures.
U.N. chief António Guterres pleaded for immediate radical action on climate change, saying that record-shattering July temperatures show the planet has passed from global warming to an “era of global boiling.”
He begged governments not to backslide.
“Leaders must lead."
"No more hesitancy."
"No more excuses."
"No more waiting for others to move first,” Guterres said.
But on a grass-roots level, Europeans are thinking about costs.
In Holland, Dutch farmers have staged strikes against government calls to dramatically slash heads of cattle and sell off land to help the country meet its goals to cut nitrogen and ammonia emissions by 2030.
It happens as the Dutch are feeling the impact of climate policy in deeply personal ways, including reductions in highway speeds and new building permits to meet climate goals.
“We’re not going to take it anymore,” said Jos Ubels, a young Dutch cattle farmer and vice president of the Farmers Defense Force, a group formed to promote farmers’ rights.
“We should teach the countries that pollute the most — the poorest countries — ways to reduce emissions,” Ubels said.
“You can’t expect a small country like the Netherlands to make such a difference,” he said.
“Here, it’s become some kind of joke, the way they keep using trial and error, and are not sure if any of it really helps.”
Faiola reported from Rome. Beatriz Rios in Brussels contributed to this report.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/eu ... ceb4&ei=42
"Europe blinks in its commitment to a great green transition"
Story by William Booth, Anthony Faiola
6 AUGUST 2023
LONDON — Europe made big, bold promises to slash carbon emissions to slow global warming, but now the bill is coming due, and governments are starting to blink at the cost — political and economic — needed to power the great transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewables.
Once far-off goals are getting more real, as Europe wrestles with how to tell Germans which cars they can drive, Italians which stoves are acceptable, Polish miners why they must abandon coal, and Britons why they can’t keep exploiting their country’s massive oil and gas reserves.
Britain and the European Union have pledged to go “net zero” by 2050, with steep cuts by 2030.
But across Europe — where this summer has brought brutal heat waves and raging fires in the Mediterranean region — a backlash is simmering against some of the world’s most ambitious green targets.
Last week, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak traveled to Scotland to announce with a big splash his decision to open the North Sea to more oil and gas drilling.
This got Sunak’s private mansion in the Yorkshire countryside draped in “oil-black fabric” by Greenpeace activists who warned that his plan to “max out” fossil fuel reserves could destroy Britain’s chance of meeting its emissions commitments and risk tipping the climate into a danger zone.
Climate activists drape British prime minister’s home in ‘oil-black’ fabric
Sunak’s gambit to commit to more domestic drilling was inspired in part by the results of a one-off parliamentary election in the London suburbs — for the seat that former prime minister Boris Johnson abandoned when he quit the House of Commons.
There, voters signaled they were opposed to the pollution charges ordered up by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, from the opposition Labour Party, to limit the number of petrol cars allowed into the central city.
The E.U., too, has been fighting about cars.
Last fall, the 27-nation bloc reached a world-leading political agreement to effectively end the sale of nonelectric cars by 2035.
But this year, a group of countries sought to water down the rules.
The regulations have remained largely intact, though Germany secured an exception for conventional vehicles that would run on carbon-neutral e-fuels.
Such fuels are not yet economically viable for mass use.
But the push suggested the rising discontent among auto industry executives and workers across the continent over a total switch to electric vehicles, and the end of cars using internal combustion engines — whose production is linked to tens of thousands of jobs in Germany, Italy and beyond.
As the world boils, a backlash to climate action gains strength
Italy and other E.U. nations are also taking aim at “Euro 7” regulations that, by 2025, are meant to tighten vehicle exhaust emissions.
“Italy, with France, Czech Republic, Romania, Portugal, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary, have the numbers to block this leap in the dark,” Italy's hard right Transportation Minister Matteo Salvini told a May car dealer conference in Verona.
“We're now a blocking minority, we want to become a majority.”
Despite those claims, analysts say that rolling back already agreed-upon E.U. rules remains a long shot.
But new agreements are more vulnerable.
During a speech on how to revive French industry, President Emmanuel Macron in May called for “a European regulatory break.”
“We have already passed lots of environmental regulations at the European level, more than other countries,” Macron said.
“Now we should be implementing them, not making new changes in the rules or we are going to lose all our [industrial] players.”
When every day somewhere is a climate record
Macron said Europe was doing its part and is “ahead of the Americans, the Chinese and of any other power in the world.”
The E.U. has reduced its per capita emissions by 29 percent since 1990 but still has far to go.
Overall, the top emitters today are China, the United States, the E.U., India, Russia and Japan.
The prevailing notion of climate justice suggests that wealthy countries that grew their economies while spewing carbon for a century need to do more than poorer, less developed countries that are historically less responsible for climate change.
Surveys show strong support for reducing emissions in Britain and Europe.
But the zeal dampens when the pollsters ask more detailed questions about the people’s willingness to make lifestyle changes or spend a lot of money.
Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, pointed to the new right-wing government of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, which is pushing back on bloc-wide efficiency standards that could require mass renovation of buildings across Europe.
“Meloni and others say, ‘Look, why should we force our citizens to retrofit their buildings?'"
"'We cannot impose this on ordinary people,’” Tagliapietra said.
He said, “This is the kind of pushback you see when climate policy really enters the daily life of people."
"And it can be pretty successful.”
Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, rising far-right star, gets White House welcome
Meloni — who is rapidly emerging as a guiding light for the European right — has walked a cautious line on the environment.
She has artfully dodged the toxic label of “climate denier” — arguing instead for “pragmatic” solutions that don’t run Europe’s economies into the ground.
(Her alliance partners in Italy have been far less careful. “I do not know how much climate change is manmade and how much of it is due to the Earth’s [natural] climate change,” her environmental minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin told Britain’s Sky News last week.)
Britain’s prime minister, too, is careful to call his new North Sea oil policy “proportionate and pragmatic.”
As the U.K. transitions away from fossil fuels — toward wind, solar and nuclear power, which it is doing at pace — it will still need oil and gas for decades to come.
So why buy foreign oil, asks Sunak, who says he is still committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
To balance out his oil-and-gas play, he also announced billion-dollar bets on carbon capture technology.
But the right wing of Sunak’s Conservative Party is filled with climate skeptics, who argue that a warmer world will not be so bad for damp, cloudy Britain.
They deride climate activists as the “eco-woke” and warn that the costs of the transition to net zero are too high — especially when top polluters like China and Russia are not following the West’s lead.
David Frost, a former government minister and top Brexit negotiator, told the House of Lords last month that rising temperatures “are likely to be beneficial” for Britain, because more people in the United Kingdom die from cold than from heat.
Frost said rather than spend billions on renewable energy, the U.K. should adapt to the warming climate, “so we can adjust to the perfectly manageable consequences of slowly rising temperatures as they emerge.”
“We must put aside the current mood of hysteria and try to assess the choices logically,” he said.
Frost’s go-slow appeal comes against a dizzying streak of record-breaking heat waves in Europe, the United States and Asia, as well as shrinking sea ice at the poles and hot-tub ocean temperatures.
U.N. chief António Guterres pleaded for immediate radical action on climate change, saying that record-shattering July temperatures show the planet has passed from global warming to an “era of global boiling.”
He begged governments not to backslide.
“Leaders must lead."
"No more hesitancy."
"No more excuses."
"No more waiting for others to move first,” Guterres said.
But on a grass-roots level, Europeans are thinking about costs.
In Holland, Dutch farmers have staged strikes against government calls to dramatically slash heads of cattle and sell off land to help the country meet its goals to cut nitrogen and ammonia emissions by 2030.
It happens as the Dutch are feeling the impact of climate policy in deeply personal ways, including reductions in highway speeds and new building permits to meet climate goals.
“We’re not going to take it anymore,” said Jos Ubels, a young Dutch cattle farmer and vice president of the Farmers Defense Force, a group formed to promote farmers’ rights.
“We should teach the countries that pollute the most — the poorest countries — ways to reduce emissions,” Ubels said.
“You can’t expect a small country like the Netherlands to make such a difference,” he said.
“Here, it’s become some kind of joke, the way they keep using trial and error, and are not sure if any of it really helps.”
Faiola reported from Rome. Beatriz Rios in Brussels contributed to this report.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/eu ... ceb4&ei=42
Re: THE BRITS
The Telegraph
"The lunacy of climate change fanatics is driving humanity to extinction"
Story by Allister Heath •
24 AUGUST 2023
Why do extreme environmentalists appear to dislike babies so much?
These eco-radicals jubilantly celebrated the news that the number of children born in Britain has taken another tumble, on the grounds that fewer rich Westerners means less consumption.
In a world in desperate search of meaning, this kind of neo-Malthusian, misanthropic nonsense has tragically found willing ears, with some young people pledging not to have children to “save the planet”.
I hope they reconsider.
The eco-extremists’ fixation with over-population, beginning in 1972 with the Club for Rome’s infamous Limits to Growth, is hopelessly outdated.
The real threat today is a global demographic collapse caused by an unprecedented reduction in the number of babies, and the social, economic, cultural and philosophical revolution this will unleash.
Yes, the world population will continue to grow for many years (albeit fewer than previously thought), led by a group of African countries, but there are now 82 countries where the total fertility rate has fallen below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, according to the World Population Review.
The majority of the world’s 195 countries will soon be affected: fertility is plunging in Asia, South America and elsewhere.
Korea suffers from the world’s lowest fertility at a staggering 1: its population could halve over the next 80 years.
America is at just 1.6, and Canada at 1.4; Italy at 1.2 (it counted just 392,598 births last year, against 713,499 deaths), France at 1.8 and Germany at 1.5, numbers that are mostly tumbling fast.
The total fertility rate has even fallen to below replacement in Bangladesh, Malaysia and Jamaica.
In 2016, 18.3 million babies were born in China; by 2022, this had slumped to 9.56 million and to some 8 million this year.
The total fertility rate collapsed to just 1.09 last year, down from 1.3 in 2020.
Remarkably, India (now the world’s most populous country as a result of China’s slump) is only just growing at 2.2: many of its states are already in negative territory and the country as a whole is likely to follow suit soon.
Israel is the only OECD country with a fertility rate above replacement: at 3 for Jewish Israeli families, it is a remarkable outlier.
Britain’s fertility rate sank to a record low of 1.58 children per woman in 2020, and is probably now hovering at around 1.5.
There were just 605,479 live births in England and Wales last year, the lowest since 2002.
Schools will be shutting soon, and the number of pensioners per young person will grow inexorably.
Something will have to give: either the pension triple lock will be axed, or taxes will be jacked up.
Our numbers would be even worse without immigration.
The percentage of births where at least one parent was born outside the UK reached a record 36.7 per cent in England, including 66.5 per cent in London (and 80 per cent or more in a handful of boroughs, including Brent and Harrow).
As immigrants integrate, their own children adopt similar fertility patterns to the rest of the population, so yet more immigration is needed to prop up numbers.
Many people in Britain are understandably worried about the scale of immigration, want to reduce numbers substantially and are angry at the establishment’s refusal to act.
Our national debate must recognise this, but also the trade-offs: either we import even more workers (from the diminishing number of countries with surplus labour), or we somehow start having more children, or we accept a shrinking working age population.
All three are legitimate options – GDP per capita is more important than total GDP, though an ageing population would affect risk-taking and innovation – but costs and benefits must be discussed openly.
There have been too many lies and obfuscations.
Japan’s case is instructive: its population is expected to slump from 126.2 million in 2020 to 87 million in 47 years’ time.
Crucially, however, these figures are being propped up by an expected jump in foreign residents from 2.8 million to 9.4 million.
Will the voters put up with this?
Japanese house prices are cheap these days: it is easy to build homes, and yet this seems to have made no impact on fertility.
There is no simple, general explanation for the global collapse in child bearing.
Many proffer parochial or ideologically pleasing explanations for what is a historic and incredibly complex global phenomenon, but countries with lower house prices or higher childcare subsidies or more generous child benefits or different labour laws or a less individualistic culture or a more egalitarian workplace are also suffering falling fertility.
The basic rule seems to be that the richer and more educated a society the fewer children it bears, and that government policies that attempt to reverse this almost always fail to move the dial meaningfully.
But there are key caveats.
A decline in religiosity appears to be the single most important driver of lower fertility: truly engaged orthodox believers continue to have a lot more children than secular people, even in the case of highly educated women and regardless of wealth.
A complementary explanation is the extended family: in Israel, grandparents are much more likely to help their grandchildren than in Britain.
In a modern, capitalist, individualistic society, strong, extended family networks may be a necessary but not sufficient condition to make having more children bearable and viable.
This would require major changes.
There are many other factors.
Urbanites have fewer children than suburbanites and rural populations, though all groups are declining.
Men are struggling in the labour and education markets, making them less attractive to better-educated women.
Ultimately, however, a society’s values and culture must be key: is parenting held in high esteem, seen as a wonderful, essential contribution to the maintenance of civilisation – while respecting those who can’t or won’t have kids – or is it denigrated?
Are we an optimistic society, or a pessimistic one?
Could a new civic culture, a new national mission, help revive fertility?
Elon Musk believes that a race to colonise other planets would galvanise many into having more kids; others will have different answers.
For now, however, we are in the midst of the greatest crisis of the 21st century, and yet the green radicals are still fighting the last war.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/th ... 5243&ei=14
"The lunacy of climate change fanatics is driving humanity to extinction"
Story by Allister Heath •
24 AUGUST 2023
Why do extreme environmentalists appear to dislike babies so much?
These eco-radicals jubilantly celebrated the news that the number of children born in Britain has taken another tumble, on the grounds that fewer rich Westerners means less consumption.
In a world in desperate search of meaning, this kind of neo-Malthusian, misanthropic nonsense has tragically found willing ears, with some young people pledging not to have children to “save the planet”.
I hope they reconsider.
The eco-extremists’ fixation with over-population, beginning in 1972 with the Club for Rome’s infamous Limits to Growth, is hopelessly outdated.
The real threat today is a global demographic collapse caused by an unprecedented reduction in the number of babies, and the social, economic, cultural and philosophical revolution this will unleash.
Yes, the world population will continue to grow for many years (albeit fewer than previously thought), led by a group of African countries, but there are now 82 countries where the total fertility rate has fallen below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, according to the World Population Review.
The majority of the world’s 195 countries will soon be affected: fertility is plunging in Asia, South America and elsewhere.
Korea suffers from the world’s lowest fertility at a staggering 1: its population could halve over the next 80 years.
America is at just 1.6, and Canada at 1.4; Italy at 1.2 (it counted just 392,598 births last year, against 713,499 deaths), France at 1.8 and Germany at 1.5, numbers that are mostly tumbling fast.
The total fertility rate has even fallen to below replacement in Bangladesh, Malaysia and Jamaica.
In 2016, 18.3 million babies were born in China; by 2022, this had slumped to 9.56 million and to some 8 million this year.
The total fertility rate collapsed to just 1.09 last year, down from 1.3 in 2020.
Remarkably, India (now the world’s most populous country as a result of China’s slump) is only just growing at 2.2: many of its states are already in negative territory and the country as a whole is likely to follow suit soon.
Israel is the only OECD country with a fertility rate above replacement: at 3 for Jewish Israeli families, it is a remarkable outlier.
Britain’s fertility rate sank to a record low of 1.58 children per woman in 2020, and is probably now hovering at around 1.5.
There were just 605,479 live births in England and Wales last year, the lowest since 2002.
Schools will be shutting soon, and the number of pensioners per young person will grow inexorably.
Something will have to give: either the pension triple lock will be axed, or taxes will be jacked up.
Our numbers would be even worse without immigration.
The percentage of births where at least one parent was born outside the UK reached a record 36.7 per cent in England, including 66.5 per cent in London (and 80 per cent or more in a handful of boroughs, including Brent and Harrow).
As immigrants integrate, their own children adopt similar fertility patterns to the rest of the population, so yet more immigration is needed to prop up numbers.
Many people in Britain are understandably worried about the scale of immigration, want to reduce numbers substantially and are angry at the establishment’s refusal to act.
Our national debate must recognise this, but also the trade-offs: either we import even more workers (from the diminishing number of countries with surplus labour), or we somehow start having more children, or we accept a shrinking working age population.
All three are legitimate options – GDP per capita is more important than total GDP, though an ageing population would affect risk-taking and innovation – but costs and benefits must be discussed openly.
There have been too many lies and obfuscations.
Japan’s case is instructive: its population is expected to slump from 126.2 million in 2020 to 87 million in 47 years’ time.
Crucially, however, these figures are being propped up by an expected jump in foreign residents from 2.8 million to 9.4 million.
Will the voters put up with this?
Japanese house prices are cheap these days: it is easy to build homes, and yet this seems to have made no impact on fertility.
There is no simple, general explanation for the global collapse in child bearing.
Many proffer parochial or ideologically pleasing explanations for what is a historic and incredibly complex global phenomenon, but countries with lower house prices or higher childcare subsidies or more generous child benefits or different labour laws or a less individualistic culture or a more egalitarian workplace are also suffering falling fertility.
The basic rule seems to be that the richer and more educated a society the fewer children it bears, and that government policies that attempt to reverse this almost always fail to move the dial meaningfully.
But there are key caveats.
A decline in religiosity appears to be the single most important driver of lower fertility: truly engaged orthodox believers continue to have a lot more children than secular people, even in the case of highly educated women and regardless of wealth.
A complementary explanation is the extended family: in Israel, grandparents are much more likely to help their grandchildren than in Britain.
In a modern, capitalist, individualistic society, strong, extended family networks may be a necessary but not sufficient condition to make having more children bearable and viable.
This would require major changes.
There are many other factors.
Urbanites have fewer children than suburbanites and rural populations, though all groups are declining.
Men are struggling in the labour and education markets, making them less attractive to better-educated women.
Ultimately, however, a society’s values and culture must be key: is parenting held in high esteem, seen as a wonderful, essential contribution to the maintenance of civilisation – while respecting those who can’t or won’t have kids – or is it denigrated?
Are we an optimistic society, or a pessimistic one?
Could a new civic culture, a new national mission, help revive fertility?
Elon Musk believes that a race to colonise other planets would galvanise many into having more kids; others will have different answers.
For now, however, we are in the midst of the greatest crisis of the 21st century, and yet the green radicals are still fighting the last war.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/th ... 5243&ei=14
Re: THE BRITS
The Telegraph
"The real costs of wind power prove the sums don’t add up"
Story by Jeremy Warner
30 AUGUST 2023
Someone get a grip.
UK energy policy is once again coming apart at the seams, with growing doubts over whether net zero or even energy security goals can be met.
Only now are the true economic costs and practical difficulties of going carbon-free becoming fully evident, and it’s not a pretty sight.
Yet still policymakers don’t seem to get it; either that or they are being deliberately misleading on the ease with which it can be delivered.
All pretence at “leading the world” in the application of renewables is meanwhile going up in smoke, as one-time champions pare back their ambitions for the UK market in the face of rising costs, oppressive planning laws, and better opportunities elsewhere.
Rival jurisdictions, particularly the US and EU, are beginning to offer far superior incentives.
If you cannot beat them, do the opposite.
Slowly, but surely, the Government is watering down its environmental agenda, which sadly but inevitably frequently clashes with the parallel goal of enhanced economic growth – the latest example being so-called “nutrient neutrality” water pollution rules which act as a barrier to more housebuilding.
Yet on paper at least, and indeed legally, the overarching environmental goal of net zero by 2050 – together with the staged targets set for getting there – remains sacrosanct, even though most practically minded people have long thought there is not a snowball’s chance in Hades of actually meeting it.
A giant leap of faith in the transforming powers of technology is demanded to think it can be.
As if to confirm the gaping chasm between ambition and reality, the latest round of auctions for UK renewable energy licences, the outcome of which is due to be announced late next week, has plainly hit the rocks.
Having already abandoned a key UK offshore wind development because of rising costs, the Swedish utility Vattenfall has indicated that it won’t be participating in the Government’s so-called Auction Round Five.
Similarly with the UK energy group SSE, which has said it will not be entering its Seagreen offshore development into the auction, citing a low, officially set, strike price, and dramatically rising costs.
Under pressure from the renewables industry, the Government has announced a slight increase in the promised subsidy below strike prices, but it’s unlikely to make a difference.
Presumably there are at least some bidders still in the running; even so, officials will struggle to get the capacity hoped for, putting in jeopardy the target of 50GW of offshore wind by 2030.
Current capacity stands at just 14GW, so there is a way to go.
This in turn raises doubts about the Government’s separate target of complete decarbonisation of the electricity network by 2035.
This, too, looks unrealistic.
British energy policy is once more in a chaotic mess.
It was ever thus.
As it is, policymakers have set strike prices so low that investors are struggling to see how they might make a return.
No surprise that prices should be forced down like this, for the green energy transition is not just about saving the planet.
It is also meant to deliver much lower energy costs.
This, too, is turning out to be a pretence.
It’s true that in the past seven or eight years, the notional cost of renewable energy has plummeted.
The price of offshore wind output has, for instance, fallen by around two thirds, from £100 per megawatt hour to less than £40.
There you go, say ministers in response to net zero sceptics; it’s cheaper than coal.
Would that it was, but the claim is in fact a statistical illusion.
The manufacturing, installation and maintenance costs alone have been surging since the war in Ukraine.
To these we must also add the costs of upgrading the National Grid to bring the new sources of electricity from where they are generated to where they are used.
Littering the countryside with pylons is understandably running into local opposition.
Billions may have to be forked out to compensate affected communities, or in finding alternative, more expensive, transmission routes.
It could make HS2 look cheap by comparison.
But to gain a proper understanding of the real costs of wind, and to a lesser extent, solar, we need to factor in another of their characteristics – that they are intermittent.
In order to function effectively, the grid needs a constant balance between supply and demand; if the wind isn’t blowing, or even if it is blowing too strongly, thereby overloading the grid, there is a problem.
Lots of conventional backup capacity is required to deal with the shortfalls that result from intermittency – capacity that can be brought online quickly at the flick of a switch when needs arise.
The upshot is likely to be a high degree of duplication in generating capacity.
This will obviously very considerably add to the costs of the renewable element. It’s disingenuous to say wind is cheaper than fossil fuels.
Potentially, storage could provide a solution to the intermittency problem, yet for the moment it doesn’t exist at the scale needed to do the trick.
If Britain cannot guarantee to keep the lights on, nobody is going to want to set up shop here.
What about batteries?
This may seem unduly pessimistic, but it stretches credulity to believe that they can ever really be the solution.
Is there even enough lithium in the world to provide the level of battery power needed to supply the National Grid when the wind stops blowing?
There are alternatives, nuclear being the most obvious, but many environmentalists are as opposed to it as they are to coal, gas and oil, and here in the UK, policy on new nuclear capacity, as on much else, falls woefully short.
It is as much as we can do even to get the money-eating leviathan of Hinkley Point C up and running.
Next comes Sizewell C, which scarcely promises to be much better.
As Britain’s ageing fleet of existing nuclear power stations reaches the end of its life, merely replacing what’s closing down seems to be beyond us.
And to phase out the 80pc of UK energy demand currently satisfied by fossil fuels, we would need far, far more.
Yet the Government continues to procrastinate.
Shamefully, it is still faffing around with an international competition to decide who gets to build Small Modular Reactors, never mind how to finance them.
The last two auction rounds lulled the Government into a false sense of security on the economics of renewables.
Both were hugely successful in attracting bidders at apparently highly competitive prices.
But things have changed.
Having been ahead, Britain is slipping behind.
Next week’s announcement on the outcome of the fifth round auction threatens to be a rude awakening.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/persona ... 07af&ei=23
"The real costs of wind power prove the sums don’t add up"
Story by Jeremy Warner
30 AUGUST 2023
Someone get a grip.
UK energy policy is once again coming apart at the seams, with growing doubts over whether net zero or even energy security goals can be met.
Only now are the true economic costs and practical difficulties of going carbon-free becoming fully evident, and it’s not a pretty sight.
Yet still policymakers don’t seem to get it; either that or they are being deliberately misleading on the ease with which it can be delivered.
All pretence at “leading the world” in the application of renewables is meanwhile going up in smoke, as one-time champions pare back their ambitions for the UK market in the face of rising costs, oppressive planning laws, and better opportunities elsewhere.
Rival jurisdictions, particularly the US and EU, are beginning to offer far superior incentives.
If you cannot beat them, do the opposite.
Slowly, but surely, the Government is watering down its environmental agenda, which sadly but inevitably frequently clashes with the parallel goal of enhanced economic growth – the latest example being so-called “nutrient neutrality” water pollution rules which act as a barrier to more housebuilding.
Yet on paper at least, and indeed legally, the overarching environmental goal of net zero by 2050 – together with the staged targets set for getting there – remains sacrosanct, even though most practically minded people have long thought there is not a snowball’s chance in Hades of actually meeting it.
A giant leap of faith in the transforming powers of technology is demanded to think it can be.
As if to confirm the gaping chasm between ambition and reality, the latest round of auctions for UK renewable energy licences, the outcome of which is due to be announced late next week, has plainly hit the rocks.
Having already abandoned a key UK offshore wind development because of rising costs, the Swedish utility Vattenfall has indicated that it won’t be participating in the Government’s so-called Auction Round Five.
Similarly with the UK energy group SSE, which has said it will not be entering its Seagreen offshore development into the auction, citing a low, officially set, strike price, and dramatically rising costs.
Under pressure from the renewables industry, the Government has announced a slight increase in the promised subsidy below strike prices, but it’s unlikely to make a difference.
Presumably there are at least some bidders still in the running; even so, officials will struggle to get the capacity hoped for, putting in jeopardy the target of 50GW of offshore wind by 2030.
Current capacity stands at just 14GW, so there is a way to go.
This in turn raises doubts about the Government’s separate target of complete decarbonisation of the electricity network by 2035.
This, too, looks unrealistic.
British energy policy is once more in a chaotic mess.
It was ever thus.
As it is, policymakers have set strike prices so low that investors are struggling to see how they might make a return.
No surprise that prices should be forced down like this, for the green energy transition is not just about saving the planet.
It is also meant to deliver much lower energy costs.
This, too, is turning out to be a pretence.
It’s true that in the past seven or eight years, the notional cost of renewable energy has plummeted.
The price of offshore wind output has, for instance, fallen by around two thirds, from £100 per megawatt hour to less than £40.
There you go, say ministers in response to net zero sceptics; it’s cheaper than coal.
Would that it was, but the claim is in fact a statistical illusion.
The manufacturing, installation and maintenance costs alone have been surging since the war in Ukraine.
To these we must also add the costs of upgrading the National Grid to bring the new sources of electricity from where they are generated to where they are used.
Littering the countryside with pylons is understandably running into local opposition.
Billions may have to be forked out to compensate affected communities, or in finding alternative, more expensive, transmission routes.
It could make HS2 look cheap by comparison.
But to gain a proper understanding of the real costs of wind, and to a lesser extent, solar, we need to factor in another of their characteristics – that they are intermittent.
In order to function effectively, the grid needs a constant balance between supply and demand; if the wind isn’t blowing, or even if it is blowing too strongly, thereby overloading the grid, there is a problem.
Lots of conventional backup capacity is required to deal with the shortfalls that result from intermittency – capacity that can be brought online quickly at the flick of a switch when needs arise.
The upshot is likely to be a high degree of duplication in generating capacity.
This will obviously very considerably add to the costs of the renewable element. It’s disingenuous to say wind is cheaper than fossil fuels.
Potentially, storage could provide a solution to the intermittency problem, yet for the moment it doesn’t exist at the scale needed to do the trick.
If Britain cannot guarantee to keep the lights on, nobody is going to want to set up shop here.
What about batteries?
This may seem unduly pessimistic, but it stretches credulity to believe that they can ever really be the solution.
Is there even enough lithium in the world to provide the level of battery power needed to supply the National Grid when the wind stops blowing?
There are alternatives, nuclear being the most obvious, but many environmentalists are as opposed to it as they are to coal, gas and oil, and here in the UK, policy on new nuclear capacity, as on much else, falls woefully short.
It is as much as we can do even to get the money-eating leviathan of Hinkley Point C up and running.
Next comes Sizewell C, which scarcely promises to be much better.
As Britain’s ageing fleet of existing nuclear power stations reaches the end of its life, merely replacing what’s closing down seems to be beyond us.
And to phase out the 80pc of UK energy demand currently satisfied by fossil fuels, we would need far, far more.
Yet the Government continues to procrastinate.
Shamefully, it is still faffing around with an international competition to decide who gets to build Small Modular Reactors, never mind how to finance them.
The last two auction rounds lulled the Government into a false sense of security on the economics of renewables.
Both were hugely successful in attracting bidders at apparently highly competitive prices.
But things have changed.
Having been ahead, Britain is slipping behind.
Next week’s announcement on the outcome of the fifth round auction threatens to be a rude awakening.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/persona ... 07af&ei=23
Re: THE BRITS
City AM
"Offshore wind auction expected to be major letdown for government’s green agenda"
Story by Nicholas Earl
8 SEPTEMBER 2023
The latest auction round for offshore wind is expected to be disappointing for the energy sector, with potentially no bids for major wind farms.
City A.M. understands from industry sources that the outcome will be highly disappointing for the government and renewables sector, when results are announced tomorrow by ministers.
It follows repeated warnings from developers that the government has not provided sufficient support to the latest allocation round for offshore projects.
These concerns were first reported by City A.M. earlier this year.
The outcome would be a blow to the government’s energy security ambitions, with Downing Street targeting a ramp up from 14GW to 50GW of offshore wind generation by the end of the decade – a move considered essential for the UK’s net zero goals over the next three decades.
Soaring inflation has eaten into the margins of renewable developers, worsening the UK’s investment climate, alongside levies on renewable generators.
This has seen Vattenfall recently pull out of a major project off the Norfolk coast, while also ruling itself out of the current bidding round alongside rival clean energy player SSE.
Offshore wind developers bid for projects via allocation rounds, where they seek to offer the lowest generation costs in exchange for guaranteed income, known as the ‘strike price’.
This means customers pay a fixed rate for the electricity they generate, while generators gain a floor in revenues to prevent losses and a ceiling to limit bumper revenues.
When wholesale prices are lower, customers effectively pay subsidies to top up the difference, but when wholesale prices are higher, developers back pay the difference.
The arrangement is known as the ‘contracts for difference’ scheme.
Generation costs for renewable projects have plummeted since the first allocation round in 2015, dropping from £155 per megawatt hour to £37 per megawatt hour three years ago.
The fourth allocation round delivered nearly 11GW of new clean energy to be added to the grid by 2029, with 93 projects winning contracts.
However rising costs have led to industry fears of higher prices in the upcoming auction round and fewer bids in the current fifth allocation round.
The government raised the overall budget from £205m to £227m during its unofficial energy security week last month, but this is not expected to make a difference to the auction’s outcome.
This is despite at least five offshore wind projects with 5GW of combined capacity expected to be eligible for this year’s auction – enough to power more than 5m homes.
City A.M. has approached the government for comment.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... 7247&ei=50
"Offshore wind auction expected to be major letdown for government’s green agenda"
Story by Nicholas Earl
8 SEPTEMBER 2023
The latest auction round for offshore wind is expected to be disappointing for the energy sector, with potentially no bids for major wind farms.
City A.M. understands from industry sources that the outcome will be highly disappointing for the government and renewables sector, when results are announced tomorrow by ministers.
It follows repeated warnings from developers that the government has not provided sufficient support to the latest allocation round for offshore projects.
These concerns were first reported by City A.M. earlier this year.
The outcome would be a blow to the government’s energy security ambitions, with Downing Street targeting a ramp up from 14GW to 50GW of offshore wind generation by the end of the decade – a move considered essential for the UK’s net zero goals over the next three decades.
Soaring inflation has eaten into the margins of renewable developers, worsening the UK’s investment climate, alongside levies on renewable generators.
This has seen Vattenfall recently pull out of a major project off the Norfolk coast, while also ruling itself out of the current bidding round alongside rival clean energy player SSE.
Offshore wind developers bid for projects via allocation rounds, where they seek to offer the lowest generation costs in exchange for guaranteed income, known as the ‘strike price’.
This means customers pay a fixed rate for the electricity they generate, while generators gain a floor in revenues to prevent losses and a ceiling to limit bumper revenues.
When wholesale prices are lower, customers effectively pay subsidies to top up the difference, but when wholesale prices are higher, developers back pay the difference.
The arrangement is known as the ‘contracts for difference’ scheme.
Generation costs for renewable projects have plummeted since the first allocation round in 2015, dropping from £155 per megawatt hour to £37 per megawatt hour three years ago.
The fourth allocation round delivered nearly 11GW of new clean energy to be added to the grid by 2029, with 93 projects winning contracts.
However rising costs have led to industry fears of higher prices in the upcoming auction round and fewer bids in the current fifth allocation round.
The government raised the overall budget from £205m to £227m during its unofficial energy security week last month, but this is not expected to make a difference to the auction’s outcome.
This is despite at least five offshore wind projects with 5GW of combined capacity expected to be eligible for this year’s auction – enough to power more than 5m homes.
City A.M. has approached the government for comment.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... 7247&ei=50
Re: THE BRITS
The Telegraph
"The renewables fantasy is coming crashing down"
Story by Andy Mayer
9 SEPTEMBER 2023
The Government’s latest auction for renewable energy contracts has not been a success.
There have been no offshore wind bids, and the “Saudi Arabia of wind” (Boris Johnson’s excitable claim for the potential of the industry in Britain), looks more like Yemen.
To achieve net zero by 2050, Britain needs to decarbonise electricity production fast and early.
Then, more than double it to cope with the electrification of heat and transport and provision of back-up power for cloudy still days, particularly in winter.
Key to doing so is the delivery of acres of offshore wind, with a target of 50GW of capacity by 2030, up from 14GW today.
Offshore wind is easier to build than onshore, fewer pesky Nimbys to raise objections, even after this week’s win for deregulation.
It’s more useful than solar, with load factors between 30-65 per cent rather than 10-15 per cent, which is the difference between claimed capacity and actual output.
It’s faster to build than nuclear, and less unpopular.
It isn’t as restricted by geography as tidal and hydropower, and it’s certainly more affordable than green hydrogen, an imagined fuel of the future.
What it isn’t, however, is cheap.
A common refrain during the 2022 energy crisis was that wind is “nine times cheaper than gas”, but it has since collided with reality.
Rent-seeking lobbyists compared pre-energy crisis deals at £38/MWh, with peak gas prices as Russian tanks rolled over the Donbass.
Virtue-signalling politicians chose to believe them and designed the latest auction to match the claims, capping bids at £44/MWh.
Unfortunately, the wind industry exists in the real world, where 75-80 per cent of energy depends on fossil fuels, and particularly so in industrial production.
When oil and gas prices rise, the cost of steel, concrete, epoxy resin and other energy-intensive goods required to construct turbines rises as well (about 40 per cent in the last year, according to industry insiders).
They are not immune from wage inflation in a cost-of-living crisis.
While this should be accounted for by index-linking their payments, rapid expansion puts a premium on skilled labour.
Rising global interest rates increase the industry’s cost of borrowing and reduce the relative returns from their contracts compared to other options.
The Government has also wised up to bad behaviour.
During the energy crisis, new wind farms exploited a clause in old contracts to take the market price, not the contract price, undermining the central rationale of the “contract for difference” system and the sharing of risk with bill payers.
This gave developers windfall profits, and this time those clauses were removed, alongside landing them a windfall tax to 2028 to claw it back.
Consequently, many wind developers cannot now honour their prior commitments, pulling out of those “nine-times cheaper” contracts.
Nor can they make new ones.
The lie of cheap offshore wind has been exposed.
If we want the true picture, then Net Zero Watch have estimated real costs around £125/MWh by reviewing developer accounts, whereas the CEO of developer SSE pointed to Ireland’s strike price of €150 (£129)/MWh as a signal of what would persuade him to invest again.
This is well above current market prices £80-100/MWh, and nearly three times the historical average.
Indulging the industry’s demands here would be a return to the politics of the 2010s when “green crap” drove up the cost of bills, even when oil and gas were cheap.
The smart way to achieve Net Zero is not to set tech targets and bespoke subsidies.
No one can accurately guess the price of energy next week, let alone years into the future.
We can crudely estimate a carbon price (the cost of climate damage from fossil fuel emissions) and use that to create a market.
We can do the same for back-up and connection (the cost to energy security of unreliable power).
But the rest should be left to competition between projects and technologies.
Deploying the most cost-effective solutions first.
If that means fewer wind farms, then wind wasn’t the right solution.
The mess is a damning indictment of industrial policy, the delusion of politicians that they can pick winners, centrally plan growth, and collude with industry lobbyists to put the cost on all of us.
Alarmingly the wind is blowing to even more of this in future, with the US Investment Reduction Act, EU response, and UK Parliamentary consensus that if it didn’t work this year, next year will be different.
It will be different, it might be worse, and if the solution is higher strike prices, then we all lose.
It’s time to rediscover the wisdom of crowds through markets and abandon these foolish targets.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... 9d6b9&ei=9
"The renewables fantasy is coming crashing down"
Story by Andy Mayer
9 SEPTEMBER 2023
The Government’s latest auction for renewable energy contracts has not been a success.
There have been no offshore wind bids, and the “Saudi Arabia of wind” (Boris Johnson’s excitable claim for the potential of the industry in Britain), looks more like Yemen.
To achieve net zero by 2050, Britain needs to decarbonise electricity production fast and early.
Then, more than double it to cope with the electrification of heat and transport and provision of back-up power for cloudy still days, particularly in winter.
Key to doing so is the delivery of acres of offshore wind, with a target of 50GW of capacity by 2030, up from 14GW today.
Offshore wind is easier to build than onshore, fewer pesky Nimbys to raise objections, even after this week’s win for deregulation.
It’s more useful than solar, with load factors between 30-65 per cent rather than 10-15 per cent, which is the difference between claimed capacity and actual output.
It’s faster to build than nuclear, and less unpopular.
It isn’t as restricted by geography as tidal and hydropower, and it’s certainly more affordable than green hydrogen, an imagined fuel of the future.
What it isn’t, however, is cheap.
A common refrain during the 2022 energy crisis was that wind is “nine times cheaper than gas”, but it has since collided with reality.
Rent-seeking lobbyists compared pre-energy crisis deals at £38/MWh, with peak gas prices as Russian tanks rolled over the Donbass.
Virtue-signalling politicians chose to believe them and designed the latest auction to match the claims, capping bids at £44/MWh.
Unfortunately, the wind industry exists in the real world, where 75-80 per cent of energy depends on fossil fuels, and particularly so in industrial production.
When oil and gas prices rise, the cost of steel, concrete, epoxy resin and other energy-intensive goods required to construct turbines rises as well (about 40 per cent in the last year, according to industry insiders).
They are not immune from wage inflation in a cost-of-living crisis.
While this should be accounted for by index-linking their payments, rapid expansion puts a premium on skilled labour.
Rising global interest rates increase the industry’s cost of borrowing and reduce the relative returns from their contracts compared to other options.
The Government has also wised up to bad behaviour.
During the energy crisis, new wind farms exploited a clause in old contracts to take the market price, not the contract price, undermining the central rationale of the “contract for difference” system and the sharing of risk with bill payers.
This gave developers windfall profits, and this time those clauses were removed, alongside landing them a windfall tax to 2028 to claw it back.
Consequently, many wind developers cannot now honour their prior commitments, pulling out of those “nine-times cheaper” contracts.
Nor can they make new ones.
The lie of cheap offshore wind has been exposed.
If we want the true picture, then Net Zero Watch have estimated real costs around £125/MWh by reviewing developer accounts, whereas the CEO of developer SSE pointed to Ireland’s strike price of €150 (£129)/MWh as a signal of what would persuade him to invest again.
This is well above current market prices £80-100/MWh, and nearly three times the historical average.
Indulging the industry’s demands here would be a return to the politics of the 2010s when “green crap” drove up the cost of bills, even when oil and gas were cheap.
The smart way to achieve Net Zero is not to set tech targets and bespoke subsidies.
No one can accurately guess the price of energy next week, let alone years into the future.
We can crudely estimate a carbon price (the cost of climate damage from fossil fuel emissions) and use that to create a market.
We can do the same for back-up and connection (the cost to energy security of unreliable power).
But the rest should be left to competition between projects and technologies.
Deploying the most cost-effective solutions first.
If that means fewer wind farms, then wind wasn’t the right solution.
The mess is a damning indictment of industrial policy, the delusion of politicians that they can pick winners, centrally plan growth, and collude with industry lobbyists to put the cost on all of us.
Alarmingly the wind is blowing to even more of this in future, with the US Investment Reduction Act, EU response, and UK Parliamentary consensus that if it didn’t work this year, next year will be different.
It will be different, it might be worse, and if the solution is higher strike prices, then we all lose.
It’s time to rediscover the wisdom of crowds through markets and abandon these foolish targets.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... 9d6b9&ei=9