Day: October 6, 2024

Proposed Model Bill Would Improve Electric Reliability

The venerable American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) recently held its 51st annual convention in Denver, Colorado.

ALEC is a nonprofit founded to promote Jeffersonian limited-government policies. It works with state legislators and the private sector to produce solutions for myriad issues facing state governments and their residents.

From Watts Up With That?

By H. Sterling Burnett

The venerable American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) recently held its 51st annual convention in Denver, Colorado.

ALEC is a nonprofit founded to promote Jeffersonian limited-government policies. It works with state legislators and the private sector to produce solutions for myriad issues facing state governments and their residents.

I have worked with ALEC’s Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Taskforce (EEA) for nearly 30 years. Among other things, it develops model legislation that states can adapt to their own needs.

This year’s EEA meetings saw the introduction of a number of impressive model bills. Two written by my organization, the Heartland Institute, would shore up the electric power grid in states trying to attract Big Tech/AI hubs. The bills aim to ensure that the electricity these power-hungry facilities require is paid for by the companies demanding it and is supplied on a reliable basis by traditional sources.

Ensuring that the power grid is not compromised by the added demand coming from Big Tech and AI will prevent socializing the cost of new demand onto ratepayers. And it will secure the power grid for residents and small businesses.

One model bill adopted by ALEC is long overdue: legislation requiring that state utility regulators set aside a position on their boards for a ratepayer advocate. That person would be dedicated solely to ensuring that utility plans brought before the commission minimize the cost of monopoly utilities’ new construction and rate plans, while firming up reliability.

Another model bill that ALEC adopted requires that sources of electric power be labeled to account for the full range of environmental and economic impacts. This allows for an apples-to-apples comparison of proposed and existing energy sources.

Yet another model bill adopted by ALEC that should prove particularly valuable to state residents is the Affordable, Reliable and Clean Energy Security Act. The bill is based on an unassailable premise: that “energy security is paramount to economic growth,” and, accordingly, that affordable, reliable electric power from clean sources is fundamental to our families’ and communities’ future prosperity.

The “security” portion of the bill is twofold:

  • To establish the security of the electric power grid and supply, it requires that fuel sources “must be primarily produced domestically within the United States” and that “the infrastructure necessary to deliver energy to the customer should minimize reliance on foreign nations for critical materials or manufacturing.”
  • To establish security for people dependent on electricity for their daily lives, it defines acceptable energy sources as those “readily available 24/7.” So, power sources dependent upon the vagaries of the weather (wind) or the time of day (solar) need not apply.

Affordability is secured by provisions in the bill that examine the stability of prices over time, and the cost-effectiveness of providing heating, cooking, and generating electricity.

The legislation enshrines the need for reliability by requiring a minimum capacity factor of 50%, with the power supplied being dispatchable on demand.

The only quibble I have with the model bill comes in its definition of “clean” energy. The proposal says that a clean energy source “releases reduced air pollutants,” and then goes on to specify that nuclear and natural gas meet the definition. They do—but so do modern, state-of-the-art, coal-fueled power plants, which produce much lower emissions than older plants.

Coal also meets all the requirements of reliability, security, and affordability defined in the legislation. We have more coal than any fuel source, and the price of coal is less volatile than that of competing fuels. For America’s long-term well-being, coal needs to stay in our energy mix.

Having said this, I’m pleased that the bill was adopted. The perfect should not be the enemy of the good—or, in this case, the very good.

ALEC advanced some good model legislation this year, and there’s more in the hopper. All the bills advance the interests of states and their residents. Now it’s time for legislators to do right by their constituents and their economies by adopting versions of bills that fit their respective states’ unique requirements.

These pieces of model legislation are good for U.S. energy security, for electric power grid reliability, and for residents’ pocketbooks and businesses’ bottom lines.

What patriotic American would object to that?

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. (hsburnett@heartland.org) is the director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization based in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

Hurricane Helene Update

But that has not stopped the usual suspects blaming the floods on climate change.

NWS have also published the wind speed data. In Florida peak gusts hit 99 mph (not sustained), a long way below the claimed Cat 4 levels.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

We have now got most of the data in for Hurricane Helene, so it is time for a proper recap:

Hurricane Helene intensified as it approached Florida’s Big Bend in fall 2024, ultimately making landfall as a Category 4 storm at 11:10 p.m. Eastern Time on September 27. Even while its center was still over the Gulf of Mexico, the hurricane had begun producing devastating outcomes on land. A predecessor rain event and then the main storm system brought heavy precipitation to southern Appalachia starting on September 25. Deadly and destructive flooding occurred as a result in eastern Tennessee, western Virginia, and North Carolina, among other areas.

This map shows rainfall accumulation over the three-day period ending at 7:59 p.m. Eastern Time (23:59 Universal Time) on September 27, 2024. These data are remotely sensed estimates that come from IMERG (the Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for GPM), a product of the GPM (Global Precipitation Measurement) mission, and may differ from ground-based measurements. For instance, IMERG data are averaged across each pixel, meaning that rain-gauge measurements within a given pixel can be significantly higher or lower than the average.

In Asheville, North Carolina, a total of 13.98 inches (35.52 centimeters) of rain fell from September 25 to 27, according to National Weather Service records. The storm swamped neighborhoods, damaged roads, caused landslides, knocked out electricity and cell service, and forced many residents to evacuate to temporary shelters. Record flood crests were observed on multiple rivers in the state. Flooding was widespread across the southern Appalachians; preliminary rainfall totals neared or exceeded 10 inches (25 centimeters) in parts of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.

On the coast of Florida, the heaviest rainfall was concentrated west of the storm’s center, in and around the town of Apalachicola. For hurricanes in the gulf, heavy rainfall typically occurs east of the storm’s center, where counterclockwise rotation brings in the most moisture from the water body. In the case of Helene, a frontal boundary over the Florida Panhandle interacted with the circulation to concentrate the highest totals west of the center, noted Steve Lang, a research meteorologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Parts of the Florida coast receiving less rain were not spared from flooding, however. Several Gulf Coast cities and towns, including Cedar Key and Tampa, were affected by storm surge.

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/153387/devastating-rainfall-from-hurricane-helene

Asheville and the surrounding region took the brunt of the flooding, and nearly 14” of rain in three days is certainly unprecedented in Asheville since records began. But the NWS shows that this was actually spready evenly over all three days:

https://www.weather.gov/wrh/Climate?wfo=gsp

As can happen, atmospheric blocking meant the storm was trapped over the Asheville area for all three days. Daily totals of four or five inches are unusual but not unheard of. It was the duration of the rain that really caused the problems.

But that has not stopped the usual suspects blaming the floods on climate change.

NWS have also published the wind speed data. In Florida peak gusts hit 99 mph (not sustained), a long way below the claimed Cat 4 levels.

140 mph sustained winds may have occurred somewhere out over the sea, but never got anywhere near that on land, at least where there was any measuring equipment.

https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/discussions/nfdscc4.html

Steve McIntyre on the Real Lesson to be Learned from Hurricane Helene

To understand the baseline risk of flooding around Asheville, Buncombe County and surrounding steep-sloped, fast-developing regions of WNC, I recommend this incredible 1960

From Watts Up With That?

By Charles Rotter

actually, the lesson from Helene is the opposite from that being promoted.

In 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority was given the mandate for flood control in the valley of the Tennessee River and its tributaries. Over the next 40 years, they built 49 dams, which, for the most… https://t.co/ReG402Ye86— Stephen McIntyre (@ClimateAudit) October 2, 2024

actually, the lesson from Helene is the opposite from that being promoted.

In 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority was given the mandate for flood control in the valley of the Tennessee River and its tributaries. Over the next 40 years, they built 49 dams, which, for the most part, accomplished their goal. Whereas floods in the Tennessee were once catastrophic, younger people are mostly unaware of them.

The French Broad River (Asheville) is an upstream tributary where flood control dams weren’t constructed due to local opposition.

Rather than the devastation of Hurricane Helene on Asheville illustrating the effect of climate change, the success of the flood control dams in other sectors of the Tennessee Valley illustrates the success of the TVA flood control program where it is implemented.

Hurricane Helene did not show the effect of climate change, but what happens to settlements in Tennessee Valley tributaries under “natural” flooding (i.e. where flood control dams have been rejected.)

https://x.com/ClimateAudit/status/1841514333274087862

I should add that, in its first 40 years, the TVA built 49 flood control dams, of which 29 were power-generating. In the subsequent 50 years, TVA built 0 flood control dams,
However, in the 1980s, they established the Carbon Dioxide Information Centre (CDIAC) under their nuclear division, which sponsored much influential climate research, including the CRU temperature data (Phil Jones) and Michael Mann’s fellowship from which Mann et al 1998 derived.

In 1990, the parents of Crowdstrike’s Dmitri Alperovich moved from Russia to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where his father was a TVA nuclear engineer. Dmitri moved to Tennessee a few years later.

One can’t help but wonder whether TVA’s original mandate for flood control got lost in the executive offices, attracted by more glamorous issues, such as climate change research.
If so, one could reasonably say that a factor in the seeming abandonment of TVA efforts to complete its original flood control mandate (e.g. to French Broad River which inundated Asheville) was partly attributable to diversion of TVA interest to climate change research, as opposed to its mandate of flood control.

https://x.com/ClimateAudit/status/1841532176866635907

another thought. As soon as the point is made, it is obvious that flood control dams have reduced flooding. Not just in Appalachia. I’ve looked at long data for water levels in Great Lakes and the amount of fluctuation (flooding) after dams installed is much reduced.

And yet my recollection of public reporting of climate is that weather extremes, including flooding, is getting worse. But in areas with flood control dams, it obviously //isn’t// getting worse than before. It’s better. Note to self: check IPCC reports for their specific findings on flooding.

https://x.com/ClimateAudit/status/1841544188623454419

Here is a diagram of the proposed system of dams and reservoirs proposed to provide flood control for Asheville – located in center of diagram (h/t reader Jack Brown). This was the project that was abandoned in the face of some local opposition. To be fair, it is my understanding that the wild rivers are very scenic, but the flood risk in the watershed was well known from the flood of 1916 and seemingly ignored by state and local governments.

@Revkin also cites NYT article on development in North Carolina zones known to be at risk

https://x.com/Revkin/status/1841850252061769963

https://x.com/ClimateAudit/status/1841868359971045829

Andy Revkin reports on fascinating 1960 report on
https://x.com/Revkin/status/1841936334891385070 entitled “Floods on French Broad and Swannanoa Rivers around Asheville,

Andy reported that the report stated that developments around Asheville “would cause these great floods of the past to be higher if they occurred again. Land fills and buildings in the flood plain and the many bcidges across the streams have seriously reduced flood flow capacity.” “On the French Broad River a flood of the same discharge as the 1916 flood would today be 3 to 4 feet;.higher between Pearson Bridge and West Asheville Viaduct than the actual flood elevation. On the Swannanoa River, a repetition of the 1916 flood would be up to 2. 5 feet higher today at Biltmore and up to 15 feet higher upstream from the Recreation Park dam.”

A corollary is that the contribution of site development to any modern “record” flood level has to be accounted for before comparing to past record levels.

Climatists’ War on Meat updated

Over the past few years, plant-based meat substitutes have come closer and closer to mimicking the real thing, with brands like Beyond Meat having even sussed out how to create fake meat that “bleeds”.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

Tyler Durden reports at Zerohedge Meat Substitutes Still A Tiny Sliver Of US Meat Market.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Over the past few years, plant-based meat substitutes have come closer and closer to mimicking the real thing, with brands like Beyond Meat having even sussed out how to create fake meat that “bleeds”.

But, as Statista’s Anna Fleck details below, after an initial boom, the company has rapidly come down from its peaks.

There are several reasons for the hype having died down, one of which being that many consumers decided to move away from buying the often more expensive items amid the cost of living crisis.

Another reason cited is that plant-based meats have become a part of the U.S.’s culture war, labeled as a symbol of left-wing politics and a binary to “real” meat.

According to data from Statista’s Market Insights, plant-based meat substitutes accounted for a mere sliver of the U.S. meat market last year.

Not counting insect-based meat alternatives or cultured, i.e. lab-grown meat, meat substitute sales amounted to $1.4 billion in 2023, while sales of fresh and processed meat added up to almost $124 billion.

Outlook

  • Revenue in the Meat market amounts to US$131.60bn in 2024. The market is expected to grow annually by 4.22% (CAGR 2024-2029).
  • In global comparison, most revenue is generated in China (US$273bn in 2024).
  • In relation to total population figures, per person revenues of US$385.00 are generated in 2024.
  • In the Meat market, volume is expected to amount to 12.10bn kg by 2029. The Meat market is expected to show a volume growth of 1.9% in 2025.
  • The average volume per person in the Meat market is expected to amount to 32.4kg in 2024.

What’s Next?

Background Post: Coming Soon: Menu Climate Warnings

Baylen Linnekin writes at Reason Public Health Researchers Float Idea of Climate-Change Warnings on Menu Items.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Warning diners that red meat is bad for the environment is yet another attempt
to socially engineer food choices.

A study released last week suggests that fast-food menus that feature labels urging diners not to order red meat off those same menus due to the “climate impact” of those food items can help convince customers to swap out red meat for what the researchers argue are more climate-friendly foods—from fruits and vegetables to poultry and seafood. The study, published in Jama Network Open and led by researchers from Johns Hopkins University, concludes that “climate impact menu labels may be an effective strategy to promote more sustainable restaurant food choices and that labels highlighting high-climate impact items may be most effective.”

The study’s data comes from more than 5,000 Americans who took part in a nationwide online survey last year. Study participants were instructed to “imagine they were in a restaurant and about to order dinner” from an accurately priced sample menu containing a variety of choices, including hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, plant-based burgers, and salads.

The study asked participants to “order” different foods after viewing one of three types of sample menus online. Outside of a control group, the study presented web users with choices that either disparaged the sustainability of red-meat dishes or touted the sustainability of dishes not containing red meat. Based on the results, which showed people who were more likely to avoid red meat if it had a red warning label and more likely to order other menu items if they featured a green health halo, the authors conclude that “climate impact menu labels [a]re effective” and “that labeling red meat items with negatively framed, red high-climate impact labels was more effective at increasing sustainable selections than labeling non-red meat items with positively framed, green low-climate impact labels.”

The study has spurred some news outlets to suggest governments around the world
may—or should—operationalize its findings.

“Policymakers have been debating how to get people to make less carbon-heavy food choices,” the Guardian recounted in a recent report on the study, “In April, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report urged world leaders, especially those in developed countries, to support a transition to sustainable, healthy, low-emissions diets.”

“Unfortunately, consumers have been resistant to change and many wish to continue eating meat,” a Phys.org report on the study laments.

Worse still, though the study itself does not suggest that it should be used to form the basis of any government policies, its lead author, Prof. Julia Wolfson of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told CNN last week that “legislation or regulation may be necessary” to force restaurants to add climate warnings to their menus.

Let’s pump the brakes—for a couple of reasons.

Data from the study itself and, more generally, on the effectiveness of government-mandated menu labeling suggests the authors may wish to dial down their perception of the effectiveness of the labels they tested. For example, after completing their respective orders, the survey asked participants if they “notice[d] any labels” on the menu. As the study data reveal, only around 4 out of every 10 participants even noticed any climate-related labeling. While that’s a low percentage, in the real world—in an actual fast-food restaurant setting rather than in an online survey—the percentage would likely be far lower. That’s because, as I’ve explained time and again, study after study has shown that few people pay attention to mandated menu labels (except to choose which food or foods to order), and even fewer use that information.

The premise of the study itself also may rest on shaky ground.

Some critics have pushed back against the notion that some chicken or seafood is more sustainable than all red meat. As the Guardian report on the study notes, “intensively produced chicken has been found to be damaging for the environment, as has some farmed and trawled fish.” Others disagree with the very notion that red meat is an inherently unsustainable food. While it’s become popular in recent years to argue that eating less red meat is better for the environment, that argument has received a good amount of pushback, with critics charging that swapping out meat for plants could be inefficient and ineffective, harm human health, and have unintended consequences for the developing world.

Even if I were to accept arguments that eating less meat is better for the environment, the choice to eat meat (or not) ultimately is and should be an individual’s to make. So it’s not “unfortunate” that consumers “wish to continue eating meat,” as Phys.org posits. And that wish isn’t a cry for government intervention, as Wolfson, the study’s lead author, argues. Rather, it’s a cry for freedom of choice.

If some restaurants competing in the marketplace care to attempt to skew their customers’ choices away from meat and towards vegetarian and/or vegan foods, by all means, they should do so. But the jury is out on whether that would improve the sustainability of those restaurants. What’s more, any restaurant that wants to make such a change should do so on its own accord, without the government’s prompting, backing, or mandate.

Shockingly Bad Science

From the annals of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation comes this beauty of a headline above a news story

From Watts Up With That?

Guest Opinion by Kip Hansen

From the annals of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation comes this beauty of a headline above a news story (h/t Matt Briggs) :

Global Stroke Burden Continues to Rise, With Climate Change Gaining Influence

And the news?  Nothing really, just yet another Global Burden of Disease paper in the Lancet:  “Global, regional, and national burden of stroke and its risk factors, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021” 

John Hopkins says: 

“A stroke, or brain attack, happens when blood flow to your brain is stopped. It is an emergency situation.”  

There are generally three different types of strokes:

“Strokes can be classified into 2 main categories:

    Ischemic strokes. These are strokes caused by blockage of an artery (or, in rare instances, a vein). About 87% of all strokes are ischemic.

    Hemorrhagic stroke. These are strokes caused by bleeding. About 13% of all strokes are hemorrhagic.”

          And two sub-types:

          “Hemorrhagic strokes occur when a blood vessel that supplies the brain ruptures and bleeds….

Intracerebral hemorrhage. Bleeding is from the blood vessels within the brain.

Subarachnoid hemorrhage. Bleeding is in the subarachnoid space (the space between the brain and the membranes that cover the brain).”

One more piece of information:

“The occurrence of subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) is a devastating cerebrovascular event that accounts for 5% of all strokes”

You may be asking yourself this question: 

“What could be the possible causal connection between Climate Change and the occurrence of stoke in the general worldwide population?” 

And a good question is far more valuable than a good answer.

My answer?  There is no causal connection – not even a barely biologically plausible connection or association.  Nothing whatever.

But as always, The Science must have its way and The Science insists that if something is bad – as in undesirable – then it must be caused by Climate Change.

And sure enough, a dedicated group called “GBD 2021 Stroke Risk Factor Collaborators” (a list of authors 1,700 long) wrote the Lancet Neurology report linked in the first paragraph.  

Usually, I suspect immediately that the journalist, in this case, Todd Neale, has paraphrased something he thinks the authors have said.  But no, the paper includes this:

“These findings are in line with research showing that rises in ambient temperature (including heatwaves) and climate change are associated with increased stroke morbidity and mortality. Because ambient air pollution is reciprocally associated with the ambient temperature and climate change, all of which synergistically influence cardiovascular disease (including stroke) occurrence and overall health, the importance of urgent climate actions and measures to reduce ambient air pollution cannot be overestimated. Experts have recommended that governments increase implementation of a clean-energy economy, promote unprocessed plant-based food choices, and globally phase out industrialised animal farming.”

If one ever needed additional proof of John P.A. Ioannidis’ finding that “Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.” – this is it.

And what is the evidence on which the 1,700 authors base this statement? Here is their visual summary:

[click here to see larger image in new tab/window]

There it is – The Science.  Let’s look carefully and see if we can find climate change as a “risk factor” on the left-hand side of each of the four sections.

NOTE:  Risk factors are not themselves causes.  Risk factors are conditions or behaviors that have been found to be associated with an increase in incidence of some outcome.  The graphic above shows risk factors and not causes.

Ah, there is no occurrence of Climate Change as a risk factor.  In fact, in the panels A, B and C, there are no risk factors that are components of climate at all – not even components of weather. 

But, there is always a way where the outcome is predetermined!

Down on the right, in panel D, which is about risk factors of Subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), which represents 5% of all strokes, we see at the bottom of the list, Low Ambient Temperature and High Ambient Temperature. 

Yes, by golly, those are components of weather (and long-time weather adds up to climate). 

And we can see that they have found that Low Ambient Temperature (How low? Who knows?) to be a risk factor in 4.5% of the 5% of strokes worldwide.  This means that COLD may be a contributing factor in 0.225% (0.00225) of the Global Burden of Stroke.

And High Ambient Temperature?  (How high? Who knows?)  A risk factor in 1.1% of SAH stokes, which are, to repeat, only 5% of total Global Stroke Burden. This brings the risk factor of High Ambient Temperature for the Global Stroke Burden to a frightening 0.055% (or   0.00055). 

Hey but where is the evidence for CHANGE?  As in Climate Change? 

There is none. 

# # # # #

 Author’s Comment:

I wish I could say that this kind of reporting is an anomaly – the exception.  Unfortunately, it is not.  It is now the norm.

We are fed a constant stream of propaganda in place of news – propaganda in place of science news – propaganda in place of science research findings. 

Don’t ask me about politics.

Thanks for reading.

# # # # #

 Not About CO2…Greenland Still Much Colder Today Than Much Of The Past 10,000 Years

Norwegian climate blog site avdekt.no here reports how the GISP2 ice core data from Greenland shows the current temperature is well below the Holocene average. 

From NoTricksZone

By P Gosselin

Norwegian climate blog site avdekt.no here reports how the GISP2 ice core data from Greenland shows the current temperature is well below the Holocene average. 

Moreover, these temperatures also match perfectly with the historical sources in Norway and Europe, according to avedkt.no.

The chart below shows a temperature reconstruction based on ice cores going back more than 10,000 years.

Chart: avdekt.no 

The temperature over the Holocene was above today’s level on at least 9 occasions, each spanning many years. Indeed today’s temperature is still on the cool side for the Holocene.

Although man is having a heating impact on today’s modern climate through land-use and modest greenhouse gas warming, natural solar and oceanic factors are still far more powerful than man’s impact. How else can the wide variations occurring over the Holocene be explained?

Today’s temperature is still 2°C below the warmer peaks seen 7,900, 7,000 and 3,400 years ago.

The Greenland GISP2 ice core is viewed as a gold standard when it comes to proxy data-based  temperature reconstructions, unlike other proxy data reconstructions based on dubious  tree ring analyses.

Why Are Well-Off EV Owners Charged Half as Much as Poor Pensioners for Off-Peak Electricity?

“The surprise is not whether the dog plays the piano well or poorly but that it plays it at all!” Dr. Johnson might well have applied this aphorism to Rachel Reeves’s cancellation of the pensioner’s winter fuel allowance. However, in this instance the shock was both that the allowance was cancelled and that it was handled so badly.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Nick Rendell

“The surprise is not whether the dog plays the piano well or poorly but that it plays it at all!” Dr. Johnson might well have applied this aphorism to Rachel Reeves’s cancellation of the pensioner’s winter fuel allowance. However, in this instance the shock was both that the allowance was cancelled and that it was handled so badly.

As a general rule I’m fine with anything that removes the state from people’s lives. However, the ‘optics’ of this announcement were shockingly dreadful. Why wasn’t it wrapped up with a programme of initiatives, such as confirmation that the triple lock would be retained or alongside details of the forthcoming increase in pensions?

In any case, here is an even greater mystery: why are people who are sat shivering at home in poorly insulated, under-heated social housing paying about twice as much per kWh for off-peak electricity as EV owners, swanning about in their £65,000 Teslas?

You must remember the biblical parable about the widow’s mite. At the temple one day the widow was only able to afford a small charitable donation. She gave her two pennies then quietly slipped away. Meanwhile the rich man made a great show of his large donation, despite it being a sum that he could easily afford.

Well, something like that is happening today in every parish in the country. The widows in this case are mainly the poor little old ladies living in post-War houses and flats with night-storage heaters. Remarkably, there are about 1.4 million homes still using night-storage heaters. The rich men in my parallel parable are the 1.2 million EV drivers, a group not known for understating their contribution to the selfless pursuit of Net Zero, especially when that contribution is funded by subsidies from general taxation and additional charges on everyone else’s energy bills.

Why do I contrast the two groups – the 1.4 million dwellers of sub-optimal housing and 1.2 million drivers of expensive EVs? Because, in many ways they’re comparable, at least in their desire for cheap, off-peak electricity. Surely, you might think, isn’t this where ‘smart meters’ come in? Isn’t the idea that they can differentiate between user groups to provide more tailored tariffs? Alas, the £20bn or so being spent on ‘smart meters’ doesn’t seem to have delivered something quite that smart.

As a kid I remember my dad had a Ford Sierra in ‘burnished gold’. Today, like so much else, the choice of a car’s paint finish has been inverted. Long gone are the days when Henry Ford could say, “you can have any colour you like providing it’s black”. Elon Musk’s customers now seem to say, “paint it any colour you like but to us we will always see it as ‘burnished virtue”.

If our widow with three night-storage heaters could buy off-peak electricity at the same price as EV drivers she’d save about £500 per year – far more than the amount she’s missing out on if she’s no longer collecting the winter fuel allowance.

You may never have given it a moment’s thought, so perhaps it’ll come as a surprise to learn that a single night-storage heater uses about the same amount of electricity as an EV covering about 11,000 miles a year. A study quoted in This is Money suggested that the average number of miles covered by an EV was, at 8,292, slightly lower than the distance covered by the average combustion car. So, for most EV drivers, they’re using less electricity than a single night-storage heater consumes. But of course, while our EV driving eco-warriors tend only to have one EV, our widows have three or four night-storage heaters. While our EV champion is spending less than £200 a year on the 2,750 kWhs of off-peak electricity at 7p per kWh to propel his car 11,000 miles, our widows are getting billed about £350, 75% more, for each of their night-storage heaters.

But it doesn’t have to work this way. The market for EV drivers is pretty competitive with prices in the range of 6.9p to 10p per kWh, as illustrated on the right hand side of the table, nabbed from Martin Lewis’ MoneySavingExpert site and reproduced in Figure 1.

Figure 1

Conversely, as can also be seen in Figure 1, the kWh prices for conventional Economy 7, or “off-peak (night) rate” electricity ranges from 10.95p to 14.85p, in some cases twice as expensive.

Is there something special about ‘EV destined’ off-peak electricity in comparison to Economy-7 electricity ear-marked for our widow’s night-storage heaters? Of course not. There’s absolutely no reason why the electricity companies shouldn’t offer the same price to Economy-7 users as EV users. In fact, Dale Vince’s Ecotricity appears to do just that, well done Dale. So, why doesn’t British Gas or EON do the same?

In general I’m not in favour of regulators. We only have regulators when markets don’t work properly. Self-evidently the electricity market doesn’t work properly. But if we are going to have a regulator why hasn’t it stepped in here and required the energy companies to follow Dale Vince’s lead and not discriminate against the widows and their night-storage heaters in favour of rich men in EVs?

Even more pertinently, why doesn’t Ed Milliband flag up the potential savings if all night-storage heater users switched to Ecotricity?

Why doesn’t Milliband go one step further and encourage our widows to install night-storage heaters? A large-scale national scheme could easily get the installed price down to about £300 for a state-of-the-art unit, about the same cost as the much lamented winter fuel allowance. We’re not short of available night-time electricity which could be priced lower than gas and directly substitute a renewable energy source for a fossil fuel.

Of course, Milliband might argue that rather than messing about with night-storage heaters he wants to install millions of heat pumps. But look at it from the widow’s point of view. If she’s only expecting to live another five or 10 years she’d be mad to squander the money she’s been squirrelling away for her kids on a £25,000 heat-pump installation that would never pay back during her lifetime (if, indeed, they ever pay back during their own lifetime).

Why not go for the low hanging fruit and get night-storage heaters in thousands of homes? Oh, and while we’re at it we could tell the widow that her contribution to ‘climate change’ (assuming she gives a damn) is rather more valuable than that donated by the rich man who just razzed by in his Y-class Tesla.