Day: March 1, 2025

The German Dunkelflautes at the end of 2024

The German Weather Service (Deutscher Wetterdienst) mentioned a Dunkelflaute between November 2 and 7 (meaning 6 days), but I found other (less reliable) sources that also included November 8 (so 7 days). The Dunkelflaute in December was even more elusive. I only found one (not reliable) source that mentioned December 10 → 13 (meaning 4 days).

From Trust, yet verify

Germany experienced two Dunkelflautes at the end of last year (a Dunkelflaute is a period with not much sunshine and not much wind). Wanting to know how many consecutive days they lasted, I started to search for more information, but my searches came out inconclusive. The German Weather Service (Deutscher Wetterdienst) mentioned a Dunkelflaute between November 2 and 7 (meaning 6 days), but I found other (less reliable) sources that also included November 8 (so 7 days). The Dunkelflaute in December was even more elusive. I only found one (not reliable) source that mentioned December 10 → 13 (meaning 4 days).

That didn’t go well. The only common information is that one Dunkelflautes took place in the beginning of November 2024 and the other just before half December 2024. I then decided to go to the Agorameter Energiewende website and look for myself what solar and wind did in those two periods. At first glance, I found more than 7 days of low solar and wind electricity production in November and about 3 days in December (11 → 13).

More confused than ever, I then went for confirmation to the Elia website to look at the Belgian solar and wind data. Belgium and Germany are neighbor countries, so they should have similar weather patterns. Here, I also found more than 7 days in November and the same 3 days that I found in the Agorameter data.

So, how long did these two Dunkelflautes last?

Looking further, I came across an interesting LinkdIn article detailing a quick statistical analysis on German dunkelflautes of the last 10 years. The article also mentions the Dunkelflautes in November and December of 2024.

The November 2024 Dunkelflaute is rather detailed in the article in this graphic:

It finds 12 consecutive days, which seems more in line with what I saw on the Agorameter data and the Elia data. A Dunkelflaute day is defined in the article as the combined electricity production by solar and wind of less than 10% of the installed capacity (red line with the text “10% CapFac”). The article explores two alternative definitions: a narrow definition (the number of days with a total production less than 10% of maximum capacity) and a broad definition (all periods with a production of less than 10% of capacity). The former definition is I think the most used and that is the one that I was interested in.

The Dunkelflaute of December is not so detailed, however. It is just described as a “few Dunkelflaute days” in the week of December 9 to 15 and it includes this image of the electricity production of the first half of December 2024:

I then decided to repeat the analysis of the November Dunkelflaute, see if I can reproduce the November graph and then apply the same to the December data to find the number of consecutive days.

The production data for solar and wind was easily downloaded from the Agorameter website. The capacity of solar and wind in 2024 was however not that straight forward. The article linked to the energy-charts.info site, but I was not able to find the information that I wanted. That tended not to be necessarily a bad thing. The author found this part a shortcoming in his analysis because the data he got from that site is of the beginning of 2024 and the period at issue is at the end of the year. In that year the capacity undoubtedly increased, therefore also the 10% threshold.

This gives me the opportunity to find more recent solar and wind capacity data for Germany. That was luckily easily found on the website of the German Federal Network Service. This is the (preliminary) capacity data from the end of 2024:

  • Solar: 99.3 GW (coming from 83.1 GW)
  • Offshore wind: 9.2 GW (coming from 8.5 GW)
  • Onshore wind: 63.5 GW (coming from 61.0 GW)

This totals to 172 GW (from 152 GW) with a maximum potential production of 4,128 GWh per day (from 3,662.4 GWh).

When I apply this for the first half of November with the capacity of the beginning of the year, then I indeed get the same result as the LinkedIn analysis with the same 12 consecutive days. When I do the same analysis, but with the capacity of the end of the year, then I find two extra consecutive days:

Now I am rather confident that I am on the right track, I can do the same for the December data. When I do the same with the capacity of the beginning of the year, then I can identify those “few days” with a Dunkelflaute as December 11 until 13. When I do the analysis with the capacity of the end of 2024, then I get 4 consecutive days (December 10 → 13).

So, if the preliminary data of the Federal Network Service is correct and this capacity was active at the beginning of November and using the 10% threshold definition, then we are looking at 14 consecutive days in November (that is a lot more than I anticipated) and 4 in December. If that capacity was not (all) active, then the Dunkelflautes lasted at least 12 consecutive days in the first half of November and 3 in the first half of December.

Congress Overturns Biden’s Natural Gas Tax: A Victory for Energy Independence

In a decisive move, the U.S. Congress has repealed the Biden administration’s natural gas tax, marking a significant shift in the nation’s energy policy. This action underscores a commitment to bolstering American energy independence and alleviating financial burdens on consumers.

From Watts Up With That?

By Charles Rotter

In a decisive move, the U.S. Congress has repealed the Biden administration’s natural gas tax, marking a significant shift in the nation’s energy policy. This action underscores a commitment to bolstering American energy independence and alleviating financial burdens on consumers.

The natural gas tax, introduced under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, aimed to curb methane emissions—a potent greenhouse gas—by imposing financial penalties on oil and gas producers exceeding specific emission thresholds. The fee was structured to start at $900 per metric ton of methane in 2024, escalating to $1,500 by 2026. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the associated regulations in late 2024, setting the stage for implementation.

Utilizing the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which permits Congress to nullify federal regulations within a certain timeframe, lawmakers moved swiftly to dismantle the methane fee. The House of Representatives passed the resolution with a 220-206 vote on February 26, 2025, followed by a 52-47 Senate vote on February 27. The resolution now awaits President Donald Trump’s signature, which is anticipated promptly.

The repeal has garnered praise from industry stakeholders and political figures who argue that the tax would have stifled energy production and increased costs for consumers. Anne Bradbury, CEO of the American Exploration and Production Council, stated,

“While American oil and gas producers are laser-focused on continuing to reduce emissions, it’s critical to undo these punitive implementing rules while we continue to work with Congress to repeal the underlying statute for the tax that risks driving up energy costs.”

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/senate-sends-legislation-block-bidens-natural-gas-tax-president-trump

Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota, a leading proponent of the repeal, emphasized the importance of energy affordability and security:

“American households and businesses depend every day on access to affordable and reliable energy. The best way to bring down prices for U.S. consumers is to increase supply.”

https://www.hoeven.senate.gov/news/news-releases/hoeven-pfluger-introduce-cra-resolution-to-block-natural-gas-tax-reduce-energy-costs-and-boost-us-energy-production

Conversely, critics contend that eliminating the methane fee undermines efforts to combat climate change by allowing unchecked emissions of a highly potent greenhouse gas. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island expressed concern that the resolution would “raise energy prices and weaken environmental quality for consumers.”

The repeal of the natural gas tax reflects a broader legislative trend from the Trump administration, favoring the expansion of domestic oil and gas production. Proponents argue that reducing regulatory and financial obstacles will lead to increased energy independence, job creation, and economic growth. This legislative action aligns with other initiatives aimed at promoting fossil fuel industries, such as expanding drilling rights and reducing environmental oversight.

As the resolution awaits presidential approval, its enactment is poised to reshape the landscape of American energy policy, prioritizing economic considerations and energy autonomy over regulatory measures targeting environmental concerns.

It’s a 100% flip: Reuters suddenly admits Net Zero policies have been a resounding failure

In a rush, at least one opinion writer at Reuters is suddenly saying all the things skeptics have been saying for years: all the things’ Reuters has hidden from the world about renewable energy.

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

Wow. Just Wow. Trump gets elected and Reuters realizes renewable energy is unrealistic

In a rush, at least one opinion writer at Reuters is suddenly saying all the things skeptics have been saying for years: all the things’ Reuters has hidden from the world about renewable energy.

It is hard to believe, but it’s all there… the naked utter failure of solar and wind to reduce CO2, to reduce oil and gas, and to reduce prices. Edward Chancellor calls it a “resounding failure”. He has the devastating figures, and even the graph showing how countries with more renewables have more expensive electricity. He has another graph of the share market failure of renewables compared to the fossil fuel success, and he uses the words “tumbled” and “soared”.  To grind it home,  he explains how we just export our manufacturing to China which uses coal (is this news?). He calls Net Zero an “illusion” where we think we lower our emissions but we actually raise them overseas.

There is carnage among the sacred cows…

Climate policy requires a more realistic approach

By Edward Chancellor, Reuters

LONDON, Feb 27 (Reuters Breakingviews) – The pursuit of net zero carbon emissions has been a resounding failure. Despite trillions of dollars spent on renewable energy, hydrocarbons still account for over 80% of the world’s primary energy and a similar share of recent increases in energy consumption, according to The Energy Institute. Coal, oil and natural gas production are at record highs. Emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise inexorably. The financial markets were already losing confidence in the energy transition before Donald Trump returned to the White House. A more realistic approach to climate policy is urgently needed.

What they don’t say is that all this was unmistakably obvious for a decade or more, that thousands of engineers and scientists have been telling the world this would happen, and that Reuters wouldn’t report them, not even when they had a Nobel prize.

Solar and wind power have grown to a mere 3.5% of primary energy production. The levelised cost of renewable energy – which measures of the net present value of electricity produced over a plant’s lifetime – has declined sharply over the years. But this has not resulted into lower electricity prices. In fact, as the share of the energy mix provided by renewables has risen, electricity prices have tended to increase. That’s because wind and solar power are intermittent. Since storing energy in batteries is uneconomic, traditional sources of power are still needed as backup, which is expensive.

Why now? Because reality is making Reuters look stupid — it’s not the reality of high costs or blackouts, but the reality that Trump won, and set fire to the “transition” fantasy by dumping Paris, dropping subsidies, opening gas fields, and installing a corporate energy CEO as the US Energy Secretary. Chris Wright and JD Vance are dropping truth bombs in speeches that can’t be ignored.  Word is spreading fast, and if Reuters don’t report this, they risk being turned into the same irrelevant wreckage the US mainstream media channels already are. As the US economy ramps up, other countries will have to let go of their green delusions in order to keep up. The game changed. There’s no point upping the ante in the UN-poker game if the main player has played a Royal Flush.

Even the graph! An actual graph!

Source Reuters and Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy 2024

Two graphs!

Presumably the owners of Reuters have sold out of their renewable stocks. (Readers here read about this trend in October 2023.)

Source: Reuters, and S&P | P.Thal Larsen.

So this is arse-covering, forgive the language, but this is also an escape clause for allies and believers

The owners of Reuters (whoever they are) — are presumably part of The Blob, since they have covered up its failures for decades, and gave millions to Hillary. This article is also an escape clause for allies and a warning to jump ship. It’s full of excuses — we were misled by an era of low interest rates; we had good intentions; we didn’t realize China made all our stuff with coal, you know, and Energy transitions take a very long time. What a shock!

The way Edward Chancellor writes, anyone could have got this wrong. Even the oil giants made mistakes, you know, and are now looking to rebuild their fossil fuel business. Never is there any question that say, National Energy Managers ought to have done their homework, or that Energy Ministers should have done due diligence before recklessly trying to transform electricity grids based on what Al Gore and a teenage girl told them to do:

Not long ago, investors worried that traditional energy companies would be left with “stranded assets” – oil and gas fields abandoned as demand for fossil fuels dried up. Yet earlier this month Shell (SHEL.L), opens new tab announced a near-$1 billion writedown for its investment in a wind project off the New Jersey coast. BP (BP.L), opens new tab is scrapping targets for increasing generation of renewable energy and cutting oil and gas production. As Lees writes, “across the sector, oil majors that shifted their portfolios to green energy are now realising their mistake and are looking to rebuild their fossil fuel business.”

 The world still urgently needs an alternative to fossil fuels.The energy expert Vaclav Smil has likened the costs of the planned energy transition to those incurred by a nation fighting total war for decades on end. The era of zero interest rates created a sense that the supply of capital was infinite and its cost negligible. Rising interest rates dispelled that illusion. The economics of wind and solar power, with their large upfront investment costs and relatively low operating expenses, have been upended. Wood Mackenzie calculates that every 2 percentage point increase in the risk-free rate raises the levelised cost of renewable electricity by around 20%.

I’ve always said there will come a day when everyone says “I was always a skeptic”

This is the start of that normalization. It’s not the end, but it’s the beginning of the end in the energy battle.

But it’s not even the start of the science battle. They’re still “believers” of big-gov bad-science.  The world still urgently needs an alternative to fossil fuels….

What the world still urgently needs are real journalists and honest media. It needs accountable Ministers, and bureaucrats that get sacked. If we don’t learn from the last mistakes, the next episode of parasitic loot-and-pillage is just around the corner.

And Reuters is still covering up for them.

Hat tip to Climate Depot

Economist Rubbishes CBI’s Green Jobs Claims

On Monday the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit published a report by CBI Economics that generated plenty of uncritical headlines about the ‘booming net zero economy’.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Economist Julian Jessop has written a full rebuttal of the CBI’s silly green jobs claim this week, which I covered here:

On Monday the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit published a report by CBI Economics that generated plenty of uncritical headlines about the ‘booming net zero economy’.

In particular, the report claimed that the total economic value (gross value added – GVA) generated by the sector grew by 10.1% last year, and that this supported the equivalent of 951,000 full-time jobs. The energy secretary Ed Miliband added that ‘these numbers speak for themselves. Net zero is essential to growth, a strong economy and money in working people’s pockets.

Unfortunately, the figures in the CBI report simply do not justify this spin.

For a start, there are valid questions about how the CBI has defined the ‘net zero economy’, the accounting for taxes and subsidies, and the failure to address the impacts that the rush to decarbonise the grid might be having on energy bills and energy security. But even putting these concerns aside, the whole approach is conceptually flawed.

Take the headline that between 2023 and 2024, the contribution from the sector grew by 10.1%, which led to the conclusion that the Net Zero economy is now a key driver of growth. Note first that that figure refers to GVA in current prices, so not adjusted for inflation. It would therefore be plain wrong to compare this figure to the growth of less than 1% in real GDP in the economy as a whole (as some others have done).

More importantly, just because one sector expanded relatively quickly does not mean it ‘drove growth’. Activity may simply have shifted (or been reclassified) to this sector from others. Indeed, the benefit from boosting one sector may have been more than outweighed by the costs to others.

For example, if more people decide (or are forced) to buy from a shop with higher prices and large taxpayer subsidies, can that shop really be said to be driving growth even if overall retail sales are unchanged? The answer is obviously ‘no’.

The report also makes a lot of the ‘multiplier effects’ with ‘every £1 of value generated by the Net Zero economy creating an additional £1.89 in the wider economy’. To get this figure, the report counts supply chain activities and ‘broader economic contributions’, including spending by people working in the supply chains.

But the same would presumably apply to any capital-intensive, high-earning activities – for example, making petrol cars rather than electric vehicles. A skilled worker installing solar panels could presumably do just as well installing gas boilers or wood burners. There is nothing special here about the ‘net zero economy’.

Similarly, the report notes that the ‘net zero economy’ now employs a large number of people and that these are paid more than the average worker. It even claims that net zero can make ‘significant contributions towards solving the UK’s productivity puzzle’.

But the energy sector has always been one with relatively high productivity and high pay – think of workers in the North Sea oil and gas industry. Again, there is nothing special here about the ‘Net Zero’ part.

In short, the CBI report simply confirms that increasing amounts of scarce resources – including labour and capital – are being deployed in activities classified as ‘Net Zero’. This diversion of resources could be just as much a cost as a benefit. All in all, this report tells us next to nothing about whether net zero is good or bad for the economy as a whole.

Much Harm and No Good from EPA Greenhouse Rule: Kill It

Having declared carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) to be harmful pollutants, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) 2009 endangerment finding has been the cornerstone of wrongheaded climate regulation, an impediment to economic growth and destroyer of livelihoods. All the result of rulemaking that puts ideology ahead of science.

Plaque sign on the outside of the United State Department of Education in Washington D.C.

By Vijay Jayaraj

Having declared carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) to be harmful pollutants, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) 2009 endangerment finding has been the cornerstone of wrongheaded climate regulation, an impediment to economic growth and destroyer of livelihoods. All the result of rulemaking that puts ideology ahead of science.

Empowered to impose sweeping restrictions on GHG emissions from all manner of human activity, the EPA has been free to impose unreasonable demands on electric generation, transportation, manufacturing and agriculture – just to name more prominent targets. Under the Obama and Biden administrations, with CO2 emissions being the focus, fossil fuels in general and coal in particular were hammered by this regulatory cudgel.

In the last decade, regulations have contributed to the closing of more than 40 percent of the nation’s coal-fired power plants – one of the most economical and reliable generators of electricity. Job losses hit thousands of plant workers, coal miners and employees of supporting businesses, and both the price of electricity and the risk of blackouts increased.

The endangerment finding was a response to the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, which ruled that EPA had the authority to regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act if they endangered the public. On the basis of flawed analyses, the Obama administration’s EPA concluded that there was such a threat, laying a foundation for some of the agency’s most consequential regulations.

Nationally, the Clean Power Plan, the Affordable Clean Energy Rule and stringent vehicle emissions standards all stem from the endangerment finding.

States point to the regulation to justify their own climate initiatives. California, for instance, has used it to defend its waiver for stricter vehicle emissions standards, while Northeastern states have relied on it to uphold the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a cap-and-trade program.

Under President Biden, the EPA doubled down, imposing last year even stricter rules for power plants and automobiles, with the goal of achieving “net-zero emissions” by 2050. Notably, critics say that a workable technology to meet emission limits for power plants does not exist.

But EPA ignores much more than the feasibility of technological “solutions.” The endangerment finding disregards complexities of climate dynamics – from solar cycles to clouds to ocean currents – and relies on bad science, including computer models that empirical data have proven false. Even the quality of global temperature records is too poor to support the rule. And though often referenced by supporters of the rule, links between warming and an increase in severe weather have not been found. In fact, there are no trends of weather getting worse over time.

Of all the rule’s absurdities none is greater than the claim that CO2 is a pollutant catastrophically overheating the planet. More than a century of accepted science has established that the warming potential of CO2 decreases as its atmospheric concentration rises. This phenomenon of diminishing returns means that even doubling the amount of CO2 from current levels would have only a modest effect on temperature.

“The models predicting doom from CO2 have consistently overestimated warming, yet the EPA continues to rely on them to justify its regulations,” says Judith Curry, one of many climate scientists questioning the regulation.

EPA also fails to account for the benefits of CO₂. Higher levels of the gas increase plant growth and agricultural productivity through CO₂’s fertilization effect – a factor in the greening of Earth over the last several decades, as affirmed by NASA. This has significantly improved global food security.

By extension, the EPA brushes aside the enormous contribution that hydrocarbons have made in allowing, through industrialization and modern agriculture, humanity to increase tenfold over the last 250 years. Coal, as well as oil and natural gas, remain critical to the economic development of impoverished nations and the feeding of their people.

President Trump’s EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, was given 30 days to make recommendations regarding the endangerment finding on “the legality and continuing applicability” of the rule, and the clock is ticking.

Given the scientific shortcomings of EPA’s “greenhouse” rule, the time is past for its repeal. The EPA should acknowledge that CO₂ – two pounds of which everybody exhales daily – is not a threat to the public and should not be treated as such.

This would defang the pseudoscience of fearmongers and the lawfare emanating from the U.N. and anti-human activists and allow a return of common sense and scientific integrity befitting a free society.

This commentary was first published at Washington Times on February 25, 2025.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.

Fake ECIU Claims

Report says gas has added £3,000 to bills since the energy crisis started.

The numbers don’t lie—gas is the main reason energy bills have skyrocketed over the last four years.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

According to Energy Live News:

Gas is driving energy bills up, renewables are lowering them

Report says gas has added £3,000 to bills since the energy crisis started.

The numbers don’t lie—gas is the main reason energy bills have skyrocketed over the last four years.

That’s the view from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), who have worked out that gas price spikes will have added a staggering £3,000 to the average UK household bill since the crisis began.

That’s £750 a year, seven times the cost of supporting renewables.

“Let’s be very clear on this, it is gas that has been driving up energy bills over the past four years and it continues to do just that,” said Jess Ralston, energy analyst at the ECIU. “Families are struggling because the UK is heavily reliant on gas for both electricity generation and home heating and the price of gas is volatile.”

Gas is driving energy bills up, renewables are lowering them

How can the ECIU get away with such lies?

For a start they are comparing energy prices in the last four years with 2020, when prices hit rock bottom thanks to COVID lockdowns.

But in three out of four of those years, we were still paying CfD subsidies to the tune of about £5 billion to renewable generators, over and above the gas-based market price of electricity they were earning.

If we had just carried on using gas generation instead of wind power or biomass, the consumer would have been better off, not worse.

I call on the ECIU to withdraw their fake claims.

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/02/21/renewable-subsidies-set-to-top-12-billion-in-2024/

Why Isn’t the Mainstream Media Reporting that Ocean Circulation Is Doing Well?

For decades, mainstream media outlets have asserted that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is on the verge of collapse, bringing catastrophic consequences to the planet. This is false. Recent research indicates that climate change has not altered the Atlantic Ocean current, despite repeated claims by the media and some supposed experts to the contrary.

From ClimateRealism

By Anthony Watts

For decades, mainstream media outlets have asserted that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is on the verge of collapse, bringing catastrophic consequences to the planet. This is false. Recent research indicates that climate change has not altered the Atlantic Ocean current, despite repeated claims by the media and some supposed experts to the contrary.

The 2004 Hollywood disaster film The Day After Tomorrow showed an AMOC shutdown plunging the world into an instant Ice Age. The story was loosely based on some scientist’s predictions that the AMOC and the regional ocean currents that feed into it, were slowing dangerously down. The mainstream media hyped those unverified assertions, setting up the science fiction blockbuster for success.

Mainstream media outlets have periodically pushed the same doomsday narrative, warning that the AMOC is slowing, weakening, or collapsing, with dire predictions of climate chaos for each condition.

For example:

Yet, as Climate Realism has repeatedly pointed out, science debunks these claims (see here). These assertions of a declining AMOC and other large scale ocean currents which drive weather patterns and impact climate change are largely based the projections of speculative climate models rather than on real-world observations or verifiable research.

Two recent peer-reviewed studies, one from February 2025 and one from January 2025, both published in Nature, confirms what many climate realists have pointed out for years—the AMOC has remained stable for at least 60 years, displaying no significant slowing trend. Going further, the scholars who conducted the research concluded that there is no credible evidence to suggest that such a collapse is imminent or even likely in the foreseeable future. Commenting on the climate models which have forecast a collapse of the AMOC, the scientists carrying out the research concluded that climate models are flawed and overstate the risks — models’ simulations have failed to match actual measured trends.

So, where is the wall-to-wall media coverage of this reassuring news? Where are the CNN specials, the New York Times op-eds, and the breathless Guardian headlines announcing that disaster is not in the offing? They are nowhere to be found.

Now that we have two peer-reviewed studies that have determined the AMOC has been stable for at least six decades and is extremely unlikely to collapse in the foreseeable furute, the silence from mainstream media outlets is deafening. The same journalists who eagerly ran worst-case scenario stories are now unwilling to report findings that contradict their previous fearmongering.

The findings of the recent studies confirm what previous research cited at Climate Realism and Climate at a Glance: Ocean Currents have shown, ocean currents are complex, influenced by a variety of natural cycles, and not as fragile as alarmist narratives suggest.

While the mainstream media constantly admonishes the public and politicians to “follow the science,” they conveniently ignore scientific research when it cast doubt upon the narrative that climate change causes everything bad.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is not collapsing, is not slowing catastrophically, and is not about to trigger an Ice Age. The latest scientific research confirms what observational data has shown for decades: AMOC variations are natural, and there is no impending crisis. That’s the good news journalists and news outlets claiming to be presenters of the truth should be reporting, but we at Climate Realism won’t be holding our breaths for it.

The Seventh Carbon Budget

The Seventh Carbon Budget, covering the period 2038 to 2042, has been well covered by the media, so you are probably aware of the major recommendations.

By Paul Homewood

https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/the-seventh-carbon-budget/#publication-downloads

The Seventh Carbon Budget, covering the period 2038 to 2042, has been well covered by the media, so you are probably aware of the major recommendations. By 2040 we must:

Cut GHG emissions by 75% from current levels

Have three quarters of cars on the road electric

Drive less

Make half of homes have a heat pump, meaning effectively a total ban on gas boilers by 2035

Reduce consumption of meat and dairy by a quarter.

Put Potential limits on flying

And we are all supposed to do this while the rest of the world does nothing!

But the issue of costs has barely rated a mention in the pro-Net Zero media.

The BBC, for instance, merely repeats Emma Pinchbeck’s lies:

The costs of tackling climate change have become highly politicised in recent years.

The CCC estimates most of the expense will be borne by the private sector and calculates the savings from moving to more efficient technologies should outweigh costs by the early 2040s.

“We are crystal clear in this analysis, in this carbon budget, for the first time we start to see the economy making savings from this investment, and they make savings over and above what we would do if we stay dependent on fossil fuels,” Ms Pinchbeck told BBC News.

This should improve energy security and filter down to lower bills in the long term, the CCC argues, provided the government acts to make electricity cheaper.

It advises removing policy costs – funding for social and environmental schemes – from electricity bills. That would cut them by about 19% based on expected 2025 prices, the CCC says, making it more cost-effective for people to switch to electric vehicles or heat pumps.

These costs could instead sit on gas bills or general taxation.

“Regardless of what you think about climate change, what we are laying out today is a massive industrial revolution,” said Ms Pinchbeck.

“It will save the economy money by 2040, it saves people money on their energy bills, it saves people money on their driving costs, but all of that is underpinned by a cheaper electricity price.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70ekknr2rwo

According to the CCC, additional CAPEX and OPEX will amount to £319 billion by 2040. But after 2040, renewable costs will miraculously fall away, making us all better off to the tune of a couple of hundred billions.

Never mind the fact that half of us will be dead by then!

However all of the costings are based on two highly unrealistic assumptions:

Falling cost of renewable energy

The CCC have made assumptions about the cost of wind and solar power, which are not only unrealistic but are contradicted by current prices.

For offshore wind, for instance, their costings are based on a price of £51.12/MWh for this year, dropping to £37.60/MWh in 2030. (All based on 2023 prices). Yet the latest strike price already stands at £82/MWh, and there is every indication this will rise again this year.

Similarly with solar, which they assume is currently £46.00, and will drop to £34.42 by 2030. However AR6 prices stand at £69.

Based on current strike prices, CCC have understated their costs by approximately £16bn a year, using generation profiles for 2040. Over the full period to 2050, we are looking at something like £400 billion.

The comparison with the CCC’s fake costings with NESO’s figures is striking. In their Clean Power 2030 plan, NESO said we would need to spend £48 billion a year up to 2030 on electricity supply CAPEX. The CCC’s figure is just £18 billion for a similar increase in capacity.

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/02/14/clean-power-2030-plan-will-cost-242-billion/

EV Parity

The second big lie concerns the cost of buying EVs, which the CCC say will reach price parity with petrol cars between 2026 and 2028, and quickly become 10% cheaper:

We have heard the same nonsense for years, yet EVs still remain a good £10k dearer, and there has been no evidence of this gap shrinking in recent years.

Between now and 2040, the CCC calculate that car owners will be £6 billion better off because of “cheaper EVs”. In reality, at current price levels they will be £20 billion a year worse off.

Nobody knows what will happen after 2040, and for the CCC to claim they do shows this report is a sham. It is fair enough for them to build in risks and opportunities in their assessment – drivers “may” be better off if EV prices fall. But it is dishonest for them to publish a report where the central case is based on such flimsy, extremely unlikely and optimistic savings.

The EV and renewable energy scams together probably mean that they have understated the true cost of Net Zero by £700 billion. It does not give much confidence that their other costings will stand up to scrutiny.

It is abundantly clear that this Carbon Budget report was specifically written to deflect mounting criticism of Net Zero and the catastrophic effect it will have on the economy and people’s standard of living. And it has clearly been written to give Ed Miliband cover for his policies, indicating that the CCC are not “independent” at all.

It is much like a glossy brochure from a timeshare company, which fails to tell you the real cost of signing up, the fact that the advertised villas have not even been built yet and that you will probably discover it is double booked when you want it!

Tomorrow I’ll go into more detail on the technical stuff.

Net Zero is Dying Around the World But the Diehards Live on Helped by Vast Amounts of Chinese Coal

In 2021, President Xi Jinping promised that China would “strictly limit the increase in coal consumption over the 14th five-year plan period (2021-2025) and phase down in the 15th five-year plan period (2026-2030)”. Perhaps something got lost in the translation of “strictly limit” or should we just limit ourselves to the appropriate response – hahahahaha. Net Zero is dying around the world, no more so than in China where the appropriate lip service goes hand in hand with the full-service manufacturing and sale of dud windmills and solar panels to subsidy-seekers reliant on dwindling bands of deluded politicians.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

In 2021, President Xi Jinping promised that China would “strictly limit the increase in coal consumption over the 14th five-year plan period (2021-2025) and phase down in the 15th five-year plan period (2026-2030)”. Perhaps something got lost in the translation of “strictly limit” or should we just limit ourselves to the appropriate response – hahahahaha. Net Zero is dying around the world, no more so than in China where the appropriate lip service goes hand in hand with the full-service manufacturing and sale of dud windmills and solar panels to subsidy-seekers reliant on dwindling bands of deluded politicians.

The graphs above from a recent report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and the Global Energy Monitor shows clearly the sterling attempts China has made to strictly limit coal production. Excellent progress has been achieved in retiring old capacity and replacing it 10-fold with new plant. As this new plant comes on stream, further mirth might arise as China enters its “phase down” period of coal consumption. It need hardly be added that all this coal production introduces a particularly dirty hydrocarbon into the manufacturing process, while cleaner natural gas with, incidentally, half the carbon dioxide emissions remain unfracked across large areas of Europe.

All this hypocrisy is necessary of course as deindustrialising Greens indulge their luxury beliefs and pretend to save the planet by outsourcing to China all the goods that they have lost the will to make for themselves. Neo-Marxism takes over in declining countries as insulated elites are happy to live off the revenues of a bloated state. If the trend continues, increasingly, as in the old Soviet Union, ‘ordinary’ citizens will pretend to work, and the state will pretend to pay them. Already in the UK public sector, large numbers of people are ‘working from home’ despite Covid restrictions being lifted years ago. An even more dystopian future might be envisaged as the lessons of history teach that strong tribes invariably take over weak, decadent groupings.

But not every country is indulging its juvenile Greens. In the United States, Net Zero is stone dead. The election of Donald Trump is sweeping away any official concern about the invented climate crisis – the majority is swiftly coming around to the view that the science backing up the scare is mostly produced by garbage in, garbage out computer models, the ‘tipping points’ never tip, the temperature data are often a creative invention of state-employed meteorologists and the claim of ‘settled’ science is a political reaction to the scientific process that would have drawn admiration from a medieval Pope. Trust in mainstream media is falling off a cliff – people are genuinely pissed when they discover that there have been three years of record growth on the Great Barrier Reef at a time when mainstream media kept telling them that if they continued eating meat the coral will all be gone within a decade. When folk want to worry about the Gulf Stream (solid as a rock, unpublicised scientists say) they can watch the science fiction film The Day After Tomorrow rather than read the ubiquitous model predictions of imminent collapse. Recent fires in Los Angeles might be less scary to a general audience if mainstream media didn’t omit the fact that wildfires in North America are running at less than a quarter of the recent historical rate.

In the US, NASA has been told to butt out of climate speculation and go back to launching rockets – a nice change since it has been unable to send astronauts to the Space Station for over a decade. All departments such as defence must concentrate on the tasks specified in their  title. The Federal Reserve will have to go back to banking and stop wasting everyone’s time by enforcing climate change regulations on the productive service economy. Days before Trump took over, the Fed withdrew from a busy-body global cartel of central banks and regulators that it is reported were exploring ways to “police climate risk in the financial system”.

Most climate funding appears to have been cut. Distributions of foreign aid are out and it is estimated that at least 10% of funding for all the UN promises has been lost. It is reported that the contribution of US federal scientists to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been halted. NASA’s Chief Scientist Kate Calvin was due to co-chair an upcoming IPCC meeting in China designed to set in motion another climate ‘assessment’ round. Her absence bodes ill for both the meeting and the ability of the IPCC to continues with its ‘Code Red’ doomsday claptrap. Perhaps most significant of all is the recent news that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency has asked the administration to rescind a 2009 ‘endangerment finding’ on the so-called greenhouse gases. “This is the holy grail of the climate agenda,” observes Marc Morano of Climate Depot. “If  you want to permanently cripple the United States climate agenda you have to go at the heart of it. This is the heart of it,” he added. He is correct. Terming carbon dioxide as a harmful pollutant opened a pandora’s box that has enabled Government activists to ban and regulate consumer goods to their own heart’s content. Already paper straws, wholly unsuitable for tackling the testing demands of a McDonald’s milkshake, have gone.

No such luck in the UK where the activists on the Climate Change Committee have informed the citizenry that within 15 years they will need to eat less meat and dairy, install noisy, expensive and inefficient heat pumps, pay much higher air fares and remove 80% of their popular internal combustion cars from the road. The Guardian is the mouthpiece for these lunatics and Fiona Harvey spins it as giving up two doner kababs a week. How convenient for Fiona and her comfortable chums in the North London wing of the governing elite. The Labour party gave up on the appalling working class years ago. Saving Planet Earth means clearing the roads of their frightful old bangers, removing most of them from sunny beaches in the Med and getting rid of all that ghastly food that the Holy Who Walk Amongst Us have to smell late at night on their way back from an uplifting play at the National Theatre.

Up the Miners – as the old working class Labour party used to say. Still going strong in China, needless to say.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

Generating electricity through subsidies is a terrible plan for the planet

The few wealthy countries of Germany, Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand, other EU countries, and the USA, representing less than one of the eight billion on Planet Earth, are mandating social changes to achieve net zero emissions in their small worlds within this planet. The wealthier countries are committing billions of dollars in subsidies to support the wealthy countries’ chosen winners to achieve net zero emissions, i.e., wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries to store electricity when weather conditions are unfavorable to wind and solar generation.

Illuminated electric towers rise into the night sky, showcasing glowing lights and lines against a dark backdrop.

From CFACT

By Ronald Stein

The few wealthy countries of Germany, Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand, other EU countries, and the USA, representing less than one of the eight billion on Planet Earth, are mandating social changes to achieve net zero emissions in their small worlds within this planet. The wealthier countries are committing billions of dollars in subsidies to support the wealthy countries’ chosen winners to achieve net zero emissions, i.e., wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries to store electricity when weather conditions are unfavorable to wind and solar generation.

Wealthy countries’ wish to rid the world of crude oil, coal, and natural gas without replacements in mind is immoral since extreme shortages of the products manufactured from fossil fuels will result in the tragic loss of billions of lives from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related events, both in the developed world and in developing economies.

Unbeknownst to the wealthy countries, over 2 billion people in the world must collect firewood or animal dung to cook, and close to 800 million live without electricity. They comprise the bottom of the pyramid of the world population, along with 80% of the 8 billion population on this planet that make less than $10/day. These billions of people cannot subsidize themselves out of energy poverty.

The billions of poor in the world also live in countries with virtually no labor laws or environmental laws to protect their landscapes and health.

The future prosperity of these billions of people in developing countries is contingent on their economic advancement through the rightful access to harness the foundational elements of any flourishing economy, i.e., the strategic use of whatever energy sources may be available to them, including fossil fuels, for electricity and to enjoy the products and fuels that are the basis of all modern infrastructures, such as:

  • Transportation
  • Water filtration
  • Sanitation
  • Hospitals
  • Medical equipment
  • Appliances
  • Electronics
  • Telecommunications
  • Communications systems
  • Heating and cooling

While billions of people in many parts of the world, such as India, China, Egypt, and many countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas must burn cow dung as fuel, the few in the wealthy countries believe they can control climate change through subsidies, on this 4-billion-year-old planet.

(1) Only wealthy economies have “green” movements and are pursuing them with mandates and costly subsidies.

(2) Planet Earth’s resources are limited! Our planet has limited natural resources, including fossil fuels, but especially critical minerals (employed in many new energy systems), such as lithium, cobalt, manganese, various Rare Earth Elements (REE), and many basic industrial metals currently being extracted at unsustainable rates, and mainly from poorer developing countries, under dire working conditions, without labor or health protections, and causing serious environmental impact, due to the unsophisticated extraction processes employed. With technological advances by wealthier countries, in the next few decades, we may find “more.” Still, at current rates of extraction, the planet may not be able to provide those resources for very long, and in many cases, not even for a century. Wealthy countries refuse to put a greater focus on the limitations of earth’s natural resources currently being extracted for the enjoyment of wealthier countries since they do not understand that our 4-billion-year-old planet will continue to be here, with or without humans.

(3) Developing countries are currently the primary source of the materials for wealthier countries to go “green.” The current “green movement” technology requires significant REE and ever-scarcer metals to make EV batteries, build wind turbines and solar panels, and construct grid storage systems. Those materials are not easily available in the few wealthier countries and are primarily mined in developing countries. Green energy mandates and subsidies are exploiting people and landscapes around the world and providing financial encouragement to China and Africa for the continued egregious exploitation of vulnerable minority populations, mostly of yellow, brown, and black skin, and financially incentivizing environmental degradation to support mandated EV’s and subsidized wind turbines and solar panels in wealthier country backyards.

(4) So-called renewable power has proven to be very expensive electricity. The few wealthy countries that have been able to provide heavy subsidies to transition to expensive, intermittent electricity generation from wind and sun have been Germany, Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand, other EU countries, and the USA. These countries represent less than one-eighth of the world’s population, but they remain ignorant of the billions in India, China, Egypt, Africa, Asia, and Latin America who live on less than $10 a day and of the billions that have no access to electricity. Wealthier countries avoid discussing and explaining how their “green movement” will help those living in poorer developing countries join the industrialized society that they themselves enjoy.

(5) The supply chain to support zero-emission mandates and subsidies by the few wealthier developed countries must be ethical and moral. Billions of dollars have already been spent to support mandates for the world’s elites. At the same time, they refuse to discuss securing sustainable supply chains, promoting responsible sourcing practices and labor and environmental laws and regulations, and ensuring a just and equitable green and digital transition for all, both poor and wealthy.

(6) Before wealthier countries accuse big oil of not having a zero-emission society, they need to ask themselves: “How dare WE in the wealthier countries continue to increase our demand for the products and fuels manufactured from crude oil, which make OUR life more comfortable?” Without a replacement for those fuels and petrochemical derivatives, phasing out oil would undoubtedly phase out the most essential industries of modern society, including the medical industry, military, transportation, communications, and electrical power industries, as well as many others. The world would face a return to the unenviable lifestyle that existed in the 19th century.

Wealthier countries need to participate in conversations that focus on how mandates and subsidies can provide PRODUCTS, FUELS, and ELECTRICITY for the 8 billion on this planet, not ONLY for the few who live in wealthier countries that can afford to subsidize intermittent wind and solar generation of electricity, as well as the costs associated with storage, grid upgrades and backup sources required for a hasty energy transition to a “green” energy world.

This article originally appeared at America Out Loud