From Climate Scepticism

By JIT

[Please excuse the bits where I get angry and write in ALL CAPS.]

All he has to do is hide in a bunker for the next 18 months and victory is assured. Sooner or later – probably later, clinging on to power by their claw-tips – the Tories will have to call an election. A less popular government you’d be hard pressed to find. Hello Red, Goodbye Blue. We’re talking Blair ’97 territory here.

But Sir Keir Starmer felt the need last week to come out and give a speech on energy. Luckily for him, it landed with the thud of a dandelion’s feather-winged achene on an unkempt lawn (one Labour councillor resigned); but seasoned climate sceptics saw enough in it to bite their knuckles in fear.

What did the next Prime Minister say?

I did not hear the speech, and am relying on the transcript from LabourList for this commentary. Nor did I hear the warm-up acts, which included Ed Miliband (update: I have heard most of what Ed said now). Ed is said to have described Labour’s national mission on clean energy as “the sound of the future arriving.” [Confirmed.]

Sure. As long as that sound is the hollow crunching noise of a feral dog snacking on the bones of a corpse by the side of the road. But I digress.

Starmer begins by thanking warm-up acts Ed, Rachel Reeves & Anas Sarwar, then characterises Labour’s clean energy mission as a cause that will deliver half a million jobs, 10% of them in Scotland. Then what may be described as the plaintive call for the orderlies starts:

It [Labour’s national mission on clean energy] will power us forward towards net zero, generate growth right across the country, end the suffocating cost-of-living crisis and get Putin’s boot off our throat with real energy security. A stronger, more secure Britain, once again at the service of working people, with cheaper bills and clean electricity by 2030.

We expect bromides in political speeches, but this is just delusional.

It is an ambitious goal – it would put us ahead of any major economy in the world. But at the moment, we’re nowhere near the front of the pack, and this is a race we have to win.

We are close to the front of the pack in terms of the proportion of our electricity that comes from wind power, as I showed last week. We are also close to the back of the pack in terms of the value for money of our energy bills. Reason dictates that the “cleaner”* our energy gets, the closer we get to the front of that race – the worse we will do in the energy bills race. But Starmer believes differently.

I’ll start with the necessity, the unbending urgency of this mission. It’s not just about the imperative of the climate emergency, not just the fundamentals of global economic competition or the race for the jobs of the future. It’s all of that, absolutely. But it’s also something even more serious.

Make no mistake, we are living in an increasingly volatile world. The twin risks of climate change and energy security now threaten the stability of nations, so we’ve got to ground everything we do in a new insight: that clean energy is now essential for national security.

„The unbending urgency“? Chortle. “The imperative of the climate emergency”? Clean energy in the UK won’t have any effect on that, if it exists. “The race for the jobs of the future”? What are they? People aren’t even clearing up dead bodies, or rounding up the feral dogs. And to describe clean energy as essential for national security is to overlook the obvious matter – as discussed here and elsewhere – that even if we were to become free of our dependence on fossil fuels in this bright green future… we will become very dependent on the large suite of materials needed to manufacture our clean energy… some of which are largely controlled by countries we would be a bit twitchy about “depending” upon.

I’m not going to give you a moral sermon about the urgency of climate change, everyone gets that argument.

Thanks. I don’t.

No. What I offer is a plan: a new course through stormy waters, a bridge to a better future.

Starmer then goes through some boilerplate about how the North Sea’s dividend was squandered, bashes the Tories, etc. Everything has gone terribly in Scotland so far.

But if you come to places like Nova Innovation here, or the hydrogen and carbon capture cluster in Grangemouth or the marvel of the Whitelee Windfarm outside Glasgow, then you can glimpse a different path. The green shoots of a third Scotland, a new Scotland, a future Scotland.

The third Scotland seems to be a euphemism for mouldy ceilings, huddling in twelve jumpers, reading Dickens by candlelight and auto-dentistry.

Starmer fought the Tories when they closed the pits (is there any irony here?) and he knows that industrial change makes folks nervous. But don’t worry guys, he’s got this.

So in all candour, the reality is this: the moment for decisive action is now. If we wait until North Sea oil and gas runs out, the opportunities this change can bring for Scotland and your community will pass us by, and that would be a historic mistake. An error, for the future of Scotland, as big as the Thatcher government closing down the coal mines, while frittering away the opportunity of the North Sea.

My offer, the Labour offer, is this: a credible plan to manage the change, protect good jobs and create good jobs. No cliff** edges. But at the same time, to harness the wealth that is in our air, in our seas, in our skies and use it to serve the interests of your community.

The wealth that is in Scotland’s air! It’s going to become the Saudi Arabia of wind, and there won’t be a hair shirt in sight.

Other countries are plotting the same course, be we have the ace on them…

We have tremendous advantages here: our coast, our shallow waters, our universities, our creativity, the depth of our skills, the graft of our people, the superpower sciences, the technological edge, and yes – if you can believe it, even our weather.

There is a distinction to be made between being exploiting the wealth of our own air and exporting machines to help other countries exploit theirs^. Now, it should be obvious to readers that the one has the potential to push us into grinding poverty and power cuts while the other has the potential to bring our country some advantage. I don’t need to explain which is which.

Seriously – there are no grounds for the defeatism which says we can’t lead the world on this. That our prospects will always be squeezed out by the US and the EU. That’s declinist nonsense. But at the same time, we’ve got to get moving. At the moment, we’re standing on the sidelines, wringing our hands and falling behind because our government talks about economic stability yet understands nothing of what this requires in times like ours.

I wasn’t aware that the US and EU are going to squeeze out our prospects. The US has more chance of doing that than the EU, which is declining at the same rate we are, for similar reasons. Why does Starmer not look to those countries where the growth in GDP is actually occurring? Is it because he knows we don’t have a snowball’s chance in (one of the warm parts of) hell of ever competing with them?

Next he goes on about how terrible free market dogma is, how “When the winds of change are blowing this fiercely, you need a government that gets involved and intervenes, on behalf of working people, to secure stability and growth.” Labour will be responsible with your money, etc. No borrowing except to invest. You know the sort of thing.

This isn’t some kind of sackcloth and sandals message anymore – it’s not a nice-to-have. Clean British energy is cheaper than fossil fuels – three times cheaper. That’s a potential gold mine for our mission on growth and the benefits flow primarily to working people and working class communities.

First it was four times cheaper, then nine times cheaper, now it’s three times cheaper. Well, that’s volatile ol‘ fossil fuel for you. Of course, if clean British energy was so much cheaper than fossil fuels, it would no longer need subsidies. The fact that wind companies are wailing about how their inflation-plus contracts are no longer affordable because of, er, inflation, so please send more money now, tells you all you need to know. Plus, of course, Sir Keir is here either being disingenuous, or is unaware of the most basic problems with that “three times cheaper” formulation. This is that Mr. Fossil Fuel stands alone, but if you employ “clean British energy” for the job, you also have to employ Mr. Frequency Stabiliser, Mr. Grid Extension, Mr. Backup Energy and Mr. AC/DC. And you would be wise to keep Mr. Fossil Fuel on a retainer.

Now we come to the truly delusional stuff. The knuckle-biting stuff.

I went to the steelworks in Scunthorpe two weeks ago, spoke to the workforce there. They don’t glue themselves to railings, but let me tell you, they’re desperate for change. They say ‘we want clean energy, we’ve got the customers, we just need the technology and a government that stands alongside us’.

It’s the same story in Clydebridge, the same story in Port Talbot – these jobs are on the line, so let’s back carbon capture, let’s invest in hydrogen, nuclear, tidal energy, double onshore wind, treble solar power, quadruple offshore wind and insulate 19 million homes.

This is the new foundation for British prosperity. £1,400 a year off energy bills for working families. Just imagine the difference that would make in a cost-of-living crisis.

“We want clean energy”? What even are you talking about? They want cheap energy, you dolt. They don’t care where it comes from. “Let’s back carbon capture.” Are you yanking my bleedin‘ chain, how much money is that going to make? Invest in hydrogen? Fantasyland. Tidal? Tidal will never, ever, pay for itself. You don’t even need the back of an envelope to realise that it solely exists to GET PEOPLE LIKE SIR KEIR TO SEND ITS PROMOTERS SHEDLOADS OF OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY.

Let’s quadruple offshore wind. Let’s make ourselves even more dependent on the whims of the notoriously reliable British weather. Let’s see how many birds we can knock out of the sky, while „restoring“ Nature. What the hell. What did birds ever do for the economy? Let’s treble solar power, so that power costs nothing at noon, and infinity plus one when you want to boil a kettle at five p.m. on a still February evening. About the only thing I can agree with here is nuclear. It’s a shame that the lead in time on nuclear is so long. It’s a shame that all our nuclear engineers gave up after the opposition to Sizewell B killed the industry off, so that we now have to GO TO OTHER COUNTRIES to build them for us, us, the first country to plumb a nuke into our grid, who in 2023 don’t even know how to replace the fuse in a 3-pin plug any more.

“£1,400 a year off energy bills…” This only makes sense if the gas is going to be cut off, along with the electricity. Then we’ll only have to pay the standing charge. We’ll have to go to the woods to cut trees down to burn, and Sir Keir’s mates will bust the door in and drag us away screaming for violating clean air regulations.

Blah blah blah – planning reform, procurement, whatever, the usual platitudes that politicians give us.

People are going to be sceptical about this, I get that. Especially here in Scotland, people say ‘we’ve got the windfarms, we’ve got the hydro-electricity, we’ve invested in clean energy, that’s all good, but the jobs boom we were promised, it never came’.

There’s no denying this, it’s a fact. The Tory-SNP era has failed miserably. Less than a quarter of the jobs that the SNP promised have materialised. The simple reason for this is they don’t have a plan and never had a plan. In the case of the Tories, they don’t believe in plans.

Of course the jobs never came. THEY WENT TO WHERE THE WIND TURBINES WERE BUILT, WHICH WAS NOT SCOTLAND. Why would you build turbines in a country where energy is so expensive, where productivity is low, where wages are high, where there are no mines, no refineries, where there is a war on fossil fuels? I dunno about you, but I think I would opt to build turbines in poor countries, where there are lots of fit young people, where labour and (fossil-fueled) energy are cheap, where environmental and workplace safety standards can be summarised by a shrug, and SELL THEM TO STUPID RICH COUNTRIES UNTIL THEY RUN OUT OF MONEY.

I spoke to the people involved in the projects at Grangemouth last week. They’re ambitious, clear about the benefits of carbon capture, but frustrated by the speed of progress, and they were clear about the missing ingredient – political clarity of thought from government.

You mean they wanted PROMISES OF MONEY. There are no benefits of carbon capture. IT IS AN IMMENSE BLOATED PARASITE LATCHED ONTO THE BACK OF AN OTHERWISE PROFITABLE ENTERPRISE. It is a money sink that will never, ever, under any circumstance, bring one iota of benefit to the UK. If you believe otherwise, you are delusional.

The competition for clean energy investment is fierce and will only get fiercer. All around the world, our competitors are developing new frameworks to attract it, and you better believe it – they are rewriting the rules of their economies to make sure it delivers good jobs.

What they are doing is giving companies money to build stuff in their country. And if the subsidies go, so do the jobs and the companies. Now, you can argue that the free market would not be able to compete against subsidy regimes. I understand that. Starmer seems to want to out-subsidise the US etc. He also wants to compel local origin rules.

We will transform the way we set the price for investors in clean energy. The contracts for difference auctions must deliver jobs as well as investment. We will set new rules – as a condition of entry – on good work, decent pay and union recognition.

He then goes on about his idea for GB Energy, which will belong to all four nations of the UK and build and own wind farms etc., then builds up to a crescendo of hope, ending with:

Some nation is going to lead the world in offshore wind. Why not this one? Some nation will win the race for new hydrogen power. Why not us? Some nation will become a clean energy superpower. Why not Britain? Thank you.

Wait, I think I know the answer to this one. It’s because the clean energy superpower is going to be powered by fossil fuels.

Notes & Featured Image

^Jobs in energy

Jobs in energy are a net cost to the economy. Jobs in energy export are a net benefit to the economy. It is stupid to use the metric of “number of jobs” without extreme care. You could make the case for depriving a labourer of his wheelbarrow, on the basis that it will then take two labourers to do the same job, doubling employment. Similarly if the quantity of energy produced is unchanged, more jobs in it makes the country poorer. If we are going to be building wind turbines and selling them to other countries, those jobs are a net benefit. But for that to be realistic you would have to believe that we can undercut developing countries on manufacturing costs. I don’t believe we can. That makes the “number of jobs” a red herring.

*Clean energy

I despise this term. For too long have renewable energy sources worn this undeserved badge of moral superiority.

**Cliff edges

Starmer refers to the loss of jobs when the existing North Sea industry dies (he will not permit any new licenses for fossil fuels, although he did not mention that here. Maybe Ed did). There is another cliff edge we might approach, which is when our energy system no longer has a high enough benefit: cost ratio (e.g. EROI) to allow us to maintain our current standard of living. There are two variables to consider: 1) what is the necessary EROI to maintain our standard of living? and 2) what is the EROI of different energy sources? I do not know, but I strongly suspect, that the EROI of renewables is less than the EROI required for a thriving civilisation. [Note that here I use EROI as a shorthand for a more complicated variable, since the support staff for renewables are not included in it.]

The featured image is something like „The red lemming king leading his followers off a cliff“. Dall.e.

Postscript

You can watch Sir Keir’s speech, plus the warm-up acts including Ed, here.