Friday 13 December 2013

Huffing, puffing and bluffing

Whelk Stall, Irish-style  (pic: Wiki)
Oh, what a game energy policy is - government picking winners, inventing schemes & subsidies & limits & caps & tax-breaks: industry lobbying, grovelling, blustering, threatening, dissembling, blackmailing, exaggerating ...

Just two examples from the DTel today:
  • Exhibit A. Eggborough (a very big coal-fired plant) wants the same ludicrous subsidy promised to Drax (even bigger) for converting to wood-burning.  But the minister has awarded himself discretion and says 'no' - so they are going stamp, scream and hold their breath until they go blue.  Oh, and since price rises are the bogey of the hour, they claim that electricity prices will "spike" 10% upwards  (10% ain't no spike, sunshine). Oh, and since Chinese investment is the order of the day, they claim the Chinese really wanted to buy into Eggborough and will be upset
  • Exhibit B.  Centrica, having threatened to withdraw from the UK in response to Milibong's "price freeze", are exiting a UK windfarm project and buying up Irish gas asssets - see, we weren't bluffing !  (Fair play to the Irish for holding out on the price.  But where's Centrica's Chinese angle ? - come on guys, tell your lobbyists to try harder !)
There's decades more of this nonsense still to come.  What a way to run a nuclear-powered whelk-stall.  

ND

8 comments:

Demetrius said...

Apart from "Phwoar" I knew Eggborough in the dear old days before privatisation, playing snooker in the staff social club. But wood burning? This is insane.

Nick Drew said...

indeed so

flying in the face of 250 years of science and technology

Anonymous said...

Perhaps we should get the charcoal burners going again, up in the woods ?

And maybe re-open the flint mines, and start up some stage-coach factories.

All handsomely subsidised, naturally, and given beaming support from the Guardian and the BBC and fellow parasites.

john in cheshire said...

Not only that, but I believe that Drax is importing virtually all its wood from primarily the USA. Talk about coals to Newcastle.

Nick Drew said...

john you are correct (by the time they are fully converted to wood, they say some will probably come from Canada)

that, of course, is to take everything at face value: call me a cynic, but with decades of Common Agricultural Policy to go by, the EU ETS, and all manner of horse-meat & other food-chain scandals etc, I'd say that when the woodburning epidemic reaches hundreds of million tonnes a year (as it is projected to do: >50 mt for UK alone), no-one will have a clue where it's coming from, and all manner of deforestation will be taking place, totally uncontrolled, all over the globe

CO2-neutral ? don't make me laugh

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