Thursday 23 November 2017

Budget: Raising a Thin Smile

Yes, you guessed, my smile is at the expense of the greens - and of course the rapacious subsidy-farmers who use sincere greens as human shields.

Hammond has taken the very logical step of curtailing the largesse on offer (via our electricity bills) to new green projects. "In order to protect consumers, the government will not introduce new low carbon electricity levies until the burden of [energy] costs are falling. On the basis of the current forecast, this means there will be no new low carbon electricity levies until 2025."  In doing so, he's taking the greenies at their word that renewables are now the cheapest form of new power generation - which isn't true, of course, notwithstanding some major cost-reductions recently in solar and wind technologies; but with boasting like that in the air, Hammod's ruling is an appropriate piece of policy ju-jitsu.  When you've declared that renewables don't need subsidies anymore, complaints about what he's done are just that little bit more difficult ...
The Renewable Energy Association said it welcomes the move to a subsidy-free future, but the industry needs urgent clarity on how the government is planning to bring new projects forward, especially for less developed technologies like tidal and advanced waste-to-energy. The group also called for clarity around carbon pricing after the government offered little detail on the future of the country's tax on carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector. 
Ah yes, "clarity", and "bringing forward".  We should open a scrapbook on all the different euphemisms these disingenuous gits use for "public subsidy".  We can translate "less developed", too - it means "grotesquely uneconomic".  It is earnestly to be hoped that the answer to their question about plans to "bring forward" the wretched Swansea Tidal Lagoon is - no such plan

To round out the picture, it must be noted that Hammond has disappointingly fallen for the Electric Vehicle nonsense.  This article (from a green-supporting perspective) gives rather more detail on the mish-mash of Budget announcements, if you can navigate some even-more-subtle euphemisms and sophistry (I particularly like the idea of "subsidy-free CfDs", which needs careful unpicking).  It gives a good summary of the EV aspects: 
... this budget provided serious support for electric vehicles - £400m more for EV charging networks, £100m for sales incentives, more tax breaks for corporate uses, and more money for R&D. This is a big deal. EVs have an outsized role to play in the low carbon economy. They are a powerful symbol of the cleaner, more attractive infrastructure we have to build. They are extremely popular with the public and can help generate buzz for the wider decarbonisation project. They deliver multiple emission reduction, air quality, and jobs benefits. And they sit at the heart of the smart grids that will enable power sector decarbonisation. Hammond is to be praised for recognising this opportunity and pursuing it. 
For my money (and it is, after all, our money), Hammond has no business putting that kind of cash behind a "powerful symbol [that] can help generate buzz".  And all those supposed benefits can be strongly disputed.

Still, if he's killed the lagoon ...

ND  

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Living up in t'hills, I get to look down upon Manchester and the shit-tinted fug smothering it like the spirit of Harold Shipman, and I'm fine with shifting to electric cars.

I mean, exactly how much are we bunging Nissan for job security for the Mackems?

Electric cars do the square root of fuck nothing for CO2 emissions, but they do make our cities a bit more breathable. So I'm fine with the EV points, that's infrastructure after all which will help take up of electric cars. Not so keen on the sales incentives and R&D though, does Hammond think we've a load Elon Musks just waiting for a handout? Could see the benefits in making trading-in for an electric car more viable though.

Anonymous said...

Excellent piece. Developing technologies are supposed to be brought forward by entrepreneurs and not government diktat but that's the greens for you.

And Hammond has laid down the gauntlet by acknowledging that future economic growth is down to industry in terms of exporting and investment in productive capabilities and not some form of financial sleight of hand.

Anonymous said...

What's wrong with the tidal lagoon? I'd far rather have that than Hinkley. Plus we wouldn't be dependent on a French company. Surely it wouldn't cost more than Hinkley?? Nor would there be any nuclear waste.

andrew said...

From the r4 interviews it seems that a major constraint is the lack of skilled people.
Would have been nice if they had expanded adult education - evening classes etc

Charlie said...

Have you tasted the air in any major city recently ND? 'leccy cars may well do sod all for CO2, but they'll clean up the city air. I'd have preferred that half a billion be spent on a ton of new cycling infrastructure though. I'm not a greenie - I just like to get where I'm going quickly (which in London means not in a car) and on time (which in London means not by public transport)

Undoing all the diesel subsidies (saves HMG money) and mandating stop/start tech on new cars (no cost to HMG) would also help.

DAD said...

In my area of western France, the only electric cars are owned by the local authorities.

There are four charging points in one local town.

Two in the town square that is used for the local market each Saturday, when parking is banned. I have only seen one car being charged here; a visitor from Paris.

The other two charging points are at the football ground; I have never seen them being used.

estwdjhn said...

"and mandating stop/start tech on new cars (no cost to HMG) would also help."

Most certainly that would make matters worse. Modern diesels have very complex exhaust after-treatment systems, and for them to work properly they have to be at full operation temperature.
To achieve this within the mandatory time frame from startup, they basically chuck diesel down the exhaust to burn in the cats to get them hot quickly - it's a major problem with delivery vans which are turned off for each drop - fuel consumption on this sort of duty cycle is quite phenomenal, and so (as a result) is pollution.

Charlie said...

Agreed. Which is why diesel duty should be increased and petrol duty reduced such that the fuel cost per mile is the same for each fuel. Who'd buy a diesel then? Hateful things (and my sensible car is a diesel)

Nick Drew said...

Anon - the shit-tinted fug; Charlie Have you tasted the air in any major city recently?

- agreed (I'm an asthmatic), but blind pursuit of EVs without thinking through the many consequences is not a smart response. BTW, another bugbear of mine, bloody Drax and its smaller brothers that burn biomass for electricity - Drax pumps out ghastly particulates that are way, way worse than coal-burning, equivalent to 3,000,000 diesel cars

(that's on top of emitting more CO2 than coal, and >2x more CO2 than natgas - but being paid as though it's "renewable": we can talk about carbon debt in detail if you like)

Anon2 - What's wrong with the tidal lagoon?

COST!: it's grotesquely expensive. Generates a piss-pot's worth of power at odd hours in the day, but wants a 90-year contract (sic) at £89.99/MWh. Hinkley is about £98 (after indexation) for *only* a 35-year contract, and produces predictable power 24/7 (assuming it ever gets built, which I don't). The most recent auction for offshore wind saw a contract being awarded for £57 (IIRC) for just 15 years - and the load-factors for offshore wind are creeping up - add another £20 for system-balancing.

If you normalise the Swansea Lagoon back to a 15-year deal, it would require approx £250/MWh.

and that's before we get started on the environmental issues, the silting-up issues, the experience with a similar (albeit older, obviously) facility in France which is not at all encouraging ... oh, and some very questionable business dealings surrounding the project ...

If there's any spare £££ going, you can do a lot better for your renewables portfolio spent differently. Government has no business lining subsidy-farmers' pockets for untried-technology projects

Charlie said...

It feels a little unfair to berate EVs on the basis that our wonderful politicians have encourage the biomass lunacy.

Clumsy said...

This is slightly off at a tangent but will anything be done about wood burning stoves? They appear to be very popular but are very bad for the environment. I don't think councils are bothering about enforcing the smokeless fuel areas. Certainly not in Brighton...

Nick Drew said...

Clumsy - a very interesting point, (and not at all tangential). You are correct - although Khan in London has muttered about *asking people* not to use them on days when extra-bad pollution is declared

it's almost like being back in the smog days of the 1940's & 50's (when asthmatics like me actually died) before the Clean Air Act

Drax (et al) = the same problem multiplied by a factor of a million, and as yet the government has remained shtum. I have formed the view they will probably not act on the CO2 nonsense (because Drax plc is 'too big to fail', which is what would happen if their *renewables* subsidies were withdrawn)

but I reckon there's a chance they get forced to clean up their particulates emissions - and I'm not sure whether the cost of that would force them to close

Nick Drew said...

PS our friend and oft-time commenter Mr RWenland sometimes has views on such matters ...

??

hovis said...

re: wood burning stoves - I saw that Raedwald recently wrote a piece on the blamestorm over them as little more than diversionary waffle; a good meme tactic because everyone like to bash a hipster now and then.

CityUnslicker said...

Drax is mental, I nearly bought it for a £1 many years ago, did not seem worth it then. They have milked it for subsidies ever since with increasingly insane schemes.

Perhaps they will convert it one day to the mythical clean coal /CCS piece.

Re employment, Drax employs about 800 people, the massive decom job would be triple that for years alone...