The Scottish Government is expected to announce an outright ban on fracking later this week according to Rob Edwards at Herald Scotland: “Ministers are putting the finishing touches to a permanent ban, replacing the moratorium they started in January 2015. This will spell the end of plans by the energy …
Read More »Green Valium for the masses
So-called ‘green energy’ is shaping up to be a wannabee Ponzi scheme reminiscent of the US fracking bubble. It began with crowd-funded nonsense such as the idea that putting solar panels on the road so that cars and trucks can drive over them might be a good investment. Since then, …
Read More »Electric cars: more disruptive than we bargained for
The UK is the latest in a growing list of countries to announce bans on petroleum vehicles. This has led to understandable concerns about the ability of national electricity grids to cope with the massive demand for additional electricity that such a ban implies. The thinking appears to be that …
Read More »Smart meter roll out dropped
Britain’s hi-tech clean energy future was going to be built around a smart grid of interconnected household and business smart meters. Connected up to smart equipment like domestic heaters and freezers, the smart grid would enable National Grid operators to balance supply and demand by remotely operating the equipment; for …
Read More »The distinct whiff of ministerial greenwash
Green virtue signalling has become so prominent that even Tory ministers are getting in on the act. Today, Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark will announce a new Industrial Strategy that, apparently, aims to power the UK economy with solar panels. What’s not to like? Except, of course, that this …
Read More »Forget the headlines, we’re burning more fossil fuels than ever
Barely a week goes by these days without someone claiming that this or that country ran entirely on renewable energy. But these claims are more about lulling the population into a false sense of security than any realistic appraisal of either national or global energy use. Even Britain’s recent coal-free …
Read More »Let’s boycott these evil polluters
It turns out that just 100 companies are responsible for 71 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. According to the Carbon Majors Report 2017: “Over half of global industrial emissions since human-induced climate change was officially recognized can be traced to just 25 corporate and state producing entities.” This …
Read More »Falling Net Energy destroys fossil fuels *and* green energy
While businesses and journalists readily understand (and often misunderstand) the idea of return on investment (“there is no magic money tree”) they seldom make the intellectual leap to apply the concept to the far more important area of energy. Currency, after all, really can be printed out of thin air …
Read More »In Britain, unprofitable fracking is green energy
Renewable energy is usually presented as the sensible alternative to domestic (fracking) gas. However, in Britain at least, the two are essential components of the same suite of technologies. This is because of the poor choices made by the UK government that force solar and wind energy to go hand …
Read More »Not so renewable Britain
Read the headlines and you could be forgiven for laughing in the face of climate change and resource depletion. Renewable energy, it seems, will win the day. Take this example by Ian Johnston in the Independent: “Renewable energy is a mainstream technology, which is cheaper and more advanced than ever. …
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