Matt Ridley: Making Wind Farms Obsolete

Like Japanese soldiers hiding in the jungle decades after the war was over, our political masters have apparently not heard the shale gas news. David Cameron and Chris Huhne are still insisting that the future belongs to renewables. They are still signing contracts on your behalf guaranteeing huge incomes to landowners and power companies, and guaranteeing thereby the destruction of landscapes and jobs. The government’s “green” subsidies are costing the average small business £250,000 a year. That’s ten jobs per firm. Making energy cheap is – as the industrial revolution proved – the quickest way to create jobs; making it expensive is the quickest way to lose them. --Matt Ridley, The Spectator, 15 October 2011

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To persist with a policy of pursuing subsidized renewable energy in the midst of a terrible recession, at a time when vast reserves of cheap low-carbon gas have suddenly become available is so perverse it borders on the insane. Nothing but bureaucratic inertia and vested interest can explain it. --Matt Ridley, The Spectator, 15 October 2011 A US energy company is seeking federal approval to allow exports of liquefied shale gas from the booming Appalachian drilling industry, saying that the nation’s natural gas supply is outpacing demand. --Fuel Fix, 13 October 2011

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David Blair’s report “Fuel poverty looms for average household” should provide a wake-up call to climate change campaigners as well as government. We cannot raise energy prices from 3.3 per cent of median household income in 2004 to 6 per cent today to 10 per cent in 2015 without creating a serious public and political backlash against current energy and climate change policies. --Alan Riley, Financial Times, 14 October 2011[Registration required] The profit margin for energy firms has risen to £125 per customer per year, from £15 in June, says regulator Ofgem. Suppliers claim the figures are misleading and do not give a realistic picture of profitability. "The approach adopted by Ofgem in calculating this figure is entirely theoretical and does not reflect how a responsible energy supply business manages its energy procurement strategy in reality," said SSE. British Gas said it had made £24 after tax per dual-fuel household. It said that Ofgem's methodology was "flawed.” --BBC News, 14 October 2011 It is not surprising that energy suppliers are not accepting Ofgem's methods and statistics. They would say that, wouldn't they. What is surprising is their reluctance to come clean and provide transparent energy bills. This would also make clear once and for all how much customers are paying for Britain’s costly climate policies and green energy subsidies. -–Benny Peiser, 14 October 2011 Australian Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has warned businesses not to invest in carbon offsets, because a future Coalition government will rescind the carbon tax. Mr Abbott told a tax forum in Sydney today that scrapping the scheme would be a Coalition government's first order of business. "An incoming Coalition government's first instructions to the public service would be to prepare legislation to rescind the tax," Mr Abbott said. "It would be our first order of parliamentary business. We will dismantle the bureaucracies it has spawned. We would take the upward pressure off peoples' cost of living and threat to workers' jobs. And we give businesses fair warning not to buy forward permits under a tax regime that will be closed down." --The Age, 14 October 2011

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