Climate Polices Mean Ever-Increasing Energy Bills

Written by Climate Discussion Nexus on September 4, 2024. Posted in Current News

Climate policy in the Western world has not delivered what it promised. Certainly to hear the alarmists tell it, there has not been an improvement in the weather, instead we’re in hell or some such place

And if you dig into their promises, it turns out that for the most part they didn’t think things were going to get better in terms of climate unless and until very drastic measures were implemented.

But they assured us that these measures would bring about economic light and joy as a secondary effect long before they achieved their direct goals.

And now that it’s not happening the situation is becoming ominously reality-based.

For instance two published reports done for Natural Resources Canada warned that “the costs of this transition was [sic] a concern” to citizens. And even publications like Vox are now fretting about “The hidden reason why your power bill is so high” in the United States, where power bills are a lot lower than in Europe but rising.

Remember, the U.S. Treasury Secretary recently said governments worldwide should spend $3 trillion every year to fight ‘climate change’. Which guarantees that someone’s going to feel a lot of pain.

But for what? A microscopic emissions reduction that no model claims will reduce the temperature by a measurable amount?

Obviously the Vox piece, by their “senior technology correspondent”, says:

“Despite what you’re hearing from Republicans, the transition to clean energy is not the driving force behind rising electricity costs, according to a July report from Energy Innovation, a think tank.”

Boo Republicans. Yay Energy Innovation. (Which is a “nonpartisan energy and environmental policy firm” that appears to have 46 staff and is all about ‘Net Zero’.)

Still, the Vox article does concede that:

“The drivers behind rising energy costs are myriad, overlapping, and vexing. Inflation, rising energy demands, volatile natural gas prices, and extreme weather are all contributing factors. The transition to renewable energy is, too.”

And of course it’s one case where the more you spend the more you save… later:

“Building wind, solar, and battery infrastructure is expensive, and connecting those new clean energy resources to the grid is complicated. Rather than making those investments, which save customers money in the long run, many utilities are doubling down on fossil fuel and existing infrastructure in an effort to ensure the grid is reliable.”

Imagine caring about reliable proven energy instead of betting the farm on magic beans.

Or maybe not. In Ontario they’re still into the magic beans even though Bjorn Lomborg recently Xed out a piece from the International Journal of Sustainable Energy saying, in his words (and after a snide “Climate oops”) that:

“Keeping nuclear in 2002 would have saved Germany half a trillion euro and today produced more CO₂-free power than all renewables. Had Germany invested in more nuclear from 2002 emissions would be reduced 73 percent more and saved €300bn”

So the policy was a total face-plant. There’s really no upside to this sort of arrogant debacle… including in PR terms.

More generally, and again it’s via Lomborg, this time from Science, the overall evidence for the direct efficacy of climate policy is risible. The authors examined some “1500 climate policies implemented between 1998 and 2022 across 41 countries from six continents” and found that only 63 had any significant impact and, even so, created a net reduction of only 0.15 percent.

We are again of the view that a monkey throwing darts at a list of options would almost certainly have outperformed the greatest minds in climate policy.

Climate science being the exact field that it is, the finding was a reduction of between 0.6 and 1.8 gigatonnes of CO₂, which compared to total emissions of 778Gt CO₂e (that would be CO2 equivalent, another imprecise concept) is between 0.08 and .23 percent.

All basically within the margin of error, though if your results might be anywhere from X to 3X you didn’t actually get a firm result. (Nor could you, since nobody knows what the global or indeed any particular national economy would have done between 1999 and 2024 absent the actual policies pursued.)

Now it’s interesting that in the Canadian story about public concern, the populace were evidently malleable ignoramuses.

According to the National Post:

“Despite the political fight over carbon pricing, ‘only a few blamed the “carbon tax”’ for higher energy bills, according to the study on the transition to renewable energy, which was based on 16 focus groups held back in January and February across eight provinces.

It found those who were asked had a ‘limited understanding’ as to why their energy bills were rising, with many feeling it’s because ‘the cost of everything is going up.’”

Well, yes, and one reason why, other than reckless monetary policy, is that everything takes energy and the real cost of energy is increasing due to deliberate government policy.

But don’t worry; the sheep can be led. According to the Post story, the “national policy manager at Climate Action Network” (no relation), Alex Cool-Fergus:

“said the report should serve as a ‘wake-up call’ to those in power ‘to just make things easy for people.’ ‘One thing that governments should be taking away from this report is that it’s murky.

It’s a messy picture. People don’t really exactly know what they need to be doing in order to reduce their own emissions.’”

No. And neither does the government, which if it knew how to “just make things easy” would just have done it already.

Still, it’s all in the mind:

“Monica Gattinger, who directs the University of Ottawa’s Institute for Science, Society and Policy, which conducts similar research, says when it comes to the issue of addressing climate change, Canadians are ‘moving from the “what” to the “how.”’

What matters is how people view the issue, she said. When they see it as a citizen, they are ‘ambitious,’ but when they look at it as a consumer that’s when questions rise of ‘who pays for what, when and how.’ At the end of the day, Gattinger says, what really matters is ‘perception.’”

No. What really matters is whether energy is expensive and unreliable.

When even the government report, putting as positive spin on it for their paymasters as possible, feels obliged to include lines like “Lack of a clear path forward combined with aggressive targets were [sic] seen as a cause for concern for many,” you know you’re in trouble on the practicalities.

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Header image: Christopher Furlong

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