Green Energy's Reverse Robin Hood Effect

 

For more than 20 years a near-unanimous consensus has driven the formulation of energy policies in the western democracies: the big lie that has been repeated so often it became the truth in the minds of the unthinking masses is that renewable energy and only renewable energy can save the planet from catastrophic climate change.  It's bollocks of course but every major political party in every economically developed democratic nations seems to have climbed on the bandwagon and joined the competition to demonstrate a greater degree of moral rectitude regarding the green agenda than any of their fellow bandwagon riders can accomplish. It is not just politicians either, public information media, the academic communities and even the celebrity circus have joined in - none of them will engage in serious debate and none will tolerate even the slightest degree of dissent. The Science is settled and if you question it you are a racist, sexist, homophobic fascist, baby murderer.

It is agreed then, because those who disagree are pariahs who cannot be given any sort of public platform to present the scientific and empirical evidence that demolishes the doom laden scaremongering on the mathematical modellers, that fossil fuels are to blame for everything.  

That kind of thinking stifles discussion and so idiotic and economically ruinous policies like 'net zero', the unrealistic ambition to reduce or mitigate carbon dioxide emissions so that on balance no CO2 is added to the atmosphere by human activity has never been debated, let alone voted on by the public. The bigger question of concern to ordinary punters who are just trying to keep their heads above water financially and live decent loves is what I have called the reverse Robin Hood effect,  just how much should everyday families be expected to fork out to bankroll the commercially unsustainable operations of green energy grifters. 

 Figures from the website of Ofgem, the UK regulatory body for the gas and electricity markets, reveals more than 25 per cent of a standard electricity bill goes on what are called “environmental and social obligation costs”. And, as a further kick in the teeth, just under 5 per cent of the bill’s total is added for Value Added Tax, a tax ultimately paid by consumers on the mark up added to a product or service by a business process.

So what are these “environmental obligations”? 

Every year, in order that politicians, the Academic communities, information media and the celebrity circuses can wallow in self - righteousness, billions of pounds in taxpayers money is being channeled in the form of  'green' subsidies to the owners and operators of intermittent, unreliable energy generation operations such as wind farms and solar panel fields. The owners and operators of sustainable generation plant range from large multinational corporations and rich landowners to smallholders who have given up trying to make a living from farming to house owners with a large enough garden to plonk a windmill in or enough roof area to accommodate a few solar panels. Many of the wealthiest people in Britain who own huge estates have been paid for years simply to have wind turbines on their land regardless of whether these generate relevant amounts of electricity or not. This is the reverse Robin Hood effect that steals from the poor who were never given the chance to opt out of the green levies and gives to the rich for no better reason than that they are rich enough to own significant amounts of land.

The green obsession, driven by the fantasy science of mathematical modellers has now reached such heights of hysteria that governments are seriously considering banning domestic gas boilers and requiring every home to install a hideously expensive and comically inefficient gadget known as a heat pump to provided domestic heating and hot water. Not only are these expensive to buy and install even in homes where they can be installed, but they are expensive to run and will increase by threefold at least the domestic energy bill for homes that have them. That is the difference between the science of mathematical modelling and true scientific analysis. 

An assessment carried out by Xavier Connolly, our resident engineer, of what replacing the gas heating [including hot water] with electric heat pump and diesel with electric car would do to my annual electricity consumption, less than 1500 units for the last ten years. It would rise to over 7000 units a year. This for a modest house/one car. Nationally, at that proportion of increase, where generating ant for a national increase of 4.5 times in domestic electricity consumption is coming from I do not know - it is not just the wind generation, but the back-up for when wind does not blow. Solar is useless at night or in the winter, even with the current subsidy the payback time is not worthwhile - you only get a few pence per generated unit, an indication of its real value, Boris calling on homeowners to fit it is just propaganda or "greenwashing" .  

  Naturally the poorest who take the least out of all the green incentives will be hardest hit by price increases. Examples would be the tax breaks on Tesla cars, or the ground source heat pump installation grants. These things are beyond the means of most people even though they are subsidised. 

  The one positive to come out of the Ukraine conflict for people in the west is that our eyes have been opened to the fact that most of that most of the energy consumed by the the people of western nations comes from countries run by chest thumping tyrants or head amputating Islamic theocrats who have neither like or respect our values and liberal attitudes and who are quite prepared to cut off our energy supplies as the whim takes them. This being unarguably the case it would make sense for western democracies to admit the folly of green thinking, abandon virtue signalling idiocies like 'net zero' and try and produce as much of our own energy as we possibly can. 

It should be noted that due to green hysteria our decisions on energy policy, the abandonment of fracking, for instance, have worked in the interests of Russia and the middle eastern oil states, on whose wish lists keeping Europe hooked on Russian energy wouild have figured close to the top. In 2014, there were reports that Anders Fogh Rasmussen, then the secretary general of Nato, had grown concerned that Putin's government was supporting propaganda campaigns to discredit fracking. Given the fanaticism of the green lobby it would not have taken much propaganda to convince people like the fanatical crusties of Exstinktion Rebellion that fracking would release a hoard of Enochian demons on the world.

Forget global warming and trying to save the planet from overheating. If we are to minimise our dependence on authoritarian dictatorships for our energy, we need to be able to make our own energy right now and that means firing up our mothballed coal and gas here and if in the long term it is shown that we need clean energy, that means hydrogen, nuclear, perhaps in the form of Small Modular Reactors or even nuclear fusion if it can be made to work economically and Thorium Molten Salt Reactors.

The point most people seem to be missing completely on the "green issues" is that the problem is not the use of cars, electricity, gas, oil, or coal. It is simply the sheer extent to which the human population on every continent has ballooned over the past century or thereabout since we developed antibiotics and mass vaccinations. Medical science has simply sidestepped almost all of nature's population control mechanisms, without the slightest attempts by anyone but China (where the one - child policy has created a hideously unbalanced society,) to do anything about the consequences of that.From the noise such people make if somebody tries to initiate a discussion on creationism or Intelligent Design one would expect them to show a little more understanding of how evolution works on a global rather than individual scale.

If the population keeps on going this way it will not matter one iota what source of energy we prefer, or whether we're all driving electric vehicles or shivering under cold showers as heat pumps fail to warm the water in the cold norther winters. The simple truth is we are taking too much from the planet because there are far, far too many of us on it now. Sure we can feed a lot more people but only by giving more land over to the intensive cultivation methods of industrialised agriculture which is actually putting more and nastier pollutants into the environment than energy production in all its forms.

Just pause a moment to think about that. Population forecasts suggest by the end of the century if current trends continue the human population will increase by 50%. Does anybody think that The Science will be able to make our environment cleaner and more pleasant when we have 4 billion more people than we have now, all of whom will need food, homes, jeans, tee-shirts, shoes, cars, mobile phones, blu-tooth earphones, televisions, skateboards, fast food, drugs, holidays etc etc etc... You get the idea. It makes zero difference to go for net zero if we cannot do something about our failure to be in balance with the rest of the world.

And yet the doyens of science in their infinite stupidity can only focus on extending the human life span still further. Pop - scientists are incapable of looking ahead to see the less fortunate consequences of their claimed successes.

The green energy rip-off is of monumental proportions and it is time there was open debate so that the many serious and well qualified scientists, environmentalists, weather watchers and economists can be given equal opportunity to put their views before a mass audience alongside the propaganda pumped out by BBC, ITN and Sky News and the print media. 

When people’s energy bills for the second quarter of 2022 land on their doormats, they're going to experience a profound shock. The increase in gas prices has already been heavily trailed, and they may be able to pay for that with a bit of belt-tightening, but electricity bills are going to hurt too, but nothing like as much as they will when we all have to support a small power station to keep our heat pumps running.