So, Deutsche Bank reports that the increasing price of delivered electricity is prompting terrible consequences in “climate” policy leader the United Kingdom, such as moving one-quarter of households into fuel poverty (I have asked the author for a copy, which no story reporting on the report has provided).
They must be so proud. Keep reading.
The Financial Times’ coverage of this report has some nice charts including showing how this began in 2005. Which is when Europe’s policies to try and comply with its pet project, the Kyoto Protocol, came into effect. Take a look. It’s amazing.
Now, you should also know that Deutsche Bank is one of the biggest cheerleaders of these policies. They pimp for the movement. I’ve noted they seem to have the German government on board in pushing for, ah, “new entrants” into the renewable energy scheme. The same kind Spain counted on before their own bubble went bust. Germany appears to be Spain, a year or two behind. I wonder if that means DB, too.
Worse, the global head of the Frankfurt-based bank’s Deutsche Asset Management Division gives interviews sounding like Al Gore on a bad day. That’s because ”he is one of the most vocal proponents of climate change investing on Wall Street, arguing that going green makes sense not only from an ethical standpoint, but also from a financial standpoint.”
He should read his firm’s own reports. But, of course, DB is heavily invested in the stuff, being based in a country that has gone whole-hog on windmills and particularly solar panels — Germany has spent more to (chuckle) “jump-start” the latter alone in the past decade, according to EuroStat figures, than they spent to bail out Greece. Oh, and Portugal. And Ireland. Combined.
Talking one’s own book isn’t unheard of. It’s the moral preening and failure of DB and journalists to square the rhetorical and financial circles when doing that which I would address.
Oh, and before you think the consequences are some far-off European malady, last year, “Construction did not begin on a single new coal-fired power plant in the United States for the second straight year.” But binge-away on Euro-style green nonsense, we did! Leaving a certain someone who would prefer you invest in the more expensive greenie stuff they’re invested in to crow in the same story, ”Coal is a dead man walkin’”. He could be describing the UK’s economy thanks to climate policies. I also recall something about our president claiming his objective to be seeing “electricity rates…necessarily skyrocket”. Swell.
We’ll see. High falutin’ firms like DB may spend a lot of money ensuring they’ve got access to policymakers, particularly those willing to push energy-scarcity (and, thereby, energy-poverty) policies. But things like — well, the above — have a funny way of earning consideration by the people the policymakers work for.
Chris – Stellar, as usual.
No one in the administration would learn, for example, from the Calzada report showing 2.2 dirty jobs cost for every “green” energy job created in Spain. Instead, our president crows about wanting to be like Spain, wanting to bankrupt the coal industry, and making electricity rates “necessarily skyrocket”.
The green left has no clue about (or is in denial of) two cold, hard realities when it comes to energy:
1) affordable, reliable, abundant energy underpins every aspect of our economy and our quality of life. the converse will destroy it.
2) no amount of wishing or ideology can change the laws of physics and economics. The former dictates that wind/solar/biomass cannot possibly replace fossil fuels in terms of energy density, power density, power consistency/reliability. the latter is being played out in the EU signatories to Kyoto, as per this story from the UK.
No amount of good intentions (and no attempt to advance an underlying agenda wrapped up like them) will overcome these two realities. It will take an outraged public, seeing these types of green policies eroding their income and quality of life, before things change. Energy price increases combined with about 5 more winters like some the northern hemisphere has experienced since 2001 should about wake people up.
Check out the US Energy Information Administration’s global 2035 forecast, issued recently. From 80% fossil fuel-based electricity generation to 78% by 2035. Virtually no growth in fossil fuel for electricity in developed countries, all the growth in the developing countries. Despite all projected growth in alternative energy, it doesn’t knock fossil fuels down more than 2% points in the next 24 years.
Lastly, for those who whine about all the wind/solar mfg. going to China, and and those who claim we should out-subsidize China on “green energy”, I suggest you consider a different reality: China is only the beneficiary of carbon guilt in the West and the policies that emanate from it. Absent carbon guilt (renewable energy standards in the US, Kyoto in the EU), China wouldn’t be subsidizing green energy mfg at the level they are.
In effect, we are intentionally increasing our own energy costs – which cannot possibly help improve the economy, only destroy it – and economically enriching our competitors, all for a policy that will have no discernable impact on the very problem it targets in the first place (“climate”).
If George Orwell, Karl Marx, and Al Gore sat around a table, they couldn’t make this stuff up.
Spot on article, as usual. Keep chugging. Whether we get the populace to wake up before they end up in energy poverty instead, this won’t last forever.
And how ironic will it be if Solyndra and its ilk are what brings down this regime, or what ends up killing its re-election bid?