A state-owned electricity generation company could save Britons £21bn ($24.8bn) a year (or £252 per household) while accelerating the transition to green energy, according to new analysis published by the think tank Common Wealth on 6 March.
In the report, Common Wealth analyses a range of proposals recently set out by other stakeholders including government agencies, industry commentators and think tanks to reform the wholesale electricity market, whose fragmented design and over-exposure to natural gas has led to Britain experiencing disproportionately high energy bills since Russia invaded Ukraine, while renewable generators have reaped windfall profits.
Analysing the pros and cons of a publicly owned generator compared with five other proposals recently tabled by various stakeholders – a wholesale price cap for low-carbon generators; a windfall tax on low-carbon generators; a voluntary shift to contracts for difference; splitting the electricity market; and establishing a single buyer of electricity – Common Wealth finds that the option of a state-owned electricity company comes out on top, both in terms of cost-savings potential and also which is most likely to incentivise greater investment in renewables.
The generator would purchase the portfolio of existing UK low-carbon generation assets, including biomass and nuclear but not natural gas, in order to generate and sell electricity to households and businesses through an integrated public company using a power purchase agreement between the public generator and supplier, and would therefore, unlike many of the other options, “provide a long-term solution” to the wholesale pricing system while passing the savings directly back to households and businesses.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres speaks at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on February 6, 2023. (Photo: United Nations)
Original article by Kenny Stancil republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
“No more baby steps. No more excuses. No more greenwashing,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. “No more bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers.”
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres made clear Monday that securing a livable planet depends on stopping the “bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers.”
In a speech to the General Assembly, Guterres called for an end to “the merciless, relentless, senseless war on nature” that “is putting our world at immediate risk of hurtling past the 1.5°C temperature increase limit and now still moving towards a deadly 2.8°C.”
2023 must be “a year of reckoning,” the U.N. chief said as he outlined his priorities for the months ahead. “It must be a year of game-changing climate action. We need disruption to end the destruction. No more baby steps. No more excuses. No more greenwashing.”
Scientists have warned repeatedly that scaling up the extraction and burning of coal, oil, and gas is incompatible with averting the most catastrophic consequences of the climate emergency. Nevertheless, hundreds of corporations—bolstered by trillions of dollars in annual public subsidies—are still planning to ramp up planet-heating pollution in the years ahead, prioritizing profits over the lives of those who will be harmed by the ensuing chaos.
“I have a special message for fossil fuel producers and their enablers scrambling to expand production and raking in monster profits: If you cannot set a credible course for net-zero, with 2025 and 2030 targets covering all your operations, you should not be in business,” said Guterres. “Your core product is our core problem.”
“We need a renewables revolution, not a self-destructive fossil fuel resurgence,” he added.
In order to halve global greenhouse gas emissions this decade, the U.N. chief said, the world needs “far more ambitious action to cut carbon pollution by speeding up the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy—especially in G20 countries—and de-carbonizing highest emitting industrial sectors—steel, cement, shipping, and aviation.”
In addition, he continued, the world needs “a Climate Solidarity Pact in which all big emitters make an extra effort to cut emissions, and wealthier countries mobilize financial and technical resources to support emerging economies in a common effort to keep 1.5°C alive.”
“We need a renewables revolution, not a self-destructive fossil fuel resurgence.”
“Climate action is impossible without adequate finance,” Guterres noted. “Developed countries know what they must do: At minimum, deliver on commitments made at the latest COP. Make good on the $100 billion promise to developing countries. Finish the job and deliver on the Loss and Damage Fund agreed in Sharm El-Sheikh. Double adaptation funding. Replenish the Green Climate Fund by COP28. Advance plans for early warning systems to protect every person on earth within five years. And stop subsidizing fossil fuels and pivot investments to renewables.”
Like the 26 annual U.N. climate meetings that preceded it, COP27 ended last November with no commitment to a swift and just global phase-out of coal, oil, and gas.
In an effort to avoid a repeat performance at COP28 in the United Arab Emirates this December, Guterres intends to convene a “Climate Ambition Summit” in September.
“The invitation is open to any leader—in government, business, or civil society,” Guterres said Monday. “But it comes with a condition: Show us accelerated action in this decade and renewed ambitious net-zero plans—or please don’t show up.”
“COP28 in December will set the stage for the first-ever Global Stocktake—a collective moment of truth—to assess where we are, and where we need to go in the next five years to reach the Paris goals,” he continued.
Guterres added that “humanity is taking a sledgehammer to our world’s rich biodiversity—with brutal and even irreversible consequences for people and planet. Our ocean is choked by pollution, plastics, and chemicals. And vampiric overconsumption is draining the lifeblood of our planet—water.”
In 2023, the world “must also bring the Global Biodiversity Framework to life and establish a clear pathway to mobilize sufficient resources,” said the U.N. chief. “And governments must develop concrete plans to repurpose subsidies that are harming nature into incentives for conservation and sustainability.”
“Climate action is the 21st century’s greatest opportunity to drive forward all the Sustainable Development Goals,” Guterres stressed. “A clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a right we must make real for all.”
Guterres’ speech was not limited to the climate and biodiversity crises. He also emphasized the need for a “course correction” on devastating wars and raging inequality, calling for a new global economic architecture that foregrounds the needs of the poor instead of allowing the richest 1% to capture nearly half of all newly created wealth.
“This is not a time for tinkering,” said the U.N. chief. “It is a time for transformation.”
Original article by Kenny Stancil republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
[3/11/22 I’m suffering from a temporary health condition [4/11/22: Baker’s cysts] which is very painful. I’m not thinking straight and find myself shouting at people on the radio, etc because of the pain. I may have lost my way with this and it’s probably best that I leave it for a while.]
This is the article the earlier Coming soon relates to. It is getting revised and elaborated. This is my understanding and judgement. I am not claiming that it is wholly correct but it is approaching it.
Every adult has a responsibility to future generations. Current governments are woefully failing that responsibility through neglecting to address the climate crisis. There are many reasons for this which I am trying to identify in this article.
Public (private) education
Privately-funded education in UK is incorrectly called public education so that you have public schools which are actually private fee-paying schools that rich people send their children to. It is generally a high standard of education, far higher than the real pubic free schooling system provided by the government and financed through taxation.
In addition to academic achievements public school students are taught how to rule, to be in charge. Many UK politicians – particularly Conservative or ‘Tory’ politicians – are privately educated with some attending the elite Eton public school before progressing to study PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) at the highly regarded Oxford University. By contrast I was educated at many different state-run schools, left school having completed O-levels at 16 and later achieved a BSc at a polytechnic and later again a MSc at the same polytechnic which by then had converted to a post-polytechnic university. I am quite capable in different ways through my experiences and despite receiving a less than first-class educational experience.
Three aspects of the education that public school students receive in addition to the academic education – often called the ‘hidden curriculum’ – are (i) that they should be concerned only with their own welfare, (ii) that they should trust and act on their intuition disregarding and regardless of evidence to the contrary, and (iii) that they will never be held to account for their actions. These three taught aspects have awful consequences for the World since they lead to neglecting to address the climate crisis.
There is a phrase “A gentleman never lies”. What this means is that public schoolboys are never accused of lying. They do lie of course – look at Tony ‘Bliar’ Blair and Boris Johnson. Lying was Boris Johnson’s first instinct – you would be nearer the truth by believing the exact opposite of anything he said. I was out drinking and fraternising locally and this posh public schoolboy student was taking the piss out of me. He was probably a student of law or something similar. So he’s repeating to me “I’m not taking the piss out of you.” as he was taking the piss out of my beauty mark, being hugely personally insulting. So I’m repeating back “That’s exactly what you’re doing.” It’s impolite to accuse somebody of lying of course but he was a total cnut trying to invoke personal stigma not understanding the accusation of being a liar because he had never experienced that.
These posh boys are also never contradicted so that they exist in some parallel universe. Blair may well have believed in weapons of mass destruction because he had poor abilities judgement abilities. The richer they are the more detatched from reality they are. People suck up to them. You never discuss prices with these posh boys because money is not an issue for them, they’re rolling in it.
These are the people in charge, really nasty people who don’t care about anyone else, appear concerned only with the immediate, don’t seem to take anything seriously and enjoy humiliating plebs like me. I can’t say that they’re all like that of course but that’s how they’ve been moulded so it would be difficult for them to not be. So, back to the main issue here: Why governments are not addressing the climate crisis. These are the people in charge who control governments. These are the people with superyachts, the people who fly around the World in private jets who just don’t care about anyone or anything except themselves. It might be fairer to say that it is the elite of this elite that is the problem, the 1% of the 1% who depend on big oil and gas to keep them rich and powerful. What sort of cnut do you have to be to take part in space tourism?
Elite education may have been appropriate in the era of Empire but is totally inappropriate now. Elite establishments should use their lead to teach compassion, co-operation and respect for all. I appreciate that state school teachers are constrained in how they can behave and what they can teach. School students should not be bullied for being poor, independent or free-thinking as was my experience. State school teachers and lecturers need to respect students’ human rights, help young people develop their potential and encourage participation in the democratic process.
The very concept of childhood is relatively recent and even today doesn’t exist in much of the World. Children are not educated and through poverty are forced to work in much of the World.
I started this article by stating that every adult has a responsibility to future generations. Privately educated Rish! Sunak has more of a responsibility than all other UK adults since he is UK prime minister. However, by chosing to neglect the climate crisis and by actually accelerating climate destruction he is even neglecting his responsibility to his own two daughters.
Climate activists are challenged while climate destroyers are not. Where are the questions Why are you destroying the planet? You’re promoting space tourism that causes … why are you doing that? Do you realise that this superyacht causes … ?
Fossil Fuels
The fossil fuel industry has deliberately developed contemporary societies to be hugely dependent on oil and gas. UK is an oil-dependent society rather than an industrial or any other society.
Politicians are so close to the fossil fuel industry that it is difficult to distinguish them.
There is a lack of imagination, politicians and others cannot imagine anything other than oil-dependency. There are alternative, renewable sources of energy that are cleaner and cheaper and do not cause climate destruction.
Congratulations to Rishi Sunak on becoming UK's prime minister today.
His short-lived predecessor Liz Truss was not only in denial of the climate crisis but was actually actively hostile to renewable energy. Even though she only served 45 days, she imposed a windfall tax on renewables and nuclear energy only and promoted exploitation of oil and gas in the North Sea by issuing new exploration licences. [I am not supportive of nuclear energy.]
The climate is in crisis. It's deteriorating and we're regularly breaking temperature records in UK despite so-far having it very easy compared to the rest of the World. It can't be simply denied as the Tories have been doing. Denial of the climate crisis is insane. It's going to get worse and extreme protests like closing the M25 are going to increase, the idea being that the protestors are stopping normal conduct of life that is killing the planet.
Hopefully Rishi will tax the rich to pay for public services. He should know - through being filthy rich - that they're not even going to notice it.
