EU Electrical Prices Soar 37% over US since 2005
Britain will be paying businesses to shut down industrial production to prevent blackouts despite their staggering $US 9.4 billion/year investment in renewable energy. Yet renewables can not provide dispatchable power when it is needed.
Calgary, Alberta, Canada (PRWEB) January 02, 2014
With Bloomberg News reporting Dec. 23, 2013 persistent high unemployment in the Eurozone and beyond, and the World Bank reporting on Nov. 26, 2013 near record high food prices around the world, it is no surprise that industry and consumers are ‘going cold’ on climate change initiatives like carbon taxes.
Maurice Newman, Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council of Australia, has written a provocative op-ed published in the Australian December 31, 2013 entitled “Crowds go cold on climate cost.” In it, he presents his view that “Australia, too, has become hostage to climate change madness.” He summarizes what he sees as various exaggerations, deceptions or distortions of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming theorists, in the face of evidence of no global warming for 17 years.
Indeed, Newman’s references to the situation in Europe and the UK are shocking.
As reported in the Telegraph on Dec. 19, 2013, Britain is planning emergency energy curfews from 4-8pm nightly for businesses and industry to ensure sufficient capacity in the grid. Firms would be paid for this inconvenience; however, such measures would further hinder economic recovery and become the taxpayers’ burden.
“Britain will be paying businesses to shut down industrial production to prevent blackouts despite their staggering $US 9.4 billion/year investment in renewable energy,” says Ken Gregory, research director for Friends of Science. “These investments have destabilized the grid and carbon penalties have caused conventional power providers to shut down. Yet renewables do nothing to prevent blackouts and cannot be relied upon to provide dispatchable power when it is needed.”
The Eurozone has experienced a 37% consumer energy price rise since 2005 over US rates. According to Eurostat, “...the highest proportion of taxes in the final price of electricity for consumers was recorded in Denmark, where more than half (55.8 %) of the final price was made up of VAT, taxes and levies; Germany (44.9 %) and Portugal (43.2 %) had the next highest shares.”
All these countries experienced a ‘rush to renewables.’ In Germany, which has the highest electricity prices in Europe, an estimated 800,000 people had their power cut due to non-payment of bills. As global warming policy analyst Benny Peiser noted in an article published in The Australian Aug. 9, 2013:
“EU members states have spent about €600 billion ($882bn) on renewable energy projects since 2005, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Germany’s green energy transition alone may cost consumers up to €1 trillion by 2030...”
Peiser's article continues: “These hundreds of billions are being paid by ordinary families and small and medium-sized businesses in what is undoubtedly one of the biggest wealth transfers from poor to rich in modern European history. Rising energy bills are dampening consumers’ spending, a poisonous development for a Continent struggling with a severe economic and financial crisis.”
“Friends of Science have reviewed climate science literature for over a decade,” says Ken Gregory. “The science shows the sun is the main driver of climate change, not carbon dioxide. Therefore, these climate change measures are unnecessary and damaging.”
Gregory goes on to say: “These extreme climate change targets have done nothing of benefit to the environment. Renewables require conventional back-up 24/7.”
Award-winning Canadian economist Ross McKitrick authored a report for the Fraser Institute issued April 11, 2013 on the environmental and economic consequences of Ontario's Green Energy Act. He found renewable energy costs 10 times as much as alternative conventional power, with no reliability, a much larger footprint, and disastrous impact on taxpayers, industry and job creation.
Australia recently elected a new government on the promise of repealing the carbon tax.
“Friends of Science wish you all a Happy No Carbon Tax New Year,” says Gregory. “Join us! Help make it happen.”
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Friends of Science have spent a decade reviewing a broad spectrum of literature on climate change and have concluded the sun is the main driver of climate change, not carbon dioxide (CO2). The core group of the Friends of Science is made up of retired earth and atmospheric scientists.
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