Despite warning of misinformation about low-carbon technologies, the CCC has been spreading its own brand of misinformation in its latest Carbon Budget
From across the pond…what is the collective thought at what will really happen by 2030?
The stated costs in the CCC report are so far from reality to be laughable. How much will the citizenry take before revolting?
There must be a huge wave of anger building at these unworkable NotZero policies, especially since they’re having no effect at all on rising global CO2 levels.
Is there any government recognition of the destructive effects of these policies on your economy?
Or am I looking at all this with too much of an American lens, and muddies g out on the big picture?
For the Sixth Carbon Budget I took the trouble to download and examine all 38 supporting documents, and then to dig back through those to identify the problems with the analysis. So far I simply haven't bothered to attempt that for the Seventh hell projection, which is simply so outlandish as to be beyond all credibility.
I suspect it might be worth considering launching a petition inviting Parliament to reject the budget as being an infeasible fantasy built on shoddy work and assumptions. Timing and media support may require some planning to maximise signatures, and tied to another event that gains publicity, such as if Milibandis sacked.
Just a little practical illustration of Heat Pump cost's.
A couple of years before covid I investigated having one installed as we were planning to add an extension to our house.
The building is/was a Grade 2 listed, EOT, three bedroom cottage, with a living room, kitchen and one bathroom. The house might best be described as 'snug'. The walls are solid 9" traditional brick.
I assembled quotations from the appropriate companies to assess the cost of the installation based on that specification, not the extended plans.
We have a large garden (long) so the quotation (from a reputable, international company) was based on a Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) rather than a cheaper Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP). The installers estimated the hardware costs and extra labour involved were probably double that of an ASHP.
£30k for the pump installed and commissioned. Extra for new radiators/plumbing etc.
Walls/ceilings required internal insulation (can't be external thanks to it's listing) and planning required for internal alterations.
Kitchen & bathroom fitting would need removal to install insulation, floors insulated (somehow) obviously necessitating new kitchen, bathroom, floor coverings and complete redecoration.
Double/triple glazing required subject to listed planning consent, which demanded timber frames (custom-made) to be in keeping with existing standards (not costed, but three of nine, custom-made, replacement, small, single glazed, 'bullseye' windows to the front of the building were £3,000 each)
Long story short, the quotations came to £100,000 before the jump in materials cost thanks to covid. Consistent with Professor Michael Kelly's £75k - £100k estimate in his report for the GWPF -'Decarbonising Housing: The net zero fantasy'. https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2020/02/KellyNetZero-2.pdf
We built a two floor extension instead using Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF), adding a bedroom, bathroom and utility room to the house, a new roof for the entire building (Welsh slate!), and new stairs (none of this included in the HP estimate) and New kitchen/bathroom fittings.
Every room (walls and ceilings) were re-plastered (traditionally), new conventional radiators fitted working with our existing combination boiler, complete redecoration of the entire house including external walls (whilst the scaffolding was up), new flooring throughout, new patio (large) and the whole house rewired and re plumbed. It was a 'turnkey' job and the house was gutted for 5 months.
Total cost - £120,000, and barely a single snag.
We have added around half the floor space of the original house and energy bills are comparable with before the building work, doubtless helped by the ICF's.
Our circumstances are somewhat unique as we are exempt from any compulsion to conform to NetZero standards because the house is listed however, the Heat Pump engineers stated that they wouldn't install one for us as no matter what we did to the house it wouldn't work well and they were concerned about getting sued.
Sorry David, this is a bit disjointed as it's all off the top of my head.
It’s very telling the contractor would not recommend or install a GSHP. Saying they’re afraid of a lawsuit tells us they knew it could not provide adequate heat for your home.
I bring that up as there must be millions of similar homes in your country.
This push for heat pumps for everyone must be tempered with this reality.
So what does your government do? Lie about costs! Even though they are certainly in possession of accurate costs from the latest ARs!
Every day the U.K. slips more into Communist Russia territory. What was it; “We know they’re lying, they know that we know they’re lying…” And so forth.
Is there any part of the government’s NetZero apparatus that is being truthful, at all?
I still don't understand why the basic math is not being openly challenged, especially since the viability of the country going forward is at stake? I suspect that part of it is that the given the "quality" of out "leaders" today, there are few who actually understand the numbers and even fewer who understand the dire consequences?
Sorry but you are doing the CCC a disservice- can you not understand that if the facts do not support the narrative, then the facts have to change and that takes a lot of jolly hard thinking- just how do you reduce a known cost of a minimum £5-8trillion to replace and upgrade the energy infrastructure to a more manageable £200billion.
I do not think that even Hans Christian Andersen could create such a fairy tale at this scale, and the real problem is that even at the end it will not work- intermittent energy is well……intermittent and therefore those gaps have to be filled with something that works.
The sad thing is that Climate Change is real, it is as real today as it was 1600 years ago when grapes were grown just North of York, North Yorkshire and turned into wine, it is as real today as it was 1,000,000 years ago and it will be as real in 1,000 years- it is as natural as day & night and lazy science has earmarked CO2 as the only culprit- not water vapour, not methane but the critical plant food that drives all life on the planet- lazy science refuses to understand simple facts- no CO2 (150ppm is the tipping point), no plant life (grasses, trees, cereals etc), no plant life no animals - ah good for vegans except the plant life has also died, so no food and mankind goes on a strict diet of death by starvation- perfect for the Malthusian ideal of wiping out humanity to save the planet but a bit of a bummer for those who would like future generations to enjoy life.
Nut Zero is a dream, and eventually the truth will be heard.
I think it is a nightmare more than a dream. We are launched in to the collective nightmare by way of 'hockey stick' modelling. Same method used for the 'pandemic'....extrapolation ( of deaths) to exponential levels because of 'cases'.
Ed Miliband is akin to a giant blimp which refuses to deflate - full of wind and hubris.
Thanks for this instructive post, David. I know for fact that Pinchbeck doesn't have a heat pump. Rank hypocrisy. Surely it's time that she got called out more publicly on this?
What's more, the main reason she doesn't have a heat pump is because it would cost in the region of £60 - 70k for her to retrofit her house accordingly (which chimes with some other comments above). She moved in early 2024; in recent interviews she's stated that she's "in the process" of getting a heat pump... it's surely time for the media and government to call her out on this. And her husband racks up thousands of airmiles every year for his job too. It stinks.
I fail to see that they are such a good idea and part of the belief in them by government must be due to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) not understanding how efficiency is worked out.
I had some communication with them a couple of years ago pointing out that their claim that a heat pump is several times more efficient than a gas boiler was an impossibility given that a gas boiler must now be 90% efficient by law and that no device is 100% efficient.
I got a reply saying one kilowatt of electricity gives a seasonal Coefficient of Performance of 2.8, which they equate to 280% efficiency. Of course they neglect to take into account that the one kilowatt of electricity consumed by the heat pump has to be generated, transmitted and distributed with considerable loss between source and consumer.
Another point is that, together with electric vehicles, until there is a significant increase in non CO2 emitting generation, heat pumps and evs will be gas powered anyway as that is what will meet the increase in grid demand. (Renewables and nuclear run at maximum available so cannot react to meet a load increase, gas does virtually all the load balancing)
This effect was quite noticable during the Covid lockdown, CO2 emissions for generation dropped, and then picked up again after the return to normal, greater demand equals more emissions in general.
You raise some good points. You may not be aware of a previous piece of energy coercion that was foisted on the population in 2018 in the form of "Boiler Plus Regulations". In addition to the 90% efficient gas boiler, installers were required to fit, and customers to pay for, an additional measure from a menu of weather compensation, load compensation, flue gas heat recovery, or smart controls, the aim being to bring net efficiency over 92%.
According to calculations I did a few years ago, regarding heat pumps v gas boilers, the Department for Energy Scarcity and Nonsense Zealotry is correct in energy terms Even with a grid powered 100% by gas, considerably less gas would be consumed in power stations supplying electricity to heat pumps in homes, compared with supplying to domestic gas boilers.
The issue is cost, both capital and running. As David has clearly laid out, misguided policies are leading to increasing electricity costs. The approach of the geniuses in charge is to cut us off from our own gas reserves and condemn us to import liquefied US gas at huge financial cost, and waste of energy in liquefaction and transport. My expectation is that they will rig prices in favour of electricity so we have both expensive gas (already several times US cost) and electricity, then proclaim in triumph the benefits of heat pumps.
This is so far in the future to be of little relevance in my world. The assumptions out to 2030 are already flawed ie offshore wind at 46GW is way off target c8GW is under construction with c9GW that if it got FID could just about scrape in. Anything from AR7 will be after 2030. Solar (i know its largely pointless) but that buildout could be achievable giving the forced approach now being adopted over planning but does the CCC consider the additional carbon impact of all the extra food imports - of course not - does it even consider carbon imports? (i haven't got the inclination to read it im afraid). Battery buildout is credible as the capacity mkt is providing a high subsidy to incentivise it.
In terms of scrutiny it will fall the Environmental Audit Committee and they seem to be more concerned about delivering the outcomes not the credibility of the assumptions so not sure that will help much. The suggestions is parliament will have to vote to accept the 7th CCC report in autumn another meaningless exercise.
In the short term better challenge could come through DENZ https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8940/the-cost-of-energy/ enquiry and hopefully David and other learned experts will be submitting evidence to this enquiry although even that has a constrained remit.
Thanks for drawing attention to the consultation. I shall now have to work out how to stay within 3,000 words. The detail on what they will take evidence on is here
Unfortunately they specify that submissions should not have been published elsewhere, including at blogs, so attempting a crowd crafted effort may require more devious tactics. However there is also little point in trying to drown them with a thousand submissions. It's hard enough to get them to read any that upset their sensibilities. Better to confine massed response to petitions.
Once published at the enquiry website it becomes possible to draw media attention to the best submissions, particularly in support of discussion of the inevitable inadequacy of the debate. Teeing the media up in advance will help.
Previous experience shows that it is best to write with numbered paragraphs. It is also possible to include illustrative charts or diagrams, and links to supporting evidence in footnotes. Submissions may be subject to minor reformatting and will be converted to pdf format from doc/odt/rtf. To avoid problems with charts it is best to paste them in png format to fix their appearance.
There are also two other enquiries with the same submission deadline: one on nuclear, and the other on building support for the energy transition.
Over two decades ago I first heard the term Lysenkoism and thought it was just a euphemism for modern times not a reality. This really is Lysenkoism. Or should we just call it Milibanditry seeing as he started the whole thing?
We can speculate on the motives for the CCC peddling disinformation, but it is clear: their behaviour is intentional and malign, despite their obvious fiscsal, engineering and scientific incompetence - which is gobsmacking by itself.
I say don't disband them. Replace them with a red team that disentangles their false and inadequate assumptions, and reports to Parliament accordingly. That would give a legal underpinning to efforts to unwind the consequent legislation, as well as completely destroying the public narrative. In some cases malfeasance in public office might be uncovered, among their consultancies too.
"They also want to cut meat consumption by a third from 1,011g per person per week to just 678g".
Whereas I would certainly prefer to eat 1 kg of red meat per DAY. As far as I can ascertain, the healthiest food for human beings whether consumed alone or with optional vegetation.
If they told the truth about the cost of Net Zero, they would all lose their very cushy, highly paid jobs.
From across the pond…what is the collective thought at what will really happen by 2030?
The stated costs in the CCC report are so far from reality to be laughable. How much will the citizenry take before revolting?
There must be a huge wave of anger building at these unworkable NotZero policies, especially since they’re having no effect at all on rising global CO2 levels.
Is there any government recognition of the destructive effects of these policies on your economy?
Or am I looking at all this with too much of an American lens, and muddies g out on the big picture?
For the Sixth Carbon Budget I took the trouble to download and examine all 38 supporting documents, and then to dig back through those to identify the problems with the analysis. So far I simply haven't bothered to attempt that for the Seventh hell projection, which is simply so outlandish as to be beyond all credibility.
I suspect it might be worth considering launching a petition inviting Parliament to reject the budget as being an infeasible fantasy built on shoddy work and assumptions. Timing and media support may require some planning to maximise signatures, and tied to another event that gains publicity, such as if Milibandis sacked.
Just a little practical illustration of Heat Pump cost's.
A couple of years before covid I investigated having one installed as we were planning to add an extension to our house.
The building is/was a Grade 2 listed, EOT, three bedroom cottage, with a living room, kitchen and one bathroom. The house might best be described as 'snug'. The walls are solid 9" traditional brick.
I assembled quotations from the appropriate companies to assess the cost of the installation based on that specification, not the extended plans.
We have a large garden (long) so the quotation (from a reputable, international company) was based on a Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) rather than a cheaper Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP). The installers estimated the hardware costs and extra labour involved were probably double that of an ASHP.
£30k for the pump installed and commissioned. Extra for new radiators/plumbing etc.
Walls/ceilings required internal insulation (can't be external thanks to it's listing) and planning required for internal alterations.
Kitchen & bathroom fitting would need removal to install insulation, floors insulated (somehow) obviously necessitating new kitchen, bathroom, floor coverings and complete redecoration.
Double/triple glazing required subject to listed planning consent, which demanded timber frames (custom-made) to be in keeping with existing standards (not costed, but three of nine, custom-made, replacement, small, single glazed, 'bullseye' windows to the front of the building were £3,000 each)
Long story short, the quotations came to £100,000 before the jump in materials cost thanks to covid. Consistent with Professor Michael Kelly's £75k - £100k estimate in his report for the GWPF -'Decarbonising Housing: The net zero fantasy'. https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2020/02/KellyNetZero-2.pdf
We built a two floor extension instead using Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF), adding a bedroom, bathroom and utility room to the house, a new roof for the entire building (Welsh slate!), and new stairs (none of this included in the HP estimate) and New kitchen/bathroom fittings.
Every room (walls and ceilings) were re-plastered (traditionally), new conventional radiators fitted working with our existing combination boiler, complete redecoration of the entire house including external walls (whilst the scaffolding was up), new flooring throughout, new patio (large) and the whole house rewired and re plumbed. It was a 'turnkey' job and the house was gutted for 5 months.
Total cost - £120,000, and barely a single snag.
We have added around half the floor space of the original house and energy bills are comparable with before the building work, doubtless helped by the ICF's.
Our circumstances are somewhat unique as we are exempt from any compulsion to conform to NetZero standards because the house is listed however, the Heat Pump engineers stated that they wouldn't install one for us as no matter what we did to the house it wouldn't work well and they were concerned about getting sued.
Sorry David, this is a bit disjointed as it's all off the top of my head.
Thank you, David, for all the detail.
It’s very telling the contractor would not recommend or install a GSHP. Saying they’re afraid of a lawsuit tells us they knew it could not provide adequate heat for your home.
I bring that up as there must be millions of similar homes in your country.
This push for heat pumps for everyone must be tempered with this reality.
So what does your government do? Lie about costs! Even though they are certainly in possession of accurate costs from the latest ARs!
Every day the U.K. slips more into Communist Russia territory. What was it; “We know they’re lying, they know that we know they’re lying…” And so forth.
Is there any part of the government’s NetZero apparatus that is being truthful, at all?
I still don't understand why the basic math is not being openly challenged, especially since the viability of the country going forward is at stake? I suspect that part of it is that the given the "quality" of out "leaders" today, there are few who actually understand the numbers and even fewer who understand the dire consequences?
By "levelised cost", they presumably mean the cost "level" which is necessary to make any sense and justify the Net Zero projections?
That's how the Carbon Tax is supposed to work.
Thanks for a brilliant article!
Sorry but you are doing the CCC a disservice- can you not understand that if the facts do not support the narrative, then the facts have to change and that takes a lot of jolly hard thinking- just how do you reduce a known cost of a minimum £5-8trillion to replace and upgrade the energy infrastructure to a more manageable £200billion.
I do not think that even Hans Christian Andersen could create such a fairy tale at this scale, and the real problem is that even at the end it will not work- intermittent energy is well……intermittent and therefore those gaps have to be filled with something that works.
The sad thing is that Climate Change is real, it is as real today as it was 1600 years ago when grapes were grown just North of York, North Yorkshire and turned into wine, it is as real today as it was 1,000,000 years ago and it will be as real in 1,000 years- it is as natural as day & night and lazy science has earmarked CO2 as the only culprit- not water vapour, not methane but the critical plant food that drives all life on the planet- lazy science refuses to understand simple facts- no CO2 (150ppm is the tipping point), no plant life (grasses, trees, cereals etc), no plant life no animals - ah good for vegans except the plant life has also died, so no food and mankind goes on a strict diet of death by starvation- perfect for the Malthusian ideal of wiping out humanity to save the planet but a bit of a bummer for those who would like future generations to enjoy life.
Nut Zero is a dream, and eventually the truth will be heard.
I think it is a nightmare more than a dream. We are launched in to the collective nightmare by way of 'hockey stick' modelling. Same method used for the 'pandemic'....extrapolation ( of deaths) to exponential levels because of 'cases'.
Ed Miliband is akin to a giant blimp which refuses to deflate - full of wind and hubris.
Thanks for this instructive post, David. I know for fact that Pinchbeck doesn't have a heat pump. Rank hypocrisy. Surely it's time that she got called out more publicly on this?
What's more, the main reason she doesn't have a heat pump is because it would cost in the region of £60 - 70k for her to retrofit her house accordingly (which chimes with some other comments above). She moved in early 2024; in recent interviews she's stated that she's "in the process" of getting a heat pump... it's surely time for the media and government to call her out on this. And her husband racks up thousands of airmiles every year for his job too. It stinks.
Very instructive.....I've learned so much about energy and carbon budgets and the CCC from this substack.
Heat pumps in particular interest me.
I fail to see that they are such a good idea and part of the belief in them by government must be due to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) not understanding how efficiency is worked out.
I had some communication with them a couple of years ago pointing out that their claim that a heat pump is several times more efficient than a gas boiler was an impossibility given that a gas boiler must now be 90% efficient by law and that no device is 100% efficient.
I got a reply saying one kilowatt of electricity gives a seasonal Coefficient of Performance of 2.8, which they equate to 280% efficiency. Of course they neglect to take into account that the one kilowatt of electricity consumed by the heat pump has to be generated, transmitted and distributed with considerable loss between source and consumer.
Another point is that, together with electric vehicles, until there is a significant increase in non CO2 emitting generation, heat pumps and evs will be gas powered anyway as that is what will meet the increase in grid demand. (Renewables and nuclear run at maximum available so cannot react to meet a load increase, gas does virtually all the load balancing)
This effect was quite noticable during the Covid lockdown, CO2 emissions for generation dropped, and then picked up again after the return to normal, greater demand equals more emissions in general.
You raise some good points. You may not be aware of a previous piece of energy coercion that was foisted on the population in 2018 in the form of "Boiler Plus Regulations". In addition to the 90% efficient gas boiler, installers were required to fit, and customers to pay for, an additional measure from a menu of weather compensation, load compensation, flue gas heat recovery, or smart controls, the aim being to bring net efficiency over 92%.
According to calculations I did a few years ago, regarding heat pumps v gas boilers, the Department for Energy Scarcity and Nonsense Zealotry is correct in energy terms Even with a grid powered 100% by gas, considerably less gas would be consumed in power stations supplying electricity to heat pumps in homes, compared with supplying to domestic gas boilers.
The issue is cost, both capital and running. As David has clearly laid out, misguided policies are leading to increasing electricity costs. The approach of the geniuses in charge is to cut us off from our own gas reserves and condemn us to import liquefied US gas at huge financial cost, and waste of energy in liquefaction and transport. My expectation is that they will rig prices in favour of electricity so we have both expensive gas (already several times US cost) and electricity, then proclaim in triumph the benefits of heat pumps.
This is so far in the future to be of little relevance in my world. The assumptions out to 2030 are already flawed ie offshore wind at 46GW is way off target c8GW is under construction with c9GW that if it got FID could just about scrape in. Anything from AR7 will be after 2030. Solar (i know its largely pointless) but that buildout could be achievable giving the forced approach now being adopted over planning but does the CCC consider the additional carbon impact of all the extra food imports - of course not - does it even consider carbon imports? (i haven't got the inclination to read it im afraid). Battery buildout is credible as the capacity mkt is providing a high subsidy to incentivise it.
In terms of scrutiny it will fall the Environmental Audit Committee and they seem to be more concerned about delivering the outcomes not the credibility of the assumptions so not sure that will help much. The suggestions is parliament will have to vote to accept the 7th CCC report in autumn another meaningless exercise.
In the short term better challenge could come through DENZ https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8940/the-cost-of-energy/ enquiry and hopefully David and other learned experts will be submitting evidence to this enquiry although even that has a constrained remit.
Thanks for drawing attention to the consultation. I shall now have to work out how to stay within 3,000 words. The detail on what they will take evidence on is here
https://committees.parliament.uk/call-for-evidence/3596/
Unfortunately they specify that submissions should not have been published elsewhere, including at blogs, so attempting a crowd crafted effort may require more devious tactics. However there is also little point in trying to drown them with a thousand submissions. It's hard enough to get them to read any that upset their sensibilities. Better to confine massed response to petitions.
Once published at the enquiry website it becomes possible to draw media attention to the best submissions, particularly in support of discussion of the inevitable inadequacy of the debate. Teeing the media up in advance will help.
Previous experience shows that it is best to write with numbered paragraphs. It is also possible to include illustrative charts or diagrams, and links to supporting evidence in footnotes. Submissions may be subject to minor reformatting and will be converted to pdf format from doc/odt/rtf. To avoid problems with charts it is best to paste them in png format to fix their appearance.
There are also two other enquiries with the same submission deadline: one on nuclear, and the other on building support for the energy transition.
I've drafted a response to the call for evidence. I will send it in and publish on here in due course when the deadline is passed.
Over two decades ago I first heard the term Lysenkoism and thought it was just a euphemism for modern times not a reality. This really is Lysenkoism. Or should we just call it Milibanditry seeing as he started the whole thing?
We can speculate on the motives for the CCC peddling disinformation, but it is clear: their behaviour is intentional and malign, despite their obvious fiscsal, engineering and scientific incompetence - which is gobsmacking by itself.
There set up with that aim surely?
Thanks David. Another well written insightful article.
Maybe we should sub-contact Elon to have a quick look at the CCC?
I did that last year.
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/disband-the-climate-change-committee?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=nhgn1
I say don't disband them. Replace them with a red team that disentangles their false and inadequate assumptions, and reports to Parliament accordingly. That would give a legal underpinning to efforts to unwind the consequent legislation, as well as completely destroying the public narrative. In some cases malfeasance in public office might be uncovered, among their consultancies too.
Will they guarantee these projections? And if not can we get our money back?
Nah, didn't think so
"They also want to cut meat consumption by a third from 1,011g per person per week to just 678g".
Whereas I would certainly prefer to eat 1 kg of red meat per DAY. As far as I can ascertain, the healthiest food for human beings whether consumed alone or with optional vegetation.