It seems as though Reform are using their position in the poles to dampen down enthusiasm from investors for extracting money from the tax payers by threatening taxing the renewable industry when they get into power, which at this state of enthusiasm looks like 2029. Does anybody have any other ideas for reducing the investment in renewables while siliband is in control? The numeric amongst us can see that this is all madness. I have found for instance that some of my friends are unable to read graphs even though they have done numeric jobs such as quantity surveying. What is the best way to explain the madness of the net zero concept without graphs?
The Reform threat has limited credibility. Renewables contracts are well protected in law from special taxes. As Reform have no real plan for how to proceed, except Just Stop Batteries and force the grid underground at huge expense and nationalise at huge expense they will simply be laughed at, and faced with the reality that they need a functioning grid if things are not to descend into chaos. They desperately need to get serious about energy policy, and devise something workable.
As to your friends it's probably best to start with understanding why they think net zero works to find out which propaganda lies they are really relying on for ignoring reality. Are they like Monty Python's Black Knight, with every impost generating a "Tis but a scratch!" response - because of a fundamental fear of the precautionary principle? Do they rely on claims that it will really, really be cheaper in the end? Do they think the rest of the world will follow? Do they understand intermittency and storage?
Identify the key beliefs, and then discover what motivates them: peer pressure (especiallyat work), heard it on the BBC which is wisdom, taught in school (or children were) etc.
Then understand what can persuade them to change their minds on each plank of net zero, but particularly the key ones. Religious belief, like Trump Derangement Syndrome can be very hard to tackle, as it tends to include a refusal to consider alternatives. Best to concentrate on those who are more open to ideas, and who at least acknowledge their bills are going up.
How can anybody in the UK possibly look at the first graph (electricity cost) and possibly claim that the UK is on the right track? Even with entrenched stupidity in states like California and New York, the USA is in vastly better shape than the UK. There is NO WAY the UK can compete with the USA (or China) in any kind of manufacturing, especially now that Trump is president. How can anybody in the UK possibly look at the second graph (energy consumption by source) and claim that anything the UK does will make any real difference to anybody, except to people hurt by destroying the economy of the UK. Truly, truly, truly, stupid is as stupid does.
The argument for an anti-Net Zero pro-decarbonisation Left is rarely made—and yet, it is becoming increasingly urgent.
Net Zero, in its current neoliberal form, is not an emancipatory project but a state-managed mechanism of financial extraction. It facilitates the wholesale transfer of public assets—land, infrastructure, and energy—into the hands of a global rentier class, reinforcing the position of capital while stripping workers of economic security.
This process reflects the hollowing out of state capacity in Britain, where regulatory bodies and political institutions have been captured by the very interests they are supposed to regulate. Charlatans like Pinchbeck, ascending to positions of influence over climate policy, exemplify how expertise has been replaced by corporate signaling. This is not an accident but a feature of Net Zero as currently constituted—it is a vehicle for wealth consolidation rather than environmental transformation.
The globalist creditor class—represented by figures like Larry Fink and his associates—is leveraging Net Zero to absorb state assets into private investment vehicles, setting the stage for Britain’s future as a low-cost, deregulated vassal state. The Great British Energy Sell-Off is already underway, backed by a Labour Party eager to present itself as a stable manager of capital’s interests.
Here is my ChatGPT summary:
The Story So Far: The Road to Britain’s Financial Subjugation
1. Labour as the Stabilization Party
Early 2024: Rachel Reeves flies to Wall Street, making the case for Britain as a safe investment haven, a de-risked landscape for capital in the wake of Tory economic chaos.
Wall Street's Response: Larry and his network signal interest—on the condition of deepening privatization and regulatory rollback. Net Zero serves as a key vector for this, allowing capital to absorb land, energy assets, and infrastructure under the banner of green transition.
Labour’s July 2024 Victory: The party secures a landslide win, but its economic policy remains hostage to capital markets.
2. The State as a Mediator of Financial Power
Labour’s First Moves: Reeves prioritizes fiscal discipline, promising spending restraint while quietly aligning with deregulatory policies favored by BlackRock, the City, and Wall Street.
The Structural Trap: With the state lacking autonomous fiscal power, financial actors use the threat of bond sell-offs and capital flight to discipline Labour into pursuing the neoliberal status quo.
The Soft Coup of Financial Capital: As growth stalls, pressure mounts for further asset liquidation, particularly in energy and housing.
3. Trump’s Return and the Shift to Hard Deregulation
Late 2024: Trump secures re-election, redefining the political-economic environment. Suddenly, Wall Street and City financiers see a faster route to deregulation through a Tory-Reform coalition rather than a slow-moving Labour government.
Capital’s Betrayal of Labour: Just as Labour begins implementing its cautious, market-friendly Net Zero strategy, financiers pivot towards the hard-right, pro-deregulation bloc.
The Market Revolt: Bond sell-offs intensify, and the Bank of England hikes interest rates, triggering an engineered recession that further erodes Labour’s standing.
4. The Fire Sale and Final Collapse
Labour’s Desperation: With capital turning against them, Reeves makes a last-ditch attempt to court Chinese investment, following the Milei-Argentina model of geopolitical hedging.
The Orchestrated Crisis: City elites bide their time, waiting for Labour’s collapse, knowing a Tory-Reform coalition will accelerate deregulation, privatization, and the final sell-off of British assets.
The Scandal as Execution: A manufactured scandal emerges: Rachel Reeves is exposed for past financial misdeeds at Lloyds Bank Scotland, a revelation conveniently timed to further weaken the government’s position.
Net Zero is not simply an economic policy—it is a legitimation strategy for key parts of the Labour Party base that they campaigned on, designed to reconcile two contradictions of neoliberal capitalism:
The Need for Growth→ Net Zero creates a new asset class (carbon markets, land acquisitions, green infrastructure) that capital can enclose.
The Need to Retain Political Buy-In under conditions of Chronic Inequality → Green rhetoric provides the illusion of progressive change, even as material conditions worsen for workers.
This is why the Left must abandon its passive endorsement of Net Zero in its neoliberal form. Without a counter-hegemonic vision of public ownership, democratic energy systems, and de-financialization, Net Zero becomes a Trojan horse for wealth extraction.
A Left-Wing Vision for Energy Sovereignty
Instead of the Net Zero wealth transfer, the Left must demand:
Public Ownership of Energy Infrastructure → Ending subsidies for corporate-owned renewables and nationalizing energy production under worker and community control.
Democratization of Investment → Instead of funneling resources into private equity-led projects, a Left alternative should establish a public energy investment bank, ensuring funding is worker-directed, not finance-led.
Breaking Financial Dependence → The Left must oppose the model of financialized green capitalism, replacing it with direct state investment and community energy systems that help us live higher quality decarbonised lives.
Reframing the Narrative → Net Zero should not be about stability for investors, but radical re-industrialization, de-commodification of energy, and working-class control over economic planning.
The anti-Net Zero Left is not anti-climate action—it is against the capture of climate policy by finance capital. Without direct intervention, Net Zero will deepen economic inequality, entrench financial power, and erode state autonomy.
The task ahead is to redefine the energy transition as a site of political struggle, where legitimacy is grounded in democratic control and economic justice, not in the dictates of BlackRock and the City. Only by rejecting the current neoliberal framework can the Left build a genuine revolutionary subjectivity, capable of reclaiming the future from the global creditor class.
Pinchbeck was a typical DEI hire, let’s not pretend otherwise - a degree in Classics won’t help her in energy competence, but she will be another perfect ‘yes Sir’ for the globalist net zero scammers and that’s the main requirement in this position
Ms Pinchbeck has an interesting work history, she seems to have been parachuted into the role of a chief executive at the beginning of her career and has never looked back. According to her LinkedIn page she has never actually worked in any real part of the Energy industry, though she has had various roles described as involving climate change.
As a Classics graduate, I bet she's read Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, and I think this is where she draws her expertise from - i.e. the White Queen who makes a habit of believing six impossible things before breakfast, because whole economy decarbonisation probably requires one to believe six impossible things before breakfast, each day, for at least a month! In fact, that's probably why a year ago, she turned up to Downing Street still wearing her dressing gown, because she was too busy believing six impossible things! (She's deleted her old @ELPinchbeck account on X - I wonder why?)
We have been spoilt for choice with politicians and quangocrats spouting nonsense in recent days with several Select Committee hearings, an Urgent Question, the announcement about increasing the rate of subsidy for Drax to ~£160/MWh CFD strike price, Wera Hobhouse calling for highergas prices in the Westminster Hall debate on cheaper energy, blind expectation that doing the same thing over again on trying to force households to invest in insulation will work this time, even if tenants are thrown on the streets. All the usual guff.
But for me probably the biggest disappointment was Reform launching utterly impractical ideas as if they were a protest party who never expects their ideas to be implemented. They have no idea and no plan on how to really unwind net zero successfully.
Trying to tax away renewables subsidies will not work: they are embedded in contracts that guarantee compensation if there is any attempt to claw subsidies back through taxes. There is already case law about this. It's whytge Torieswere unable to impose Generator Levy on subsidised renewables despite in many cases outrageous profit levels.
Telling National Grid to bury all transmission lines would simply impose massive costs on consumers and not inconsiderable disruption: it's ignorant 5th form politics.
Banning all battery systems already on the grid risks destabilising it with consequent blackouts: the grid now depends on them to operate. Not the way to gain favour from voters.
They also need to ditch the idea that they would nationalise the energy industry. It would be very costly at the expense of taxpayers and other programmes, and do nothing to improve matters. It is already operating under highly centralised control.
Its very disappointing to see Reform not taking there lead from NZW and the likes of David and others as well as commentators like yourself who have the raw indisputable facts. Problem is its only Reform that are likely to ignite this debate so are the only way to getting a groundswell debate going that might then wake up the other parties.
Got a piece on this coming later this week. I didn't know about the tax case law for CfDs/ROCs. Can you point me to a link. I might have to edit the article.
Mr Turver, you sum it up with: "...inconsistent and incoherent....". She's lying. She knows she's lying, MPs know she's lying, they all know they know they're lying but they can't stop because then well, the Emperor Has No Clothes On and the entire scam falls apart.
If unreliables worked they would not need subsidy. The market would already provide them.
They don't, and they do; so government forces them on us. Government deliberately breaks the market for energy, slaps the cost on our bills and worse, points to energy companies to blame.
The sad thing is most people do. Complicated things like revenue before and after taxes, or something as simple as 'business does NOT pay tax' is lost on most folk. They don't look at what comprises their bills, they just get angry. The state blames Russia, or better yet 'that it is right we should pay more to save the planet' Milioaf, when he forced the climate change act on us - and slapped his energy bills - (some 4 times the average for his property) on the tax payer.
I fully appreciate your view, and it's impossible to be certain, but I genuinely fear those in charge are sincere but brainwashed into believing their own rubbish, and that they really are that stupid, ignorant and incompetent, which is a far more frightening prospect. As I always point out, liars at least know what the truth is. I have read an insider's opinion that it takes a decade doing real work within the energy industry to know how it really works - seems reasonable to me as a qualification for authority on the subject. It may explain the enthusiasm in some quarters for Chris Wright's appointment in the US.
Well done David for ploughing through so many interminable pages of guff from these two committee meetings. Four pages out of 36 of the Scottish one was all I could stand.
Do you know that the target of the holier than thou Scottish so-called government is to achieve Net Zero by 2045? And energy is not even a devolved issue in Scotland!
It was disappointing that Christopher Chope asked such tame questions at the DESNZ committee. He was one of only five MPs who voted against the 2008 Climate Change Act. He should ask what is the point of unilateral UK Net Zero when most of the rest of the world, now including the USA, doesn’t give a fig for Net Zero. And if the lying reply is that renewables are cheaper, follow up by asking why the rest of the world clearly doesn’t agree.
Mr Brodie, it doesn't matter what anyone else does. 'Net zero' is simply a mechanism for moving private wealth into public hands. That's what it's intended to do. Nothing else. The state isn't going to let something as annoying as reality - let alone energy production supply and demand! - get in the way of its tax scam.
Big money will always find a way to exploit governments stupidity but the likes of NESO and OFGEM should be there to check it but im afraid the UK has been utterly inept at regulating anything.
Obviously I realise that Net Zero is a scam but I don’t agree there is nothing we can do about it. We can do what the American people just did in voting out the Net Zero nutters (Democrats) and voting in a common sense Net Zero agnostic. In the UK that means voting out the Lab/Con/Lib Dem/SNP Uniparty and voting in Reform UK, the only Westminster party committed to scrapping Net Zero.
OMG. It's dire isn't it. The Mad Hatter's Tea Party in the English and Scottish parliaments, with Pinchbeck, the White Queen, telling us how she believes in six impossible things before breakfast and nobody enquiring how.
I'm fascinated to learn that pinchbeck is an alloy of copper and zinc, i.e. brass, invented to simulate the appearance of gold, as you say 'a cheap imitation' which sums up Ms Pinchbeck quite nicely, as well as the CCC, as well as the entire 'renewables' scam which she is brainlessly and dishonestly promoting. Even more apt - she certainly has some 'brass neck', I'll give her that!
I used to live close to Pinchbeck in Lincolnshire and would often wander around the farmland and marshland footpaths with my two dogs. The entire area is already blighted by an ugly wind installation and it is the site of the Viking Interconnector connection to the National Grid. It will no doubt be blighted by even more turbines, solar panels and mega pylons as Mad Ed attempts to make his impossible Net Zero grid 2030 dream come true. Which means lots more copper and zinc in Pinchbeck, for cables, batteries and solar panels! You really can't make this shit up.
And thank you Doug and Joe for informing us of the Viking origin of Quines (women) and Loons (men). We then have an LGBTQ 'Just Transition' which benefits all Loons of Great Britain, Trans and Quines! Fraser Stewart and the other arts graduates will love this interpretation no doubt - although they might quibble about the need for a '+' on the end.
You’ve probably got quite a lot of Viking influence where you live, just across the water from the Isle of Man and Snow Fell (Snå Fjell). By the way, “loon” is not Viking. Maybe it's Doric as Joe suggests.
Last August - just before she joined the CCC - I loosely transcribed an interview with Emma Pinchbeck on PM. She spoke fluently, but incoherently, blaming the international price of gas for high electricity prices. [As is always the case, neither party involved noted that there are many other countries, also seemingly helpless in the face of the merciless international gas price, which have much lower electricity costs than the UK does.] Cliscep link: https://cliscep.com/2024/08/24/the-bill-gets-bigger/
That this transition, if it ever happens, will increase electricity costs is quite obvious. You do not need to crunch any numbers to know that if you engage in a vast overbuild of capacity in order to ameliorate the times when neither solar nor wind are of use, string out vast lengths of extension leads to far-flung places to bring wind-harvested power back to where it is needed, maintain the entire fleet of gas turbines on standby and add on myriad grid-stabilisation features, while the only saving is the reduced combustion of gas, that your system will inevitably cost more than before.
These days I can only think of one thing: how do we sue these people for fraud and stop this in its tracks? We don't have a President who can issue an Executive Order. Do we get this done through a question to parliament?
I asked for Climate Change science verification documents and the government just pointed to the IPCC. For those who don't know what that means, it is them saying that academic science and opinions are sufficient for taking an idea and applying it directly to the real world when at the same time any other scientific idea has to be distilled through the engineering and audit process to be deemed safe.
All of the electrical sockets in a building may be marked as 240V but you still need to physically test them.
For some reason any wild idea that a government comes up with bypasses accountability until way after the fact and the damage is done. Look at ULEZ in London. The minute a more right-leaning mayor is elected all of that is gone. Because it's just a money grab. There is no way to verify improved health of people caused by seemingly reduced emissions from cars. That all came from a 2012 EU-wide correlation study based off of simplistic advocacy models.
So there must be a barrister or solicitor who reads these pages. How do we do it? How do we finally drive a stake in this Net Zero vampire?
The professional liars trying to implement infeasible policies forced on them by their globalist overlords are a hapless bunch. They are crashing into stark reality on multiple fronts and it’s suddenly got much worse now that the new US government is calling out their madness.
The huge spike in global temperatures caused by the Hunga Tonga eruption has confused the issue over the last couple of years. I referred to it in my “debunking” paper and also the looming cold phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). Unfortunately, I omitted to refer to the looming cold phase of the Grand Solar Minimum (GSM). I was reminded of the latter through Tom Nelson’s latest podcast, an interview of solar scientist Valentina Zharkova. She says we have already entered a GSM which will take off in earnest in 2031 and last until 2053. Her studies show that GSMs occur on a 400-year cycle, the last being the freezing Maunder Minimum: https://rumble.com/v6h1uts-valentina-zharkova-grand-solar-minimum-is-underway-tom-nelson-pod-278.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp.
We are about to enter the cold phase of the 60-70-year AMO, the last of which provoked a “How to Survive the Coming Ice Age” cover on Time Magazine. The coincidence of these two cycles means that it could soon get very cold, the last thing we need after wrecking our energy infrastructure for Net Zero: https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/global-boiling-is-toast-will-global.
Excellent confirmation that just about everything is wrong with this Climate Change nonsense. Global warming, nope, actually the opposite is just round the corner. The young would do well to move South with the swallows.
Thank you David. I'm finding it hard to take in just how bad things have got. It's like hearing the voice of the "surgeon" as the anaesthetic starts to take hold: "I've just come down from a PPE degree at Oxford and thought it would be rather jolly to have a go at this for a bit. Ouch, that's sharp!". Or, as you're sitting on the runway about to take off, and the cabin intercom's been left on: "Ooh, what a lot of dials and switches - I wonder what this big one does? It's nothing like my Mini".
Also, I've noticed that "experts" pictured pronouncing on mining and minerals always seem to be smartly dressed in comfy surroundings, and never in front of a dusty hole in the ground.
Having scanned the Climate Committee minutes, I also notice that there are virtually no numbers. It is very easy to make all sorts of good sounding statements when they are not backed up with numerical facts.
A "just transition" would be proper well paid green jobs in the UK not importing all the high value kit.
It seems as though Reform are using their position in the poles to dampen down enthusiasm from investors for extracting money from the tax payers by threatening taxing the renewable industry when they get into power, which at this state of enthusiasm looks like 2029. Does anybody have any other ideas for reducing the investment in renewables while siliband is in control? The numeric amongst us can see that this is all madness. I have found for instance that some of my friends are unable to read graphs even though they have done numeric jobs such as quantity surveying. What is the best way to explain the madness of the net zero concept without graphs?
The Reform threat has limited credibility. Renewables contracts are well protected in law from special taxes. As Reform have no real plan for how to proceed, except Just Stop Batteries and force the grid underground at huge expense and nationalise at huge expense they will simply be laughed at, and faced with the reality that they need a functioning grid if things are not to descend into chaos. They desperately need to get serious about energy policy, and devise something workable.
As to your friends it's probably best to start with understanding why they think net zero works to find out which propaganda lies they are really relying on for ignoring reality. Are they like Monty Python's Black Knight, with every impost generating a "Tis but a scratch!" response - because of a fundamental fear of the precautionary principle? Do they rely on claims that it will really, really be cheaper in the end? Do they think the rest of the world will follow? Do they understand intermittency and storage?
Identify the key beliefs, and then discover what motivates them: peer pressure (especiallyat work), heard it on the BBC which is wisdom, taught in school (or children were) etc.
Then understand what can persuade them to change their minds on each plank of net zero, but particularly the key ones. Religious belief, like Trump Derangement Syndrome can be very hard to tackle, as it tends to include a refusal to consider alternatives. Best to concentrate on those who are more open to ideas, and who at least acknowledge their bills are going up.
I have to think about that.
How can anybody in the UK possibly look at the first graph (electricity cost) and possibly claim that the UK is on the right track? Even with entrenched stupidity in states like California and New York, the USA is in vastly better shape than the UK. There is NO WAY the UK can compete with the USA (or China) in any kind of manufacturing, especially now that Trump is president. How can anybody in the UK possibly look at the second graph (energy consumption by source) and claim that anything the UK does will make any real difference to anybody, except to people hurt by destroying the economy of the UK. Truly, truly, truly, stupid is as stupid does.
The argument for an anti-Net Zero pro-decarbonisation Left is rarely made—and yet, it is becoming increasingly urgent.
Net Zero, in its current neoliberal form, is not an emancipatory project but a state-managed mechanism of financial extraction. It facilitates the wholesale transfer of public assets—land, infrastructure, and energy—into the hands of a global rentier class, reinforcing the position of capital while stripping workers of economic security.
This process reflects the hollowing out of state capacity in Britain, where regulatory bodies and political institutions have been captured by the very interests they are supposed to regulate. Charlatans like Pinchbeck, ascending to positions of influence over climate policy, exemplify how expertise has been replaced by corporate signaling. This is not an accident but a feature of Net Zero as currently constituted—it is a vehicle for wealth consolidation rather than environmental transformation.
The globalist creditor class—represented by figures like Larry Fink and his associates—is leveraging Net Zero to absorb state assets into private investment vehicles, setting the stage for Britain’s future as a low-cost, deregulated vassal state. The Great British Energy Sell-Off is already underway, backed by a Labour Party eager to present itself as a stable manager of capital’s interests.
Here is my ChatGPT summary:
The Story So Far: The Road to Britain’s Financial Subjugation
1. Labour as the Stabilization Party
Early 2024: Rachel Reeves flies to Wall Street, making the case for Britain as a safe investment haven, a de-risked landscape for capital in the wake of Tory economic chaos.
Wall Street's Response: Larry and his network signal interest—on the condition of deepening privatization and regulatory rollback. Net Zero serves as a key vector for this, allowing capital to absorb land, energy assets, and infrastructure under the banner of green transition.
Labour’s July 2024 Victory: The party secures a landslide win, but its economic policy remains hostage to capital markets.
2. The State as a Mediator of Financial Power
Labour’s First Moves: Reeves prioritizes fiscal discipline, promising spending restraint while quietly aligning with deregulatory policies favored by BlackRock, the City, and Wall Street.
The Structural Trap: With the state lacking autonomous fiscal power, financial actors use the threat of bond sell-offs and capital flight to discipline Labour into pursuing the neoliberal status quo.
The Soft Coup of Financial Capital: As growth stalls, pressure mounts for further asset liquidation, particularly in energy and housing.
3. Trump’s Return and the Shift to Hard Deregulation
Late 2024: Trump secures re-election, redefining the political-economic environment. Suddenly, Wall Street and City financiers see a faster route to deregulation through a Tory-Reform coalition rather than a slow-moving Labour government.
Capital’s Betrayal of Labour: Just as Labour begins implementing its cautious, market-friendly Net Zero strategy, financiers pivot towards the hard-right, pro-deregulation bloc.
The Market Revolt: Bond sell-offs intensify, and the Bank of England hikes interest rates, triggering an engineered recession that further erodes Labour’s standing.
4. The Fire Sale and Final Collapse
Labour’s Desperation: With capital turning against them, Reeves makes a last-ditch attempt to court Chinese investment, following the Milei-Argentina model of geopolitical hedging.
The Orchestrated Crisis: City elites bide their time, waiting for Labour’s collapse, knowing a Tory-Reform coalition will accelerate deregulation, privatization, and the final sell-off of British assets.
The Scandal as Execution: A manufactured scandal emerges: Rachel Reeves is exposed for past financial misdeeds at Lloyds Bank Scotland, a revelation conveniently timed to further weaken the government’s position.
Net Zero is not simply an economic policy—it is a legitimation strategy for key parts of the Labour Party base that they campaigned on, designed to reconcile two contradictions of neoliberal capitalism:
The Need for Growth→ Net Zero creates a new asset class (carbon markets, land acquisitions, green infrastructure) that capital can enclose.
The Need to Retain Political Buy-In under conditions of Chronic Inequality → Green rhetoric provides the illusion of progressive change, even as material conditions worsen for workers.
This is why the Left must abandon its passive endorsement of Net Zero in its neoliberal form. Without a counter-hegemonic vision of public ownership, democratic energy systems, and de-financialization, Net Zero becomes a Trojan horse for wealth extraction.
A Left-Wing Vision for Energy Sovereignty
Instead of the Net Zero wealth transfer, the Left must demand:
Public Ownership of Energy Infrastructure → Ending subsidies for corporate-owned renewables and nationalizing energy production under worker and community control.
Democratization of Investment → Instead of funneling resources into private equity-led projects, a Left alternative should establish a public energy investment bank, ensuring funding is worker-directed, not finance-led.
Breaking Financial Dependence → The Left must oppose the model of financialized green capitalism, replacing it with direct state investment and community energy systems that help us live higher quality decarbonised lives.
Reframing the Narrative → Net Zero should not be about stability for investors, but radical re-industrialization, de-commodification of energy, and working-class control over economic planning.
The anti-Net Zero Left is not anti-climate action—it is against the capture of climate policy by finance capital. Without direct intervention, Net Zero will deepen economic inequality, entrench financial power, and erode state autonomy.
The task ahead is to redefine the energy transition as a site of political struggle, where legitimacy is grounded in democratic control and economic justice, not in the dictates of BlackRock and the City. Only by rejecting the current neoliberal framework can the Left build a genuine revolutionary subjectivity, capable of reclaiming the future from the global creditor class.
Pinchbeck was a typical DEI hire, let’s not pretend otherwise - a degree in Classics won’t help her in energy competence, but she will be another perfect ‘yes Sir’ for the globalist net zero scammers and that’s the main requirement in this position
Ms Pinchbeck has an interesting work history, she seems to have been parachuted into the role of a chief executive at the beginning of her career and has never looked back. According to her LinkedIn page she has never actually worked in any real part of the Energy industry, though she has had various roles described as involving climate change.
Some time at WWF apparently ("activist" methinks). Not even a decade as an economist at the Bank of England.
Classics graduate and self-described expert on whole-economy decarbonisation. How can she be an expert on something that has never been achieved?
As a Classics graduate, I bet she's read Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, and I think this is where she draws her expertise from - i.e. the White Queen who makes a habit of believing six impossible things before breakfast, because whole economy decarbonisation probably requires one to believe six impossible things before breakfast, each day, for at least a month! In fact, that's probably why a year ago, she turned up to Downing Street still wearing her dressing gown, because she was too busy believing six impossible things! (She's deleted her old @ELPinchbeck account on X - I wonder why?)
https://x.com/Janine511484078/status/1757911011666096171
Alice in Wonderland is beginning to look like a Haynes manual for Net Zero policy.
She isn’t, but she will do as she’s told by the globalist puppet masters, that’s all that matters!
We have been spoilt for choice with politicians and quangocrats spouting nonsense in recent days with several Select Committee hearings, an Urgent Question, the announcement about increasing the rate of subsidy for Drax to ~£160/MWh CFD strike price, Wera Hobhouse calling for highergas prices in the Westminster Hall debate on cheaper energy, blind expectation that doing the same thing over again on trying to force households to invest in insulation will work this time, even if tenants are thrown on the streets. All the usual guff.
But for me probably the biggest disappointment was Reform launching utterly impractical ideas as if they were a protest party who never expects their ideas to be implemented. They have no idea and no plan on how to really unwind net zero successfully.
Trying to tax away renewables subsidies will not work: they are embedded in contracts that guarantee compensation if there is any attempt to claw subsidies back through taxes. There is already case law about this. It's whytge Torieswere unable to impose Generator Levy on subsidised renewables despite in many cases outrageous profit levels.
Telling National Grid to bury all transmission lines would simply impose massive costs on consumers and not inconsiderable disruption: it's ignorant 5th form politics.
Banning all battery systems already on the grid risks destabilising it with consequent blackouts: the grid now depends on them to operate. Not the way to gain favour from voters.
They also need to ditch the idea that they would nationalise the energy industry. It would be very costly at the expense of taxpayers and other programmes, and do nothing to improve matters. It is already operating under highly centralised control.
To quote Fagin in Oliver!
I think they better think it out again.
Its very disappointing to see Reform not taking there lead from NZW and the likes of David and others as well as commentators like yourself who have the raw indisputable facts. Problem is its only Reform that are likely to ignite this debate so are the only way to getting a groundswell debate going that might then wake up the other parties.
Parts of the Tories are waking up. Here's the recent contributions from the acting Shadow Minister (Coutinho is on maternity leave)
https://hansard.parliament.uk/search/MemberContributions?memberId=4601
"Under new management" and allowed to say things previously unthinkable for uniparty Tories
Got a piece on this coming later this week. I didn't know about the tax case law for CfDs/ROCs. Can you point me to a link. I might have to edit the article.
See here
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/02/13/reform-plan-major-threat-to-renewables-auction/#comment-308749
Mr Turver, you sum it up with: "...inconsistent and incoherent....". She's lying. She knows she's lying, MPs know she's lying, they all know they know they're lying but they can't stop because then well, the Emperor Has No Clothes On and the entire scam falls apart.
If unreliables worked they would not need subsidy. The market would already provide them.
They don't, and they do; so government forces them on us. Government deliberately breaks the market for energy, slaps the cost on our bills and worse, points to energy companies to blame.
The sad thing is most people do. Complicated things like revenue before and after taxes, or something as simple as 'business does NOT pay tax' is lost on most folk. They don't look at what comprises their bills, they just get angry. The state blames Russia, or better yet 'that it is right we should pay more to save the planet' Milioaf, when he forced the climate change act on us - and slapped his energy bills - (some 4 times the average for his property) on the tax payer.
I fully appreciate your view, and it's impossible to be certain, but I genuinely fear those in charge are sincere but brainwashed into believing their own rubbish, and that they really are that stupid, ignorant and incompetent, which is a far more frightening prospect. As I always point out, liars at least know what the truth is. I have read an insider's opinion that it takes a decade doing real work within the energy industry to know how it really works - seems reasonable to me as a qualification for authority on the subject. It may explain the enthusiasm in some quarters for Chris Wright's appointment in the US.
Yes, I wanted to steer away from the 'L' word. It's quite ugly. But glad you got the gist.
Well done David for ploughing through so many interminable pages of guff from these two committee meetings. Four pages out of 36 of the Scottish one was all I could stand.
Do you know that the target of the holier than thou Scottish so-called government is to achieve Net Zero by 2045? And energy is not even a devolved issue in Scotland!
It was disappointing that Christopher Chope asked such tame questions at the DESNZ committee. He was one of only five MPs who voted against the 2008 Climate Change Act. He should ask what is the point of unilateral UK Net Zero when most of the rest of the world, now including the USA, doesn’t give a fig for Net Zero. And if the lying reply is that renewables are cheaper, follow up by asking why the rest of the world clearly doesn’t agree.
Maybe one day someone will actually challenge the junk science on which the Net Zero hoax is founded. Surely the climate change committee should know something about climate. They should be asked how, after junking our energy infrastructure with short-lifespan windmills and solar panels, we are going to survive the imminent global cooling from the combined effect of the cold phase of the AMO and the Maunder-like freezing of the GSM, see my earlier comment: https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/pinchbeck-incoherent-in-parliament?r=8t7a0&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=93861124.
Mr Brodie, it doesn't matter what anyone else does. 'Net zero' is simply a mechanism for moving private wealth into public hands. That's what it's intended to do. Nothing else. The state isn't going to let something as annoying as reality - let alone energy production supply and demand! - get in the way of its tax scam.
Big money will always find a way to exploit governments stupidity but the likes of NESO and OFGEM should be there to check it but im afraid the UK has been utterly inept at regulating anything.
Obviously I realise that Net Zero is a scam but I don’t agree there is nothing we can do about it. We can do what the American people just did in voting out the Net Zero nutters (Democrats) and voting in a common sense Net Zero agnostic. In the UK that means voting out the Lab/Con/Lib Dem/SNP Uniparty and voting in Reform UK, the only Westminster party committed to scrapping Net Zero.
Were no Reform MP’s present to ask some actual questions?
As I understand it, Reform were blocked from membership of Select Committees.
I thought so. They want to avoid being asked ‘awkward’ questions.
I sincerely hope Emma Pinchbeck reads this David.
OMG. It's dire isn't it. The Mad Hatter's Tea Party in the English and Scottish parliaments, with Pinchbeck, the White Queen, telling us how she believes in six impossible things before breakfast and nobody enquiring how.
I'm fascinated to learn that pinchbeck is an alloy of copper and zinc, i.e. brass, invented to simulate the appearance of gold, as you say 'a cheap imitation' which sums up Ms Pinchbeck quite nicely, as well as the CCC, as well as the entire 'renewables' scam which she is brainlessly and dishonestly promoting. Even more apt - she certainly has some 'brass neck', I'll give her that!
I used to live close to Pinchbeck in Lincolnshire and would often wander around the farmland and marshland footpaths with my two dogs. The entire area is already blighted by an ugly wind installation and it is the site of the Viking Interconnector connection to the National Grid. It will no doubt be blighted by even more turbines, solar panels and mega pylons as Mad Ed attempts to make his impossible Net Zero grid 2030 dream come true. Which means lots more copper and zinc in Pinchbeck, for cables, batteries and solar panels! You really can't make this shit up.
And thank you Doug and Joe for informing us of the Viking origin of Quines (women) and Loons (men). We then have an LGBTQ 'Just Transition' which benefits all Loons of Great Britain, Trans and Quines! Fraser Stewart and the other arts graduates will love this interpretation no doubt - although they might quibble about the need for a '+' on the end.
A dream is in your imagination Millibrain is a lot more dangerous that that he forcing stuff on us more like authoritarian.
You’ve probably got quite a lot of Viking influence where you live, just across the water from the Isle of Man and Snow Fell (Snå Fjell). By the way, “loon” is not Viking. Maybe it's Doric as Joe suggests.
Yes, the local dialect around these parts has a lot of Nordic influence.
Last August - just before she joined the CCC - I loosely transcribed an interview with Emma Pinchbeck on PM. She spoke fluently, but incoherently, blaming the international price of gas for high electricity prices. [As is always the case, neither party involved noted that there are many other countries, also seemingly helpless in the face of the merciless international gas price, which have much lower electricity costs than the UK does.] Cliscep link: https://cliscep.com/2024/08/24/the-bill-gets-bigger/
That this transition, if it ever happens, will increase electricity costs is quite obvious. You do not need to crunch any numbers to know that if you engage in a vast overbuild of capacity in order to ameliorate the times when neither solar nor wind are of use, string out vast lengths of extension leads to far-flung places to bring wind-harvested power back to where it is needed, maintain the entire fleet of gas turbines on standby and add on myriad grid-stabilisation features, while the only saving is the reduced combustion of gas, that your system will inevitably cost more than before.
It's obvious - but unsayable.
These days I can only think of one thing: how do we sue these people for fraud and stop this in its tracks? We don't have a President who can issue an Executive Order. Do we get this done through a question to parliament?
I asked for Climate Change science verification documents and the government just pointed to the IPCC. For those who don't know what that means, it is them saying that academic science and opinions are sufficient for taking an idea and applying it directly to the real world when at the same time any other scientific idea has to be distilled through the engineering and audit process to be deemed safe.
All of the electrical sockets in a building may be marked as 240V but you still need to physically test them.
For some reason any wild idea that a government comes up with bypasses accountability until way after the fact and the damage is done. Look at ULEZ in London. The minute a more right-leaning mayor is elected all of that is gone. Because it's just a money grab. There is no way to verify improved health of people caused by seemingly reduced emissions from cars. That all came from a 2012 EU-wide correlation study based off of simplistic advocacy models.
So there must be a barrister or solicitor who reads these pages. How do we do it? How do we finally drive a stake in this Net Zero vampire?
I am cautiously optimistic that "Trump is poised to, once and for all, put a stake through the heart of the U.N. globalist climate change scam" (Marc Morano): https://www.foxnews.com/politics/experts-say-first-week-trump-effect-derailing-global-climate-movements-house-cards
So we'll get round to it in about 20 years after since we can't be following the ways of those stupid Americans. Not our class at all, my good fellow.
The professional liars trying to implement infeasible policies forced on them by their globalist overlords are a hapless bunch. They are crashing into stark reality on multiple fronts and it’s suddenly got much worse now that the new US government is calling out their madness.
Their Net Zero madness is really very easy to debunk, as I did a year ago: https://metatron.substack.com/p/debunking-the-climate-change-hoax.
The huge spike in global temperatures caused by the Hunga Tonga eruption has confused the issue over the last couple of years. I referred to it in my “debunking” paper and also the looming cold phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). Unfortunately, I omitted to refer to the looming cold phase of the Grand Solar Minimum (GSM). I was reminded of the latter through Tom Nelson’s latest podcast, an interview of solar scientist Valentina Zharkova. She says we have already entered a GSM which will take off in earnest in 2031 and last until 2053. Her studies show that GSMs occur on a 400-year cycle, the last being the freezing Maunder Minimum: https://rumble.com/v6h1uts-valentina-zharkova-grand-solar-minimum-is-underway-tom-nelson-pod-278.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp.
We are about to enter the cold phase of the 60-70-year AMO, the last of which provoked a “How to Survive the Coming Ice Age” cover on Time Magazine. The coincidence of these two cycles means that it could soon get very cold, the last thing we need after wrecking our energy infrastructure for Net Zero: https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/global-boiling-is-toast-will-global.
Excellent confirmation that just about everything is wrong with this Climate Change nonsense. Global warming, nope, actually the opposite is just round the corner. The young would do well to move South with the swallows.
Thank you David. I'm finding it hard to take in just how bad things have got. It's like hearing the voice of the "surgeon" as the anaesthetic starts to take hold: "I've just come down from a PPE degree at Oxford and thought it would be rather jolly to have a go at this for a bit. Ouch, that's sharp!". Or, as you're sitting on the runway about to take off, and the cabin intercom's been left on: "Ooh, what a lot of dials and switches - I wonder what this big one does? It's nothing like my Mini".
Also, I've noticed that "experts" pictured pronouncing on mining and minerals always seem to be smartly dressed in comfy surroundings, and never in front of a dusty hole in the ground.
Having scanned the Climate Committee minutes, I also notice that there are virtually no numbers. It is very easy to make all sorts of good sounding statements when they are not backed up with numerical facts.