Author
Ewen Stewart is the director of Walbrook Economics which is a consultancy specialising in
the interaction of macroeconomics, politics and capital markets. Fiscal, monetary policy and
consumer research has been a core specialisation. Clients include major pension funds,
asset managers and hedge funds.
Ewen’s City career has spanned over 30 years’ where he worked for a number of major
investment banks including Dresdner Kleinwort Benson and ABN AMRO.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to thank Tim Knox for all his support and encouragement and without
whom this research would not be possible
Hmm. Now one of the reasons I steer clear of certain subjects (like, the “science” of global warming, vaccines etc) is that it’s all too easy to make this kind of mistake when you’re not steeped in teh area. Don;t have those immediate “‘Ang on!” moments when numbers lose track of orders of magnitude stuff.
If I were you I would download this report so you can laugh at it for much longer than the 13 hours it is going to exist before they realise they have completely stuffed the numbers by confusing TWhs with TWs.
…the fact it got published is amazing. Hilariously amazing. https://t.co/UfQGzswX1v
— Tom Haddon (@TomH_Analyst) September 28, 2023
I don’t even know if the ctiricism is right. But I am seeing it in a number of places, independently.
Ouch.
Considering that the cost of Net Zero was / is £1.4Trillion (by 2050)*, using the handy example of HS2 (original estimate £32B, now, 13 years, later running at £106Bn+), it is more than likely the total cost of Net Zero WILL BE £4.6 Trillion.
*And even at 1.4 trillion, the cost per household will be £50,000, not £6,000.
But, as Tim reminds us, the important question is how does that £6,000 or £50,000 compare to the cost of *not* doing anything?
“this kind of mistake when you’re not steeped in teh area”
“Steeped”? The difference between a kW and a kWh is literally schoolboy stuff. By what magic would that relationship break down if you replaced the “k” by a “T”?
For amusement I’ve looked up a sciencey page of an outfit called The Carbon Collective which boasts “Written by Zach Stein | Reviewed by Subject Matter Experts”. Har, har. Enjoy this:
“America being one of the largest electricity consumers in the world uses about 4,146.2 terawatt-hours.”
*And even at 1.4 trillion, the cost per household will be £50,000, not £6,000.
The report is claiming £6000 per year.
How the fuck is a country where 75% of households earn less than £40K a year and are also in debt going to afford to spend £6K per household, per annum – or any sum even close to £6K – on climate shit?
Answer: it isn’t.
Studiously ignored in the power cost calculation is the cost of electric network reliability. Where is cost of storage or backup generation? Infrastructure costs I believe are seriously underestimated.
Of course you can import power from those icky French nukes. That is if you have a pound that anyone still wants.
Confusing GW and TW with GWh and TWh, is the deliberate duplicitous behaviour of the political and climatron filth to pretend that for example, a 10GW wind farm can produce enough electricity to supply a town the size of Newtown-in-the-piddle, when in fact it cannot, because it cannot provide power continuously – likely not more than 7 to 10 days a month and some months none.
With just more investment and more turbines, wind power can completely replace fossil fuels and nuclear, so the nitwits enthuse.
The average UK daily demand is 39GW. There is 38GW of wind capacity installed, so if we listen to the lying toads we should already have reached Net Zero with respect to electricity,
Currently the demand is 31.41GW and wind is supplying 11.81GW, so why not all of it? And it is only supplying that much because gas and nuke are obliged to dial back their input to make way for the wind god.
I’ve just looked at the report. I think the criticism you highlighted is itself a crock. The report talks about energy rather than power, so it’s going to be in units of Watt-hours rather than Watts. Chapters 1-10 are setting the scene with all sorts of global comparisons of energy cost, CO2 output etc. The criticism of the Climate Change Committee starts in Chapter 11 where energy consumption in TWh now and in the future are considered. It quotes the CCC as saying electricity generation will increase from 313 TWh today to 780 TWh by 2050. Although it’s not specifically stated, and perhaps this is where the confusion arises, is those figures are per year. 313TWh per annum is an average of 35GW all the time for the year which is completely in line with what Gridwatch says – 31.40 GW as I write this.
Now it’s just possible the author doesn’t know this Watts from his Watt-hours but I’m damn sure he got people who do understand this stuff to review it before publication. IMHO the criticism we are seeing is because this is actually quite a damning report on the approach to climate change (if such is indeed happening) in this country.
MG – That is if you have a pound that anyone still wants
We’ll all get RICH out of exporting jobs and importing dinghy rapists and Beeg Eeshoo vendors.
As rich as Weimar Germany.
PJF @ 2.03, I’m quoting the cost of net zero from the Office of Budget Repsonsibility. 1.4T divided by 29 million households is just shy of £50,000
The figures, whatever their worth, seem to come from some outfit called “Walbrook Economics”.
. . . I’m quoting the cost of net zero from the Office of Budget Repsonsibility. 1.4T divided by 29 million households is just shy of £50,000
Yes Addolff, but you compared it with “£6,000” whereas the Civitas report claims £6000 per year.
It quotes the CCC as saying electricity generation will increase from 313 TWh today to 780 TWh by 2050.
Yep, that’s annual. It’s also utter fucking bullshit. Electricity accounts for around one fifth of our current total power usage. Rest is gas & oil for heating, transport etc. If the economy is meant to be 80-100% electrified by 2050, how the fuck are we going to be doing that with only 2.5x the leccy? Especially when the population will be at least 10m higher.
As far as I can tell, the CCC gets there by assuming that the proles won’t own their own cars, go overseas or ever be properly warm in winter. They also make wild assumptions about hydrogen, batteries and carbon capture and storage. None of which are proven, all of which are vastly expensive and are mostly bollocks anyway, especially the last.
Regardless of the calculations, £4,500 billion for Net Zero is as good a number as any. Pick a fucking big number and double it. Then imagine it all piled up high and torched, because that’s how much good it will do.
Although some fuckers, like that verminous cunt Gummer, will make a killing. My hope is that somewhere along the line, the proles realise what is happening and start setting fire to things, which will at least keep them warm.
“ …the proles won’t own their own cars, go overseas or ever be properly warm in winter…”
Got it in one.
No, it will do less good than that. We won’t even get the benefit of keeping warm from that big money bonfire.
I’ve spotted another typographical error on page 94. So I’m a fucking genius, me.
I was thinking of a way around the conundrum of burning all the money. £50 notes I believe are still paper, so they can be converted in briquettes for burning in stoves.
the 10s, 20s and fivers are all plastic and so really only of use when incinerated to feed a boiler to generate electricity.
I believe the CCC say that 60% of the reduction in CO2 will be due to ‘lifestyle changes’, which basically means us proles being colder, eating less meat/more insects, travelling a shitload less, having no holidays and generally being miserable.
Once the general population realises this, I’m going to buy shares in piano wire and lamp posts.
PJF, I never ‘compared’ anything, merely quoted another estimate of the cost of net zero from a reputable source. You have a habit of reading things into the things that people say to support the things you want to believe.
. . .I never ‘compared’ anything . . .
You did ( saying “cost a, not cost b” is a comparision) but that’s not the point. The point is that you made a margin-of-error type mistake (£6,000 rather than £6,000 per year) whilst commenting on a post about avoiding margin-of-error type mistakes. I didn’t make a big finger pointy deal about it, or “read” things into it, I simply restated what the Civitas tweet said.
Anyways, it seems the Civitas report is wrong (or they’re very worried it is) as their tweet has been deleted.
At time of commenting the report is still up if anyone wants to look:
https://civitas.org.uk/content/files/Net-Zero-an-analysis-of-the-economic-impact.pdf
Shame really, giving such easy points to that Tom Haddon character, who seems like the Bob Ward of X.
PJF: I don’t believe it is wrong, at least not in the sense of a TW/TWh mixup. One might quibble with some of their assumptions and there are some formatting issues in tables, but having read through it I can’t see any obvious howlers. As I said, the report talks in energy terms, so you would expect large energy numbers to be in TWh. If you want it in Joules, multiply by 3600.
Here it is on the story
UPDATE: There has been criticism on social media of two paragraphs on page 47 of this report, where capacity and output are confused. These paragraphs will be amended and updated. The author is happy to acknowledge this and correct the report.
The two paragraphs will change and the report updated. The fact remains that we are facing a huge bill for net zero that is many times more than official estimates. The author will update page 47.
Being one of said “bolshy proles”, when the time comes for piano wire and lamp posts we will neither be asking, nor buying (since the pound will be in the shitter), we will be taking by force.
As good old Protect and Survive said:
After a nuclear attack, markets will be in flux.
Same applies when the proles decide the elite needs a “close to the neck” shave. Fortunately a guillotine is fairly easy to manufacture.