Sometimes I receive emails and peruse internet articles lacking any apparent connection, but a moment’s thought supplies a link. In the case of anything “green” and associated with net zero, the common theme is often money, and so it proved to be this week.

The Big Zero Show

Despite the fact that one version of this event took place last year, I hadn’t heard of it, until an email arrived earlier this week with the heading “Don’t forget to bring your colleagues and partners to The Big Zero Show”. Since it supplied a link to its website, I thought I would take a look. And what I saw was a mix of establishment groupthink and big business. Among the offerings are “Crack the case of carbon emissions!”, a talk with Detective Superintendent Vanessa Eyles from the West Midlands Police Force. I’m not convinced that the job of the police is to talk to business people about carbon emissions, though I will concede that the reality of the talk seems to be about “sharing her expertise, as Director of the West Midlands Cyber Resilience Centre, on how to make businesses cyber safe”. Why the apparently irrelevant reference in the talk heading to carbon emissions? I don’t know, though the blurb also gushes that attendance at the talk will not only “make your business more secure” but it will also “help you learn how to improve your carbon footprint”.

That’s all a bit odd, I thought, so I dug deeper, and discovered that the event is organised (in partnership with Coventry City Council – don’t they have other things to do?) by future Net Zero (yes, the lower case “f” in “future” does seem to be deliberate). You can visit the website for yourself (where you will discover that it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Energy Live News Limited), but the bit that always interests me about the myriad of interlinked “green” and “net zero” organisations is who is the motivating force behind them, and where their money comes from. In this case the founder of future Net Zero (and Energy Live News Limited) is ex BBC presenter Sumit Bose, which didn’t really come as a surprise, given the BBC’s relentless pushing of climate catastrophe and net zero. Their “partners” are divided into founding, platinum, silver, bronze and solution partners. I’m guessing that the second third and fourth categories represent funders, with the level of funding dictating platinum, silver or bronze status, while the solution partner seems to consist of consultants who hope to make money out of helping businesses reduce their carbon footprints. A few examples of the names appearing here are Advantage Utilities (“Your competitive advantage”); Balanced Energy; the consultus international group (yes, all lower case); DB Group; Energycentric; Pause People; net zero international (yes, all lower case); Utility Team (“Energising your business”) and so on. I’m sure you get the idea. Apologies to those who I missed out and who therefore don’t get a plug courtesy of Cliscep.

I was intrigued to see that platinum partners include people like the much-maligned (by the net zero lobby, at least) Shell Energy and Drax. I struggle to see how Drax contribute to net zero, given all the trees they burn. What are they doing here? Then I noticed that the Big Zero Show includes among the speakers Paul Miller, Sales Director at Drax. His biopic tells us that he “has nearly 20 years’ experience in the energy industry setting strategies across TPI and strategic business. He’s an advocate of working in partnership with large customers to help understand and satisfy their complex energy requirements. Drax’s purpose is to enable a zero carbon, lower cost energy future.” Another speaker is Professor Patricia Thornley of Aston University, telling us “[t]he truth about biomass.” Given that Drax appear to sponsor the organisers of the event, and one of their directors is speaking at it, I would be surprised if Professor Thornley is to be critical of them. I don’t know exactly what she will say, but the summary of her 15 minutes slot is:

Biomass is a very controversial route to net zero. Many people cannot understand the concept of burning wood and other plant material for power. Professor Thornley will explain the science and the facts, instead of the hearsay and the rumours. The ultimate truth revealed…

There’s much more in the same vein. In fairness, Mr Bose makes no secret of the fact that he thinks net zero involves nuclear power, a controversial idea so far as some environmentalists are concerned. It’s not surprising, then, that another speaker is Caroline Longman:

a strategic and commercial leader in the nuclear industry, with over 20 years experience in the sector. She is committed to enabling nuclear energy to play a major role in a decarbonised energy system, during the last 2 years she has driven forward the opportunity for nuclear energy to contribute to a future hydrogen economy through development of cross sector collaboration. Caroline believes nuclear energy can deliver a safe, secure, affordable, low carbon energy supply and deliver on the UK’s net zero targets. To achieve this, she has founded, in partnership, a business, www.equilibrion.co.uk, with a single mission, to be a catalyst for the development of collaborations that can enable nuclear energy to decarbonise transport, heat and industry.

Her talk (“Can Nuclear Energy be a Sustainable Route to Net Zero?”) will conclude that it can:

Nuclear Energy is a high-capacity source of energy which can provide 24/7 safe, reliable low carbon energy to decarbonise many industrial sectors. Government can see the opportunity for nuclear energy to decarbonise sectors such as transport, heat and industry where fossil fuels dominate and there are few credible alternatives. Caroline will explain why nuclear can deliver a truly sustainable pathway to net zero, aligned with the United Nation’s sustainable development goals and overcome its historic perceptions of cost, safety and waste.

There are numerous similar examples. To my cynical mind, this is mostly about business people trying to sell their business ideas, services and products, with a view to making money. I don’t doubt their sincerity – their belief in their businesses and their ability to help secure “net zero”, for instance – but it seems to me that underlying a conference of this sort is money. The punters are dragged in by the net zero sell, but it’s businesses that are really doing the selling, and they want your money.

The monolith of climate smear-mongering

Ben Pile, formerly of this parish, has published an article under the above heading on his Substack account, which seeks to debunk the claim that “Big Oil” spends “US$200 million a year on lobbying to control, delay or block binding climate policy.” I know that we here at Cliscep don’t see a penny (or cent) of this fabled pot of money, but I’ll leave it to you to decide whether or not Ben’s debunk is successful.

The part of his article that interests me for current purposes is the size of “Big Green’s” pot of money. Ben’s approach to this struck me as interesting. He referenced an organisation (InfluenceMap) which produced a report purporting to justify the $200M p.a. claim with reference to Big Oil. InfluenceMap states on its website that it is “An independent think-tank producing data-driven analysis on how business and financing are impacting [sic] the climate crisis [sic]”. Such organisations are often used by organisations such as the Guardian and the BBC to justify alarmist claims, and in such cases the claim of independence is rather useful. As to how independent (independent of whom?) InfluenceMap is, that’s a matter of opinion. Ben analyses its funders, and tells us a little about each of them (and their money). Helpfully (and I give them due credit for being transparent about the source of their funding) the people at InfluenceMap tell us who their funders are (“InfluenceMap’s work has been made possible by the vision shown by a range of philanthropic foundations”). Just who are these philanthropic foundations, how much money is at their disposal, and how do they use it?

First, Luminate. It “is a subsidiary philanthropic funding arm of the Omidyar Network of organisations established by French-Iranian-American tech billionaire, Pierre Omidyar, who founded eBay. Ben tells us that:

Over the 13 years 2010-2022 (inc.), Luminate has made grants of nearly $406 million, with an annual average of $31.2 million.

(Not all of Luminate’s grants are made to organisations active in climate. However, Luminate does not provide an accurate breakdown of the organisations it makes grants to, listing for example, donations to both Greenpeace UK and environmental lawfare outfit ClientEarth under the category of ‘financial transparency’. Moreover, though, Illuminate’s donations are manifestly political, and drive so-called ‘civil society’ organisations towards particular policy agendas. A $630,000 grant to ‘independent’ media organisation, OpenDemocracy for example, isn’t going to allow it to make space for climate sceptics. Similarly, its $300,000 grant to the Sundance Institute isn’t going to end up helping me make my films about how rotten climate philanthropy is.

Next, the Sunrise Project. It is:

an Australian philanthropic fund (apparently distinct to the US-based Sunrise Movement) that claims to be ‘Driven by the imperative of climate justice’, and ‘a global network of changemakers’, but declines to say who those ‘changemakers’ are. Since being founded in 2012, its annual revenue, most of which seems to go on grants, although it employs a large staff, have risen from AUS$4 million to AUS$52 million. Using today’s exchange rate, AUS$52 million is roughly US$35 million.

The Laudes Foundation is next. Ben doesn’t establish that its money goes to climate alarmism, though it has the aim of “Redefining value for the good of all”. I don’t know what that means, but I suspect any grants that are being given our are more likely to go to climate alarmist, rather than climate sceptic, organisations. I think that’s a safe bet, given that it talks about “the dual crises of inequality and climate change” and tells us that its strategy “is designed to help accelerate the existing movement towards a climate positive and inclusive economy.” I certainly don’t take entirely against this organisation, which seems to do some good work (or at least, to supply grants to others who do good work), one example being a grant to Anti-Slavery International to “[s]upport the initiative “European Action to Reduce Forced and Child Labour in Global Supply Chains.” That’s one grant that doesn’t sit comfortably with cobalt mining for ithium ion batteries, using child labour, in the Congo, for instance. On the other hand, I notice a grant to the “Anthropocene Fixed Income Institute” for the explicit purpose of “Challenging Debt for Fossil Fuels”. If you make it as far as “c” in the list of organisations receiving grants, you do start to notice quite a few with “carbon” in their titles, such as Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA) – Game Changers Fund and Carbon Tracker Initiative Limited. Nevertheless, climate alarmism seems to be small part of what they’re about, so Ben doesn’t make a convincing case for me regarding this particular donor to InfluenceMap. Ben tells us that:

The foundation reports that in its first year, it committed €66.9 million in grants, and a further €70.7 million in 2021. In total, the fund has €220 million committed to grantees…

However, I’m not convinced that much of that money (though a modest amount does) is finding its way to “Big Green”.

The Quadrature Climate Foundation (the clue’s in its name) “had income of £130 million in 2022, £60 million in 2021, and £31 million in 2020.”

The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation is apparently a global venture philanthropy firm, which passed on about $13M in grants in 2021, but only about 8% of that (or roughly $1M) went to organisations working in the climate and environment field.

If some of the above seem like small beer in the scheme of things, then the IKEA Foundation (IF) is anything but. According to Ben, it:

…boasts having made grants of €1.8 billion to organisations working for ‘people and the planet’ so far. THe Foundation reports that ‘In 2021, the board of the IKEA Foundation decided to make an additional €1 billion available over the subsequent five years – on top of our annual grant making budget – to accelerate a reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions’. According to OECD analysis, IF gave $118.7 million to organisations for ‘climate action’ in 2020. If these figures are correct, IF is now giving approximately $334 million per year to organisations working for ‘climate action’.

The Climate Change Collaboration (again, the clue’s in the name) seems to be somewhat opaque, with no sources of funding revealed on its website. Ben calculates that it probably dispenses funding of roughly $1.5M p.a. (I do not know if he is correct, and in the scheme of things, this is in any event a relatively modest amount).

There is something of an irony about the European Climate Foundation :

This secretive organisation does not give a full list either of its benefactors…or its beneficiaries. Yet, somewhat ironically, it funds transparency campaigns such as InfluenceMap. In 2021, its annual report states that it received €95 million, equivalent to $102 million.

The Wallace Global Fund states four main aims, one of which is environmental.

The Fund’s website gives no detail and published no annual report, but its filings reveal disbursements of $23 million in 2020. LEt’s assume that this is split between its four main interests, to make $5.75 million of grants to organisations active in climate change.

The Climateworks Foundation:

…is the parent and seed funder of the European Climate Foundation, and built on the same model of passing donations from larger philanthropic interests to strategically-aligned beneficiaries. In 2021, it raised $478 millionfor its grantees to lobby, campaign, and fight for climate policy.

Finally, the KR Foundation – “a Danish fund that is operated by the family of Velux window designer and manufacturer, Villum Kann Rasmussen. in FY2021-22, the KR Foundation made DKK 133 million in grants, equivalent to approx. $19 million.”

Adding all that up, Ben concludes:

In total, InfluenceMap’s funders are making grants of roughly $1.2 billion per year to climate change lobbying. That’s six times larger than the lobbying it claimed to have detected coming from the world’s largest oil companies. And, of course, we have only counted those philanthropic funds with which InfluenceMap has a direct relationship.

We have not counted the $billions that flow to green ‘civil society’ organisations from most of the billionaires active in this field, such as the Rockefeller family, Bezos, Bloomberg, Gates, Hohn, the Hewletts and Packards and Gettys, and so on.

So much money sloshing around, advocating for action relating to “climate change”, and yet still the tax-payer and the energy user is having to fund the actions these people campaign for.

Firm behind Dundee battery factory plans in race to raise cash

Speaking of tax-payer funded climate change policies, the BBC ran an article this week under the above heading, bemoaning the possible fate of the “company behind plans to build a major new battery factory in Dundee”. Obviously lacking sufficient UK subsidies, we are told that the company in question (AMTE Power) (“Powering the energy transition – Electrifying vehicles, homes and industries for a net zero world”) is considering relocating to the USA in order to avail itself of subsidies on offer there. Money is urgently needed within four weeks, we are told, despite the company in recent months having arranged a new £580,000 loan from Highlands & Islands Enterprise (HIE) (in other words, from the taxpayer), as well as securing £1M under its convertible loan facility.

I take no pleasure in seeing a UK company potentially going bust for lack of funding, and I hope that the up to 200 job losses that are being talked about don’t come to pass. I do observe, however, that none of the climate philanthropists seem to be in a hurry to fund them (instead they fund others to agitate for the taxpayer to fund the policies such companies exist to implement). I observe further that when the industrial revolution transformed society, and when the advent of the internal combustion engine did so again, no subsidies or public funding were required. If an idea works for society, society will adopt it willingly, without coercion or subsidies being necessary.

Also in passing, I also note that HIE is advertising grants of up to £150,000 from its “Green Grant Fund” “to help businesses and social enterprises progress towards net zero carbon emissions”.

Net zero electricity: the UK 2035 target

Sir Dieter Helm’s website published a report earlier this week, under the above title. Despite concluding that the UK should concentrate on Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) and offshore wind, the analysis is basically pretty scathing of both Government and Opposition energy policy.

As a brief digression, given the mention of Drax above, I doubt if Sir Dieter would agree with the analysis which I suspect will be offered by Professor Thornley at the Big Zero Show. This is Sir Dieter’s take on Drax:

DRAX’s emissions do not count towards the UK’s territorial emissions on the grounds that new trees are being grown in the US and elsewhere to offset the carbon from the burning of wood pellets in the UK. They should, and the 2035 target should be revised to at least take this into account. The supply chain has several questionable dimensions from a carbon perspective. First there is the primary material: wood. DRAX claims this is primarily waste wood, though the concept of “waste” from a biological and carbon perspective is highly suspect. There have been claims, which DRAX denies, that it uses primary forest trees. Whatever the supply, this wood is a low-density energy source. It has to be trucked to processing sites to be turned into wood pellets. The trucks are energy-intensive, as is the pelletisation. The wood has to be dried, and then transported to ports where it is loaded onto ships and sailed to the Humber, where it is unloaded, put on a train, taken to a storage facility at DRAX power station, and cooled (to prevent spontaneous combustion, as happened at Tilbury power station). The wood pellets are then burned, emitting not just the unassigned carbon emissions in the UK, but also PM2.5 particles. The latter are so serious from a health perspective that the government is trying to limit the use of wood-burning stoves in homes. The irony is that customers are subsidising DRAX at just under £1 billion per annum, when DRAX is analogous to a giant wood-burning stove.

Drax, however, is a digression. The key points I take from Sir Dieter’s report are at sections 3 (“The other objectives of energy policy – security of supply and affordability”) and 6 (“Funding and financing net zero”). Section 3 is damning of the official line claiming that net zero is affordable and beneficial. The conclusion is that it will cause problems and raise costs to consumers (which obviously means raising costs to business, reducing its international competitiveness). I make no apologies for reproducing this section of the report at length, because each paragraph leads inexorably to the very negative conclusion:

Some advocates of net zero suggest a fast-track decarbonisation path would improve affordability. It is argued that renewables are cheaper than fossil-fuel electricity generation, and hence that having more renewables equals a lower price. If this is true, then a very fast track to net zero for power would be an urgent requirement on affordability grounds, and the advance to a 2030 target would in principle be one that met both the climate and the affordability objectives, and it would all be “British” too, delivering energy independence. The UK’s energy would then be “cheap, clean and British”.

It sounds too good to be true—indeed, if it were true, it is not clear that there would need to be any major government intervention. Developers of wind and solar project could offer suppliers lower prices, and suppliers could then cut customers’ bills. Renewable subsidies could be abolished for all new projects, and gas generators would go out of business.

It is notable that no renewables generators are demanding the abolition of subsidies despite claiming that the contracts-for-differences (CfDs) upon which they rely are not subsidies, which they so obviously are. On the contrary, there are demands for more subsidies to address rising costs and renewables lobbyists actively (and very successfully) campaigned against the uniform Equivalent Firm Power auctions proposed in the Cost of Energy Review.What seems to be too good to be true is indeed too good. Only if the marginal cost of renewables generation, at the point of generation, is the correct measure of the cost of renewables could it possibly be true. If it is not, renewables need to recover the sunk and fixed capacity costs too. Meeting customers’ needs also requires at least two extra things to happen: there needs to be transmission and distribution networks to take low-density, geographically peripheral electricity to customers, and these customers need to have continuous supply, both of which are not paid for by renewables generators. The renewables are not firm power and the network costs are significant. Add the fixed and sunk costs, and these two dimensions to the cost comparisons, and it is clear why the renewables projects still need subsidies.

But remarkably the renewables generators claimed lower costs are not reflected in the price of most renewables to consumers. On the contrary, most renewables generators are paid the wholesale electricity price, which in the UK system is determined largely by the marginal cost of gas. As the price of gas went up, so did the revenues to the renewables generators, even though the costs of renewables (and nuclear) had not changed. Not surprisingly across Europe and in the UK there was a debate about applying windfall taxes to renewables.

The right cost comparisons for renewables – gas and nuclear – are on the basis of Equivalent Firm Power, as set out in the Cost of Energy Review.

There is one further twist to the affordability dimension to the net zero transition for the power sector by 2035. It is widely agreed that it will require a large step change in investment. But it is also widely assumed that this is not a cost to consumers, since it will be financed by debt. On this argument, there is no connection between affordability and the costs of investment. We can have lots of investment, but that investment is not going to have any impact on our consumption and standards of living. As we shall see in section six, this is quite wrong: investment has costs in forgone consumption, and in interest, dividends and capital repayments.

The upshot of these considerations is that a tightening of the net zero target from 2035 to 2030 is likely to further raise the costs to consumers, and these in turn will be further increased by the forced switching to electric cars and to heat pumps and other non-gas-boiler heating. A faster transition will also exacerbate supply chain constraints and labour costs given the time period required to train the relevant skilled workforces.

None of this suggests that the target should not be 2035 or indeed 2030, but it does raise the need to explain why costs will rise in the short run, and in a context within which achieving the UK 2030 or 2035 targets will make no noticeable difference to global climate change. Indeed, as and when the costs in the UK rise in the absence of a carbon border adjustment, this may lead to further carbon leakage, and hence further displace domestic emissions for imported emissions. To offset these effects, there may need to be further subsidies to industry and a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), raising prices to consumers.

Section 6 is equally damning, describing the official line as an “illusion”:

To build the generation capacity and the networks, there will need to be a lot of investment. This is described in the Skidmore report as “the economic opportunity of the 21st century”.

One of the convenient illusions of those advocating net zero targets is that this investment is not going to cost current consumers (and voters); on the contrary, it is argued, investment causes growth, which raises incomes, and hence the economic growth will pay out over and above the costs of investment. Voilà! All we need to do is borrow the money and the growth premium will pay it back.

Imagine if this principle were generalised. Suppose we took every project with a claimed positive net present value (NPV), and several of those that may not have a positive NPV (some of which are included in the net zero programme) and, irrespective of the aggregate investment required, did them all. HS2 supposedly passes this test; so too does Crossrail 2, the upgrading of the sewers, upgrading of roads, and so on. Even defence might pass the test, given the objective of being defended. Would it matter if the total came to 10% GDP, or 20% or 100%? As long as the result is assumed to be “growth” and as long as the aggregate is NPV-positive (strictly social NPV-positive), then it would be self-financing.

On this logic it is a wonder that the world as a whole is not transforming itself to net zero at a very rapid rate from the current 80% dependency on fossil fuels, with massive investment.

There is of course an obvious flaw in this argument, of particular relevance to the UK investment required to achieve the 2035 net zero target. The flaw starts from the identity: savings equals investment. Savings is forgone consumption. Someone has to reduce consumption to increase their savings to provide the funds for investment…

…The net zero “economic opportunity of the twenty-first century” runs like this: it requires a big investment push, and it needs a flow of savings to fund it, with long-term returns. Where is the UK going to find the money for its great investment in net zero in electricity by 2035, and in 12 years (or 6), and again for the rest of the 27-year period to 2050?

Domestic savings are grossly inadequate. UK citizens are living beyond, not within, their means, as witnessed by the trade figures. UK industry invests little, and notably retained earnings play a very small part. Even for the water industry, its large investment programme has been funded since 1990 by borrowing such that profits equal dividends. So too for the electricity networks. The third component is savings by government (through taxation-for-investment), and these are in aggregate negative and likely to remain so for the rest of this, and probably the next decade. The government is a net “dis-saver”.

Why would foreigners lend us the sorts of sums needed to get to net zero by 2035 for the power sector? The answer is that they would expect not only to get their money back, but also to earn profits and have interest paid. Up until the recent windfall taxes, and until there is coherent and widespread market reform, it has been a pretty good bet. Australian and Canadian pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and overseas investors more generally have had a good deal.

One reason it has worked so far, and the UK has been able to sell off the family silver successfully and foreign investors have underpinned not only specific offshore and onshore energy projects and bought shares and debt in the main networked utilities, is that the UK regulatory regime enshrines the principle that investors are entitled to a reasonable rate of return determined by “independent” regulatory offices. Most of these costs to consumers lay further out. To the extent that some of these costs are being paid for now, they have been in a benign context: falling fossil-fuel prices, and especially gas in the last decade, and particularly since 2014, and a falling cost of capital. There has been room in customers’ bills to pay for the various renewables, DRAX and other subsidies to these mostly foreign investors.

That is not likely to be true from now on, and especially now governments have got a taste for subsidising energy bills, and for windfall taxes and interventions to prevent companies recovering full costs, for example in the case of pre-payment meters.

What will happen? There are likely to be two coincidental impacts on the cost of capital, and hence on the costs to consumers to service the investments and eventually pay them back. The first is the general macroeconomic turn towards higher nominal interest rates, and in due course as the peak of inflation subsidises higher real interest rates (or rather less-negative real interest rates)…

…As has been witnessed in broader household bills, and in particular mortgages, the change in macroeconomic circumstances quickly bumps up against the ability to pay. Yet again, the energy trilemma trade-offs remain.

The second is the project costs of capital. The higher risk comes over and above the higher cost of debt (and probably equity generally) from the country risk of the UK. Instead of looking at just whether households can afford (and will vote to be forced to pay for) the specific extra costs from specific projects in the net zero investment programme, foreign investors will have to take account of the aggregate impacts of the household bills, including higher water, broadband, rail and eventually car transport costs, and higher mortgages and higher taxes. A return to country risk is already taking place, and this means that the cost of capital goes up, just as consumer (and voter) pushback is coming into play.

This explains the gap between the bold Keynesian-style macroeconomic claims and the possibility that this is a great investment opportunity, on the one hand, and the ability to credibly borrow from foreigners to pay for it, on the other. The implication is stark: if the UK wants to carry out economy-wide major upgrades to all its infrastructure generally, and complete the net zero transitions on target, domestic savings have to go up, either directly or through higher taxes that then extract money from consumers and divert it to investment.

Whether this is a politically feasible route determines whether consumers are willing to live within their net zero (and other investment) means.

Again, I have quoted at length because the logic is remorseless, inexorable, and devastating. Net zero can be achieved – but at what cost? Net zero advocates would have us believe that it’s an opportunity, that it will benefit us more than it will cost us, that we need to seize the moment and lead the way. Increasingly it looks as though their way leads us straight over the cliff edge.

Conclusion

Everything about climate alarmism and net zero is about money. Big business, often multinational and foreign businesses, want to benefit from UK taxpayer-funded largesse.

“Green” foundations seem to be awash with cash, and dispensing freely of it to those organisations who campaign for policies to “deal with” climate change. “Big oil” money is insignificant by comparison.

Small UK businesses, despite benefitting from loans and subsidies, seem to be struggling to compete with President Biden’s free and easy approach to “green” projects with the cash supplied by the UK taxpayer. Time and again we read about “green” businesses going bust or on the verge of going bust unless the UK taxpayer gives them money.

The net zero project is hugely expensive. The idea that it represents an opportunity is an illusion. If it is to be pursued, most people (including, in all probability, you and me), will be impoverished by it.

It’s all about money. Prepare to be poorer.