Energy Matters Global and Domestic

[mickthemaverick]

Our Dave has published an excellent summary of the issues before the forthcoming COP, well worth the watch:

[NewcastleFalcon]

Carbon Tax, an effective way of changing the landsccape, favouring electrification over burning fossil fuels?

On a domestic front, no one is going to switch away from Gas while electric heating is more expensive, and while the gas itself, and the equipment remains considerably cheaper.

Here's one from the Car world. Create a rule about overall fleet level of CO₂, and a series of fines should Manufacturers exceed the target. Manufacturers pay the fines think to themselves we really need to do something about mix of cars we make and sell, we need to make more electric, more smaller cars.

End of story....of course not...buy credits rather than pay the fines, rather than do anything about their current fleet mix. Always a bit of unnecessry interference, but at least the credits earned by TESLA funded Gigafactory Berlin

https://insideevs.com/news/392198/tesla ... unded-fca/

JLR have reportedly joined Honda in buying credits from 100% Electric car maker Tesla

Tesla to help Jaguar Land Rover avoid fines in Europe with CO2 pool

Regards Neil

[Sloppysod]

I personally don't think this is the right way to do things, Jaguar/Landrover & Honda and others, are paying Tesla subsidies to avoid paying CO2 fines, yes this saves them money and reputation for not selling enough EV's.
The consequencies/benefits of this practice is..............these companies are paying Tesla to avoid developing their own Electric Vehicles, thus giving Tesla an reasonably uncompetative market to operate in, with no market forces determining price. Tesla are in a win win situation, money for nothing, more sales at higher prices - where's the anti-competition lobbyists.

[Gibbo2286]

The whole of the carbon trading scheme is set up for the money makers, a stock exchange for carbon emissions set up by or at the behest of a former US vice presidential nominee who made a huge fuss about global warming if my memory isn't failing. Wasn't that John Kerry?

[NewcastleFalcon]

A.C. Pigou
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Might as well give Mr Pigou his 5 minutes of fame on the FCF, one of the thinkers who formulated the ideas of a carbon tax, before anyone knew that burning fossil fuels may have what he descibed as "negative externalities".


A Pigovian tax (also spelled Pigouvian tax, named after economist Arthur Cecil Pigou) is a tax levied to correct the negative externalities (negative side-effects) of a market activity.

A straight Carbon Tax is an example to reflect "negative externalities" of greenhouse gas emissions , and make the price paid for fossil fuels higher to disincentivise their use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax

On their own, carbon taxes are usually regressive, since lower-income households tend to spend a greater proportion of their income on emissions-heavy goods and services like transportation than higher-income households. To make them more progressive, policymakers usually try to redistribute the revenue generated from carbon taxes to low-income groups by lowering income taxes or offering rebates,[17] then as part of the politics of climate change they often call it not a tax but a carbon dividend.[18]

REgards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Scratched the surface and found out that the UK has one of these

The UK Emissions Trading Scheme: a quick explainer

Such things can be as hard or as soft, as the Government chooses to specify. It can set minimum prices/tonne for CO₂ equivalent emissions, can set a cap for overall emissions.

May 2021 saw the first auction of emissions allowances with a minimum auction reserve price of £22/Tonne. The allowances can be traded. When the market opened the price hit £50/Tonne.

UK ETS: carbon market opens for first time with carbon price topping £50 per tonne

REgards Neil

[Gibbo2286]

Pod-point have allocated the installing of my home charger to this company so I looked them up.
Some interesting detail on their site about the state of the market.
https://jecelectrical.co.uk/electric-ve ... g-points/

[myglaren]

Not directly energy related but I recall that Mick worked here in the past.

Saudi deal secured of nearly £1bn to reopen Wilton 'cracker' plant

[NewcastleFalcon]

Not directly energy related but I recall that Mick worked here in the past.

Saudi deal secured of nearly £1bn to reopen Wilton 'cracker' plant

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59070025

Sabic said the investment would include strengthening operations at Teesside and making its site "one of the world's lowest carbon-emitting crackers".

Wonder if BP will let them pipe excess CO₂ down their "Blue Hydrogen Carbon Capture and Sequestration Pipe" out under the North Sea.

https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/ ... oject.html

bp...is developing plans for the UK’s largest blue hydrogen production facility, targeting 1GW of hydrogen production by 2030. The project would capture and send for storage up to two million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) per year, equivalent to capturing the emissions from the heating of one million UK households¹.

Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Lets try the Worcester News reporting of this story. Makes a change from the usual publications, and TV media outlets.

Major oil producer Saudi Arabia announces net-zero target by 2060

Moving out of the oil and gas business Of course not. That's where Carbon Capture Usage, Sequestration and Storage comes in. Isn't that going to make a more expensive product for them to sell, and be a lousier fuel than gasoline or diesel Not really. The net zero bit announced is just within their own borders. Export the usual products to more than willing recipients including Europe, let them do the refining/making hydrogen/carbon capturing and storage as they see fit. They must also be dripping in Solar Power potential, so not that difficult to hit the target they have set themselves.

Nice £1bn for Teesside just before COP26. Dead easy to go off focus on reducing carbon emissions when someone slaps down £1bn, to restart "one of the world's lowest carbon-emitting crackers".

The UK has well and truly pulled the said cracker.

Who knows, maybe they got one of these as well

REgards Neil

[myglaren]

JCB signs green hydrogen deal worth billions

Construction equipment maker JCB has signed a deal to buy billions of pounds of green hydrogen, defined as hydrogen produced using renewable energy.

The deal means JCB will take 10% of the green hydrogen made by the Australian firm Fortescue Future Industries (FFI).

[Sloppysod]

Major oil producer Saudi Arabia announces net-zero target by 2060

REgards Neil

Isn't this just kicking the can down the road, (and they are not alone)and didn't they agree at the Paris 2015 that everyone should have a 2050 target......

[myglaren]

They have been very circumspect with their findings but:-

Surprising discoveries

At an old gunpowder factory in Delaware—now a museum and archive—I found a transcript of a petroleum conference from 1959 called the “Energy and Man” symposium, held at Columbia University in New York. As I flipped through, I saw a speech from a famous scientist, Edward Teller (who helped invent the hydrogen bomb), warning the industry executives and others assembled of global warming.

“Whenever you burn conventional fuel,” Teller explained, “you create carbon dioxide. … Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect.” If the world kept using fossil fuels, the ice caps would begin to melt, raising sea levels. Eventually, “all the coastal cities would be covered,” he warned.

1959 was before the moon landing, before the Beatles’ first single, before Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, before the first modern aluminum can was ever made. It was decades before I was born. What else was out there?

From:-
https://www.popsci.com/environment/oil- ... -cover-up/

[myglaren]

More from haveathink.

[mickthemaverick]

I watched that last night, the concept is pretty exciting and it could, as Dave suggested, be a significant breakthrough!!