The Green Agenda has Become an Embarrassing Failure
From heat pumps to new bins, the Government keeps trying to force unworkable technologies and environmental wheezes on an unimpressed public, writes Ross Clark in the Telegraph. Here’s an excerpt.
The Government’s initiative to rationalise recycling bin collections, with the result that all homes could end up having up to seven wheelie bins or other containers, seems to have been binned itself. Meanwhile, the Government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which seeks to persuade us to rip out our boilers and install heat pumps instead, has turned out to be a miserable failure, with only 10,000 installations in its first year. The Government had made enough money available for three times that number – and by the end of the decade is counting on 600,000 installations every year. Nor is the great switch to electric cars exactly going to plan: the proportion of car sales made up by pure electric vehicles has stalled at 16%, with petrol cars still accounting for a stubborn 41% in March.
Sunak is rapidly finding out what Cameron previously discovered: while the public is generally very concerned about the environment, we are not going to tolerate badly thought-out policies which make us poorer and turn our lives into a misery. Sadly, that is exactly what so many green policies do. While they offer huge handouts to a lucky few – such as Cameron’s father-in-law Sir Reginald Sheffield, who was reported to be earning £350,000 a year from wind turbines on his Lincolnshire estate – for the greater mass of humanity green policies too often mean vast expense and a large amount of bother.
Is it really any wonder that take-up of £5,000 vouchers for heat pumps should have turned out to be lukewarm? Lukewarm, indeed, is how many early adopters have described their homes after shelling out £10,000 or more for a heat pump. Even the handout won’t bring the cost of a heat pump down to parity with a new gas boiler in all but a few cases. Moreover, if you have a gas boiler which is functioning perfectly well, why risk changing it? Heat pumps may be suitable for well-insulated, newly-built homes which don’t need a lot of heating of any kind, but even Bosch, which manufactures them, has said they are not suitable for older properties – at least not without spending at least another £10,000 stripping them back to the walls and insulating them.
As for expecting us to sort our rubbish into up to seven recycling bins, why on Earth did any Government minister think that would be a good idea? There are some environmentalists, it is true, who love the idea of people being forced to go through their rubbish with a fine tooth comb every week because they see it as doing penance for the damage human societies’ are wreaking on the natural world. But it is so unnecessary. The technology to sort out recyclables from a single waste stream has existed for many years, is widely used in the US and many other countries – and even in parts of Britain. My own local authority uses an automated plant outside Cambridge – with the result we need only one bin for dry recyclables and have one of the highest recycling rates in the country. It rose from 37% to 56% after the new plant was opened.
“The Government has made its bed by agreeing on an arbitrary emissions target, but we shouldn’t have to sleep in it,” adds Ross. After all, “crap stuff won’t cease to be crap just because it’s green.”
Worth reading in full.
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An engineer friend tells me that waste plastic can now be converted into clean fuel oil by pyrolysis at a cost of about 65p a litre. He reckons the Government should make it duty free at point of sale and see what happens. I guess every kilo of plastic would make about a litre of fuel.
Except that pyrolysis is an energy-consuming process, which makes a lot less energy than it uses. Incineration, au contraire, merely releases the residual energy within the oil-originated plastic, so you generate energy.
That’s interesting, but maybe not disastrous – I mean, do we know whether costs are changing over time, and also whether there are economies of scale to be made? To me it seems at least an argument for pursuing the technology, that we do already have an infrastructure for burning fuel oil, but we don’t have road vehicles that run on incinerated plastic.
I can’t see how burning fossil fuels to make energy to produce ersatz fossil fuels is an answer to anything. We’ve enough ways to consume energy already, without inventing more. Likewise, of course, hydrogen, which is from the nature of chemistry using more energy to produce less energy once the inevitable inefficiencies are taken into consideration.
Quite right. If there is or has been any commercial viability in any of these energy generating processes, it would have been adopted on an industrial scale already. The fact that governments are bribing and psychologically blackmailing people to adopt commercial unviable concepts tells you all you need to know about these processes. It is an agenda not an alternative option.
Hydrogen is the most common substance in the known universe! Pity its not all in one place or easy to get!
Readily available on the Sun.
And hydrogen is the most reactive and dangerous element in nature, which is why there is no free hydrogen on Earth, and what was in the atmosphere is in the oceans.
Why would you have to use energy to release energy (which can never be anything like 100% efficient – especially the idiotic hydrogen proposals)
So, let water run down hill through a turbine to make electricity and charge a lot for it, then, pump it back up to the top using cheap electricity and do it again! Profitable, yes, reality, codswallop! World saving ,blinkered human madness.
Thank you, Jon Garvey!
Thankyou, Marcus. I did a bit of research on it back in 2021, summarised here. The bottom line on energy (from someone who managed pyrolyis plants) is that they consume from 5-87 times more fuel-energy than they produce. As green as carrots!
We have unknown oil and gas underground – best estimate is enough to last two to three centuries.
Why do we need to use costly, resource mis-allocating nonsense to produce motor fuels by other means?
If we reject the false environmental premise regarding climate change, plastics (one of the most inert materials we know) and everything Mankind does, we would not need to tie ourselves in knots at vast cost solving non-problems.
I’ve read a few articles that hypothesize that the earth is a giant gas producing machine. Certain formations in the earth’s crust seem to be able to produce it at an unfathomable scale.
A lot of the recycling nonsense started in the 1990’s following the EU Landfill Directive which concerned the landfilling of biodegradable waste. The UK Landfill Tax was introduced in 1996 by Conservative Secretary of State for the Environment, John Gummer, and was the UK’s first environmental tax.
I seem to recall there were problems with landfill in The Low Countries with contaminents leaching into the water supply and the directive was to tackle this issue. Like many EU edicts, the UK, where landfill was cheap and on the whole unproblematic, gold plated the unnecessary legislation and waste disposal costs soared. We then shipped a lot of our waste to developing countries so that we could hit recycling targets. But at least the greens were happy.
9% of UK plastics recycled for future usage. It is a sorry sight.
But a massive industry – some £250 Bn worldwide….(ah now we get it).
Gov’t says 45% of UK waste is recycled – but that means ‘sent for recycling’ it does not mean reuse. It might well be shipped offshore to be burnt or dumped in a 3rd world landfill. I would guess 20% might be recycled vs the billions spent. A real audit would be enlightening.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/17/plastic-recycling-myth-what-really-happens-your-rubbish
Plastic recycling started in the early 1970s as a result of frequent Middke East oil crises and a surge in the price of oil, plus… everyone’s favourite, Peak Oil due at the end of the 1980s.
It made commercial sense both to reduce costs and to conserve oil supplies to recycle plastic rather than use all virgin plastic.
The crises passed, Peak Doom was rescheduled, oil prices fell, recycling plastic was no longer economic, but has becoms estsblished as a ritual to propitiate the gods of the environment and offer penitence to Mother Earth.
My business routinely separates card and plastic from our other waste. But we have to put the plastic out for domestic collections in a stolen wheelie bin (shhh…!), and card goes to supermarket recycling centres which are getting fewer and fewer round our way. As our contract is up for renewal, I thought I’d ask the local authority if they now have any other plans for card and plastic and they said, received today…
“Sorry, I am unable to help with this one as we do not do any commercial recycling, all our collections are done as general waste.”
Thats the local authority admitting that it all just goes in an incinerator or a hole in the ground. So much for our good intentions.
Whereabouts are you Neil?
The telegraph! Tap tap! Oldest form of electrical communication! Morse, it’s Oldest language! Telegraph, mail,? Are these the only bastions of common sense!?
Common sense used to be the norm!
Now we tap tap bollocks!
You never get something for nothing!
: Isaacs Newton
Embarrassing to whom? The government don’t pay for it and therefore don’t care. It’s the taxpayers who pick up the bill. I don’t mind being embarrassed. I do mind being fleeced by amoral, unaccountable. self serving, overpaid politicians and even worse, civil servants.
“…while the public is generally very concerned about the environment…”
I am very concerned that the environment is overflowing from my cracked gutter’s downpipe, leading to a rather wet wall, which is damaging my property.
Apart from this, and the need to wear a thick coat and boots in April, I couldn’t give a rat’s arse about “the environment” (whatever it is).
I am glad this has been “binned” in England, however in Wales it is business as usual. A bin for every waste product, except for the bin into which we could put the Senedd.
The cost of separating materials for “recycling” is almost impossible to recover.
I don’t remember who called it “Unilateral Economic Disarmament”,but they were correct.
It was Kemi Badenoch
A lot of scientific analysis on here but they are missing Will Jones’s point which tells us. ” We ain’t buying the bullshine”
Isn’t the point that we may not be buying it but we are paying for it all the same?
I wonder if the Eco Nutters in the Government have started to wake up to the fact that people aren’t going to voluntarily make themselves colder, poorer and less mobile. And if they’re pushed too hard, many of them are going to kick back.
Yes, they have. Which is why they are focusing on a relentless propaganda campaign as per comment elsewhere.
https://staging.dailysceptic.org/2023/04/14/the-green-agenda-has-become-an-embarrassing-failure/#comment-871849
More Telegraph clickbait. We may win a few skirmishes but in the longer term we are losing this war. If they can’t persuade us, they will force us. For example I think I read last week that from next year the government will begin to restrict the number of new ICE vehicles that can be sold, to ‘encourage’ us to buy EVs.
Yes, it’s a complete farce. But it won’t stop them doubling down on the propaganda war. Take a look at the mind games that the House of Lords and the Behavioural Insights Team are urging the Government to indulge in. Propaganda campaign, regulation of advertising, greening TV drama and news and so on. When did we turn into East Germany?
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/net-zero-behaviour-change-mind-games?r=nhgn1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
My local paper has a GOING GREEN page each week with articles all of which misinform the readers. The articles make statements of certainty where there are NONE. They make all manner of claims with zero evidence to back them up. I can write to the letter page but that is unlikely to succeed in changing anything and in any case they only print about 3 letters each week and mine would be unlikely to appear. Green propaganda is everywhere. People don’t seem to realise how they are being manipulated and what the end game really is. ——They mostly seem to think it is all about “science” and “saving the planet”. Once their central heating gets ripped out they might wake up but by then it’s too late.
One big problem with all of this pretend to save the planet decarbonisation nonsense is that we have actually forced ourselves in law to do this. This means we can be sued if we don’t do it. ——–How can politicians have forced us to do something and made it a law when (a) They have no idea how to achieve it. (b) They have no idea of the astronomical costs involved, which doesn’t seem to bother them much, and (c) have no clue or don’t really care whether it has any effect on global climate because they are going to do it anyway for ideological reasons. ———-NET ZERO might cost trillions, with virtually no benefit and infact mostly causing extreme hardship. Smart meters alone are estimated to be costing 20 billion, so imagine the enormous cost and clutter of removing 22 million gas boilers and replacing them all with WHAT? A silly heat pump? Fanciful Hydrogen that isn’t even a fuel? ———These people are insane and a diabolical disgrace.
In my county council area we already have 6 bins! One for garden waste for those who want it (paid extra), one for plastics/tins/foil, one for glass/cartons, one for paper/cardboard, one for food, one for general. (I’m a luddite and separate out other stuff like metals and batteries which I take to the tip myself.) Weekly collection for recycled stuff, three weekly for general. I don’t have a problem separating it out – I’ve done it for years for composting and burning clean paper/card on the woodburner – but dunno where it all goes though, except that they make an OK compost from the green waste.
You are trying to be sensible. But no doubt you have plenty of room and a good size garden to keep all of those bins. Not all people have such a luxury. There comes a point where ideology trumps common sense, and as regards the green agenda that point was reached a very long time ago.
Kept in the garage at the front – small garden, frontage straight onto road. 4 of the bins are small and do stack but yes, its a major issue for those with limited storage space and straight onto the pavement. Its an obstacle nightmare on collection days, forcing people to walk in the road.
Exactly. ————Why should your property or mine be a storage facility for the governments silly pretend to save the planet aspirations?
“who won’t accept crap stuff just because it’s ‘green'”
:Addendum
“who won’t accept crap stuff just because they are told its green”‘.
“Get your heat pumps here, get em while there tepid, their lovely!”
Then we can all die frozen in our beds with a massive electricity bill on the mantlepiece!
Well, we still have the unworkable, expropriating boiler replacement prohibition law for rental properties and LPG first in place, though now apparently graciously deferred for a few years.
And in Germany, they are now planning to go all-in on that via mandatory heatpumps from next year!, regardless or rather because of, their uselessness and unworkability in most cases.
Cockup?!?
Are we really to believe the idiots in charge are so stupid they have given no thought to exactly how much more electrical power will be needed to replace fossil fuels in vehicles and homes and what is required to generate and deliver it, so have no appraisal or plan regarding the capital and resources needed and made no schedule?
Or, as we conspiracy theorists very much suspect after the Fakedemic fiasco, the ‘plan’ is not to replace fossil fuels with alternatives, but to replace them with nothing.
Net Zero Human Race.
My local authority has informed us that we no longer need separate waste into separate bins for recyclable, non-recyclable as henceforth instead of two bin lorries one for each bin, there will be one lorry and it will all go to landfill. Thus because whilst our flats separate rubbish, other blocks don’t, so it’s cheaper just to do one round.
The economics of the green caper and the religious recycling rituals are getting through.
I tried writing to my MP about that very subject. The reply I got from the then BEIS minister was notable because it contained no actual numbers on average or peak demand and no detail about how they were going to produce the required supply. But National Grid ESO think we are going to get by just fine with 46-60% less energy per capita. Cock up or conspiracy, I don’t know, but it’s completely crazy.
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidturver/p/what-will-net-zero-ever-do-for-us?utm_source=direct&r=nhgn1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web