There’s No Such Thing as ‘Green’ Industry
News this week emerged about the collapse of Swedish battery startup Northvolt. “Like many companies in the battery sector,” the failed company’s website explained, “Northvolt has experienced a series of compounding challenges in recent months that eroded its financial position.” European Governments, including those of Britain and the EU, have long claimed that as pioneers of green policy and the ‘transition to a low carbon economy’, their policies will cause domestic industries and the green economy to boom. But instead of the green dream turning into reality, across the continent there is only a bleak economic outlook and deindustrialisation. Given that so much of this was predicted, yet those predictions met with policymakers’ intransigence, isn’t it time to ask if this nightmare is a feature of green policy, not merely a bug?
Established in 2016, Northvolt offered battery cells “produced with 100% fossil-free energy” which “represent the most sustainable products of their type in the world”. These super-green batteries were a rival to manufacturers mostly based in China, which enjoy dominant market position, thanks to the low cost of energy (much of which comes from coal) and greater control over supply chains. The company claimed to have $50 billion worth of orders on its books, and, according to the FT, had raised $15 billion of investment. But “neither Sweden nor the EU had provided the company with much financial support”, says the pink newspaper, citing “substantial Government subsidies” that Chinese manufacturers enjoy.
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Northvolt:
“We weren’t as successful at grifting as we thought we would be.”
Sensible people:
“The whole of SaveThePlanet is absurd, because the premise is false.”
“Northvolt has experienced a series of compounding challenges in recent months that eroded its financial position.” Gone bust. A dead battery company. Deceased, defunct, no more.
Can’t even make a go of it in energy-rich Sweden. Elsewhere in Europe, “green” industry foist by the petard of ruinously-expensive green energy.
Go figure, Kommissar Miliband. The People’s Bung is deepest Green.
The Kommissar Must Fall.
The idea of the state needing to “support” supposedly commercial businesses has become normalised. If a business is selling something people want to buy at a sustainable price then it doesn’t need support, and if it isn’t then you’d better come up with a damn good reason why I should bail it out – a reason beyond “I like the idea of what they are selling”.
You’ve hit the nail on the head there – the political point of ‘we like what they are doing’ vs ‘we understand they can be profitable’ are often not linked, especially when subsidy grifters get their act together to milk the system and its gullible politicians. Trying to think of other major industries where it’s been so obvious – I guess coal mining was subsidised during the latter years, steel as well due to military needs?
I don’t know about coal and steel, but it’s possible. Some people believe in “market failure” as the economists call it, others don’t, and there are some arguments for protecting domestic industries to preserve national security and freedom – food and energy independence. If you are reliant on other countries for essential stuff then you are not your own master. But I think the starting point should be “if it’s such a great idea, why does it need a subsidy”.
100% agree – it’s all about the ‘why’ on the subsidy point. My default position would be zero subsidies for anything, then build up from that. Idealistic perhaps, but we need to do something to get back on a solid footing…. As you say, if say wind turbines are so amazing, pull all the subsidies and watch them flourish (they won’t, they’ll stop)
Indeed. We could have been energy independent with a combination of coal, gas, oil and nuclear – and not needed to use land (including agricultural land) to build solar farms and wind turbines on.
Yes there is. It is the Money Industry (ie when money was green).
It is an industry of eco-destruction, corruption, theft, grift, bribes, and criminality. All fuelled by ‘green’.
So Government, Socialism… business as usual.
As an electronic engineer, I totally agree: there is no such thing as green industry.
It is nonsense.
Green solutions are about as effective as putting a picture of a green leaf on your latest electronic gadget.
This section summarizes the problem:
“Wind turbines need steel. Steel needs iron. And iron production needs mines. And refining iron ore needs cheap and abundant energy.”
The simple fact is that technology created a problem and we are trying to solve it by throwing more technology at it.
What’s the solution, then?
I haven’t got a clue.
Technology & private sector economics driven by the relentless need to build competitive advantage drive improvements in productive efficiency towards ‘same for less’ or ‘more for same’. This driver is, for obvious reasons, dictated by their quite different objectives, absent from Goverment and public sector. ‘Greening’ of industry is a byproduct of improved efficiency which will not be achieved by ridiculous government mandates. My experience ( also as an electronc systems engineer/ entrepreneur ) in building more than 1 international innovative companies over the last 4 decades to deliver efficiency in certain large energy consuming applications has taught me that
1 Innovation has to prove such efficiencies to justify its application,
2 Government subsidies are always misdirected as those appointed to dole out subsidies cannot be expected to understand Innovation,
3 Political drivers such as ‘safety’ or ‘Climate Change mitigation’ are always abused and corrupted by those who either do not understand the problems or whose aobjectives are deliberately mis-stated,
4 Innovation over time and with competition will deliver diminishing returns, determined by the laws of physics.
Good points.
There is no problem. A slightly warmer climate is a nicer climate.
Smelting iron also needs coking coal but the governing idiots shut down the new mine and all the jobs associated with it.
On a closely related topic, look at this crap
Don’t built the stupid f-ing things in the first place and save all the birds that would have died!
I wonder if bats can see the stripes at night? or maybe Bats aren’t deemed important enough? Insects by the ton, you know, bird food?
https://www.ecoportal.net/en/it-will-save-one-million-wind-turbine/3465/
Because its a cult, a doomsday one and people like Milliband are the equivalent of other Cult leaders who forced people to their deaths.
Labour is a death cult as evidenced by its policies on net zero, its policies towards the elderly and its pushing of the assisted killing bill.
Green Ideology. ————Remove reliable affordable Energy and replace it with unreliable unaffordable energy. The excuse being that we must “save the planet” by reducing CO2 emissions. But CO2 is actually something else. It is the one gas that can be directly tied to Industrial Capitalism. The wealthiest people emit the most CO2 and the poorest emit the least. Climate Policies are therefore about getting the wealthiest to use less energy and emit less CO2. Not because they are destroying the planet with global warming, but because they are using up more than their fair share of the world’s resources. As Edenhoffer of the IPCC said “One has to free oneself from the illusion that climate policies are environmental policies anymore. We redistribute the worlds wealth via climate policy”—-It isn’t about the climate. It is about economics, wealth and resources in a world that now has 8 billion people. They cannot all have the same standard of living as the wealthy west, as there is not enough coal oil and gas for that. So a plausible excuse is required to encourage less use of resources. That excuse is “Climate Change”.
So all these “green jobs” that will be created by the drive to Nut Zero – they amount to a huge drop in productivity, by any sane measure.
Re hydropower, although there is not a lot in the UK, there is another form of it bubbling under the political radar that could contribute more; tidal power, mostly in the Bristol Channel. Not popular with the greens, though! http://www.reuk.co.uk/wordpress/tidal/severn-barrage-tidal-power/ and loads of other places on this.
Tidal energy is another huge waste of money. If you want proof, consider why France only built the one at Rance while plenty of other locations exist for such schemes.
Any company which needs Government support = taxpayer money and regulatory protection from other market players, is not economically viable and just a vehicle to defraud the public purse and such private investors, stupid enough to invest conned into believing that Government “support” lowers the risk and guarantees a return.
Time for arrests, charges, Court cases.
One can’t help wondering how many people are getting money in brown envelopes from the Chinese communists.
Why are we paying wind farms to turn off during low demand. They should be using it to electrolyse water into hydrogen and oxygen, to be used in the huge (joke) range of hydrogen vehicles or burned in turbines later to create electricity
Still not an economic prospect.
I caught an episode of Alvin and the Chipmunks by chance yesterday and it was green zet zero propaganda from start to finish. Children are being indoctrinated
To paraphrase the supposed words of Henry II – who will rid us of this turbulent priest Miliband? But as it appears the whole body politic is obsessed by the green energy cult it is more than just him. As the economic idiocy of green policy grows ever clearer I believe that the political party that reveals the emperor’s clothes and abandons that policy will win the next election by a landslide.
The reason for these failures is that there are almost no science or engineering graduates in the civil service that advises ministers, and which does the analysis that informs policy. They are all arty farty types and PPE twats.
Our country is now living with the consequences of a Marxist, dumbed down education system which commenced in the mid 60s. We are finished.
Start planning how you are going to survive the collapse.
Remigration!