This tweet is from the political editor of the Telegraph this morning:
I suspect that the Telegraph has reliable sources for this story. If so, it is profoundly worrying given the battles on climate change to come.
First, hundreds of millions is nothing compared to the problem of energy waste we face in the UK's 30 million properties, many of which are still hopelessly energy inefficient.
Second, energy efficiency provides the best rate of return on all energy investment by actually cutting use.
Third, this really is about tackling the climate crisis in that case.
Fourth, it also fits firmly into the fuel poverty and levelling up agendas.
Fifth, it could also create new long term employment opportunity.
But the Treasury says no. Climate change, poverty, the end of life on earth, inequality, meeting basic needs: none of those are as important as balancing the government's books.
And staggeringly that is when hundreds of millions have been raised with new green savings products for which no use has been decided as yet. In other words, hypothecated funding for this was already available.
But still Sunak fought it.
It takes callous ignorance on a staggering scale to adopt Sunak's position. We have to presume that's what he possesses.
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Or he is involved with big energy that does not want a reduction in use??
The only way to explain this is:
1) The public are used to get politicians into power through the supposed democracy of the election system.
2) Then democracy is parked up or discarded like a booster rocket and forgotten about as the interest groups like Carbon and the City ply the politicians with funding so that THEY get the world THEY want.
This is how the world actually works and how it will end.
The latest IPCC report says we have 3 years to start implementing change to stave off the worst of the temperature rises.
Energy efficiency will be a large part of the immediate action we can take
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/26/amory-lovins-energy-efficiency-interview-cheapest-safest-cleanest-crisis
to ignore this now is complete and utter madness
I think this is just empty posturing on Sunak’s part. He seems unable to grasp the seriousness of the issues and perhaps thinks that ‘looking hard’ and saying no will help get him into Number 10. Given how stupid a lot of Tory voters are, perhaps it might.
sounds like Sunak is on the “cut the green cr@p” bandwagon (which has now been shown to be a daft mistake…)
Ignoring any issues over climate
1. We have some real supply issues over oil, in particular diesel and gas. The only thing that will deliver any relief in the short term is efficiency measures.
If we dont we could experience significant disruption
2. In the longer term we are going to spend a lot of public money to secure the energy supply, this can either be done by ‘efficiency measures’ which by and large are ‘one off’ and as Amoy Lovins points out here
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/26/amory-lovins-energy-efficiency-interview-cheapest-safest-cleanest-crisis
rather than investment in generating capacity.
Might it be due to both a lack of vision and/or who might own that plant?
I would have been more surprised had Sunak’s stance been contrary that reported quite frankly, successive UK governments have avoided addressing state sponsored energy conservation retrofits since the 1960s with rare exceptions.
The only explanation to HMG’s serial myopia is obsession over maintaining or increasing Treasury revenue streams irrespective of what befalls the world outside, be that a hole in the ozone layer, global warming, or a “global” energy crisis.
With further increases anticipated in September, the Tories are rapidly heading toward their own “Winter of discontent”…