Massive New Coal Boom To Fuel Southeast Asia’s Booming Economies

The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that about 100 GW of new coal-fired power generation capacity is expected to come online in Southeast Asia by 2040, more than doubling the region’s current coal power capacity. Global coal-fired generation capacity to grow by nearly 50% over today’s levels. —Power Magazine, 27 October 2017

Even before the start of the talks negotiators voiced their warnings and demands. North Rhine-Westphalia’s Prime Minister Armin Laschet (Christian Democrats) who leads the CDU’s negotiation team on climate and energy threatened to pull the plug on the negotiations: “If Germany’s industrial base is compromised, we won’t form a coalition. If coal plants are closed down in Eastern Germany and thousands of workers are made redundant, very soon 30% of voters will support the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD),” Laschet warned. “If push comes to shove we will have to crash the talks.”  —Spiegel Online, 26 October 2017

Consumers are paying too much for their energy because of “excessive” green taxes added to bills, a damning Government-commissioned report has found. Consumers will have paid well over £100 billion by 2030. A series of “spectacularly bad” decisions by ministers have “unnecessarily burdened” households and businesses with higher green energy subsidies than necessary, according to Prof 
Dieter Helm, of Oxford University. —The Daily Telegraph, 25 October 2017

In an authoritative and excoriating report commissioned by the government, Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at Oxford University, has torn away from the fig leaves covering the government’s nakedness. Policy interventions, he tells us, are so numerous and badly designed that they have resulted in costs well in excess of what is needed to meet emissions targets. These subsidies will cost a hair-raising £100 billion by 2030.  Sadly, as the study emphasizes, much of this wasteful policy cannot be canceled, due to “contractual and other legal commitments”. In other words, the government has given the rent-seekers firm entitlements that the courts must defend. Did the civil servants explain these liabilities to the responsible ministers, and if so why was the consumer interest neglected, and why were such bad deals struck, again and again and again? –John Constable, The Times, 27 October 2017

A majority of scientists might say a scientific theory is true, but that doesn’t mean the consensus is reliable. The science underpinning environmental claims can be fundamentally wrong — as it was in one of the biggest environmental scares in recent decades. The acid-rain alarm of the 1970s and ’80s was a dry run for the current panic about climate change. Both began in Sweden as part of a war on coal meant to bolster support for nuclear power. In 1971 meteorologist Bert Bolin wrote the Swedish government’s report on acid rain to the United Nations. Seventeen years later he became the first chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. –Rupert Darwall, The Wall Street Journal, 26 October 2017

The BBC has been accused of ‘caving in’ to climate change lobbyists after apologizing for an interview with global warming skeptic Lord Lawson. Benny Peiser, director of the GWPF yesterday accused it going overboard in its apology. He said: ‘If the BBC had to apologize for every time one of their interviewees said something inaccurate, they would have to close the whole shop. They are completely obsessed with the green agenda and hardly ever have a dissenting voice … and now they have essentially caved to the bullying tactics of the green campaign.’ —Katherine Rushton, Daily Mail, 26 October 2017