Those advocating climate change mitigation policy have hitherto wagered everything on the success of renewable energy technologies. The steadily accumulating data on energy and emissions over the period of intense policy commitment suggests that this gamble has not been successful. Pragmatic environmentalists will be asking whether sentimental attachment to wind and solar is standing in […]

Three years ago, Canada joined 194 other countries in Paris to announce a landmark agreement on climate change, now informally known by the French capital’s name. This week began in Paris, however, with startlingly violent discord over fuel taxes stemming from that climate deal. The protesters, clad in the yellow safety vests France requires motorists to carry, are […]

REGULAR readers may remember my report in May on the Government’s failure to respond to the devastating critique of government energy policy by Dieter Helm, Britain’s foremost energy economist. The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Greg Clark, has finally responded, thirteen months after the Cost of Energy Review was published. His […]

“Broadly speaking, I would judge that French popular anger is the shape of things to come globally, as climate policies begin to move into more difficult sectors,” GWPF energy editor John Constable said. The French love a good riot, but the political backlash to the French government’s plans to increase carbon taxes on fuel could […]

The government has suddenly renewed its interest in carbon capture The news that the government has suddenly renewed its interest in carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a bit of a puzzler.  Back in 2015, it cancelled the £1billion competition to develop commercial-scale CCS, a move which led to much gnashing of teeth among the […]

The government’s response to the Helm Cost of Energy Review shows it is putting green ideology ahead of the welfare of families and the competitiveness of British business, Lord Lawson has warned. Thirteen months after publication of Dieter Helm’s Cost of Energy Review in October 2017, Greg Clark has at last responded by kicking all Helm’s recommendations into the […]

The most important news in world politics this month isn’t about diplomacy. Bigger than Brexit, more consequential than presidential tweetstorms, the American shale revolution is rapidly reshaping the global balance of power as energy prices plummet. Until recently, observers expected American energy production to reach a plateau. A lack of pipeline capacity was expected to […]

To understand what has been happening it is instructive to compare the new IEA report with that published 10 years ago. Hydrocarbons — oil, gas and coal — accounted for 81 per cent of total global energy supply in 2008. The figure today is still 81 per cent and will decline only marginally over the […]