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SUVs are conquering the world as car buyers ignore climate message
SUVs are conquering the world. That’s a problem for efforts to reign in emissions from the global transportation sector, which accounts for roughly 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. For the first time ever in the U.S. last year, sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) likely accounted for half or just over half of all vehicles sold, according to […]
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Bill Blain: Will the green economy trigger the next crash?
Britain will be in serious crisis over its carbon-neutral green energy costs. Back in the last century, I spent a large part of my investment career packaging up financial assets, like mortgages, into bonds – securitisation. I was heavily involved with the acquisition financing of a US home lender which went spectacularly wrong a few […]
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Socialised losses, private profits
Policy Exchange’s proposals for a floor price are fundamentally flawed This is the second part of Bruno Prior’s commentary on the recent paper on energy reforms from Policy Exchange (PX). The first part can be seen here. Contracts for Differences guarantee a generator a “strike price”. If the market price is below the strike price, […]
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Judy Terry: The demands to make car travel more expensive ignore the political and economic realities
Judy Terry is a marketing professional and a former local councillor in Suffolk. Lifelong Conservatives are not alone in losing patience with Downing Street’s arrogant dictatorship, and its headline-grabbing policies, often based on questionable data, but designed to appease a minority of campaigners who don’t suffer the financial constraints of the rest of us. Instead […]
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James Woudhuysen: Net Zero will take over our lives
The new energy White Paper will force us to obsess over the minutiae of everyday energy consumption. Surely everyone remembers Boris Johnson’s ‘Green Industrial Revolution’, hyped in mid-November with his 10 Point Plan? Or maybe not. So familiar was his shopping list of eco-initiatives that it wouldn’t be a surprise if many eyes glazed over. But […]
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Rupert Darwall: From Covid to climate, the UK is handing policy to the unelected
Climate change sees more power being given to the administrative state. Boris Johnson looked awful: slumped on the frontbench, he was about to suffer the worst parliamentary revolt of his premiership. It was December 1 – less than a year on from his historic election triumph – and Parliament was debating the reimposition of regional Covid tiers […]
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Rupert Darwall: The IMF’s Net-Zero fairy tale
With Britain, France, the European Union, and now America (soon to be under Joe Biden’s leadership) piling onto the net-zero bandwagon, you’d think that some objectivity about the economic costs and consequences about such absolutist carbon-emission policies would be in order. Traditionally, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) could be relied upon as a source of […]
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For nuclear energy to flourish, we need a ‘mindset reversal’ about radiation
The future of nuclear power projects in the UK and elsewhere hinges on disabusing the public of its excessive fear of radiation. Nuclear energy must grow – and grow rapidly – if the countries of the world are to have any hope of limiting the growth of carbon dioxide emissions. But the growth of nuclear is being […]
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