What Environmental and Oil interest lobbies don’t want you to know: 99% clean coal is here, and ready to go
Both major Parties to blame
Sensational evidence of coal alternative being rejected by ideologues and Party donations
The Slog: In a situation that ranks among
the most disgracefully short-sighted, incompetent and corrupt energy
policies on Earth – ours – the British people are being asked to live
with unsightly, ineffective propellers and water-threatening shale
extraction….when beneath the surface, we have a near infinite supply of
potentially clean fossil fuel energy.
The Daily Telegraph reports today that a major punch-up is going on
between Ed Davey’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), and
the DEFRA Minister Owen Paterson. Patercake is for offshore turbines and
against land turbines, on the grounds that turbines can harm rural
areas. His forthcoming report offers “official confirmation” of this
“fact”….although it’s a pity that the Coalition couldn’t just take
umpteen Dutch reports showing that the turbines are a nightmare to
maintain, are often made in materials unfit for salt water, are noisy
and unsightly, and on some days generate enough juice to power one drill
in Scunthorpe.
But LibDem Ed Davey wants to stop the Paterson Report, because he’s a
dyed-in-the-brain fart recycler. And, as it happens, Paterson is a
died-in-the-brain fracker who’d like us all to be dead-in-the-water.
Thanks to politically driven, doubtfully supported ideology, once again
here we are going to be saddled with one half-baked wind policy
existing alongside one overdone shale-gas fest….neither of which will
solve any of our longer-term problem – and both of which are potentially
damaging to the British economic infrastructure.
What we’re seeing here is a row about whether ducking witches is more
humane and just than burning them. It is a farce beyond the sane
person’s imagination – and there is no need for it.
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I am reminded of the great Aneurin Bevan who, on digging up a scandal
about fish and coal shortages during World War II, rose in the House of
Commons to declare, “We are an island built on coal and surrounded by
fish. Only this Government could organise a shortage of both at one and
the same time”. Well Nye, you were lucky, mate: you didn’t live to see
the entire British political class organising the most comprehensive
energy, financial, agrarian, trade and economic balance cock-up in the
history of mankind.
He was, however, right about one thing: coal.
Coal’s ability to be cleaner has moved on a million light years since
King Arthur’s mad pickets took on the equally Mad Handbag, and lost.
Even the newer Chinese coal reactors use less fuel and capture over five
times as much pollution as older versions….and add environmental
benefits: Integrated Coal Gasification Combined Cycle power plant
technology can increase efficiencies by 20–30%, and inject the captured
carbon dioxide from CCS power plants into oil fields to increase energy
recovery rate by 4–18%. Carbon storage technologies, such as the
creation of bio-charcoal, can improve soil fertility, agricultural
productivity and water quality. Where is the evidence that any of this is being investigated and developed by the donkeys in Downing Street? Anyone?
Alright then, I’ll tell you. Four years ago, beneath the Firth of Forth, in a coalfield of more than 200 square miles,
a project began that, if successful, would offer an affordable means
of reaching billions of tons of deep-lying coal deposits without causing
harm to the environment. The Firth of Forth field is so deep – 500
metres or more beneath the surface – that it has until recently not been
cost-effective to mine. But British – British – scientists
developed a combined underground CCS and fuel cell methodology which –
as fuel becomes more difficult to extract and prices increase – could
make us self-sufficient in almost completely clean coal.
In April and October 2010, the scheme was featured in the media again…talking in terms of billions of tons
of clean coal. Since when (in the UK) it’s gone….nowhere. But if you
live in elsewhere as opposed to nowhere, then it’d be different: in
India, Mexico, and the US
would you believe, clean-coal is going ahead and extraction has begun.
The new Ohio (that name’s familiar) technology linked above removes 99% of greenhouses gases from coal.
So even if, like me, you don’t buy the CO2 danger argument, there is no
political or economic argument on Earth to stop Britain being energy
self-sufficient within a decade…..and without harming either the
environment or the water supply.
This politically incorrect source of fuel, the wicked coal Thing, that even without new trechnology
would pour less So2 in the atmosphere in 20 years than the relatively
small Tambora volcanic eruption of 1815, would take us a century to beat
the pollution from the Krakatoa blast in 1883. Three older coal
reactors in Shanghai chuck out more CO2 into the atmosphere in a week than we would in a decade….even if we just used the old fashioned approach.
Why is this being ignored?
A number of reasons, but these above all:
1. Oil interest/Offshore wind farm lobbying and bribing of the
Conservative Party to ensure that coal remains quietly buried – and seen
as if it might be some kind of long half-life radioactive isotope.
2. Environmental/Green lobbying of the Labour Party (now led by arch
CO2 bollocks-spouter Ed Miliband) to ensure that everyone remains
blindly on message.
3. Tory Party fears that a new coal extraction industry might create
another Arthur Scargill. (It wouldn’t, but you have to remember that the
Tory Right these days has a per capita mental age of about 274 years).
4. Labour Party decisions taken to push coal extraction into a siding, and forget about it….under the direct Ministerial leadership of Ed Miliband.
In short, these clowns – with their hamfisted ideologies and
bankroller Sugar Daddies – are shafting all of us on energy (exactly as
they have on EU membership, immigration, banking, trade policy and
austerity) for their own commercial and political ends.
Look at the evidence and gnash your already worn-down teeth:
* Electoral Commission records show
that in the eight months before a Government grant to offshore wind
giant Offshore Group Newcastle (OGN) was announced, OGN and one of its
directors, Alexander Temerko, made donations totalling £49,905 to the
Conservative Party. In the year that followed the grant, Mr Temerko and
his company donated a further £298,250 to the party. Mr Temerko is in
turn an oil baron in Russia.
* David Cameron met several key donors on his recent visit to Kazakhstan,
a trip criticised by human rights groups because of the country’s
autocratic political regime. Prominent Kazackhstani Ayman Asfari, chief
executive of UK oil and gas firm Petrofac, has given the Tories nearly
£300,000 in the past three years.
* William Hague lobbied strongly on behalf of Tullow Oil who were embroiled in a dispute over a £175 million unpaid tax bill in Uganda. Tullow CEO
Aidan Heavey later donated £10,000 to the Tories.
Aidan Heavey later donated £10,000 to the Tories.
* Tony Buckingham, the chief executive of Heritage Oil, donated
£50,000 to the Conservative Party shortly before the general election.
* Oil baroness Lady Getty makes regular contributions to Tory coffers. Since 2001, the Paul Getty organisation has contributed a whopping £5m to the Conservative Party.
And then we turn to the Ed Miller Band….
* Before the 2010 election, technology for cleaning up coal plants,
known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), struggled to get off the
ground because – according to reliable coal industry sources –
Miliband’s Environment Ministry showed zero interest in the project. In
December 2010 – after the election – Powerfuel, which had the UK’s only licence to build a clean coal power station, went into administration through lack of funds.
* Ed gave only tentative support to the CCS idea, happy to accept
that plants “might be” in operation by 2020. His equivocal attitude was
directly related to (a) his need to pacify Labour’s Green wing and (b)
hopes he harboured at the time that a deal might be done with the
Evergreen Liberal Democrats. Whichever way you cut it, Miliband lost a
clear British lead during the 2008-10 period. Others are now using the exact same technology he was such a Wet Willy about. What he himself declared was
a “massive opportunity” for British innovation was frittered away – by
him, and then by the oil industry’s grip on the Conservative Party.
* Today, the Party led by yes-and-no-with-reservations Greenie Ed
Miliband has a shadow energy minister rejoicing in the name of Tom
Greatrex. Tom says,
in the latest Labour manifesto, that his Party will promise “to get
much more of the UK’s energy from green sources by 2030 to make sure
wind farms and other renewable sources of
energy are developed”. So the coal alternative continues to be buried
deep beneath bonkers, ill-informed and 10 years out of date science.
We have a massive energy debate going on at the minute that is
centred around fracking. That debate is being muddied by hairies jumping
up and down in the time-honoured manner of gallant losers, and
Tory/oilco spin machines snowing through a short-term fix that will be
disastrous for Britain.
The UK will never solve any of its problems – energy or otherwise –
until the donor-monied, ideologically constipated political class has
been replaced from top to toe.
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