“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
– F. A. Hayek: The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988), p. 76.
The European Commission’s (EC) just-published Energy Roadmap 2050 (Roadmap) updates its last analysis (which I criticized here) of EU forced-energy-transformation projects to 2020 , as well as scenarios reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 80-95% below EU 1990 levels by 2050. The forecast is stated (postmodernism?) as coincident with the need for energy security and affordability.
As one should “follow the money” when it comes to political capitalism, one should “follow the assumptions” when it comes to any roadmap pertaining to a post-carbon-based energy world.
…1. Renewables The share of renewable energy sources is projected to be 75% in gross final energy consumption and 97% in electricity consumption by 2050.
The European Energy Review has published a comprehensive article on the EU energy policy, entitled “Europe’s green energy chaos” by Andrew MacKillop (sometimes appearing as McKillop), an independent energy analyst and project advisor who has written on energy topics for over 35 years, and who worked for the European Commission’s Directorate-General of Energy as a policy expert in the 1980s.
EU policy can be summarized as 20-20-20 by 2020. Catchy isn’t it? It means 20% improvement in energy efficiency, 20% reduction in emissions, and 20% use of new renewable energy sources – all by 2020.
When publicized, the EU plan was (properly) criticized by the Economist and Dieter Helm, the chairman of the ad-hoc committee established by the EU to provide expert advice. MacKillop’s critical analysis of the current problems of government-heavy energy policy is spot on.…
“I wrote this book because the rising cost of energy is an increasingly important feature of the political landscape, as it massively affects the cost of living for families across Britain. Excessive green taxes make everything from driving to work to taking a well-earned holiday more expensive and make it a lot harder for manufacturers to compete and keep employing people here in Britain.
Motorists are particularly hard hit and unfairly penalized well beyond the cost of maintain the roads and the environmental harms their emissions create. The Government need to give families a better deal and cut unfair green taxes.”
– Matthew Sinclair, Press Release, Let Them Eat Carbon (London: TaxPayers Alliance: August 2011)
Matthew Sinclair, director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, has penned an educational tract to get his fellow countrymen to reconsider what in their good graces has been accepted as sort of a public duty–to buy into climate/energy alarmism and to do their fair share.…