Campaign to highlight the serious economic and societal implications of expensive and poorly considered climate and energy policies #CostOfNetZero
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Net Zero Watch retweeted
This just adds to the sense that Western politics is increasingly performative, seeking to appear on message to maintain parochial status. But what is at stake is not election to the student union…
Oh the irony
Rutte spent 14 years running one of Europe’s largest refining countries, the Netherlands. Did he use those years to build energy resilience?
Gosh, no. He was busy championing the Green Deal and prematurely reducing hydrocarbon supplies ahead of demand realities - like all of them!
His government shut Groningen, Europe’s largest gas field, imposed a 5-year moratorium on shale-gas exploration and production, and introduced a national CO₂ levy on industry on top of the EU ETS.
Now Rutte changed jobs and, as NATO Secretary General, discovers the strategic value of energy security: in a war, Europe needs “massive amounts of diesel and all the oil products.”
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Net Zero Watch retweeted
Are Mark Rutte and NATO “climate deniers” @ret_ward?
These slurs only serve the interests of our enemies. They delegitimise scrutiny of policies that have weakened our energy security and industrial capacity while hostile states build theirs.
There is no virtue in making the West weaker.
CC: @afneil
This climate change denier cannot bring himself to say the U.K. should reduce its dependence on diesel by moving to electric vehicles. He just wants to complain about the suffering of being dependent on diesel.
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Net Zero Watch retweeted
Not just Miliband. I want to see @EdwardJDavey held to account. Unlike in 2022, the breakdown of the cross party consensus on energy will mean he has no where to hide this coming winter.
An inquiry should open into the actions or lack thereof by @Ed_Miliband as Energy Minister. If it were shown he knowingly deprived the UK of energy security, charges might follow.
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Net Zero Watch retweeted
We are heading for the mother of all energy crunches this winter, the second in four years. We need more refined oil products, particularly diesel and aviation fuel, and more natural gas.
Geopolitics is the proximate cause. But decades of delusional policymaking have left us badly exposed.
I hope journalists do their job in the coming weeks and months. Politicians were repeatedly warned by energy realists and figures in the defence and security establishment about the risks of rapid decarbonisation and policies designed to suppress domestic hydrocarbon production. Those warnings were ignored. In some cases, the people making them were smeared as cranks, climate deniers or fossil-fuel lobbyists.
This vulnerability was not unforeseeable. Choices were made. There needs to be accountability for them.
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Net Zero Watch retweeted
I actually find this depressing. Many of us have been making these arguments for years. They were central to our opposition to Net Zero, the fracking ban and the retreat from domestic oil and gas production.
We made them again after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
We were - and still are - smeared as “climate deniers” and “fossil fuel lobbyists”.
This is a complete failure of British and European statecraft. 👇
Oh the irony
Rutte spent 14 years running one of Europe’s largest refining countries, the Netherlands. Did he use those years to build energy resilience?
Gosh, no. He was busy championing the Green Deal and prematurely reducing hydrocarbon supplies ahead of demand realities - like all of them!
His government shut Groningen, Europe’s largest gas field, imposed a 5-year moratorium on shale-gas exploration and production, and introduced a national CO₂ levy on industry on top of the EU ETS.
Now Rutte changed jobs and, as NATO Secretary General, discovers the strategic value of energy security: in a war, Europe needs “massive amounts of diesel and all the oil products.”
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The UK has announced a £330 million support package for the Global Environment Facility and will support sustainable agriculture and fishing to help protect ‘critical’ ecosystems such as the Amazon and Congo Basin.
Ed Miliband announced the funding at the UN General Assembly.
Britain's factories are mothballed due to unaffordable energy costs, while Labour splash the cash in New York.
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Britain now imports more than half the diesel it uses, while only four UK refineries remain. Fuels Industry UK warns there is a “very real risk that the UK will have no refineries by 2030.”
With Donald Trump threatening restrictions on US diesel exports, Britain’s growing dependence on imported fuel has suddenly become a serious energy-security problem — leaving the country’s 16 million diesel vehicles dangerously exposed.
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UK industrial energy use has fallen another 4.9% to the lowest level on record, amid warnings that surging energy prices and the offshoring of heavy industry are making it “too expensive to do business” in Britain.
The figures emerged barely 48 hours after petrochemicals giant Ineos mothballed UK plants. Owner Jim Ratcliffe blamed Labour’s Net Zero policies and accused ministers of “economic vandalism”.
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Instead of taking orders from Ed Miliband, Andy Burnham should listen to Dr Fiona Hill.
Stop playing into Putin’s hands and lift the ban on UK oil and gas production!👇
Dr Fiona Hill, co-author of the Starmer government’s 2026 Strategic Defence Review, told Congress in 2019 that Putin had personally stressed to her as far back as 2011 how much of a threat he considered fracking to Russian interests.
If our own defence and security experts understand the strategic importance of fracking and domestic hydrocarbon production, why has Ed Miliband banned it and pursued policies that harm the North Sea?
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Net Zero Watch retweeted
Dr Fiona Hill, co-author of the Starmer government’s 2026 Strategic Defence Review, told Congress in 2019 that Putin had personally stressed to her as far back as 2011 how much of a threat he considered fracking to Russian interests.
If our own defence and security experts understand the strategic importance of fracking and domestic hydrocarbon production, why has Ed Miliband banned it and pursued policies that harm the North Sea?
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"Concerns about the long-term burden of renewable energy subsidies on household bills, about the impact of carbon taxes on industry, about the security implications of relying more heavily on interconnected and intermittent supply, are not fringe complaints invented by bad actors. They are the predictable outcomes of a policy that has been pushed through without due consideration of its unintended consequences," says @HarryWilkinsonn, emphasising "Renaming Net Zero won’t make its costs and trade-offs disappear."
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"We live in a city of nearly 10 million people. The air will never be crystal clear and there will always be trade-offs. You take a risk whenever you cross the road, have a pint or sit near the fire. You take a risk simply by living in a city. Life will never be utterly safe, but it has no need to be made so utterly sterile," says @jamesbaxterd, contemplating Sadiq's new war on log burners, despite Brighton having "a worse problem with particulate pollution than any London borough."
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Net Zero Watch retweeted
Both the Government and the Conservative opposition are now touting electrification as the solution to high electricity prices. In this short video, I explain why this idea is doomed to failure.
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There is little Andy Burnham can do about turmoil in the Middle East, Donald Trump’s ill-advised threat to ban US diesel exports, or Saudi Arabia’s decision to severely cut crude exports to Europe in October. But it does make Labour’s continued reluctance to allow further exploitation of Britain’s North Sea resources all the more harmful. Rosebank and Jackdaw are still on ice...
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