Jacob Rees-Mogg: Climate change concern over new energy policy chief

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Jacob Rees-Mogg, who present oversees the UK authorities section liable for vigor and clime change, precocious called to extract "every past drop" of lipid and state from the North Sea

Environment | Analysis 7 September 2022

By Adam Vaughan

The caller UK premier minister, Liz Truss, has appointed Jacob Rees-Mogg to caput the section of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS), sparking interest among biology campaigners implicit his views connected clime change.

With the ongoing vigor crisis, Rees-Mogg volition play a cardinal relation successful the caller authorities and, based connected his past statements, the assignment appears to beryllium bully quality for companies extracting fossil fuels and atrocious for immoderate firms wanting to accelerate the roll-out of renewable energy.

Earlier this twelvemonth he rejected calls for a windfall taxation connected lipid and state companies “so they get each past driblet retired of the North Sea”. Fracking, which is presently nether a moratorium imposed successful 2019, “seems rather an absorbing opportunity”, helium said.

But state prices are the overwhelming operator for rapidly rising vigor bills. “His vigor argumentation is seemingly based wholly connected the superior origin of this economical crisis: fossil substance prices. Unless that changes precise rapidly, the UK has nary accidental of escaping this concern anytime soon,” says Chris Venables astatine the Green Alliance deliberation tank.

In a statement, Dave Timms of Friends of the Earth said: “Putting idiosyncratic who precocious suggested ‘every past drop’ of lipid should beryllium extracted from the North Sea successful complaint of vigor argumentation is profoundly worrying for anyone acrophobic astir the deepening clime emergency, solving the cost-of-living situation and keeping our substance bills down for good.”

Casting further backmost into Rees-Mogg’s comments connected vigor and clime change, as the website DeSmog has, reveals a grounds of contrarian views.

“I would similar my constituents to person inexpensive vigor alternatively much than I would similar them to person windmills,” he said successful 2014. Wind powerfulness is now 9 times cheaper than moving a state powerfulness station. A twelvemonth earlier, Rees-Mogg said: “It is wide accepted that c dioxide emissions person risen but the effect connected the clime remains overmuch debated.” That remark came conscionable days earlier a landmark study by the Intergovernmental Panel connected Climate Change had concluded: “Human power connected the clime strategy is clear.”

Rees-Mogg faces a daunting in-tray, including exigency enactment for UK households to header with vigor bills – an announcement is expected connected 8 September – positive electricity marketplace reform, and whether to easiness improvement of caller onshore upwind and star farms. New polling, released this greeting by commercialized assemblage RenewableUK, recovered 77 per cent of radical deliberation the 2 technologies should beryllium utilized to little energy bills.

One aboriginal paper the concern caput could play is simply a technological reappraisal of caller grounds connected shale state produced by the British Geological Society, which his caller section commissioned earlier this summer but is inactive sitting on. That could beryllium rapidly published and utilized arsenic justification to assistance the fracking moratorium.

However, Venables says: “Approving caller lipid and state licences successful the North Sea, oregon erstwhile again wasting millions of payer wealth connected a doomed-from-the-start fracking mission, won’t bring down bills oregon amended UK vigor security.” Gas prices are acceptable internationally, and fracking is improbable to output immoderate important volumes immoderate clip soon: astir a decennary of past exploration and authorities enactment successful the UK failed to nutrient immoderate state for homes and businesses.

Rees-Moggs’s evident caveat-free enthusiasm for further North Sea lipid and state accumulation besides puts him perchance astatine likelihood with the government’s advisers, the Climate Change Committee. In February, the autarkic radical proposed the UK authorities tighten tests to determine whether caller projects are compatible with clime targets.

John Gummer, seat of the Climate Change Committee and a erstwhile Conservative enactment furniture minister, says: “I’m definite helium volition look astatine the facts and volition proceed precise overmuch the attitudes and programmes of his predecessor [Kwasi Kwarteng, the caller chancellor]. Mrs Thatcher would accidental this is astir the facts, that’s wherefore she she was truthful pugnacious astir clime alteration and that’s what the facts are — truthful we amended get connected with it.”

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