Not that there's much of England left to save, but this won't help

I haven’t been following England — why would I? — but this caught my eye: the Extinction Now people appear to have won, and their goal of extinction is on the cusp of success.

Election spells end of North Sea as Labour policies doom oil industry

Starmer victory would prompt operators to give up on British waters, warn analysts

The looming early election threatens the end of the North Sea oil industry, according to experts, with Labour’s threat to extend the Government’s windfall levy set to hasten the sector’s decline.

Analysts said a likely victory for Sir Keir Starmer would prompt operators to give up on British waters, meaning some of Britain’s biggest oil and gas reserves may never be recovered.

“If Labour deliver on their promises, the UK continental shelf is finished,” said Ashley Kelty, research director at Panmure Gordon, a leading investment bank.

The future of the North Sea oil industry was thrown into doubt in 2022 when the Government imposed a windfall levy on the profits from oil and gas production that took total tax to an eye-watering 75pc.

Labour has pledged to add another 3pc, along with banning new drilling and, perhaps most damaging of all, stripping offshore companies of the tax breaks they get when investing in new fields. The plans were confirmed by shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves at a meeting last week.

How does a manufacture compete when its energy costs are 10X greater than competitors in other countries? The U.S. might wonder the same thing, because Biden et als are hoping to even the playing field by matching England’s and Europe’s prices. China, and the rest of the coal burners in Asia must be delighted.

...Britain has been going down this path since 2008, when Parliament wrote an 80 percent decarbonization target into law, which it raised to 100 percent, or net zero, in 2019. This luxury net-zero policy, which only the rich can afford, has been devastating for both businesses and ordinary Britons just trying to heat their homes and get to work.

...In 2020, even before the recent surge in energy costs, everyday Britons were paying about 75 percent more for electricity than Americans, the result of a double whammy—cap-and-trade policies on the one hand and renewable subsidies on the other. And then came the Ukraine shock. During the 2022 energy crisis, electricity rates for British businesses were more than double the average paid by U.S. businesses.

In Britain, the impact of cap-and-trade on the cost of fuel to generate electricity is massive. In 2022, government-imposed carbon costs averaged $128 per megawatt hour (MWh) for coal-generated electricity and $51 per MWh for natural gas. Those costs are on top of actual fuel costs, which averaged $150 per MWh for electricity generated from coal and $160 per MWh for natural gas. These mean that it cost $278 to generate 1 MWh of electricity from coal and $211 from natural gas.

...So in the U.S., the fuel cost per MWh of electricity generated from coal was $27 per MWh (versus $278 in Britain) and $61 per MWh for natural gas (versus $211 in Britain).

Britons also have to pay the cost of subsidizing politically favored wind and solar. Analysis of the renewable portfolios of Britain’s Big Six energy companies shows that the average price for wind- and solar-generated electricity between 2009 and 2020 was well over £100 per MWh, whereas the price for reliable electricity from gas- and coal-fired power stations fell from £60 per MWh in 2013 to less than £50 per MWh in 2020.