By James Kirkup, Harry Wallop and Louise Gray, the UK Telegraph

Companies that fail to register their energy use by next month will be hit with fines that could reach 45,000 pounds under the little-known rules.

Those that do participate in the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) initiative by declaring their energy use will face charges for every ton of greenhouse gas they produce.

These payments are expected to average 38,000 pounds a year for medium-sized firms, and could reach 100,000 for larger organisations.

Surveys have shown that thousands of businesses are unaware they are supposed to be taking part, or even that the scheme exists at all.

The imposition of new charges and fines will put pressure on firms at a time when economists are warning of a “double dip” recession as companies, consumers and the public sector all cut their spending.

Business leaders criticised the CRC - which was created by Labour but implemented by the Coalition - as “complex and bureaucratic”. One accused ministers of swinging “a big hammer” at companies and questioned whether it would have any environmental benefits.

Under the scheme, any company or public sector organisation that consumes more than 6,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy a year - meaning a power bill of about 500,000 - must register its energy use by the end of next month. From April, firms will need to buy permits for each tonne of carbon dioxide emitted. For those using 6,000MWh, that could mean 38,000.

The scheme is intended to create a financial incentive to cut energy use, and those organisations that record the biggest reductions will get bonuses, funded by penalties imposed on those with the worst record.

Of about 4,000 organisations estimated to qualify for the scheme, only 1,229 have registered to date, leaving thousands at risk of fines.

Missing the Sept 30 deadline will mean an immediate 5,000 fine, and 500 for each day after that, up to a maximum of 45,000.

Another 15,000 smaller organisations are also required to register and could be expected to buy permits in the future. If they miss the September deadline, they face fines of 500.

WSP Environment and Energy, a consultancy firm, estimated that a total of 7,500 businesses would miss the deadline.

Greg Barker, the energy and climate change minister, who is overseeing the scheme said yesterday: “I understand the original complexity of the scheme may have deterred some organisations and I want to hear suggestions as to how we can make the scheme simpler in the future.”

Executives and business groups said that the scheme had been poorly communicated and publicised, leaving many companies in the dark.

One recent survey suggested that 53 per cent of executives had not even heard of the CRC and did not know whether their firm was affected.

The Environment Agency, which will run the scheme for the Government, has refused even to publish a list of the companies that are required to register.

The Coalition is pressing ahead with the CRC despite Conservative pledges to cut red-tape on businesses.

Business groups said the paperwork and costs involved in complying with the CRC scheme could put a significant new burden on companies already struggling in an uncertain economic climate. The Bank of England is expected to underline fears about the economy today with forecasts for faltering economic growth and persistent inflation.

Yesterday, the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply reported a slowdown in British manufacturing exports to Europe.

Bob Jarrett, of the BHF-BSSA Group, a trade body that represents thousands of independent shops, said ministers had not done enough to explain or justify the CRC. “We’ve only come across this in the last few weeks, and yet the deadline is at the end of next month. The Department for Energy has not given this nearly enough publicity,” he said.  Read more here.

By Ed Lasky

George Soros is continuing his assault on America’s shale gas industry. His latest step is to mobilize MoveOn.Org, a so-called 527 group that he liberally funds, to join forces with the very left-wing Working Families Party of New York in an effort to stop the process of hydrofracking: a crucial , and safe, technology used to tap our nation’s abundant natural gas reserves:

The New York Observer reports:

The 4.2 million member strong online community MoveOn.org is sending out an email urging its supporters to sign a Working Families Party petition that would place a one-year moratorium on hydrofracking.

It is rare for MoveOn to engage in local issues, and it is believed to be the first time that the group has collaborated with the New York City-based WFP.

The WFP delivered 22,000 signatures to the Senate last night. If the Senate passes the moratorium, the Assembly is expected to follow suit.

In the spring, Congress asked the Environmental Protection Agency to study the risks of hydrofracking, and the WFP and their allies are urging an end to all natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale until that study is complete.

Rare indeed. MoveOn usually takes on national Republican politicians or issues, such as the Iraq War that it used to help bash George Bush; it also played a big role in electing Barack Obama.

Why would the group focus on stopping the development of shale gas? Because MoveOn is following the agenda of George Soros. He wants shale gas—a vast, easily tapped resource located on-shore throughout large swaths of America—to be plugged up. This helps his big financial interest in the Brazilian petroleum company Petrobras, the Australian-based InterOil corporation, and the billion dollars he is pouring into “renewable” energy schemes.

I covered Soros and his schemes regarding shale gas (Cheap Natural Gas and its Democratic Enemies ; Cheap Natural Gas and Its Enemies; Harry Reid Pulls a Fast One to Sabotage Shale Gas Development). Soros also has pulled in his billionaire pals, Herbert and Marion Sandler (profiteers from the savings and loan disaster) who have founded and funded their own media outfit, Pro Publica, that is purportedly a non-partisan investigative group. Pro Publica has for some odd reason focused much of its efforts on disparaging the shale gas industry.

There seems to be a concerted effort among George Soros and the Sandlers (who have cooperated also in founding and funding the Center for American Progress—a big promoter of cap and tax and clean energy schemes) and their pet groups, MoveOn.Org and Pro Publica, to derail America’s most promising domestic energy resource: shale gas.

See more here.

By Michael J. Economides

It is billed as a “panel of the world’s leading economists… to fight climate change.” I am not sure what kind of economists they are but the ones that have been meeting in Bonn, Germany seem to ignore what any undergraduate student in business or engineering can readily conclude: the net present value of carbon dioxide fossil fuels is positive and huge; the net present value of any “green” alternatives is negative to hugely negative.

Unless of course they start with the presumption of anthropogenic global warming, which they do, but even more to the point, they accept lock stock and barrel the most alarmist, the direst predictions of the consequences of global warming. If one accepts those, no economic calculation is necessary because the presumed damages have an incalculable impact. There is no real need for “leading economists” to congregate other than provide fake but authoritative sounding pronouncements for what it is a thinly disguised giant worldwide tax. 

The panel was assembled by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon last March and is supposed to report to him in October. “Potential revenue sources include auctioning the right to pollute, taxes on carbon production, an international travel tax, and a tax on international financial transactions, as well as government grants and loans.” The speaker in Bonn: none other than Nicholas Stern, the author of one of the most alarmists reports on the subject in the UK.

Almost certainly because of the failure of US Congress to enact carbon legislation and the debacle in Copenhagen last December, the proposal in Bonn, unabashedly uttered by Stern is for the UN to be the revenue raiser. In a far from subtle manner, the UN has been mentioned for the first time as the vehicle to raise $100 billion per year to fight climate change. This departure from past plans is so outlandish, so far out of any authority that the UN has ever claimed on member states that it would lend credibility of the pronouncements of not just right-wing radio talk show hosts but the most radical phobias of world governance expressed by fringe groups.

Stern is certainly not immune to cherry pick information to prove a point. One would wonder about the scholarliness of this leading economist. One of the most striking examples, one that has been quoted by many, is the Stern Report’s citing of the work of Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at Risk Management Solutions, a US consulting firm. The Report said: “New analysis based on insurance industry data has shown that weather-related catastrophe losses have increased by 2% each year since the 1970s over and above changes in wealth, inflation and population growth/movement… If this trend continued or intensified with rising global temperatures, losses from extreme weather could reach 0.5%-1% of world GDP by the middle of the century.”

Muir-Wood said his research showed no such thing and accused Stern of “going far beyond what was an acceptable extrapolation of the evidence”.
But Stern in Bonn was unfazed. He talked of a “new industrial revolution to move the world away from fossil fuels to low carbon growth...It will be extremely exciting, dynamic and productive.”

But there was nothing specific. Which technologies will shape this new industrial revolution, what is their viability, what is their own economic attractiveness? What it is certain is that the existing highly attractive, tried and true technologies and energy sources are to be taxed at the tune of $1 trillion per decade. There will be a process, not specified, on how this massive revenue will be “distributed.” And finally the clincher, “private capital also will be crucial, and governments must adopt policies reducing the risk to investors”, i.e. subsidies, i.e., more taxes.

These ideologues seem unrepentant and unmoved by the giant signals from many countries, all in just this year, which led to the Copenhagen fiasco, the wholesale abandonment of subsidized, unrealistic green technologies throughout Europe and the huge disconnect between public pronouncements and actions by practically every country. Now they will try the UN route which is the surest way to further reduce the effort to laughable levels. How is the US going to compel countries to comply with such massive tax increases?

But never underestimate the environmentalists’ fervor once they find themselves in the government. In the United States we have a new tactic. The EPA, citing the Congressional refusal to enact the holy carbon legislation, which I would have thought would be a yet another giant signal of what the public wants (a bothersome nuisance I am sure) will now attempt to impose regulations on the power and energy industry.

Blinded by ideology and an almost religious anti-carbon devotion have they, from Bonn to Washington, lost all their senses?

Economides is a professor at the University of Houston and the editor-in-chief of the Energy Tribune

ICECAP Note: Every real economist I know thinks this is a ridiculous idea, but these rent-seeking phonies led by the pompous, ignorant Stern, proclaim themselves “leading economists” and give the UN what it thinks it needs to turn the tide. Here’s hope they and the equally clueless and pompous EPA fail miserably. See here where the UN is failing and Stern, the UK discredited economist is taken to the woodshed here for overstating the science.