Tag Archives: Energy

NETTING ZEROES: PUBLIC HEAT – PRIVATE PROFIT

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City Leap BE

An announcement in March that the council’s £7.3m City Leap procurement process had finally come to an end and US firm Ameresco had got the contract to ‘decarbonise’ the city by 2030 was accompanied by a lovely Thatcherite kick in the teeth from Labour. As it was also revealed that the city’s heat network assets would be handed to Ameresco’s partner, Vattenfall to run.

Vattenfall is an energy multinational owned by the Swedish state. So we’re in the odd position of handing some of the city’s publicly owned energy assets over to the Swedish people to financially benefit from. Go figure. The announcement of this giveaway – that’s not even a sell-off as no price tag is attached – comes after claims as recently as February that the networks would be put into a joint venture company owned by the council and the private partner.

Bristol Holding boss, Peter Beange assured councillors at a scrutiny meeting on February 9 that the heat networks would be part of “a successful share sale to the winning City Leap joint venture.”

Not any more. The brand new networks of underground pipes and heat centres built with public money over the last seven years will now be fully privatised so that Bristolians can be squeezed for profit for heating their homes and businesses in an unregulated energy market. 

The news didn’t seem to bother councillors at a scrutiny meeting on 28 March when the u-turn was revealed. Instead they engaged in another round of cheerleading for the private sector. Strange, because Labour, Green and Lib Dem politicians have all called for the Tories to nationalise energy providers in the face of the cost of living crisis and huge energy price hikes.

It’s like politicians come out with any old populist bollocks that they have no intention of really fighting for isn’t it?

ONE SMALL LEAP FOR BRISTOL: ONE GIANT PAYDAY FOR THE PRIVATE SECTOR?

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Leap 82429

“We should never have been in the energy business,” is the Reverend Rees’s mantra regarding Bristol Energy. The deranged energy reselling wheeze delivered courtesy of a pair of hapless elected mayors and a supporting cast of idiot senior council bosses and greedy private sector troughers that has cost the city an estimated £50 MILLION during a long period of austerity and public service cuts.

But why, if we should never have been in the energy business, is the Reverend now setting up ‘CITY LEAP‘, a “billion pound” public-private vehicle to decarbonise the city? Or is “the delivery of a local interconnected, low carbon, smart energy system in Bristol that provides long-term social, environmental and economic benefits for its residents, communities and businesses” not “the energy business”? If not, what is it?

This latest Bristol City Council energy project, which, like the last one, is promising social, environmental and economic benefits to the city is also, like the last one, shrouded in mystery. Albeit an even more EXPENSIVE mystery with the best part of £10million already shifted to the private sector to pay for legal and procurement consultants who have finally delivered a shortlist of three multinational corporate ‘partners’ for the project.

But what is this project? So far, we understand, the council will be handing over their limited number of ENERGY ASSETS – mainly some half-finished city centre heat networks and wind turbines to a multinational company to “implement competitive heat retail and competitive heat generation across the heat network”.

In English that means the multinational will be making A PROFIT from public assets by charging the competitive rate they choose to supply energy from our public infrastructure. However, this is nowhere near a “billion pound” project, which makes some recent announcements from the council’s housing department rather interesting. 

They say, “Housing recently assisted the City Leap team with updating and revising documentation for the City Leap project, which included the INFORMATION ON OUR STOCK and the potential OPPORTUNITY for improvements to net zero. Housing will continue its liaison with the City Leap team and notes the significant benefits that having a pre-procured partner for project delivery and, potentially, investment could have on the rapid roll out of carbon reduction programmes.”

In other words Bristol City Council Housing Service intend to sign A CONTRACT IN ADVANCE with a multinational to retrofit all their council homes. Then should any large government grants for retrofitting council homes roll in to the council – such as through a ‘GREEN NEW DEAL‘ – they’ll roll straight out again and offshore to a corporation who can charge whatever they want and do whatever they want.

They’ll be no competitive tendering; no local opportunities; no local profit and little democratic control over any housing improvements or the public funds for them. This could, potentially, amount to tens, if not hundreds, of MILLIONS in grants.

Of further concern is another missive from the council’s housing department, “it is anticipated that the retrofit of domestic properties will be included in the program of works delivered by the City Leap Energy Partnership. The REQUIREMENT to retrofit domestic properties is essential to the decarbonisation of heat and to achieving carbon neutrality.”

Is this a reference to privately owned homes? And what is this “REQUIREMENT to retrofit domestic properties”? A project that might well cost that magic “billion pounds”. But how will home owners be “required” to retrofit their homes? Will this have to happen through the council’s multinational partner? Do homeowners pay or do the government pay? Can homeowners be FORCED in to debt to meet this new “requirement”?

Will households in the city end up INDENTURED to some faceless multinational corporation so that the council can live the green dream while delivering an extravagant pay day to a lucky corporate? Is the plan, this time, that the council’s foray into the energy business dumps the inevitable huge losses directly on to us?

We think we should be told,

CLEAN AIR ZONE SPIN SCAM

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Using that tried and tested scam of changing the name of something that’s hugely unpopular, back in 1971 the government changed the name of the Windscale nuclear power plant to Sellafield after a series of major safety scandals had shaken public faith in the safety of the plant.

Now, the Reverend Rees, not being one to pass up the chance of repeating a DAFT IDEA, has come up with his own name changing scam. Knowing full well anything called ‘CONGESTION CHARGE’ would unleash a torrent of unpopularity and be an instant kiss of electoral death, the Reverend in March unveiled some new options to improve air quality in the city – ‘Improving Public Health – A Clean Air Plan for Bristol’.

And – can you believe it? – four out of the five options on the table involve introducing an, er, CONGESTION CHARGE of some kind! The Reverend even wheeled out his youthful and rather dim Cabinet member for Energy, Waste and Regulatory Services Kye “The” Dudd to explain why this congestion charge wasn’t a congestion charge. “It’s to address a public health matter rather than a war on motorists,” blustered the tyro politician before CLAIMING this not-a-war-on-motorists congestion charge would save 300 lives a year.

Not entirely true as these 300 hundred deaths a year are not REAL deaths but STATISTICAL deaths calculated at a desk by consultants using complex equations. Indeed, The Dudd’s own consultants admit the deaths from this public health crisis are “UNCERTAIN” due to “RISK COEFFICIENTS“.

Statistically uncertain deaths in Bristol could therefore be as low as 101 per year or as high as 612. WHO KNOWS? Not the Dudd, that’s for sure, as he bandies around that figure of 300 deaths to unleash a congestion charge on unsuspecting Bristolians.

If the Dudd was serious about reducing pollution rather than raising revenue then he would, in fact, be leaving motorists alone and getting his middle class mates to ditch their poncy WOODBURNERS. According to the British Medical Journal these must-have heating systems for the well-heeled urban twat are producing over TWICE as many harmful emissions as road traffic!

But where’s the money and votes in targeting woodburners?