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Net Zero Watch has warned Boris Johnson to follow Germany’s lead and put Environment, Social and Governance (“ESG”) regulations on ice or suffer severe competitive disadvantage.

Increasingly conversations about climate and energy policy are becoming narrow and polarised. Net Zero Watch gives “a clear view of the reality of climate and energy policies and what they mean for you.”

The EU set out to create a labelling system to define which economic activities are sustainable. But for more than a year, there have been a battles among EU member states to determine which investments are environmentally friendly. This regulatory steamroller was intended to make climate-friendly investments more attractive to private capital firms, preventing “greenwashing,” which happens when companies and government entities overstate their environmental credentials to acquire lucrative contracts and tax incentives, Forbes reported at the beginning of this year.

According to press reports from earlier this week, Germany’s Financial Supervisory Authority (“BaFin”) has halted planned rules for classifying “green” investment funds as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent shockwaves through global energy markets.

Germany’s financial regulator has shelved planned rules for classifying investment funds as sustainable, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent shockwaves through global energy markets.

Against the backdrop of the dynamic situation in regulation, energy and geopolitics, we have decided to put our planned directive for sustainable investment funds on hold,” BaFin President Mark Branson said Tuesday [3 April] at a press conference in Frankfurt. “The environment isn’t stable enough for permanent regulation.”

German Regulator Shelves ESG Rules After Russia Energy Fears, Bloomberg, 3 May 2022

BaFin’s announcement is a clear sign that Germany is beginning to break green shackles that are holding back economic growth, putting Europe’s biggest economy essentially on a war footing.

Net Zero Watch director Benny Peiser said:

“Germany is taking radical steps to remove obstacles and potential threats to energy security amid the looming ban of Russian energy imports.

“Britain needs to follow suit if it doesn’t want to worsen the energy cost crisis and suffer severe competitive disadvantage.”

Renewables have been ‘a catastrophic error’

In March Net Zero Watch published an article about a plan devised by two energy experts to overhaul the UK’s energy system: “the UK energy system is dysfunctional and on the verge of collapse.”

“Further expansion of renewables will make our gas dependency worse; only gas can now support renewables. There is no alternative to improving the efficiency of our gas-fired fleet, and diversifying the sources from which we obtain natural gas.”

According to the authors, Dr John Constable and Andrew Montford, consumer prices can only be reduced by lowering the cost of gas and increasing the efficiency of gas-fired power stations. Increasing use of renewables will undoubtedly raise prices further.

The plan, therefore, aims to wind down renewables completely and put the country back on the gas-to-nuclear trajectory that had delivered both lower prices and lower emissions for many decades before environmentalist pressure shifted the focus to wind and solar.

According to the authors, bill reductions of as much as £400 per household could be delivered relatively quickly, with a similar reduction in the general cost of living.

The plan also addresses energy security concerns, recommending diversification of the natural gas supply to include fracking, and the introduction of high-efficiency “ultra-supercritical” coal-fired power stations.

Their plan, ‘Taking Back Control: Addressing Britain’s Energy Crisis’, can be downloaded HERE.