Marcus Lush rang me up this morning for a chat about the emissions trading scheme on his Radio Live breakfast show (podcast and stream available here). Nice plug for the book, too, but my bit was followed by a “dissenting
3 thoughts on “The presenter, the author, and the crank”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I’m kind of surprised that Brian Leyland still holds the CSC party line.
After all, AGW is almost an essential ingredient in making a pro-nuclear argument these days.
Leyland and McShane are making themselves conspicuously irrelevant to the real debate. Can’t be good for business…
Okay, now I have listened to the broadcast. You seemed to come off pretty well Gareth, earning yourself a “good sort” rating from Marcus. And, it was good to see him take Brian to task over denialism.
I had expected better from Mr Leyland on the subject of the electricity industry (this being where he actually does have expertise). But, I can’t follow his argument that the price increase gives no incentive to reduce emissions.
Renewable generators (or aspirants) will see the opportunity to make more money out of an increased wholesale power price. They will build more plant to take advantage of the opportunity. That new plant will bid low in the market (because operating costs are low – and for wind and run-of-river hydro they are close to being “must run” plant). And…this low bid generation will knock the expensive oil, gas and coal off the top of the bid stack.
I have expert economists telling me this (something else that Brian is not) not to mention that it is intuitively obvious, when you understand how the market works.
The only way this can’t work is if the fossil fuel generators suck up the carbon cost themselves. But that would certainly disincentivise investiment in fossil fuel plant.