On Sunday, the global climate summit COP27 will convene in Egypt. Bloomberg Green will cover the conference in depth and we’ve been preparing for it, looking at Egypt’s future under a possible 3C of warming and discussing why every election is now a climate election.
Germans are preparing to throw the weight of Europe’s biggest economy behind a plan to replace fossil fuels with the universe’s lightest element.
The UK is still backing billions of pounds worth of fossil fuels overseas despite pledging to be a leader on tackling climate change, campaigners claim.
Donald Trump’s opposition to the fight against global warming could leave the U.S. stuck in the past as countries from Europe, Asia and even the Middle East pursue an energy revolution in which renewables offer a better bang for their buck.
BP has launched the 65th edition of its Statistical Review of World Energy, launched today, and claims the world is shifting to lower carbon fuels.
One of the key questions in the often-polarised debate on renewable energy, in public, in parliament, and in the media, is “Can we afford it?”
The UK fossil fuel industry receives £6billion a year in subsidies which is almost twice the financial support provided to renewable energy companies, new research has shown. In a study by the Overseas Development Institute it was found Britain gave an average of £5.9billion worth of subsidies a year to companies including BP and Shell over 2013 and 2014. The proportion of it was given in the form of tax breaks which help boost North Sea production.
The Environment Agency is cutting its pension fund investments in fossil fuels to bring it in line with efforts to prevent dangerous climate change. Under the plans the Environment Agency Pension Fund (EAPF) will invest 15% of its £2.7 billion fund in low carbon and energy efficient technology and reduce investment in coal by 90% and oil and gas by half, in terms of carbon emissions, by 2020. The change by the Government agency aims to make sure its investments are compatible with international agreement to keep global temperature rises to 2C - seen as the threshold beyond which dangerous impacts of climate change will occur.
The Church of England is to sell £12 million of its shares in fossil fuel companies. The Church, announcing a new climate change policy, also said it will no longer make any direct investments in companies that generate more than 10% of their revenue from extracting thermal coal or producing oil from tar sands. Welcoming the new policy Bishop Nick Holtam, the lead Bishop on the environment at the Church of England, said climate change is “the most pressing moral issue in our world”. The new policy will see more engagement between the church’s national investment bodies and the companies in which it holds shares, including fossil fuel producers.
A scheme to pay power companies to ensure there is enough back-up to meet peaks in electricity demand is facing a legal challenge over concerns it is an unlawful subsidy. The “capacity market” will see energy generators bidding for payments to bring power plants online to meet peak demand or to companies to reduce power use. But an independent company, Tempus Energy, is submitting a challenge to the European General Court on the grounds the scheme violates State Aid rules by prioritising fossil fuel energy generation over cheaper and cleaner efforts to reduce demand.
LONGANNET is dead. Long live carbon capture and storage. The two statements are by no means incompatible, as some of the obituary notices for the ScottishPower project in Fife have suggested.