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Qatar Tribune
04-06-2025
- Politics
- Qatar Tribune
EAA Foundation, UNDP partner to empower 1.3 million Uzbekistan Youth
DOHA: Education Above All (EAA) Foundation, a global foundation for education and development, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and support from Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD), has launched the initiative 'Empowering and Nurturing Leadership Skills of Youth Through Climate Action Education in Uzbekistan'. The foundation said in a statement that the the three-year project aims to equip over 1.3 million youth with green skills and climate knowledge, fostering a more resilient and sustainable future for Uzbekistan. The statement said that the initiative will train 50,000 teachers, incorporate climate change education into the curricula of all 10,199 secondary schools in Uzbekistan, and provide 4,000 rural youth with specialized training in climate-smart agriculture and renewable energy. In some of the nation's most climate-vulnerable areas, such as the Aral Sea region, 800 young community leaders will also be engaged to carry out local climate action projects. The signing of this initiative comes in the backdrop of World Environment Day on June 5, whose theme this year is an urgent global call to end plastic pollution. Uzbekistan faces pressing climate challenges, with young people and rural populations particularly vulnerable. Despite this, climate education remains largely absent from the country's formal curriculum. This initiative addresses that gap by embedding green skills training within the national education system and vocational training facilities. Aligned with Uzbekistan's Strategy on Green Transition, the project also supports global climate action efforts by contributing to Sustainable Development Goals 4 (Quality Education) and 13 (Climate Action). Through this collaboration, EAA Foundation and UNDP reaffirm their commitment to empowering youth as key drivers of change, ensuring they have the knowledge and skills to lead a greener, more sustainable Uzbekistan. Executive Director of EAA Foundation's ROTA Programme Abdulla Al Abdulla said that: "By embedding climate education into Uzbekistan's national education system, this project will empower over a million youth to confront the climate crisis. Alongside our partners, with support from our strategic partner the QFFD, EAA Foundation is proud to invest in Uzbekistan's youth to be leaders in climate action and resilience." UNDP Resident Representative Akiko Fujii highlighted the project's vision during the launch: "This project ensures youth are not just beneficiaries, but leaders in Uzbekistan's green transition." A key component of the initiative is the Young Green Ambassadors Network, which will empower 800 rural youth to lead grassroots environmental efforts such as tree-planting and waste management campaigns. To foster innovation, national climate competitions will be organised, with winning projects receiving international recognition. Minister of Preschool and School Education Khilola Umarova remarked: "This initiative aligns with Uzbekistan's 'Year of Environmental Protection and Green Economy'. Climate education is essential to prepare our youth to address environmental challenges and become innovators in the green economy." Through this strategic collaboration, EAA Foundation and UNDP are ensuring that Uzbekistan's youth are not just prepared for the future but actively shaping it.
Associated Press
29-04-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
AEG's Erik Distler Leads Sustainability Conversations During Earth Month
As a leader in sports and live entertainment, AEG has been on a mission since 2008 to minimize its environmental impact across its music, sports, ticketing, and real estate portfolios, embedding sustainability into the core of its business operations. Since then, the company has been recognized as an industry trailblazer in the introduction and implementation of sustainable practices focused on reducing its carbon footprint, waste consumption and water usage. With a mission of inspiring others to affect change, this Earth Month, Erik Distler, AEG's Vice President of Sustainability, convened and participated in numerous panel sessions aimed at facilitating insightful and productive conversations about the state of sustainability in sports and live entertainment. On April 23, 2025, he hosted and moderated the fourth annual AEG Sustainability Insights Panel. The session brought together influential leaders who are shaping the future through action-driven sustainability efforts -- experts in sustainability, climate change, and policy -- and drove attention to the pressing issues facing the sports and live entertainment industry as it works to build scalable sustainability practices. Panelists shared their insights on how sports and live entertainment can continue to lead in sustainability while inspiring others to act. Members of the panel included: To promote best practices and the enormous potential of creative industries to act as a catalyst for change, on April 8, Distler spoke at Climate Week Los Angeles, where organizations, policy makers, companies and innovators from across Los Angles convened to discuss climate change solutions. Distler participated in a panel, Creative Forces for Change: Workforce Development in the Green Transition, which explored the critical role of workforce development in driving sustainability within the $7 trillion global green economy—particularly across the arts and culture sector -- and how the city's creative industries are helping to shape a more sustainable future for all. Additionally, on April 15, Distler participated in the Music Sustainability Alliance's 2025 Summit, which looked to empower the music business and artists to leverage their platform to tackle the climate crisis. Distler joined the panel session, Waste Not, Play On: Tackling the Trash Problem, to discuss the live music industry's reliance on single-use materials and the urgent need to reduce waste. The panel session explored the scale of the problem, debunked common myths, and offered practical solutions to help create a more sustainable future for live events. To learn more about AEG's sustainability activities, click here. Visit 3BL Media to see more multimedia and stories from AEG
New Statesman
24-04-2025
- Business
- New Statesman
Could zonal pricing reduce energy costs?
Photo byThis article was originally published as an edition of the Green Transition, our weekly newsletter on the economics of net zero. To see more editions and subscribe, click here. It's unorthodox to start an opinion piece both by explicitly avoiding taking a view and yet still expecting to piss everyone off. But it must be so when talking about energy market reform, the sector's issue de jour. Energy market reform, more formally known as the Review of Electricity Markets Arrangements (REMA), was a policy developed by the previous Conservative government. But with a Labour victory at the general election came a new plan for the energy system – Clean Power 2030 – backed by an interventionist state. This complicated REMA. Government needs a lot of private investment to build the infrastructure to decarbonise power by 2030. REMA changes the rules, risk and therefore cost to government of that investment. A decision is still expected by the summer and is vital to the confidence business will have in government's plans. But that decision now effectively boils down to one thing. Despite once being about every part of non-retail electricity markets, from contracts for difference to the balancing market and beyond, we are now essentially talking about one issue – locational, marginal, or zonal pricing. On one side are the champions of a free-market policy where energy varies by location (let's call them the insurgents). Their argument is predominantly pro-consumer, that zonal pricing is a silver bullet for lower costs and an easier energy transition. On the other are investors, legacy energy companies and climate advocates, who worry that the risk of shifting to zonal threatens infrastructure investment and therefore decarbonising the energy system (let's call them the status quo). Their argument is predominantly about growth and investment. Both sides have the economic modelling to prove that zonal raises/lowers bills (delete where appropriate). There is no middle position, everyone must pick a side. This is a nightmare for government, who have no off-ramp. We need a decision, the uncertainty either way is just as damaging to the UK's investment prospects. Politics means meditating interests to get to a decision. To help, advocates should think a little about the political process. First, think about the evidence. Paying for more numbers to prove your point clearly isn't moving the dial. The best conclusion government can currently reach is that any decision has highly uncertain impacts which vary wildly on the underlying assumptions. At worst they will think that whatever action they take someone will accuse them of raising the cost of the energy transition. The mudslinging about incumbents, vested interests or profiteering may be good tactics for firms but they are terrible strategy for all those who care about net zero. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Second, recognise the government's strategy. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is planning a decarbonised system. It is going to have a concrete plan for where it thinks energy assets should go. How can it reconcile a free-market policy, which was developed under the previous Tory government, with its more statist instinct? Clearly this government wants to be a reforming one. The status quo is not an option, and too often advocates against zonal stop at – 'just don't do it'. The government is already doing a lot of reform, not least on CfD terms, balancing market arrangements, or grid connections. But 'we are already reforming so we aren't doing this' is not an announcement. It leaves open the question over whether REMA is paused, salami-sliced, killed or complete. There is no 'no-change' option available here, the world and energy system are already changing, fast. The government wants to be a part of that. If zonal doesn't go ahead DESNZ will still need answers on things like maximising the effectiveness of storage or efficacy of interconnectors. If it does, it needs a plan for managing the politics of a situation in which different towns, cities and industries pay different energy prices. With both sides only representing their own interests it's always going to be hard for government to mediate. In formulating a response, it can draw from both sides. From those advocating for reform, the government can take a laser focus on consumers, and a clarity over where we're trying to get to and why. Being positive about the future carriers a lot of weight. DESNZ should talk about households and their benefits, not investors. From those lobbying to keep the status quo, the government should push that whilst it is already reforming, there are myriad more options to do so. But it can't appease both; and the government must recognise not everyone will be happy. Government can go further than either side has in looking at more radical ideas for bill reduction that don't feature in the current debate. They include, returning to ways to finally break the link between gas and electricity prices, thinking about hypothecating carbon pricing revenues or rethinking how Ofgem calculates network costs? Too often industry focuses solely on their thing and can't abstract it to a political process. But it's naïve to think that government can do that alone. There's a reason REMA has been three years in the making, it's hard. Time to start compromising. Related
New Statesman
22-04-2025
- Business
- New Statesman
Who killed industrial Britain?
A view of British Steel's Scunthorpe site. Photo by Ryan Jenkinson / Getty Images. This article was originally published as an edition of the Green Transition, our weekly newsletter on the economics of net zero. To see more editions and subscribe, click here. When he was Prime Minister, Boris Johnson caused a minor stir (no pun intended) by suggesting that Margaret Thatcher should be commended for having given Britain a head start on net zero by closing down the coal mines. It was a characteristically flippant, tongue-in-cheek remark from a PM that had recently scored a historic victory by taking chunks out of Labour's Red Wall, not least in former coalfield constituencies. But it presaged a debate that has only accelerated since, and one that has now reached fever pitch with the government's effective nationalisation of the Scunthorpe steelworks to rescue the UK's virgin steelmaking capabilities: who, or what, killed industrial Britain? There are, roughly speaking, three schools of thought that have emerged. First, a net zero-sceptic crowd, which now includes Kemi Badenoch, places blame squarely on climate policy, and even on one individual in particular as its lead evangelist: Ed Miliband. That analysis seems a little unfair given that industrial manufacturing's share of total UK economic output and employment has been in decline since roughly the 1970s, when young Ed was merely a nipper. But the agenda is being pushed relatively successfully in the right-wing press and broadcast media. It says that climate policies and renewable subsidies are adding costs to energy bills, making the UK uncompetitive for energy-intensive industries like steel, glass, ceramics, chemicals, cement, and much else besides. Countering this tendency, we have a second school that responds with the following: UK manufacturing and energy-intensive industries are indeed being hampered by sky-high energy costs, this much is true, and agreed by all parties. But, they say, these high costs are a result of Britain's over-reliance on fossil fuels, specifically gas. Bringing down prices requires a rapid transition to low-carbon, cheaper, home-grown forms of energy production, namely renewables. This is the government's position. And gas prices have certainly risen dramatically, particularly since sanctions against Moscow cut off supplies from the world's biggest natural gas exporter. It is only since Putin's invasion that UK and European prices have begun to diverge significantly. Yet while this gas price spike has had an adverse impact, the anti-net zero grouping does have a point, in that a significant proportion of customer bills are made up of renewable subsidies, carbon taxes, and grid balancing and transmission costs. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Even net zero advocates admit this much. Shaun Spiers, executive director at the Green Alliance, says 'there are policy costs added to bills – the green levy and so on… but it's important to say in terms of industry costs that the policy cost of industry's energy bills is lower than it is in, say, Germany'. Re-wiring Britain's electricity grid will cost money. We have an over-centralised system set up to accommodate a small number of large, coal-fired power stations. A renewable grid requires a new, more decentralised network, with countless new connections. That won't come cheaply and is currently being delivered through a combination of public and private investment (which, yes, is linked to your bills). 'There is definitely an initial outlay', says Spiers. 'There is obviously a cost in infrastructure.' But he hastens to add, 'there are lots of jobs and growth opportunities one can leverage from that as well'. And that's the promise of the so-called green industrial revolution: a regional jobs and growth boom with climate policy as the catalyst, as turbines, solar panels, pylons and cables are produced and laid in every corner of the country. Once that grid is in place, bills will start to come down. So, is net zero destroying British industry? Not really, even though there's a kernel of truth to claims that climate policy is adding to costs, and that a total re-jig of the UK's electricity grid will require significant amounts of capital investment. But what about the other side of the debate? Is our reliance on costly gas imports killing industry? Well, again, not really. This is only part of the story. As mentioned, British heavy industry has been in decline for a long time. The more complex, nuanced reality goes back to Boris Johnson's Thatcher jibe. For it was Mrs T who turbocharged the decline of manufacturing Britain, and not, as Johnson jokily claimed, because she was an enthusiastic eco-warrior. It was because she was integral to the formation of a political consensus that her Conservative Party heartily promoted. That consensus basically stated: it doesn't matter where goods are produced, we should buy them as cheaply as possible; it doesn't matter who makes things, the market and the price mechanism should dictate our decisions; it doesn't matter that we're losing manufacturing jobs, the high-value-added future is in services and the 'knowledge economy', and so why should we subsidise British production when we can import commodities from elsewhere? And that's the third school of thought, which the Green Transition is bravely getting behind. It's not net zero, or even the post-Ukraine gas price spike, that's killing industrial Britain. It's an economic philosophy that's now coming apart at the seams, one that says globalisation is an unalloyed good, that it doesn't matter if the Chinese own our steel plants or that we rely on the kindness of strangers to keep the lights on. And that's the philosophy that needs to change. Related
