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South Wales Guardian
30-04-2025
- Business
- South Wales Guardian
UK issued stark warning or risk floods and wildfires
Independent advisory Climate Change Committee raised fears that spending needed to protect communities and critical services such as the NHS from worsening weather extremes could be cut in the summer spending review. In a new report released by the committee, they've warned there has been no improvement since its last assessment in 2023, and accused the new government of failing to deliver the change in approach needed. The report warns that 6.3 million homes and properties in England are currently at risk of flooding, which is set to rise to eight million, one in four, by 2050. We have published our advice on the Seventh Carbon Budget. It is in line with previous Government commitments – the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Carbon Budgets, international commitments, and the Net Zero commitment in 2050. Adding that early deaths from heatwaves are projected to rise from the 3,000 seen in 2022's record hot summer to 10,000 a year by mid-century. The committee warns that without action to stop climate change, the UK will suffer a 7% hit to its economic output by 2050. While rising sea levels are worsening coastal flooding and extreme temperatures and drought drive an increased number of wildfires. Half of the UK's prime agricultural farmland is already at risk of flooding, which is set to worsen, while schools, hospitals and care homes are among the most vulnerable to impacts such as heatwaves. The Committee has published its advice to Government on the UK's nationally determined contribution, recommending an 81% reduction in emissions by 2035. More: The committee's assessment looked at 46 areas where adaptation needed to be delivered, and found only good progress for three: making rail and strategic road networks reliable and ensuring risks were properly disclosed and managed by financial institutions. The committee warned that delivery had actually worsened in the water sector due to a lack of credible plans to cut leaks and reduce water demand in the face of worsening drought risk. It added that the previous government's action plan fell short of preparing the UK for the climate change already being experienced and found little evidence of changes despite Labour's manifesto promising to 'improve resilience and preparation' for the country. The committee's chairwoman, Baroness Brown said: "People are worrying about the impacts of extreme weather, worrying about food prices. "People are worried about what's going to happen to their vulnerable friends and relatives. 'Despite all this, we are seeing no such change in activity from the new government, despite the fact that it's clear to my committee, it's increasingly clear to the public that the current approach to adaptation policy just isn't working." Sharing how the UK can act to help tackle climate change, the report lays out measures including: Recommended Reading A Government spokesperson said they would carefully consider the findings of the committee's report. They added: 'Alongside our transition to become a clean energy superpower and accelerating towards net zero, the Government is taking robust action to prepare for the impacts of a changing climate. 'We are investing a record £2.65 billion to repair and build flood defences, protecting tens of thousands of homes and businesses and helping local communities become more resilient to the effects of climate change such as overheating and drought.'
The National
30-04-2025
- Business
- The National
Independence is needed to secure Scotland's green future
Naturally, since the question of independence is one which is fundamentally about 'who decides?' for Scotland, Unionist and nationalist arguments are still woven right through the tussle over who can and should be doing what when it comes to energy policy, and where those powers to act would best rest. Effecting a transition which protects jobs and the environment is, however, something which needs to be dealt with immediately and regardless as to Scotland's constitutional status or people's personal preferences on that. When it comes to that transition, the Seventh Carbon Budget prepared by the Committee on Climate Change sets the challenge out starkly. Some 17% of employment in Aberdeen and 4% of employment in Aberdeenshire is estimated to be from oil and gas, the report says. As of 2021, direct employment in oil and gas in Aberdeen has declined by nearly one-third since 2015, with some estimates showing that around 14,000 people in the region will need to be moved to other roles or sectors between 2022 and 2030. READ MORE: ICC arrest warrant requests must be kept secret, court judges order Support for the just transition and North Sea workers was the subject of a debate which my colleague Kirsty Blackman secured last week at Westminster. Highlighting the current and very real lack of confidence in the energy sector, she pointed out how issues ranging from the inability to get grid connections, to the UK Government's current tax regime for the North Sea, conspire to stifle the investment activity that we desperately need to be taking place right now. We are, she warned, at a tipping point. One danger is that the highly mobile, highly paid oil and gas workers that we need in order to effect a transition at scale will go abroad if the opportunities for them to work in Scotland disappear faster than new opportunities are created. Another is that, unless the Labour Government picks up the pace, private investors will go to our European neighbours like Denmark or Norway where there is no lack of government appetite or pace. We already know what a failed energy transition looks like from the vandalism wreaked by the Tories on the coal industry in the 1980s. If we don't get this one right, then whole sectors and communities risk being left on the scrapheap as they were during the Thatcher years. And the transition certainly won't be 'got right' if it is left to the market alone to sort those things out. The jobs transition needn't just be a transition from energy jobs to other jobs in energy. To give one small example, I have recently been in discussions with the plumbing industry. A capacity crisis is coming for that industry in a few years' time because the financial constraints facing the training and education sector mean that the industry cannot possibly meet the demand for skilled labour that the market is going to have in the years ahead. One thing ministers could do straight away is to incentivise the private sector, using community benefit funds, to invest in apprenticeships in those areas, so that we are preparing alternatives and opportunities for people as the North Sea basin declines. That's the sort of 'belt and braces' requirement that the just transition Commission, which was set up by the Scottish Government in 2018 to provide scrutiny and advice on delivery, could be helping to push for. Northern Ireland is currently consulting on setting up its own commission; Wales established its own commission in 2023. So where is the UK-wide Just Transition Commission to similarly scrutinise the policy areas which the UK Government has kept reserved to itself? Even when it comes to jobs that the UK Government is directly in control of, the chairman of GB Energy has let the cat out of the bag about the '1000 new jobs' promised for Aberdeen, describing its work as 'a very long-term project', with the much-promised 1000 new jobs taking perhaps 20 years or more to realise. The Acorn project at St Fergus, the new power station at Peterhead and the investments in key strategic ports at Peterhead and Fraserburgh are vital and massive components of any just transition. While the UK Government was able to find almost £22 billion for carbon capture schemes in Merseyside and Teesside last autumn, it has yet to dig deep enough into its pockets for Scotland, despite all that it and its predecessors have taken from Scotland in the past five decades. Any hope there might be for a positive decision on funding the Acorn project at St Fergus is now in a most uncertain position in the June spending review, where we must imagine that the Chancellor will be more focused on squeezing through her self-imposed 'fiscal rules' than on meeting the far more important requirements of the future. Meanwhile, households are facing a third rise in energy costs since Labour came to power, partly as a result of a thoroughly dysfunctional energy market where electricity is priced according to the most expensive input needed to produce it. The typical offshore wind turbine contains more than three times as much material from abroad as it does from domestic manufacturers. And ownership of energy assets remains predominantly in overseas hands. While we miss out on present and future opportunities, the wider context to all of this is an energy market that is, paradoxically, working against both the interests of the consumer and the companies and investors who want to realise the green energy industrial revolution. So we come back to that fundamental question of 'who decides?'. There can surely be no question that when it comes to energy transition or indeed anything else, the people who care most about Scotland, and who are therefore best placed to take decisions of this magnitude, are those of us who have chosen to make our lives here, and who are therefore most invested in getting good outcomes for here. To get all of the opportunities for Scotland which should come from having all of the energy that we do, it's clear that Scotland's government needs all of the political power to match.
The Herald Scotland
23-04-2025
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
MP calls for oil and gas plan, warning of many Grangemouths
'We're talking about a possible Grangemouth every week," she said, "in terms of the level of job loss. It's incredibly significant. Not nearly as devastating for local community as Grangemouth will be, but that kind of devastation will be spread.' Blackman spoke in advance of a Parliamentary debate which she tabled, at which cross-party MPs joined her call on the government to do more to support North Sea oil and gas workers, as the UK transitions away from fossil fuels to renewable energy production. She slammed the UK Government for its lack of a clear transition plan. 'There isn't a plan,' she said, 'that's in one coherent place and there's no governmental overview of that plan, so in terms of ensuring that the transition is just, we don't have any oversight of that." She also drew attention to job losses over recent years, some of which have occurred in her constituency. 'I'm really concerned about where we are. There already have been significant job losses and there are significantly more to come if the government doesn't get it together on this. 'The UK government will contend that they have done some things and to be fair they have put the skills passport in place. But the problem is that there is no point in having a skills passport if those jobs don't exist yet.' Projections for oil and gas industry job losses have varied widely from 200,000 (the total number of direct and indirect jobs in the industry as claimed by Offshore Energies UK), to tens of thousands, in an industry that supports 30,000 direct jobs. By Blackman's calculation if 200,000 jobs were lost over a decade, and Grangemouth losses are 400, this would be a rate of almost one Grangemouth a week. But this is also a sector that, according to a 2023 analysis by Uplift, had already seen oil and gas jobs halved in the previous ten years, 'despite the government issuing hundreds of licences in this period'. Already more than 200,000 jobs have been lost in that time. Academics at Robert Gordon University have predict a decline of around 30,000 jobs being lost over the next decade. The decline in jobs and its impact on community was described in the UK Climate Change Committee's Seventh Carbon Budget published earlier this year. 'Volatility in oil and gas markets," it said, "has led to periodic job losses in the sector and, over the last two decades, there has been a steady decline in North Sea production. These have had knock-on impacts on the local economy. As of 2021, direct employment in oil and gas in Aberdeen has declined by nearly one-third since 2015. Household disposable income has fallen and poverty has increased.' MP Kirsty Blackman (Image: PA) Three quarters of oil and gas workers, Blackman pointed out, live outside the North East of Scotland, and therefore she said, 'this is not just an Aberdeen issue'. She said: 'This is an issue across the UK because of the number of workers that there are all over the UK that travel offshore. If we keep going in the route that we're going with the reduction in the amount of oil and gas at pace and the Energy Profits Levy [windfall tax], we will see a lack of investment, we will see the jobs going down at a much quicker rate.' Part of the problem, she highlighted, is that 'offshore wind has not increased at the rate that we would like to see it increase' and she pointed out that she 'would like to see offshore wind moving much faster.' 'If that involves speeding up some of the processes around grid connections, for example, then that would make a very positive difference. If companies are unwilling to do final investment decisions on renewables because there is some unfathomable grid connection queue that is totally not acceptable and the UK Government needs to take that bull by the horns and sort it out.' Currently, the average North Sea turbine contains three times as much material from abroad as from the UK. As a result, the rapid growth of UK offshore wind – which currently accounts for more than a fifth of global offshore wind capacity – has not fully delivered promised local jobs or prosperity. 'There is also," Blackman added, "an issue around ensuring the proper offshore planning. So, if you look at areas offshore then some of the areas have been licensed for offshore wind. They've also been licensed for carbon capture and storage and for oil and gas extraction. Three different things which are incompatible. So there's not really a proper overview of that.' A major concern, she added, is the risk that Scotland and the UK will lose workers and skills to jobs in other countries. 'There are already in Aberdeen many people who work in Dubai," she said, "and many who work in other countries who are already highly mobile. These people that are incredibly mobile and very highly skilled will, and are already, moving to another country. We will lose those skills. We will lose that ability to capitalise on those skills that we're going to need for the renewables sector if we don't close this gap somehow.' Blackman called for the continued commitment of money to the transition. 'We need to see the Spending Review continue to commit to money to GB Energy for example in order to fund the just transition. We need to see that the spending review doesn't pull back on that. 'We need to see a commitment to ensuring that the jobs will continue and that there will not be this very regular tinkering of changes in terms of oil and gas. If you look at all of the countries that have had a windfall tax in place for example, almost all of them have now gone back on that, whereas the UK hasn't. That kind of clarity needs to be provided about actually the government's rhetoric matching the government's actions in this." Anas Sarwar, Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband (Image: PA) The debate took place ahead of a two-day energy summit in London co-hosted by the UK government and the International Energy Agency at which Keir Starmer is due to speak and coincides with a one million strong petition which will be handed into 10 Downing Street, calling for an end to new oil and gas drilling in the UK. Cross party MPs joined Blackman's call on the government to prioritise the needs of workers and communities in the transition. Barry Gardiner, Labour MP for Brent West said: "The government must be bold and turn the dial for North Sea communities. For 14 long years there has been no plan, just job losses upon job losses as the oil and gas declined. We can only make Britain a clean energy superpower if we engage with these workers now and graft their incredible engineering skills into secure new clean jobs in the renewables sector. A just transition must be more than a soundbite.' READ MORE: Carla Denyer, Co-Leader of The Green Party and MP for Bristol Central commented: 'Whilst oil and gas companies lobby for lower taxes and more drilling to boost their own profits, workers and communities are bearing the brunt of a disorderly transition. In a declining basin, last-ditch attempts to double down on new oil and gas will not provide workers with the long-term security they deserve. 'It is high time the government stops betting on the private sector to do the right thing and starts delivering in the interests of workers, communities and the country as a whole. That means stopping the expansion of new oil and gas, investing in good quality renewable energy jobs and putting workers and local communities at the heart of transition planning.' Responding to the debate, UK Energy Minister, Michael Shanks said: "The truth is we should have been planning for this transition a long time ago... There is no greater example of the failure to plan when we knew years ago that Grangemouth was in a precarious position. We should have been planning at that point for the workforce. My driving purpose in this role is to make sure we don't make the same mistake again in the wider North Sea sector.'
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Petrol and diesel drivers switching to EV could be £700 better off
Electric cars could save drivers nearly £700 with proposals calling for an immediate end to fossil fuels. A Climate Change Committee (CCC) report has presented to the Labour Party government a new pathway to achieve a decarbonised UK by 2050. The plan requires reducing emissions by 87 per cent compared to 1990 levels by 2040 with electric vehicles being crucial. The report found that electrification will make up 60 per cent of emissions reductions by 2040. Interim Chair of the CCC, Professor Piers Forster, said: "The Committee is delighted to be able to present a good news story about how the country can decarbonise while also creating savings across the economy." READ MORE: Parking on driveway 'illegal' and UK households told to pay £7,000 for privilege READ MORE: Drivers urged to remember three documents they 'must' carry in car READ MORE Crucial check UK households must do this spring to avoid £3,500 bill By 2050, household driving bills are also predicted to be approximately £700 cheaper than today while energy bills are also expected to fall by a similar amount, with annual savings of around £716. Prof Forster said: 'For a long time, decarbonisation in this country has really meant work in the power sector, but now we need to see action on transport, buildings, industry, and farming. This will create opportunities in the economy, tackle climate change, and bring down household bills." He added: "Our analysis shows that there is no need to pitch action on climate change against the economy. We will need Government and business to deliver the investment, but we are confident that this Seventh Carbon Budget offers a secure, prosperous future for the UK." In addition, by 2040, the CCC's Balanced Pathway sees three-quarters of cars and vans and nearly two-thirds of heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) on the road being electric, up from only 2.8% of cars and 1.4% of vans in 2023. The share of new car and van sales that are electric grows quickly, ahead of the zero-emission vehicle mandate, reaching around 95% by 2030 and 100% by 2035. This is propelled by the falling cost of batteries, which allows electric cars to reach price parity with comparable petrol and diesel cars between 2026 and 2028. The pathway also assumes battery-electric vehicles are chosen to decarbonise all HGVs.
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Net zero plans are divorced from reality
Most people are probably only vaguely aware of the existence of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), if they think about it at all. They are, however, fully apprised of some of the thinking that underpins the dash to net zero. The CCC came into existence under the Climate Change Act pioneered by Ed Miliband during his first incarnation as Energy Secretary in Gordon Brown's government. It has powers to advise ministers on the implementation of public policy measured against a set of statutory targets which have been tightened over the years, especially by Theresa May and Boris Johnson. The CCC issues regular reports on how well it considers the Government is doing to achieve the removal of all carbon-based sources from British energy production. Its latest publication – the Seventh Carbon Budget – is a work so divorced from reality that it is hard to take it seriously. Yet it will be the basis for energy policy in the coming years unless the Government stops it, as it must if it is to have any hope of generating economic growth. The proposed expansion of Heathrow and Gatwick airports will make it harder to achieve carbon change dates. Unless the statutory elements of these targets are removed, the courts will intervene whenever it looks like they will be missed. The CCC makes assumptions about purchases of electric vehicles and heat pumps to replace gas boilers that are completely fanciful. By 2040, half of homes will need a heat pump and 60pc of HGVs are going to have to be electric even though at the moment hardly any exist. It projects that meat consumption is going to fall by 25 per cent within 15 years, with the numbers of cattle and sheep plunging as land is given over to trees to soak up carbon. Even if this were desirable, how is it to be achieved? We keep being told by Mr Miliband that moving to renewable energy will mean lower bills and yet they are going up again in the spring. The UK has some of the highest electricity costs in the industrialised world, hampering businesses and deterring investors from overseas. The moment is rapidly approaching when Sir Keir Starmer will have to choose between the ambitions of his Chancellor and those of his Energy Secretary. We have seen already with overseas aid that he is willing to drop statutory requirements if the circumstances warrant it. If he has any sense he will drop Mr Miliband and remove the CCC's statutory powers. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
