We have had a reply to the VAT petition from the Treasury. See below for the full wording. Interestingly it shows that the UK government fought against the VAT rises with the EU but were defeated by the Court of Justice of the European Union siding with the European Commission.
Renewable electricity in the UK has had a great year, but with our homes and transport still almost totally reliant on carbon the hardest part of the zero-carbon future is still ahead It’s been a bad year for fossil fuels in the UK. In May, Great Britain went two weeks without burning any coal for
Sir David Attenborough regularly battles it out with the Queen for the title of the county’s “most trusted person” – a fact he always puts down to a single cause. “I have never done a commercial. Never. Ever,” he said in a newspaper interview in 2006. “If I have any quality on the screen, it’s
If you missed last week’s launch of the UK Green Finance Strategy, it is entirely possible you’re not alone. The 80-page document may make for dry reading for all but finance diehards, but the issue it sets its sights on is consequential: the inescapable truth that the world is failing to invest in clean energy
A Citizens’ Assembly on climate change and achieving net zero has been announced by six of the government's select committees. The Assembly will bring together a group of citizens to discuss – and reach a conclusion on - a net zero pathway. A report will be produced after all the sessions are over, with the
Two thirds of all people who own a PV array generate enough electricity to become self-sufficient if they have access to storage, according to German utility E.ON. “66 percent of our clients with a solar array produce more electricity over the year than they consume,” the company’s head of German operations, Victoria Ossadnik, told broadcaster
Large-scale renewables are the most important factor in decarbonisation of the energy sector, according to a new UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) report. However, rapid, unprecedented changes across the entire UK economy will be required to meet net zero. Disruptive change, defined by UKERC as a significant deviation from past trends in a short timeframe,
The UK recorded its greenest ever winter in 2018/19, as mild conditions, high renewable output and system flexibility combined to send carbon intensity tumbling. National Grid ESO’s Winter Outlook document, published yesterday, revealed that the average carbon intensity of power generation over the period established a new record low of 242.8g CO2/kWh, almost half the
Are you a glass half-empty or half-full sort of person? Which type are you? (Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay) How you are enormously changes how you receive information. I recently listened to an episode of Analysis on BBC Radio 4, and I was left feeling some real optimism about our climate
The UK has now gone a fortnight without coal, underpinning what has been a landmark month for the country’s energy mix. The record was confirmed by National Grid ESO at 3:12pm this afternoon, the moment it became clear that the UK would surpass two consecutive weeks without any coal-fired generation whatsoever. Having only gone a