COP26 president-designate and ex-energy secretary Alok Sharma has called for an end of international coal finance in a speech marking six months till the international climate conference. Speaking in Glasgow – where the conference is set to take place this November – against the backdrop of ScottishPower’s Whitelee wind farm, Sharma described this ask as
Last year, renewable capacity additions were up by 45% globally to almost 280GW, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). This was the highest year-on-year increase since 1999, but the agency has said these high additions are the “new normal” in 2021 and 2022. Over the next two years, renewables are expected to account for
Boris Johnson is hoping to claim global leadership on the climate issue by committing Britain to an accelerated programme of emissions cuts. Is this achievable – and affordable? What has the government announced? Last month, in the run-up to Joe Biden’s Earth Day climate summit, Boris Johnson announced a new legally binding pledge committing the
With another bank holiday has come another renewable generation record, with wind power hitting a new high of 17.6GW. At 3.30pm on Monday 3 May, the renewable source was producing 48.4% of Britain’s electricity mix according to provisional results from National Grid ESO. This just tops the previous wind record set in February during the
The past decade has seen solar energy leading the way towards a future of affordable clean energy for all. Now, with a little more innovation and a lot more deployment, batteries, whether in electric vehicles or as stationary energy storage systems (ESS), will enable the rise of PV go into its next, even bigger growth
That we are living in science fiction was brought home to me last week when I put down Kim Stanley Robinson’s superb climate-futures novel The Ministry for the Future and picked up Bill McKibben’s New Yorker letter on climate, warning of the melting of the Thwaites Glacier, “already known as the ‘doomsday glacier’ because its
The UK has now set in law the Climate Change Committee’s recommendation of a 78% emissions reduction by 2035. As part of the sixth Carbon Budget – set to run from 2033 to 2037 – therefore, the UK will aim to reach the nearly 80% reduction on 1990 levels. This is 15 years earlier than
In less than a decade, solar power will be economic in comparison to local fossil fuels globally, while wind will be economic in more than half of cases. This is according to a new report from thinktank Carbon Tracker, which found currently around 60% of solar generation and 15% of wind generation is economic when
The tougher target for carbon reduction could dramatically reshape the fortunes of several industries – for better or worse Boris Johnson’s plan to accelerate the UK’s climate ambitions over the next 15 years, revealed last week, will hasten progress towards a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. The new target – to cut the UK’s carbon emissions
In closing President Joe Biden's global climate summit, world leaders shared stories of their own nations' drives to break away from climate-wrecking fossil fuels WASHINGTON -- World leaders shared tales of climate-friendly breakthroughs — and feverish quests for more — to close President Joe Biden's virtual global climate summit on Friday, from Kenyans abandoning kerosene