Articles in the Energy policy category:

A Green New Deal: can it fly?

August 3, 2019

Readers with long memories will recall the Green New Deal group that produced series of proposals more than a decade ago including a booklet entitled ‘Green New deal’ (1). Convened by the New Economics Foundation, it set out an ambitious set of proposals for a just climate transition in the dying days of the last […]

Learning lessons from Donald Trump’s America

December 19, 2017

During 2017 two countries signed up to the 2015 Paris Accords – Nicaragua and Syria and one, the USA  pulled out – though the formal process means  it won’t actually leave until the day after the next Presidential election. The USA is a global outlier on this – as on much else, gun control, abortion […]

Green Deal: energy saving or hot air?

March 26, 2014

In March 2013  I wrote about the launch of the Government’s  ‘Green Deal’.  In that article I set out what the vision was (ambitious) and the compromises that had been made to get it off the ground (messy), while expressing the hope  and some cautious optimism, that despite the complications inherent is the programme  as […]

‘Fracking’: new threat to the Tory heartlands

August 7, 2013

The hot days of July finally saw the debates around the implications ‘fracking’ of unconventional hydro-carbons in the UK reach out and grab the attention of the national media. As Tory grandee Lord Howell called for the process to be focussed on the ‘desolate north’ (he corrected the initial impression that he was referring to […]

From Didcot power station to ‘people’s power station’

June 27, 2013

Anyone who has travelled in or out of London by train towards the West Country, Wales, or north to Birmingham will have passed the looming presence of Didcot ‘A’ power station and it cooling towers. They have been a feature of the Oxfordshire landscape since 1970. But earlier this year the coal-fired power station was […]

Green Deal: deal or no deal?

March 23, 2013

The Government’s much-heralded ‘Green Deal’ (1) was launched on 28 January. The objective is very worthwhile – to provide a funding mechanism to enable a lot of the 20-odd million homes in the UK which are energy inefficient to be retro-fitted with insulation and energy efficient appliances like boilers and heating systems that greatly reduce […]

‘Fracking’: America’s new gold rush

December 11, 2012

I was lucky enough to be in the United States for much of the final stages of the US presidential campaign and got to see all the presidential debates. Commentators noted that it was the first time since 1996 that the debates made no mention of climate change. Indeed the most notable reference to it […]

Nuclear power: no answer to energy policy in a changing climate

November 26, 2012

It is eighteen months since the meltdown of the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power complex after the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan. Globally, reaction to this series of events has been mixed, with a number of countries including Germany reaffirming their intentions to get out of civil nuclear power generation, others like China and Indonesia […]

My very own floating garden

September 26, 2012

The last few weeks have really brought home to me the vulnerability of subsistence farmers across the world to unpredictable weather. I have had an allotment for thirty years and it is a very useful supplement to family food supplies with plenty of fresh fruit and veg in season. But of course I don’t rely […]