Last week, more than 2000 climate change researchers gathered in Paris for the ‘Our Common Future under Climate Change’ conference, an enormous and prestigious event as part of the preparations for the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris later this year. The talks and conversations were hugely diverse, but a key message was summed up by Fatih Birol, chief economist at the IEA: “Is it enough? No. But is it a good step? Yes”. Read more ›
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I was lucky enough to take part of the UACES (The academic association for contemporary European Studies) Collaborative Research Network’s (CRN) inaugural EU Energy Policy workshop on the 25-26 June 2015 at the University of East Anglia. The workshop covered a wide range of topics: Energy and Climate Policy: Engaging internal actors and external partners; the challenges for multilevel governance; EU Renewable Energy Policy: Greening energy in Europe and abroad, and the EU energy market. The CRN is funded by UACES and runs from 2015 to 2018, with Dr. Jenny Fairbrass (Norwich Business School, UEA), Anna Herranz-Surralles (Department of Political Science, Maastricht University) and Israel Solorio Sandoval (Environmental Policy Research Centre, Freie Universität Berlin) as network coordinators. Read more ›
Follow Sussex Energy Group The government’s decision to scrap the zero carbon homes target plus the equivalent for non-domestic houses is a major setback for achieving a low carbon UK and will undermine the credibility of the policy mix on building energy efficiency and beyond. The zero carbon homes target was announced in 2006 and, as the name suggests, was an obligation for any new home to be built from 2016 to be ‘zero carbon’. This includes improvements to be building fabric compared to standard new buildings and measures such as on-site renewable energy generation. Since this is difficult to achieve, the government then introduced so-called ‘allowable solutions’ which are measures which can be implemented off-site to reduce emissions to complement the on-site carbon savings. The recent announcement on the details of the allowable solutions has already been criticised as being ‘watered down’ compared to the original target.
Follow Sussex Energy Group CIED project partners at the Centre for Energy Policy (CEP) at University of Strathclyde together with Climate XChange recently held an event ‘How Scotland could make the most of its energy efficiency policies.’ Hosted by the Scottish Government, the event presented insights from recent CEP research, including work on household energy efficiency and rebound effects. Following an introduction by Scottish Government’s Chris Stark, the programme commenced with a discussion, led by Lisa Ryan of University College Dublin, on the multiple benefits of energy efficiency – including positive impacts on economic growth and human welfare. This was followed two senior researchers at Strathclyde – Karen Turner, Director of the Centre for Energy Policy who presented on industrial energy efficiency and productivity-led growth and Simon Gill on the energy supply industry.
Follow Sussex Energy Group Angel Gurría, secretary-general of the OECD, gave a tour-de-force speech in London on 3rd of June 2015 as part of the organisation’s build-up to COP21 in Paris. He drew upon “Aligning Policies for a Low-carbon Economy“, an OECD report that was produced with the International Energy Agency, the Nuclear Energy Agency and the International Transport Forum, but his speech was not a dry litany of managerial tweaks that civil servants might make to public policy.
Gurría challenged assumptions about the impact of a low-carbon energy system on economic growth, business competitiveness, and also development goals. “There’s a flawed but deeply rooted idea that development comes before decarbonisation. That there is a certain inevitable sequence. While developing economies will inevitably increase their emissions, there is no iron law in the 21st century that it has to be as fossil intensive as it has been in the past. Viable alternatives are already commercially available.” He bemoaned the lack of a price on carbon and the scale of investment into unabated coal-fired electricity generation. Then the former minister of finance laid into the discount rate – used to compare costs and benefits that occur in different time periods – which leads to “ …our grandchildren end up having no value – simple as that! Brutal as that!” This was a speech that could have been made at a climate change demo. Instead, I was at sitting in the City of London, in the company of investors and representatives of some of the biggest companies in the world. While some may have disagreed with his analysis, the applause extended well beyond politeness. But it is not unusual nowadays for establishment figures to call in strident terms for action on climate change. Lord Nicholas Stern, who introduced Gurría, was among the first, and the latest being Pope Francis.
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