Stellantis chief says company is nearing decision on Ellesmere Port and Luton amid row over EV quotas
The owner of the Vauxhall, Citroën and Peugeot brands has said a decision will be made on the future of its UK plants “in the next few weeks”, amid a row over government electric vehicle quotas.
Carlos Tavares, the outgoing chief executive of Stellantis, has said the company is nearing a decision on the future of Ellesmere Port and Luton.
Continue reading...Party donor Dale Vince warns that urging homeowners to switch to clean-power technology risks political storm bigger than Ulez
The government risks a huge political backlash if it keeps pushing the public to install heat pumps to replace their boilers, one of Britain’s leading green entrepreneurs has warned.
Dale Vince, a major Labour donor and renewable energy advocate, called on Keir Starmer to rethink national programmes, championed by Boris Johnson, pushing the technology. Vince argued that Whitehall should explore alternatives to the devices, which he said were expensive, caused serious disruption and could end up increasing energy bills for some people.
Continue reading...A Dodge Ram 1500 is bigger than a Panzer I tank and campaigners say heavy trucks are ‘lethal’ in collisions
The engines rev, the guitars thrum and a gruff narrator lays out why the vehicle occupying the driveway is more than just a machine. “A truck is a tool,” he says, “but a Ram – a Ram is life.”
So begins an advert for the Ram 1500, a pickup truck slightly bigger than the Panzer I tanks of Nazi Germany and almost as heavy. It is growing in popularity in Europe, with the number of Rams arriving on the continent up 20% in 2023 from the year before, according to registration data from the European Environment Agency. Road safety and environmental campaigners in the UK and Europe are aghast as the latest, most extreme cases of North American car bloat – giant pickup trucks – are increasingly crossing the Atlantic.
Continue reading...Scope of oil and gas influence underscores concerns technology will prolong demand for planet-heating natural gas
The UK government’s move to award £22bn in subsidies to carbon capture projects followed a sharp increase in lobbying by the fossil fuel industry, it can be revealed.
Oil and gas giants such as Equinor, BP, and ExxonMobil attended 24 of 44 external ministerial meetings to discuss carbon capture and storage (CCS) in 2023, according to official transparency records.
Continue reading...As prime minister Justin Trudeau trails in polls, opposition seek to persuade voters environmental policy is a burden
Mass hunger and malnutrition. A looming nuclear winter. An existential threat to the Canadian way of life. For months, the country’s Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has issued dire and increasingly apocalyptic warnings about the future. The culprit? A federal carbon levy meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
In the House of Commons this month, the Tory leader said there was only one way to avoid the devastating crisis: embattled prime minister Justin Trudeau must “call a ‘carbon tax’ election”.
Continue reading...New vehicle efficiency standards (NVES) will not apply to at least four large vehicles, source says
New fuel efficiency standards due to come into force from January will not apply to at least four large vehicle models because of a gap within the legislation, the motor industry has been told.
The Albanese government said earlier this year its new vehicle efficiency standards (NVES) would save motorists about $1,000 a year while cutting fuel use and carbon emissions.
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Continue reading...With the last coal-fired plant closing today, we chart the rise and fall of the once-indispensable fuel which powered modern Britain
Britain’s transition to a low-carbon future has reached a milestone with the closure of its last remaining coal-fired power plant at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire.
The shutdown of the 57-year-old power plant on Monday ends more than 140 years of coal power generation in the UK – an industrial story closely interwoven with Britain’s socioeconomic and political history.
Continue reading...Food campaign Bite Back says 10 firms account for more carbon emissions globally than aviation industry
Britain’s biggest food and drink firms are doing too little to tackle the climate emergency and are producing “staggering” amounts of greenhouse gases, campaigners claim.
The 10 companies that manufacture more of the UK’s food than anyone else produce more carbon emissions between them than even the aviation industry, a report says.
Three of the firms increased their annual emissions in 2022 – Ferrero, Kraft Heinz and PepsiCo.
Seven are on course to miss meeting emissions targets they have set themselves to achieve by 2050.
Only four have a verifiable commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050 – Danone, Mars, Mondelēz and Nestlé.
Continue reading...Lobbyists are increasingly confident about expansion plans as concerns for the economy start to deepen
The younger, tormented minister mulling his position before the Labour government granted Heathrow’s third runway in 2009 might have been greatly relieved to know that, 15 years later, not a shovel would have touched the ground.
But now, returning to power with a revamped energy and climate brief, Ed Miliband again finds himself in a cabinet which, many in aviation hope, may usher in bigger airports and more flights – as well as enough CO2 emissions to outweigh any new solar farms.
Continue reading...Experts urge Australia not to delay target too long as report by Climate Change Authority identifies six barriers to net zero
The Australian government may delay the announcement of a 2035 climate target until after the February deadline and beyond the next election, in part due to uncertainty about the ramifications of the US presidential election.
Some big emitting countries are lagging in developing their 2035 emissions reduction targets, which under the Paris climate agreement are due before the UN climate summit in Belém, Brazil, in November next year.
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Continue reading...Plan to cut German factories is politically fraught but makes sense economically
When Bernd Pischetsrieder attempted to cut jobs at Volkswagen in the early 2000s, he was forced out. When Herbert Diess tried the same, he got the same result, leaving in 2022. Yet now Volkswagen appears to be deliberately grasping the nettle.
“This time it’s different,” says Matthias Schmidt, a Berlin-based automotive analyst. Chief executive Oliver Blume is “VW through and through”, and his actions likely reflect the desires of the controlling Porsche and Piëch dynasties, Schmidt said. The course is set for a historic clash over the future for Germany’s largest carmaker.
Continue reading...Greenpeace urges Labour to ‘fulfil international obligations’ as critics question accuracy of official data
The UK’s worst methane hotspots include the last coalmine, livestock farm clusters, landfills, power plants and North Sea oil and gas wells, according to an analysis.
The process has also thrown up serious doubts over the UK’s ability to calculate its methane emissions.
Continue reading...Campaign group says firms such as Uber should reveal data on driver miles to help boost wages
Uber and other ride-hailing apps should be forced to publish data on drivers’ workloads so that regulators can tackle exploitation and cut carbon emissions, campaigners argue.
Analysis by the pressure group Worker Info Exchange suggests drivers for Uber and its smaller rivals may have missed out on more than £1.2bn in wages and costs last year because of the way they are compensated.
Continue reading...Had fires been ranked alongside countries they would have been world’s fourth-largest emitter, study finds
Wildfires that swept Canada’s woodlands last year released more greenhouse gases than some of the largest emitting countries, a study found on Wednesday, calling into question national emissions budgets that rely on forests as carbon stores.
At 647 megatonnes, the carbon released in last year’s wildfires exceeded those of seven of the 10 largest national emitters in 2022, including Germany, Japan and Russia, the study published in the journal Nature found.
Continue reading...Absence of legally binding targets for greenhouse gas reductions from 2031-49 deemed unconstitutional
South Korea’s constitutional court has ruled that part of the country’s climate law does not conform with protecting the constitutional rights of future generations, an outcome local activists are calling a “landmark decision”.
The unanimous verdict concludes four years of legal battles and sets a significant precedent for future climate-related legal actions in the region.
Continue reading...Greenpeace among 150 groups expressing outrage after preemptive arrests led to cancellation of protest camp
Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have accused police of acting as “private security” for the UK’s biggest carbon emitter after dozens of pre-emptive arrests forced the cancellation of a climate protest camp near Drax power station.
In a statement signed by almost 150 groups, they called the operation against activists who had spent months planning the camp near the wood-burning power station “an unreasonable restriction of free speech”.
Continue reading...Dr Adi Paterson’s statements are apparently at odds with the group’s official position, which says nuclear is needed to tackle the climate crisis
The chair of a leading Australian nuclear advocacy group has called concerns that carbon dioxide emissions are driving a climate crisis an “irrational fear of a trace gas which is plant food” and has rejected links between worsening extreme weather and global heating.
Several statements from Dr Adi Paterson, reviewed by the Guardian, appear at odds with statements from the group he chairs, Nuclear for Australia, which is hosting a petition saying nuclear is needed to tackle an “energy and climate crisis”.
Continue reading...Fires made at least three times more likely by climate crisis and emitted about 2bn tonnes of CO2, data reveals
Canada’s “record-shattering” wildfires last year produced nearly as much greenhouse gas emissions in one season as would be expected over a decade of fires in normal circumstances, data has shown.
The fires, in Canada’s “wildest season ever”, were made at least three times more likely by the climate crisis, and produced about 2bn tonnes of CO2, about a quarter of the total global emissions from wildfires last year, according to data in the State of Wildfires report, published on Wednesday.
Continue reading...More than 95% of investors urged commodities firm to keep highly profitable fossil fuel arm to help maximise shareholder cash
Glencore has scrapped plans to spin off its coal business after shareholders urged the commodities company to hold on to the highly profitable but heavily polluting division.
The FTSE 100 company said that an overwhelming majority of its shareholders favoured retaining the coal business over its plan to list the division as a separate company on the New York stock exchange.
Continue reading...Protesters say recently approved tax-free datacentre will ‘provide nothing except toxic waste and greenhouse gases’
Google’s plans to build a datacentre in Uruguay have angered environmentalists, who say the project will release thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide and hazardous waste.
Uruguay’s environmental authorities recently approved the datacentre, which will use air conditioning to cool its servers. The company initially proposed using millions of litres of fresh water to cool its infrastructure, but this caused an outcry in a country that suffered its worst drought since 1950 last year, causing its capital city to run short of drinking water.
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