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Truth and Fantasy in Our Net Zero World

In this short-lived breathing space between last week's Net Zero barrage and next week's CoP26 frenzy, it seems timely to reflect on how it all stacks up so far. After months of delay, Boris Johnson and his fractious Ministers finally moved into warp drive in issuing their Net Zero Strategy.

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The Conundrum that is BECCS (Part 3 of a 3-part blog)

At its simplest, Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) sounds like the go-to climate solution: convert your coal or gas-fired power station to burn biomass. Source that biomass from fast-growing ‘sustainable forests’, with as many new carbon-sequestering trees planted as are cut down –…

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CCS: A Devious and Damaging Distraction (Part 1 of a 3-part blog)

For as long as I can remember, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has been promoted as a way of making it possible for us to go on using fossil fuels without further destabilizing the climate. By capturing the emissions of from the combustion of these fossil fuels BEFORE they're released into the…

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Nuclear Energy:Nuclear Weapons – the Inseparable Link

I first took an interest in Greenpeace back in 1973, before I joined Friends of the Earth, CND and the Green Party (then the Ecology Party) a year later. I’d followed the campaigns against the testing of nuclear weapons in Amchitka (one of the Aleutian islands in Alaska), and then in the French…

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Getting Real About Net Zero

When it comes to understanding the true nature of Net Zero by 2050, I have one huge request: could everybody please stop flourishing their particular ‘get out of jail free’ cards – whether that’s a nuclear card, or a hydrogen card, or a 100% renewable electricity (100% RE) card.

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Energy Policymaking in the UK: Ill-Informed and Incoherent

In March 2012, four former Directors of Friends of the Earth (myself, Tom Burke, Charles Secrett and Tony Juniper) wrote to Prime Minister David Cameron to warn him that the pro-nuclear bias of his advisors across government posed a significant risk to the Government’s ability to fashion a coherent…

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