What is a carbon offset worth?
Carbon offsets are all the rage. As companies declare their net zero targets, they are reaching for offsets to make the numbers add up. Landowners see carbon farming as a new revenue driver. The missi...
15 Mar 202112min
Bespoke carbon taxes - should beef and dairy be singled out?
The government has been kite-flying proposals for beef and dairy carbon taxes - to signal to environmentalists that it is “on their side” and to see how big the lobbyists’ backlash will be. The Climat...
16 Feb 202111min
Net zero gain - how to build better
Once upon a time, developers applied for planning permission and they either got it or not. Now they have to deliver Net Biodiversity Gain, a very limited application of the polluter-pays principle. T...
8 Feb 20218min
How green is the government really?
Boris Johnson, like David Cameron, has started out talking the green talk. Standards here in the UK, post the BREXIT transition, are going to be higher. Net zero is embraced wholeheartedly. But one mo...
2 Feb 202110min
Net zero policy in 2,000 pages
At the end of 2020 the government and the Climate Change Committee produced a blitz of documents. We had the Ten Point Plan, the National Infrastructure Strategy, the Energy White Paper and the Treasu...
19 Jan 202113min
How much is it going to cost to meet the net zero target?
The Climate Change Committee, in its 6th Carbon Budget, tells us that the answer is not very much, if anything, once fuel savings are taken into account. Is this really true? Could the conversion of o...
14 Des 202014min
Net zero, green recovery and green industrial revolution plans – what's in a number?
In the UK and the EU, grand Ten Point and Green Recovery Plans are all the rage. In the UK, everything adds up to 10; in the EU it was 20, with its "20/20/20 Climate and Energy Package". They tend to ...
23 Nov 202012min
COP 26 and global climate agreements - will they work?
In November 2021, world leaders will gather in Glasgow to try once again to crack climate change. It is a formidable task: none of the previous agreements, including Paris in 2016, has made any differ...
9 Nov 202012min
