The Energy and Climate Change Select Committee has published a new report showing that the UK is not on course to meet targets on renewable heat and transport. Its recommendations for more action are very welcome, as are its calls for more to be done to understand the carbon impacts of biomass. However, calls for the use of more crop biofuels could put nature and the climate at risk. A more detailed analysis follows below…

News this week came out that the EU is well on course to meet its energy efficiency target. In part due to economic slowdown and in part due to policies that have driven greater energy efficiency, the use of energy in the EU was below what was expected in 2014 by as much as the annual energy use of Finland. Of course, as others have pointed out, it is important to make sure that this momentum is capitalised on so as if…

A new study in the US has underlined existing evidence that biofuels, designed to save emissions by replacing the petrol and diesel in our vehicles, can actually make climate change worse. By using a new methodology focusing on the flows of carbon, US researchers found that crops grown to recapture the equivalent amount of carbon released by biofuels only reabsorb 37% of the emissions. This means that biofuels used by vehicles…

 

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RSPB is part of a coalition of countryside and nature conservation organisations that came together two years ago to assess the potential risks of fracking to the UK’s natural environment, landscapes and climate. Since then, we’ve been calling for tighter environmental regulation of the fracking industry and asking to see a compelling case that fracking is compatible with the UK’s climate change commitments…

Different news on climate change: a new climate risk assessment for the UK is published today, by the Committee on Climate Change. Yes, it’s rather gloomy reading – yet also a spur to action.  There’s a lot that we can do to avert the worst of the problems,  we just need to  get on with it. And doing so is a good investment – it’ll cost us a lot less now, than if we put things off into the future.…

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Today the UK Government has published long-awaited advice from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) on whether the exploitation of shale gas, is compatible with the UK’s carbon budgets.

The report makes it clear that this compatibility is highly uncertain and only possible if three tests are met to limit emissions from fracking and elsewhere across the economy. Meeting these tests requires, in the CCC…

Today is Solar Independence Day so we’re celebrating all things good about solar! Solar is a great renewable energy option because it produces electricity in way that is especially low risk for wildlife. We’d like to see solar on roofs and other built infrastructure, such as car parks and bridges, where few if any risks are posed to the natural environment. Solar farms which generate larger quantities of renewable electricity…

The UK Government has just announced that it is to ban fracking at the surface in protected areas in both England and Wales. This ban will apply to any new and to all existing onshore petroleum licences. The official Government response to a consultation they ran last year can be found here.

The RSPB has been working with NGO partners to call for these protections for vulnerable sites, wildlife and landscapes for some…

Telescopes and binoculars from fifteen European BirdLife partner organisations were trained on two lammergeiers, or bearded vultures, roosting high on the cliff face of a quiet Alpine valley as dusk fell. We’d come to Gran Paradiso National Park, Italy to make headway in building climate change adaptation into our nature conservation activities across Europe...From discussions and ideas hatched at the workshop, we’re…

On Monday 6^th June, the Energy Ministers of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden and Norway signed a “Political Declaration on Energy Cooperation between the North Seas Countries”. The UK was notably absent from the declaration signing, which we understand is due to statutory restrictions on government activity in the UK in the run-up to the EU referendum on 23 June. However…

I spent a year from 2013-14 living in the jungles of Indonesian Borneo and spending many days searching for and following orangutans and gibbons. So, last year’s forest fires in Indonesia, which came to within a kilometre of our base camp, made me especially sad and concerned for my friends, colleagues and the wildlife they work to protect.

Many of the forest fires in Indonesia are started illegally, using the…

This post was written by Pip Roddis, Policy Officer in the RSPB's Sustainable Development Team

Last week the RSPB published its latest report on energy and climate change – ‘The RSPB’s 2050 Energy Vision: Meeting the UK’s climate targets in harmony with nature’. It has been two years in the making, and has involved more than 40 people from across the RSPB. It was launched to a positive reception…

By Pip Roddis, Policy Officer.

If any of you have been following RSPB’s blogs over the past few months (for example, see here and here), you will know that we’ve been undertaking a major piece of research on renewable energy and the potential risks for wildlife in the UK’s low carbon transition. We’re very pleased to say that we will be publishing our research next week in a report called ‘The RSPB’s 2050 Energy…

I returned yesterday from a meeting at the European Commission on bioenergy. The discussion was about new sustainability criteria that would apply to all bioenergy across the EU from 2020 onwards. Bioenergy currently makes up around 2/3 of all the renewable energy used in the EU, and in the UK it's even higher at 72%.

Only a few member states have sustainability criteria right now, including the UK. But the new criteria…

By Alice Collier, Policy Officer

You may have seen an RSPB news article earlier in the year about the imminent construction of a wind turbine at the RSPB’s headquarters in Sandy, in partnership with Ecotricity. Well, the turbine is now up and running!

I’m new to the team and working here at The Lodge it’s really great to know that our electricity needs are being met by renewable energy. In fact, the 100 metre…

I recently travelled to the US to see the forests impacted by EU bioenergy policy and the increased demand for wood pellets. All photos by me, Matt Adam Williams.

The forests of North Carolina are incredibly rich in wildlife, including this little lizard I found.

One of my favourite moments had to be when we saw a bald eagle from a boat we took a trip on.

This is a pile of whole trees sitting at the Ahoskie pellet…

I’ve been back from the USA almost a week now. As you’ll know if you’ve read my previous blogs about my trip, I went out there to see the impacts of UK and EU bioenergy policies. The beautiful forests are being cut down and turned into wood pellets that in many cases are being shipped to the UK to be burned in our power stations.

But after seeing the impacts for myself, and meeting with the decision…

So, my biomass fact finding mission to the US is coming to a close. Here are ten things that I learned while I was here:

1. Community members in the Southeastern USA are very concerned about the wildlife, climate and health impacts of the wood pellet industry and its mills.
2. The bottomland hardwood and wetland forests of the Southeast are rich in birds and wildlife, from bald eagles to belted kingfishers.
3. The destruction…

This post was written by Pip Roddis, Policy Officer in RSPB's Sustainable Development Team. 

This was the question I found myself being asked the most at the climate change stand at last weekend's annual RSPB Members' Weekend in York. 

It's a good question. Faced with such an all-encompassing and frightening problem, it's very easy to feel overwhelmed and like there is nothing we can do to help. But I was…

The dogwood trees are in bloom at this time of year in North Carolina. Tiny white flowers single them out from the other foliage that lines the interstates. And turkey vultures are ubiquitous, circling above them in flocks of three or four, tilting as they glide on the hot air.

With other European NGO colleagues I’m visiting my friends from the Dogwood Alliance, one of the American NGOs we work with on bioenergy. This…

Today the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the UK Government’s independent advisory body, published much-anticipated advice on how the new and ambitious global deal in Paris could alter the UK’s efforts.

This is something RSPB cares about because climate change poses the greatest long-term threat to wildlife, and every degree of temperature rise puts more species at risk of loss and extinction.

The CCC…

This is a guest blog by Andre Farrar, RSPB Planning and Strategy Manager.

Crazy weather has always been with us – floods and droughts, cold snaps and heat waves, wind and storms ... it’s the patterns over time that count and those are now showing more clearly than ever before that our climate is changing. At one extreme the grievous impact of the latest floods in the North of England at the other unseasonably early spring…

Guest blog by Dr Rob Field, Senior Conservation Scientist, RSPB Centre for Conservation Science

A recent paper 'The potential for land sparing to offset greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture' in the journal Nature Climate Change has attempted to show that land sparing has the technical potential to significantly  reduce agricultural emissions, by balancing them with greenhouse gas uptake from ‘spared land…

The chair of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee asked Amber Rudd (the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change) on Wednesday whether she had any Christmas presents for him. By this he meant any announcements she wished to share with the Committee.

Amber Rudd held back from revealing anything, saving the surprise for the day after her appearance before the Committee.

This week the Government has announced…