• Energy and Climate Change Select Committee: UK not on course to meet renewable transport and heat targets

    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…

  • EU energy efficiency success provides good example to UK

    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…

  • Policy proposals for a sustainable EU bioenergy policy: lessons for the UK

    Bioenergy can play an important role in decarbonising energy systems. However, over recent years evidence has made it increasingly clear that this role needs to be limited. This is because certain types of bioenergy can result in substantial risks to nature and wildlife and in fact offer only meagre emissions savings, or perhaps even increase emissions over the medium term relative to fossil fuels.
    At the EU level, to…
  • New US evidence confirms biofuels result in emissions increases, not savings

    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…

  • Two years later: are we fit to frack?

     

    Summary

    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…

  • Nature needs us to do more to cope with climate change

    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.…

  • New Committee on Climate Change report: highly uncertain whether fracking can be compatible with UK's climate ambition

    Summary

    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…

  • The RSPB celebrates Solar Independence Day

    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…

  • Government bans fracking at the surface in SSSIs and other protected areas

    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…

  • BirdLife partners across Europe work together to adapt to climate change

    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…
  • Cooperation on offshore wind development in the North Sea – will the UK join in?

    On Monday 6th 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…

  • New study shows biofuels in EU increasingly dependent on palm oil

    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…

  • The RSPB’s 2050 Energy Vision: Meeting the UK’s climate targets in harmony with nature

    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…

  • The RSPB's 2050 Energy Vision - coming soon...

    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…

  • RSPB contributes views to European Commission on role for bioenergy post-2020

    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…

  • The RSPB’s new wind turbine: Backing our words on climate change with action

    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…

  • US biomass trip: in photos

    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…

  • After my US biomass fact finding trip, what next?

    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…

  • USA biomass fact finding trip: what did I learn?

    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…
  • What can we do about climate change?

    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…

  • Witnessing biomass impacts in the southeastern USA first hand

    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…

  • Committee on Climate Change fails to raise ambition post-Paris

    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…

  • Show your love for nature this Valentine's Day

    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…

  • New research shows how land sparing can reduce greenhouse gas and benefit wildlife

    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…

  • You might not like Amber Rudd's fracking Christmas present...

    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…