New owners apply for permission to extract oil in Horse Hill despite landmark ruling from supreme court in 2024
After years of trying to dig for oil in Surrey, the company behind the drilling project that was turned down in a landmark supreme court ruling has sold off the site for a fraction of the money it spent on it, and rebranded as a clean energy company.
Meanwhile, the new owners, who picked up the site for £1m, are applying, once again, for permission to dig.
Queenslanders’ right to object to mining projects – including coal – would be “gutted” by new legislation that would ban opponents from being heard in court without the minister’s approval and then only if they owned a property within a 125km radius of the project.
The Greens have called the move “corrupt” and community action group Lock the Gate Alliance said the state’s LNP government was “tearing up democratic and environmental protections just to make life easier for mining companies”.
Firms manage $7.3tn in assets and could afford to transition away from fossil fuels yet invest in natural gas and coal-fired plants to power datacenters
The energy portfolios of 20 private equity firms produce 1.5bn tons of greenhouse gases a year, more than the annual emissions of any country except China, the US, India and Russia, according to a new report.
Together, these firms manage $7.3tn in assets of all kinds, affording them the ability to shape the pace of the transition away from fossil fuels. However their energy investments include significant fossil fuel assets including natural gas and coal-fired power plants to provide electricity to datacenters.
Labour should replace levy in 2027 rather than 2030 as energy bills are poised to surge over the winter, says lobby group
The North Sea oil and gas industry has called on Labour to scrap the windfall tax on fossil fuel firms three years early, as Britain heads into a winter with energy bills expected to reach their highest level since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), the industry’s trade body, wants the tax replaced in 2027, rather than in 2030, with a narrower levy that only applies during price spikes.
Trump’s EPA strips itself of regulating ability, gutting Clean Air Act in what experts say is a gift to planet polluters
On the heels of the hottest summer ever recorded in the US, the Trump administration has said it will erase any limits on emissions from coal and gas plants that are dangerously heating up our planet.
The US Environmental Protection Agency said it will strip itself of its ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions coming from power plants under the Clean Air Act, removing a key tool to address the climate crisis.
Energy Transfer, whose CEO is a major Trump donor, named as biggest single methane producer in new rankings
Down a short gravel track in a largely nondescript corner of Louisiana sits a gas processing facility, operated by a company whose chief executive is a major donor to Donald Trump. It may be the largest emitter of methane in the US.
The Energy Transfer site, located near the city of Shreveport,is named as the biggest single “super-emitter” in new rankings of US oil and gas operations for the largest releases of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that is rapidly overheating our planet, according to a new UCLA study, which is based on satellite data.
One Nation has come under fire for quietly shelving support for a new domestic gas reservation policy in preference for a policy that favours the party’s billionaire patron, Gina Rinehart.
The Albanese government has announced it will establish a new reservation policy for Australia’s east coast, requiring gas exporters to supply a portion of the gas they produce to the domestic market. The policy is aimed at “modestly” supplying the domestic market to put downward pressure on prices for consumers.
Trump’s toga | Reform UK donations | Ben Delo | Word watch | Andy Burnham | The name game
Octavian (later Emperor Augustus), following his victorious battles of Illyricum and Actium, announced he would give 400 sesterces to adult male citizens. Will we see the US president wearing an emperor’s purple and gold toga soon (Trump promise of $5,000 for US citizens after midterms decried as ‘bribery’, 10 September)? David Shannon Ashton under Hill, Worcestershire
• Can we assume that the donations to Reform UK from the billionaires Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo (Report, 12 September) will be followed by some sort of cash offer for every adult in the UK should Mr Farage win the next election? Phil Thomas Frodsham, Cheshire
Thousands of miles of new power lines are needed to deliver climate targets and energy security, but bills will rise in the short term and opponents are mobilising
Britain is embarking on one of the largest overhauls of its electricity grid in generations – a megaproject in which five times more infrastructure will be built by 2030 than was constructed during the previous three decades.
Tens of billions of pounds are being spent on new pylons, subsea cables and converter stations to connect a growing fleet of wind and solar farms and carry clean power to where it is needed.
Silicosis sufferers are getting younger as Trump and the coal mining industry push back on protections
Silicosis is one of the oldest workplace hazards and public health experts have known for decades how to prevent it. Yet a new wave of workers, from Appalachian coalminers to Latino countertop fabrication workers, are developing and dying from the disease as industry fights new protections and regulators fail to defend the rules that could protect them.
John Robinson’s grandfather developed black lung back when coalminers could spend decades in the mines before being diagnosed with the disease, often dying in their 60s, 70s and 80s. But Robinson, who mined for coal in south-west Virginia, was diagnosed when he was 47. He’s part of a trend that has grown over the past two decades in central Appalachia, where more coalminers are developing black lung disease at younger ages.
Michigan case is one of several legal disputes as Trump administration uses emergency powers to force a half-dozen coal-fired plants from closing
In a defeat for the Trump administration, a federal court on Friday ruled that the energy department exceeded its authority when it forced a Michigan coal-fired power plant to stay open past its scheduled retirement date last year.
The energy secretary, Chris Wright, had said the 64-year-old JH Campbell Generating plant was needed to ensure reliable electricity in the region, and he used emergency powers to keep it operating. Environmental groups and three states – Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota – went to court to try to overturn orders keeping the plant online.
Greens accuse Labour of hiding position to avoid criticism before contest, in which Zack Polanski is standing
A decision on approving the controversial Jackdaw gasfield in the North Sea is to be delayed until later this autumn, with the Greens accusing Labour of hiding their position before the crucial Holborn and St Pancras byelection.
Businesses, charities and other groups sign letter calling for levies to be paid by the government
More than 120 organisations including big businesses and charities have called for the removal of “hidden taxes” added to energy bills to help reduce costs for consumers and prevent businesses closing.
In a letter to the chancellor the signatories – including Energy UK, business trade body the CBI, End Fuel Poverty and Age UK – called for levies amounting to 10% of energy bills that fund policies to be paid for by the government. John Healey is to present his first budget on 28 October.
Consumers will pay higher energy bills unless the UK government speeds up work on a vast programme of upgrades to the electricity grid to enable the switch to renewables, the public spending watchdog has warned.
The National Audit Office (NAO) said that without faster action the extra costs associated with managing the ageing power network, which are ultimately passed on to the public, could reach £7.8bn a year by 2030.
Emissions of planet-heating methane and CO2 from natural sources are worsening the climate crisis, paper says
Rising global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels are transforming the world’s forests, wetlands and tundra to the point they are releasing emissions that could further worsen global heating by as much as 30%, a new study has found.
As the world heats up, permafrost in the high latitudes is thawing, fiercer wildfires are burning in drying forests and wetlands and lakes are warming. All of these changes are themselves causing the release of planet-heating methane and carbon dioxide locked in trees and soils, therefore worsening the climate crisis, the paper states.
Climate catastrophe is on our doorstep – yet Labour’s impending approval of further drilling will bring more pain for negligible gains
Pinch yourself, it’s happening again. Here is a Labour government spending a vast amount of political capital to earn tiny material gains while risking huge political losses. It occurred repeatedly under Keir Starmer, and now – with the impending decision to approve further gas and oil drilling in the North Sea – it is happening under Andy Burnham. You rack your brains to explain it, but no rational explanation comes.
Burnham is studiously cryptic about his reasons. His clearest statement to date goes as follows: “There is a resource there. When people are struggling, we can’t ignore that.” Does he mean that oil and gas workers are struggling? If so, this decision will be of little use to them. The Jackdaw gasfield, likely to be approved this week, will generate a grand total of 27 direct full-time jobs. The Rosebank oilfield, whose approval is likely to follow soon, will support 450 UK-based jobs during its lifetime. Yet the UK’s net zero economy directly employs 300,000 people, and a further 400,000 jobs are planned. The rest of the green economy employs more than 600,000. A just transition for fossil fuel workers, securing jobs in the green economy, is better for everyone.
Facilities likely to employ 10,400 workers, compared with 40,000 in industry estimates, thinktank says
Datacentres in the UK will create just a quarter of the jobs predicted by the tech sector, while consuming vast amounts of energy, according to new research.
Environmental thinktank Verdant predicts that all the datacentres currently planned are likely to directly employ 10,400 workers – compared with the more than 40,000 cited in projections by the industry lobby group TechUK.
The offshore windfarm at Berwick Bank is predicted to kill more than 4,000 birds in its first year alone – among them gannets, puffins and kittiwakes, writes Ashley Davies
Lev Parikian paints a vivid picture of the gannets of the Bass Rock and the impact that avian flu has had on their numbers (Country diary, 31 August). There’s another threat, though, and it’s one that puts some supporters of renewable energy like me in a novel situation: protesting against the construction of a windfarm.
Berwick Bank will be one of the biggest offshore windfarms in the world – a few kilometres from the Bass. This is perilously close, and the RSPB has calculated that it will kill more than 4,000 seabirds in its first year alone, among them gannets, puffins and endangered kittiwakes.
Researchers urge governments to help worst afflicted countries, such as Nigeria and Algeria, which rely on oil revenues for public services
Conflict, migration and economic upheaval will accompany the global move away from oil, unless governments act urgently to help the worst afflicted countries to cope, research has found.
Nigeria, Iran, Angola and Algeria are among the countries that will be severely affected, as they rely strongly on oil revenues for their government and provision of public services, but have little diversification and too little capital to cushion the blow.
Chief of nuclear watchdog says secret Assad-era facility would have been able to produce fissile material
A nearly complete nuclear reactor built secretly during the rule of the toppled Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad would have been able to produce fissile material for possible use in nuclear weapons, the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog has revealed.
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last month visited two sites, one in Deir ez-Zor and a second in an undisclosed location identified to them by Syrian authorities.
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