Labour MPs fear No 10 team lack up-to-date energy insight and don’t fully recognise voters’ climate concerns
Andy Burnham was told he could face the first revolt of his premiership as Labour MPs and climate experts condemned his apparent support for renewed drilling for oil and gas.
As the UK suffers through drought, fires and heatwaves, the prime minister gave the strongest indication yet on Friday he was minded to allow new drilling. His comments came just hours before the UN secretary-general warned “every new fossil fuel project” made heatwaves more dangerous.
Boom in solar farms and home installations in first half of 2026 began shortly after start of US-Israel war against Iran
Great Britain has recorded more new solar power installations in the first half of this year than in any six-month period since 2011, as households turn to rooftop panels to help cut their energy bills.
An analysis of the government’s official figures shows that Great Britain added 142,536 solar installations in the first six months of the year, putting it on track to top last year’s record solar additions.
Environmentalists renew calls for windfall tax to support households after Q2 earnings rise to almost $10bn
Shell has posted its second highest quarterly earnings on record as the energy market surge caused by the Middle East crisis helped to double its net profit to almost $10bn in the three months to June.
Europe’s biggest oil and gas company reported a quarterly profit of $9.8bn (£7.4bn), more than double the figure for the second quarter last year and the highest since its record-high earnings in the months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Exclusive: Blunder at Rosebank, UK’s biggest undeveloped oilfield, comes as government considers granting licence
Production at Britain’s biggest undeveloped oil and gasfield could be delayed for months after equipment from a rig was accidentally dropped in the North Sea, the Guardian can reveal.
The Varta crisis has entered another severe phase after the German battery manufacturer lost the customer responsible for nearly all production at its specialized factory in Nördlingen.
Varta has not publicly identified that customer, but reports from German media and industry sources point to Apple. The iPhone maker is reportedly moving battery orders for a future AirPods generation to a lower-cost supplier in China.
The decision will lead Varta to stop producing rechargeable button cells in Nördlingen during fall 2026. Approximately 350 jobs will be eliminated across the factory and the company headquarters in nearby Ellwangen.
Describing the development as a complete corporate collapse would go too far. Varta continues operating other battery businesses and recently completed an extensive financial restructuring backed by Porsche. The loss of Apple, however, has destroyed the economic foundation of a production site created around one highly influential customer.
Varta Crisis Exposes Dependence on Apple
The Varta crisis illustrates how a large technology customer can transform a supplier and then leave it with capacity that cannot easily be reassigned.
Varta became an important producer of CoinPower lithium-ion cells, small rechargeable batteries designed for wireless earbuds and other compact devices. Teardowns of AirPods Pro models identified Varta cells inside the earbuds, although Apple does not publicly discuss most component suppliers by product.
Demand from premium wireless headphones helped Varta expand rapidly. In 2020, its Microbatteries and Solutions division generated approximately €508 million in revenue, representing growth of 49% from the previous year.
The company invested heavily in production as wireless earbuds became a mass-market category. Apple demand provided the volume needed to justify specialized lines, equipment and hiring in Germany.
That dependence became dangerous when AirPods production weakened and Apple began adding other battery suppliers. A factory developed for unusually large orders could not operate efficiently once those orders declined.
The customer now leaving Nördlingen had previously accounted for nearly the entire capacity of the site. Varta says it has gained other customers, but their combined demand is not sufficient to keep the specialized factory running.
The plant is therefore closing not because rechargeable button cells have disappeared, but because replacing one customer of Apple scale requires far more than several smaller contracts.
Price Reportedly Decided the AirPods Order
German reports indicate that price was the decisive factor behind the supplier change.
Varta battery quality was reportedly equal to or better than the competing product. The German manufacturer could not, however, match the cost offered for the next generation of cells from China.
Battery production in Germany faces higher labor, energy and operating expenses than many Asian manufacturing centers. Chinese suppliers also benefit from extensive domestic electronics supply chains, access to materials and production volumes spread across numerous customers.
Apple has enormous leverage when negotiating component contracts. AirPods ship in sufficient quantities for a small difference in the cost of each battery to produce substantial savings across an entire product cycle.
The company regularly qualifies multiple suppliers for components when technical requirements and available capacity permit. Competition can reduce prices, protect production against interruptions and prevent one manufacturer from gaining excessive influence over the supply chain.
For Varta, that process brought the opposite effect. The supplier expanded to serve Apple and then faced declining utilization as the customer divided orders among additional manufacturers.
The latest move appears more final. Varta expects the contract to expire at the end of October, removing the volume that kept Nördlingen economically viable.
Image Credit: Apple Inc.
Apple Supplier Strategy Is Not Simply About China
The reported decision does not mean Apple is moving its complete production network toward China.
Apple has spent several years expanding device assembly and component production in India, Vietnam and other countries. AirPods manufacturing has grown in India, while Macs, iPads and wearables are assembled across a wider group of Asian locations.
The Varta case concerns a particular component for which a Chinese supplier reportedly offered a more competitive price. It shows that diversification away from one country can coexist with cost-driven sourcing from that same country.
Apple may reduce its dependence on Chinese final assembly while continuing to purchase Chinese batteries, displays, enclosures or electronic components when suppliers provide the required scale and pricing.
That balance creates a difficult environment for European manufacturers. Political interest in domestic technology production does not guarantee that major customers will accept higher component prices.
Premium engineering can protect a contract when it produces a measurable advantage in battery capacity, safety, dimensions or lifespan. Once competing suppliers reach comparable performance, procurement decisions become increasingly sensitive to cost.
The Varta crisis suggests that manufacturing location and supplier history carried less weight than the economics of the next AirPods battery.
Varta Was Already Fighting Financial Failure
Apple did not create every problem affecting Varta.
The company entered the current dispute after years of debt, costly investments, volatile customer orders, supply-chain problems and weaker demand in parts of its energy-storage business. A cyberattack in early 2024 also disrupted production and delayed financial reporting.
Varta warned that its earlier restructuring plan might fail after Apple reduced AirPods production. By mid-2024, the company had reached a point where it could no longer service its debt without another intervention.
A pre-insolvency restructuring reduced financial liabilities from approximately €485 million to €200 million. Porsche and majority shareholder Michael Tojner agreed to provide new capital, while creditors supplied additional financing.
Existing shareholders lost their investment as Varta was removed from the stock market. The process preserved the operating company but demonstrated how little financial room remained for another major disruption.
Varta reported a loss of €64.5 million for 2024. Although that was an improvement from the previous year, the business remained dependent on successful restructuring and stronger performance from its surviving divisions.
The Apple contract loss therefore did not independently bring down a healthy battery group. It struck a manufacturer that had already narrowly avoided insolvency.
Image Credit: Wikipedia
Porsche Cannot Protect Every Varta Business
Porsche participation gives Varta a future in automotive batteries, but it does not rescue the Nördlingen button-cell operation.
The automaker invested in the restructuring and took control of the V4Drive business, which develops high-performance cylindrical lithium-ion cells for hybrid and performance vehicles. Porsche gains greater access to battery technology while helping retain part of that expertise in Germany.
Varta also continues producing household batteries and energy-storage systems. Those businesses serve different customers and do not depend on the machinery used for tiny CoinPower cells.
Employees affected by the Nördlingen closure may be offered positions at other locations, although Varta has not indicated how many can realistically be transferred. The company and its works council are negotiating measures for the workers whose roles will disappear.
The shutdown leaves a modern production unit without enough demand only a few years after wireless earbuds were presented as one of Varta most promising growth markets.
Its remaining automotive operation now has the security of a strategic customer with a direct ownership interest. The microbattery division learned the cost of building a factory around a customer that never made the same commitment.
There's one very stinky reason why Labour's ambitious housebuilding targets are doomed to fail, says Mike Wells: Britain's creaking sewers and drainage systems simply can't cope with all the demands of new homes.
Selection of economist formerly at helm of green thinktank marks continuation of decarbonising Miliband era
In her first 48 hours as energy secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh was left in no doubt about the thorny policy decision at the top of her in-tray. Protesters from Fossil Free London met her outside her new offices dressed as firefighters holding placards reading: “We’re already putting out fires, don’t start new ones.”
The MP for Peckham – a radical economist who is outspoken about the climate crisis – is a surprising choice as secretary of state for energy and net zero for those who believe the speculation in Westminster that Andy Burnham wants to approve new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.
Tories, Reform, fossil fuel industry and some in his party lined up against decarbonisation target as energy secretary
“Whenever the Labour party feels a bit sad,” according to one close observer of the current government, speaking some months ago, “they wheel out Ed Miliband to talk about rooftop solar.”
It might not have been literally true, but it often felt during Keir Starmer’s premiership as if energy secretary Miliband brought the sun. Unfailingly upbeat, with a simple message that was understandable to voters, he had a clear mission – to decarbonise the UK’s power sector by 2030 – that was seen to be progressing fast.
The predicted £264bn cost by 2050 could be even higher, plus renewables avoid a far higher total of emissions than can be captured, writes Andrew Boswell, while Simon Oldridge calls out vested interests
Prof Myles Allen and colleagues, in their letter (12 July) on carbon capture and storage (CCS), propose licensing gasfields on condition that producers store an increasing proportion of “the carbon dioxide their products generate”. Their proposal only considers CO2. Methane is excluded by choice although it leaks throughout global fossil-fuel supply chains, including during extraction, processing, liquefaction and shipping.
A growing academic literature, supported by satellite observations of major methane plumes, shows that these emissions can be very substantial, and are the dominant near-term climate impact for gas supplied as liquefied natural gas.
“Burnham has been very quiet about the climate [crisis] so far,” says Chris Venables, an environmental campaigner and fellow at the Green Alliance thinktank. “I don’t think [it] is at the forefront of his mind, but that does not mean he will water down this agenda.”
At the Royal College of Nursing meeting last month, top of the agenda was not the recruitment crisis or NHS waiting lists but climate change. Have nurses nothing better to do, asks Professor Roger Watson.
Three small-boat migrants who gang-raped an unconscious woman on Brighton beach in an "entirely predatory and callous attack" face deportation after being handed lengthy jail sentences today.
Government to launch campaign to help people cope with events such as weather emergencies or cyber-attacks
The British public should begin taking “small but important steps” to secure and protect water, power supplies and basic phone signal in case of further severe weather emergencies, national crises or cyber-attacks, Downing Street has said.
Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, told MPs “the risks we face from climate change cannot be underestimated”, and warned of the “significant and prolonged disruption to essential services” extreme weather events could cause.
Operator brings in independent legal firm to look into whistleblower allegations relating to June heatwave
Great Britain’s grid operator has brought in independent investigators to look into accusations that its staff were involved in a cover-up over the power system being at a greater risk of blackouts during the heatwave.
The government-owned energy system operator will face the scrutiny of an external legal firm after a whistleblower claimed that control room staff were warned against leaving a paper trail relating to efforts to stabilise the power system during record high temperatures in late June.
Prof Myles Allen, Stephanie Loo and Toby Lockwood, and Olivia Powis, respond to an article by George Monbiot about ‘the great carbon capture con’
George Monbiot suggests that we can solve climate change without carbon capture and storage (The great carbon capture con: behold the wasted billions Burnham could claw back, 8 July). Physics says otherwise. The world is going to generate more carbon dioxide than we can safely dump into the atmosphere, and we can’t rely on our stressed biosphere and oceans to mop up the excess. Stopping global warming will therefore require capturing and durably disposing of carbon dioxide on a huge scale, which right now means injecting it back underground.
Where George does make a good point is in questioning whether carbon dioxide disposal should for ever be paid for using public money. Why should private companies be allowed to make large profits taking carbon out of the ground while the taxpayer foots the bill to put it back? The obvious solution: require those who extract fossil fuels to pay for the disposal of the carbon dioxide their products generate. If the fraction they store rises to 100% by mid-century, fossil fuel use would cause no further warming thereafter.
Microsoft, Amazon and Google say they still aim to achieve net zero output despite construction boom
Microsoft, Amazon and Google’s collective carbon emissions have increased by nearly a fifth in the past year, driven largely by datacentre construction.
In the financial year ending March 2026, the three tech companies emitted 119m mTCO₂e (metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent), or about a third of those of France.
They suck up energy and water, and blast out heat. Just who is better off from all this investment – aside from tech bros?
The two great existential threats of our time – the climate crisis and AI – come hurtling together in the explosion of datacentres across Australia and around the world.
You can hardly avoid hearing about them these days, either with awed reverence of the promised benefits to humankind or with fear and anger given the implications for the climate, inflation, jobs and even housing affordability.
The scientific consensus is that burning fossil fuels drives the climate crisis, yet the world’s biggest oil companies are planning to increase production
As the world swelters in ever more dangerous heat, why are oil companies being allowed to turn up the gas instead of paying for the consequences of their greed?
That ought to be the question on everyone’s minds amid baking heat domes over much of the northern hemisphere, temperature records being smashed day after day, children dying in locked cars, hospitals filling with heatstroke victims and emergency services tackling wildfires.
Exclusive: Campaigners argue news channel’s attacks on climate action ‘work in financial interests’ of Sir Paul Marshall
The hedge fund run by the co-owner of GB News almost tripled its investments in fossil fuel companies in the first quarter of 2026 to $2.8bn (£2.1bn), the Guardian can reveal.
Critics have accused Sir Paul Marshall of “cashing in on climate chaos” and have claimed the news channel, which frequently attacks climate science and action, was “working in its owner’s financial interests”.
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