Blog: Climate

From today's Guardian:

"Less than a fifth of the biofuel used on UK roads meets environmental standards intended to safeguard human rights and guarantee carbon savings, figures released today show.

"The Renewable Fuels Agency says just 19% of the biofuel supplied under the government's new initiative to use biofuel to help tackle global warming met the green standard. For the remaining 81% of the biofuel, suppliers could not say where it came from, or could not prove that it had been produced in a sustainable way."

But even this "green" standard is misleading, as it ignores the side-effects of biofuel production such as massive deforestation:

"The standard does not include carbon emissions from indirect effects such as changes in land use caused by biofuel planting, which experts have warned could cancel out their environmental benefits."

See all Climate Camp updates.

In a pleasant grazing meadow outside Strood, the Climate Camp is open for business and I'm here for a couple of days to see what's going on, cover it for the blog and, more importantly, get involved.

It's difficult to talk about the camp without touching on some of fractious actions of the police. Fortunately, nothing much happened and, after a frustrating period when we could all have been doing something more constructive, the police withdrew.

Keeping the lights on - without new coal

"[U]nless we want to risk our security of supply and face greater cost burdens, stations such as Kingsnorth must be part of the energy mix."

"Currently, we have to use a mix of energy sources to power our country - fossil fuel, renewable energy and nuclear power. Together they provide us with a reliable electricity supply. And although the use of low-carbon energy sources is growing, fossil fuel will continue to generate power, not just here but around the globe."

Senior government and Big Energy have been working hard to propagate the idea that, to keep the lights on, we need to build new coal plants.

So, is it true?