press releases

The French nuclear safety agency, ASN, has ordered construction to be suspended on the new nuclear reactor being built in France - the same model that would most likely be built in the UK. (1)

Flamanville's construction in northern France has run into the same kinds of problems plaguing the ongoing construction of the only other European Pressurised Reactor (EPR), Olkiluoto 3, in Finland.

Reacting to comments by Business Secretary John Hutton, calling for Britain to become a low carbon economy, Greenpeace climate campaigner Joss Garman said: 

Reacting to protests over fuel price increases, Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said: 

"There are ways around the fuel price increases that are good news for the climate and good news for drivers' pockets. Keeping your speed below 55 can save more money than the recent price hikes and cut CO2 as well. But in the long run the government needs to force car manufacturers to build more efficient vehicles. As it is Brown has failed to take a lead in Brussels where talks on vehicle efficiency are coming to head." 

Reacting to the release of new figures showing that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is at its highest level for at least 650,000 years, head of Greenpeace's climate change campaign Robin Oakley said:

Five of the world's principal tuna suppliers were forced to stop doing business at the seafood industry's largest trade fair by almost 100 environmental campaigners this morning.

The Greenpeace volunteers entered the European Seafood Exposition in Brussels - where many UK supermarkets buy from the 1,600 exhibitors - at 10am. Using fishing nets and chains, they shut down the tuna traders' stands and used the public address system to urge industry buyers to purchase only sustainable seafood.

The company behind some of the world's biggest brands, including Dove, is driving the destruction of the last remaining habitats of the orang-utan and massively speeding up climate change, according to environmental group Greenpeace.

Simultaneous "direct actions" are taking place across the UK and Europe, and a damning new report has been released highlighting Unilever's use of palm oil supplied by companies that are systematically destroying the rainforests of Indonesia.

The introduction of the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) tomorrow could seriously undermine the UK's claim to leadership on climate change and increase emissions from the transport sector, according to Greenpeace.

The group claims that new rules to oblige motorists to pump biofuels into their tanks will drive rainforest destruction and could actually accelerate global warming.

Reponding to news of a takeover at British Energy, Ben Ayliffe, head of Greenpeace's nuclear campaign, said: "This is a staggeringly expensive way of doing very little to tackle climate change, given that a replacement nuclear programme can only reduce our carbon emissions by four per cent sometime after 2020. It's inconceivable that these enormous costs aren't going to be passed on to customers in the form of higher energy bills.

Reacting to news that biofuel companies are profiting from a process known as "splash and dash" (1), Greenpeace senior forest campaigner Belinda Fletcher said:

"Shipping biofuels back and forth across the world for tax breaks is just one more example of the way this industry pretends to be green while actually contributing to climate change.