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Helen Blenkharn, Climate Change Policy Officer I regularly get asked ‘do wind turbines save carbon emissions?’ A recent report by the Committee on Climate Change looks at the UK’s carbon footprint and the lifecycle emissions from different types of electricity supply and so answers...

We all know that we can’t afford to burn all of our fossil fuel reserves if we’re to stay within the ‘safe’ climate change of around 2°C average global temperature rise, but a new report last week has revealed just how big the mismatch is between economic and environmental...

John Lanchbery, Principal Climate Change Advisor We are not on course to save the world from climate change. Emissions are not heading downwards so as to ensure an average global temperature rise of less than two degrees, the target agreed by all nations. Instead they are surging upwards towards a...

Helen Blenkharn, RSPB Climate Change Policy Officer Last week we posted a blog on our concerns about proposals for a Severn Barrage that are being discussed by a Government committee . The project would involve a shore-to-shore barrage across the Severn Estuary, with potentially catastrophic consequences...

Tony Whitehead, RSPB South West Regional Office With the DECC Minister Greg Barker saying yesterday that it’s not at all realistic that a Severn Barrage Bill will come before parliament this term we think now is the ideal time for everyone to take stock and look anew at generating power from...

Helen Blenkharn, Climate Change Policy Officer ' Carbon Bomb' projects threaten explosion in global emissions Yesterday, this was a headline in BusinessGreen. The article was about a new Greenpeace report called ‘Point of No Return’ which suggests that the world’s 14 largest...

Much of the UK is hunkering down for a weekend of expected snow. My friend Andrew, along with farmers across the land, will be bracing himself for a hard slog of feeding animals – he sent me this today from Wiltshire: It is January, when snow probably should be expected here, and it’s...

Helen Blenkharn, Climate Change Policy Officer I hear so much about onshore wind these days, are fossil fuels even a big deal in the UK any more? Yes, they are! In fact, demand for fossil fuels in the UK could be on the verge of a resurgence! For example: So what are we actually extracting...

Helen Blenkharn Climate Change Policy Officer It’s that time of year again when our energy use soars through the roof as we warm our homes from the January weather - the extra couple of degrees on the central heating, the extra hour with the gas fire on in the evening, the higher setting on...

John Lanchbery, at the UNFCCC conference Two days to go at the global climate negotiations in Doha and the sun continues to shine outside, although not much light percolates through to the negotiations. Ministers have arrived now and with them have come the journalists; I am sitting next to John Vidal...

John Lanchbery, at the Doha UNFCCC conference Sunday, and I am just back from an early morning walk around the dhow wharf, one of last remnants of the old pearl fishing village of Doha. The rest of the city is brand, spanking new and stretches far out into the deserts of Qatar. Thanks to its huge...

Absolutely delighted that Eric Pickles isn’t prepared to allow further peat extraction at Chat Moss, in Cheshire – well done Minister! As this is the Climate Change blog, I’ll start by saying it’s great to see the local planners citing climate change and noting that further...

The tragic impacts of hurricane Sandy in the US and the Carribean are a reminder of the kind of extreme weather events that climate change will make more frequent and intense. Have a look at this blog from the US NGO the Natural Resource Defence Council for a useful explanation of this. With this...

Jim Densham, RSPB Scotland Would you call £1.7m a trickle of money? Probably not. Think what you might do with all that dosh. The Scottish Government has just announced this amount of new funding for peatland restoration from its Green Stimulus Package. Good news, and we said so . But £1...

John Lanchbery, Principal Climate Change Advisor The European Parliament voted in favour of countries taking responsibility for their emissions from agriculture and peatlands. ‘Shouldn’t they be doing that anyway?’ you may well ask, slightly surprised. The answer is, of course, ‘yes’...

Guest post by Sarah Alsbury, RSPB Environmental Systems Project Manager The mad thing about importing biomass to burn for energy is that we have plenty in the UK, which is often left to rot on the ground. We have this problem on many reserves, especially our wetlands. We need to cut grass, reeds,...

The proposal for a new high speed train line between London and Birmingham is one of Government’s new infrastructure projects that will supposedly help dig us out of recession and deliver a green economy. But will it really be green? There are two tests it will have to pass to make this claim...

Post by Helen Blenkharn, Climate Change Policy Officer ‘What if we train our staff and they leave?’ ‘Yes, but what if we don’t train our staff and they stay?’ I laughed at this phrase, part of a role play at NationalGrid’s first ever Sustainability Summit last...

Helpfully confirming the mess we're in over climate climate, the new AVOID report surely must help to redouble efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The headline messages are stark. An evens chance of limiting climate change to 1.5 degrees Celsius is no longer feasible - 1.6 is the very...

Matt Williams, Climate Change Policy Officer I was embarrassingly proud today when I was quoted for the first time as an RSPB climate change policy officer. The article was published on my birthday too, which is a nice treat. My statement is in an article related to biomass, which Government hopes...

John Lanchbery from the Bangkok UN climate meeting The UN climate talks in Bangkok are drawing to a close. After running straight through the weekend, typically for at least twelve hours each day, everyone is feeling a bit tired now. This is not helped by the fact that, as the guide books say, Bangkok...

Further thoughts on food and climate from Heather Ducharme, RSPB Senior Climate Change Policy Officer Our summer issue of Birds magazine featured an article on ‘shopping for sun bears’ – charming inhabitants of tropical forests in south-east Asia that are menaced by forest clearance...

Inspired by Matt's call to action a couple of days ago, a guest blog from Olivia Betts in the RSPB's Public Relations team I am partial to a bit of blogging me, so when Dr Olly Watts our Senior Climate Change Policy Officer was chatting about actually doing things instead of just worrying...

Guest post by Kelsie Pettit, Energy and Climate Policy Officer, RSPB Scotland The above words, spoken by a colleague from Birdlife International at the European launch of the Good Practice Wind project (GP Wind), are a reflection on the global community in which we live. Our insatiable media and...

Excellent article about our global greenhouse budget in Rolling Stone (a hark back to 1970s student days for me, never thought I’d be reading that in work time!), which outlines that the world’s energy companies are now sitting on fossil fuel reserves which would lead to five times the greenhouse...