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Pressing challenges: What should sustainability professionals set as their New Year’s Resolution?
Businesses continue to grapple with the current economic downturn, the agreements both made and missed at COP28 are only just starting to take shape and there are brand new frameworks on the horizon for sustainability professionals to get to grips with. What does 202r hold for sustainability professionals? Here, edie outlines the resolutions that readers are setting for the New Year.
The key green policy gaps for the UK Government to close in 2024
As we embark on a fresh year, edie takes stock of the lags and overlooked prospects in UK green policy throughout 2023, pinpointing four major policy gaps that the Government needs to address in 2024.
Government unveils post-Brexit farming subsidy overhaul
Environment Secretary Steve Barclay recently unveiled a series of farming reforms aimed at bolstering British farmers and fortifying supply chains, aligning with the Government’s commitment to uphold a minimum of 60% food production in the UK.
At the Oxford Farming Conference, Barclay outlined the revamped offer for 2024, curated based on farmer feedback, with the objective of enticing more farmers to engage in the schemes and catalyse greater environmental initiatives.
Environment Secretary Steve Barclay said: “Farmers do the essential job of keeping Britain fed. That’s why I’ll back British farmers and help support farming businesses.
“We have listened to farmers’ feedback and set out the biggest upgrades to our farming schemes since leaving the EU, with more money, more choice and more trust to support domestic food production whilst also protecting the environment.”
‘The mission is clear’: Starmer reiterates £28bn green spending plan
Labour leader Keir Starmer reiterated his Party’s commitment to spurring £28bn of investment in green markets, stating that Labour would energise a “new Britain with foundations built to last”.
Starmer delivered a New Year speech to a selection of national journalists in Bristol on Thursday (4 January), stating that if Labour were to win a General Election later this year, his party would build a “Britain standing tall again, looking forward again, believing again, that tomorrow will be better for your children”.
The Labour leader’s speech covered “five national missions that will sweep away the era of Tory division”, one of which was clean energy and security.
“What the Tories have done to our public realm over the last 14 years, not just the cuts, also the denigration of the people who serve this country, the total lack of respect, honestly there are no words,” Starmer said.
UN foresees major climate risks to food systems and tourism in 2024
The United Nations (UN) has forecast a deceleration in global GDP growth for 2024, partly attributable to stunted recovery from recent extreme weather events and to imminent climate shocks.
The body’s flagship annual report on global economic prospects, published late last week, predicts 2.4% global GDP growth this calendar year, down from 2.7% in 2024.
Causes are multifaceted including slow pandemic recoveries in developing economies and live conflicts in regions including the Middle East and Russia-Ukraine. Recent climate-related damages and imminent climate-linked risks are also highlighted.
In his foreword to the report, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns that “divisions between countries and economies are preventing an effective response” to some of the world’s biggest interconnected crises, including climate change, environmental degradation, increasing poverty and unequal access to nutritious and affordable foods.
Rising energy and commodity prices, compounded with two summers of record-breaking extreme weather, forced up food prices across the world in 2022 and 2023, the report outlines. This, in turn, has impacted quality of life.
National Grid: Wind slowly but surely replacing gas in UK electricity mix
Almost one-third of the electricity generated in Britain last year came from wind farms, the National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) has confirmed.
The ESO revealed on Tuesday (9 January) that wind accounted for 29.4% of the UK’s electricity generation mix in 2023 – only a slightly smaller proportion than that accounted for by gas (32%).
For context, wind made up 26.8% of the generation mix in 2022 while gas accounted for 38.5%.
As well as the decline in gas-fired electricity generation, the ESO has tracked a continual decline for coal. Coal had a 39.6% share in the generation mix in 2013, falling to 1.5% in 2022 and 1% in 2023.
By the end of 2024, all of the UK’s remaining coal-fired power generation capacity will be required to come offline.
Report: UK’s failure to attract offshore wind investment in 2023 deepened gas reliance
The UK is unlikely to meet its 2030 offshore wind target and will likely turn to gas power plants and biomass rather than other renewables to maintain energy security, according to new research.
Cornwall Insights’ latest quarterly overview of power market trends in Britain states that, because the UK failed to attract any bids from offshore wind developers in its most recent Contracts for Difference (CfD) auction round, it risks missing its 2030 target to host 50GW of offshore wind capacity.
Funding totalling £227m was announced under the auction round in September 2023. No offshore windfarm bids were received, largely because developers found the CfD offering economically unviable as supply chain costs mounted.
Several developers in the UK, EU and US have paused or scrapped offshore wind projects this year due to rising supply chain costs, partly caused by soaring energy and commodity prices and continued disruption related to Covid-19.