Environment

Don’t bury good news

21 April 2011 | Michael Ware

One of the first signs we had that my Grandad Ted was going senile was when he started to bury his pension book in the back garden. Grandad had an irrational fear of swarthy foreign burglars so took to burying valuable things. Read more

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Come clean on growth, by Steve Lang

24 January 2011 | Steve Lang

Today’s publication of the Centre for Cities annual city index makes for interesting reading. The report, which ranks the economic performance of cities up and down the UK, find that while many are bouncing back quickly from recession, the recovery is likely to be unevenly spread across the country. Read more...

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Green for go? By James Close

16 December 2010 | James Close

As usual, our parliamentarians and civil servants have marked the final week before the Christmas recess with a frenetic bout of legislative activity. Monday’s Localism Bill, Tuesday’s draft Cabinet Manual, Wednesday’s unemployment figures and today’s Electricity Market Reform green paper have kept the Westminster Village at full stretch – party season or not. And that’s not even including the continuing repercussions surrounding the coalition’s higher education funding reforms. Read more...

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Green Bank blues, by Michael Ware

19 November 2010 | Michael Ware

Reading reports of the ongoing row between chancellor George Osborne and energy secretary Chris Huhne over the status of the government’s proposed Green Bank bought back anxious memories of my failed history A level; the answer I had carefully prepared in the preceding weeks bore little or no resemblance to the question in front of me. Read more...

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How green is my deal? By Luke Hildyard

9 November 2010 | Luke Hildyard

For a policy intended to unleash ‘a third industrial revolution’ creating up to 100,000 new jobs, the government’s flagship ‘Green Deal’ programme might appear slightly underwhelming. Read more...

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Green for growth, by Steve Lang

26 October 2010 | Steve Lang

While today’s growth figures were not as bad as expected by analysts, the fall from the previous quarter together with last week’s Spending Review will have focused minds in Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street. It was perhaps not surprising that David Cameron opted to focus on growth in his speech to the CBI yesterday. Read more...

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Light at the end of the Spending Review? by Reg Platt

13 September 2010 | Reg Platt

As the budget cuts kick in and the spectre of the October Spending Review looms it’s difficult to see the future as anything much other than bleak, not least for community and voluntary groups. However, there is a ray of light for these groups and it’s a light powered by solar panels and wind turbines. Read more...

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Light at the end of the tunnel, by John Maddocks

9 September 2010 | John Maddocks

Organisations are increasingly producing social responsibility or sustainability reports, mostly on a voluntary basis. These vary widely in terms of relevance and quality, largely because there is no global standard for measuring and reporting on environmental, social and governance performance. Read more...

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We have the power, by Michael Ware

6 September 2010 | Michael Ware

The recent change in the law allowing councils to sell power to the grid has had me thinking about how passive we are in our relationship to electricity. It comes out of the wall, I have never actually seen it, I am a bit vague as to how ‘it’ actually works (isn’t it electrons going in a big circle back to the power station ? ) and I think AC/DC was a technical term about current before it came to mean something more esoteric. But that’s the sum of my knowledge and I suspect that this relaxed attitude is shared by many in the public sector.
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Banking on a green future, by Steve Lang

29 June 2010 | Steve Lang

Today’s report from Bob Wigley’s Green Investment Bank Commission will no doubt ricochet between policy-makers at departments across Whitehall. Read more...

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