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Green energy jobs, training needs and AI

Lots of UK oil and gas jobs are disappearing. Will enough green jobs emerged to replace them? It is a big local issue in Scotland in particular. The UK government’s view is that moving from oil and gas to green energy will cut emissions and make the economy, and energy prices, more stable. But not everyone agrees. For example, Reform UK plans to gut existing climate & green policies and expand gas and oil drilling. Though it’s been claimed that this would cause 500,000 job losses, rising to more than 1.4 million people put out of work by 2040, according to new research for Transition Economics. However, it not at all clear if the drive to clean energy as currently planned will be sufficient to avoid net job losses. So some people could face real problems . Certainly, there will be a massive need for retraining- not least to avoid skill gaps opening up in the short term, as Terry Cook and I argued in a recent paper .  There are some good plans. Last year, the government announc...
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Miliband's new plan to cut UK power prices

 ‘At the moment, when gas prices are high, we end up paying more for our electricity, even though the cost of producing it doesn’t change. And so myself and Ed Miliband are now working to come up with a practical way that we can delink those prices’. So said Chancellor  Rachel Reeves . And a few days later,  Energy Secretary Ed Miliband doubled down on net zero with a new plan to face up to fuel prices rises and energy uncertainty, saying that in ‘the era of clean energy, security must come of age’.  In his new plan , the older ‘legacy’ renewables with Renewable Obligation (RO) contracts will have to move to fixed price Contract for a Difference (CfD) arrangements, to escape paying the Energy Generation Levy (EGL), the already existing  ‘windfall tax’ on excess  power market profits, which will be increased from 45% to 55% at peak gas price times. The extra funds raised by this will be used to cut household power bills. About 30% of renewable projects are ...
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UK Renewables talked up - and down

The UK has been setting new renewable generation records, while also pushing its share of imported energy, particularly gas, to the lowest level since 2004.  The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) has used new government data to show that 46% of primary energy used to supply electricity to the UK was imported in 2025, down from 48% in 2024, and well down on the peak of 67% in 2013. ‘The expansion of renewables is more than making up for the ongoing decline in North Sea gas output which has happened even under decades of policy to maximise extraction.’                         However, not everyone is so sure that all is going well. Electricity is too expensive- and renewables aren’t helping. So says Justin Rowlatt in a recent BBC news report , under the heading ‘Why cheap power could matter more than clean power in the push to net zero.’  He says that, on the supply side ‘solar power has seen dramatic co...
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Climate fixes: public reactions to geo-engineering

 We are producing too much climate changing carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels. The obvious answer is to stop using them. But if it is too hard, then perhaps we can capture and store the carbon dioxide, or find other ways to offset the impacts of climate change. Various geo-engineering ideas are getting attention these days, so it is interesting to see how they are being received by the general public.   Engaging 323 lay-people across the world, a new technology foresight study explores imagined futures where climate interventions, such as solar radiation modification and large-scale carbon removal, are widely implemented in 2030. The participants generated 299 distinct ‘futures’, each characterized by an imagined newspaper headline. Some were positive, some negative, some neutral. For example, in terms of Solar Radiation Management, the study says ‘futures were on balance more positive for Marine Cloud Brightening, evenly split for space-based approaches, and more n...
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Green jobs and local power

 The UK is doing quite well with renewables, with over 65GW now installed and much more planned, helping it reduce carbon emissions . It should also mean that it is better able to cope with global fossil energy price rise shocks - it can provide a buffer.  ‘Let's get control of our own energy so that whatever is happening in the world, we control what's happening in this country’, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer says, adding ‘what gives us control is renewables, our own homegrown energy, which is then more secure & more independent, which is why I think that we should go further & faster in relation to renewables’. That’s good news, with more new jobs also being created as a result.  Employment  in ‘green’ jobs has expanded by nearly 28% over the last year, with  much of that being in renewable energy and related areas, and many more are expected.  However, there are issues. For example, Max Lacey-Barnacle, a researcher at Sussex University Centre f...
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Green Heat Tech: the UK debate continues

The UK needs to green its heat supplies - it can’t continue to use fossil gas. But there is a lot of debate over how. Electric heat pumps are the option favoured by many since they can use green power to upgrade ambient heat with very high efficiencies.  One unit of power in can produce up to 4 units of heat out. However, there are opponents, and not just from those like Reform UK with anti-green tech views. For example, although the Ecotricity-backed Green Britain Foundation accepts that, ‘well-designed and installed heat pumps can deliver substantial savings in CO2 emissions’ it says  ‘there are significant risks in terms of running costs’ and that ‘capital costs are much higher than gas boilers.’ Specifically, ‘to deliver the same amount of heat via a heat pump would cost 24% more than a gas boiler,’ while ‘the capital cost of installing an ASHP, including alterations to the distribution system, is more than 4 times the capital cost of replacing a gas boiler'. And it also ...
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The Geopolitics of energy heat up

The pace of global warming has nearly doubled since 2015, while global energy issues are becoming much more fraught, with wars and market chaos adding to the worsening climate problem.  But the UN says countries should not delay climate action in an era of geopolitical instability.  Instead they should recognise decarbonisation & adaptation as the foundation for security and crisis management.  However, while some are trying, the US notably apart, in this context, some recent policy shifts in Europe seem to be perverse. For example, as I noted in my last post, France has cut its renewable energy targets back. In addition, Germany  is to scrap parts of a contentious heating law mandating the use of renewables in favour of a draft law allowing homeowners to rely on fossil fuels.  The previous energy law in Germany, produced in 2023 when the Greens were in the governing coalition, required most new heating systems to use at least 65% renewable energy, with h...
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