Ed Matthew

Why have progressive voters deserted Labour? I’ve worked as a climate campaigner for 20 years and one clue to this question may be that since Labour came to power I’ve detected no change from Treasury on climate action - they are as backward as the Tories - perhaps scared of Reform. This must change

Great thread from @drsimevans.carbonbrief.org ripping to pieces the shameless disinformation on the cost of net zero from oil and gas funded Tufton Street and covered without due scrutiny by the right wing media. It assumes funding and running a fossil fuel system is free - 100% bollocks

Kemi Badenoch: Tories to scrap petrol ban if they win next election The Conservative Party leader says the policy is "destructive" and "economic self-harm".

Drivers of EVs can save on average over £1000 a year on fuel costs. Badenoch is not on the side of drivers. She is on the side of the fossil fuel companies. A faster transition to EVs will also help to keep our car manufacturers competitive

Cuts to insulation scheme will leave homes cold over winter, experts say E3G thinktank warns retrofit sector could shed 10,000 skilled jobs as small firms struggle to survive

ECO was failing but needed reform, not axing. The impact will be a cut of £5 billion to insulate fuel poor homes and loss of 10,000 jobs. Reeves cut winter fuel payments then u-turned; she then cut disability benefits then u-turned. Now she is slashing funding for the fuel poor. A Labour Chancellor

IFS responds to £150 cut to energy bills pledged in Rachel Reeves’ Budget Some climate campaigners have criticised the move by Rachel Reeves to cut green levies

I’m quoted in this article criticising Chancellor for axing ECO, the U.K. insulation scheme. The most recent version failed due to terrible design by former government, but it needed reform, not scrapping. The decision is a £5 billion cut to insulate homes of fuel poor and will cost 10,000 jobs

Hundreds of thousands to lose heat pump subsidies in Reeves’s budget plan Exclusive: Supporters say grants largely going to middle-class households, but experts warn move will slow transition from gas boilers

The real story here is Reeves trying to gut the warm homes plan. If she gets her way at Budget and the ECO green levy is axed, then green homes funding for insulation and electrification will be cut from £21bn to £13bn over 5 years - a 40% cut which will lead to more gas dependency and higher bills

What a great project to make the use of veteran skills - helping to accelerate the clean tech revolution. Extra poignant given clean energy is super essential to energy security and indeed national security

Cutting home insulation funding will imperil UK’s climate goals, Reeves told Energy firms and charities urge chancellor to avoid short-term fix that could also harm low-income households

Guardian cover letter we helped coordinate to call on the Chancellor not to cut or axe the Energy Company Obligation at Budget. 67 civil society groups and major businesses say it would threaten fuel poverty and climate targets to remove UKs leading insulation programme. Thanks to all that signed

The Treasury is at serious risk of killing off the transition to electric vehicles by bringing in a new pay per mile tax at Budget. Given the market is only just going mainstream, this move could torpedo progress. It’s bad timing which won’t help the U.K. EV industry or climate action

Reeves considers cut to green levies in effort to reduce cost of energy bills Exclusive: Chancellor hopes to save up to £170 from average bill but industry insiders say move would be ‘disastrous’

The Treasury is actively contemplating axing the UKs main insulation programme (ECO) to cut energy bills. Given how critical insulation is to ending fuel poverty and reducing energy bills, it would be completely self defeating and destroy the insulation industry as well. Mobilise. Now.

Because you are not listening. You think that electricity would be cheaper if we were more dependent on gas. That is not true.

What this analysis shows is that electricity bills would have been higher if it wasn’t for offshore wind. If you care about bills then you should be happy to see this. It also cuts carbon and if the world doesn’t go carbon free then economies will tank. Do you want that for future generations?

Do you really think replacing wind with gas would have led to cheaper electricity bills? Did you notice what just happened to gas prices following Russian invasion of Ukraine? it has cost households thousands

First deaths from Hurricane Melissa confirmed in Jamaica and Haiti The hurricane - Jamaica's worst to date - was downgraded from a category five storm on Wednesday.

This catastrophic, record breaking hurricane was made 5 times more likely by climate change. The politicians and media figures arguing for slowing down the transition to carbon free energy are fuelling this destruction

Yes money saved compared to what bills would have been if we had used gas instead. This is a good news story - using sustainable British energy sources which generate cheaper power than using gas. But I doubt those being used by the fossil fuel industry to further their profits will want to admit it

Wind power has cut £104bn from UK energy costs since 2010, study finds Reduction comes from energy generated from windfarms and lower cost of gas owing to lower demand

This is powerful research showing that the UK has saved over £100 Billion on our energy bills due to the roll out of wind power. That is the saving after accounting for green subsidies. This shreds false claims by Reform that renewables drives up energy bills. They are lying. The reverse is true

Plug-in hybrids pollute almost as much as petrol cars, report finds Analysis of 800,000 European cars found real-world pollution from plug-in hybrids nearly five times greater than lab tests

Data from the real world shows that hybrid cars are little better than regular petrol and diesel cars when it comes to the fuel they consume, the CO2 they produce and the money they cost to run. The lesson here is that the industry (and consumers) should leap straight to full electric cars

Nigel Farage’s Reform Party Has Accepted £2.3 Million from Fossil Fuel Interests, Climate Deniers, and Polluters Since 2019 Election Reform UK has received more than £2.3 million from oil and gas interests, highly polluting industries, and climate science deniers since December 2019, amounting to 92 percent of the party’s donations...

Every day is a good day to point out that 92% of Reform's donations were found to come from figures and groups linked to the fossil fuel industry. @desmog.com

China ≠ just coal plants and solar exports. The deeper shift: electrifying everything it can. Strategic, because China relies on imported fossil fuels. Coal is still king in the power mix—for now. But the balance is changing year by year.

Pledge to axe UK Climate Change Act backfires The attempts to turn the British public against climate action does not only make no scientific or economic sense, it makes no political sense.

This blog is my take on the Tory Party vow this week to axe the Climate Change Act. This is not leadership. It is surrender to the commercial interests of fossil fuel barons at the cost of us all.

As Tories vow to scrap ‘failed targets’, how do their climate claims stack up? We fact check Kemi Badenoch and her party after she promised to repeal Climate Change Act if they win power

My take on the decision by Kemi Badenoch to end the fight against the climate crisis and torpedo the U.K. economy and a great critique by @fionaharvey.bsky.social of the falsehoods set out in the Tory press release. This action by Badenoch is utterly shameful.

Kemi Badenoch vows to repeal Climate Change Act Tory leader says she would replace it with ‘cheap energy’ strategy, ending decades-long consensus on climate

Kemi Badenoch has now aligned the Tory party on climate with Trump and the far right parties of Europe. Tragic. It shows that she is more interested in the profits of oil and gas companies than the security of the country. The Tory party can no longer be trusted on the environment or the economy

There’s a persistent myth that new solar farms don’t really help tackle climate change because panels are “made with coal” and “never pay back” their carbon debt.

This is simply false.

- UN: solar ~8x cleaner than gas, ~19x than coal per kWh
- panels repay CO2 in 4 months; save 57x over life

It doesn’t. Most of the potential savings come from helping households with heat pumps to access electricity when it is cheap. Making sure they are installed to a high standard of efficiency also provides big savings. Getting off gas will also save money. Some levies can be paid for my exchequer

And here is the graphic showing the potential for heat pumps to cost half as much to run as a gas boiler WITH policy reforms - full report is here : www.e3g.org/publications...

Heat pumps could halve heating bills with energy system reform, study finds Steps to make electricity cheaper, such as ending levies, could transform prospects for pumps, thinktank shows

www.theguardian.com/environment/... - our latest E3G report showing that with policy reform, running a heat pump could be half the price of running a gas boiler. The future is electric !

Ofgem just approved a record £24bn investment in gas & electric grids to 2031, making bills "£30 lower" than they would have been

Predictably, some usual-suspect media have mangled the reporting.

So here's a Really Simple guide to counterfactuals, with Bluey refs:

Labour warned to keep spending review in line with net zero or face legal action Exclusive: Friends of the Earth tells Keir Starmer any major green cuts by Rachel Reeves will be challenged

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

All you need to know is that it has now been easily weaponised by those trying to undermine climate action. This means at very least they got their narrative very badly wrong and it has backfired. Either that or they were deliberately trying to offer a gift horse to Farage - I hope not

Climate experts and politicians round on Tony Blair for ‘wrong message’ Former Labour PM accused of ‘handing talking points’ to Tories and Reform after saying net zero strategy faltering

The Tony Blair Institute should issue a public apology for putting out a climate ‘solutions’ report that has been so easily weaponised by those seeking to delay climate action. This was a gross misjudgement and it should have been properly vetted before publication - what a mess