Insights

Insights listing

What is the real cost of low-carbon to typical household energy bills? – Media reaction

19 December 2011 Members of the Committee on Climate Change

By Emily Towers, Communications Manager, CCC Last week, we published our first comprehensive analysis of how household energy bills will be impacted by the costs of meeting carbon budgets. Our aim on entering this debate was to fulfil our legal duties in this area (we have a statutory duty to report on fuel poverty under […]

Reports spell double trouble for the climate

24 November 2011 Members of the Committee on Climate Change

By Sam Fankhauser (Member of the CCC & Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment) “There have been two sobering climate change statistics recently. First we learnt that despite a sluggish economy, global emissions of carbon dioxide grew by a whopping 6% between 2009 and 2010. This was followed by a report by the […]

“CCC test-drives the next generation of low carbon vehicles”

17 November 2011 Members of the Committee on Climate Change

By Assistant Economist, Jonathan Haynes CCC transport analysts had the opportunity to test-drive the latest low-carbon vehicles fast-approaching the UK market, at Ecovelocity, the low-carbon motor festival. Improving the fuel-efficiency of conventional vehicles and promoting the development of electric vehicles are key to achieving the deep cuts in transport emissions required to meet the Government’s […]

Bioenergy team visit energy crop fields

17 October 2011 Members of the Committee on Climate Change

By Senior Analyst, Kavita Srinivasan Members of the CCC Bioenergy team recently joined experts on bioenergy from the  National Farmers’ Union  to visit two miscanthus and short-rotation coppice (SRC) willow farms in Yorkshire. The farms supply woody biomass directly to Drax and other power stations for co-firing, as well as for local heat applications. Miscanthus, […]

CCC visit Drax power station

13 October 2011 Members of the Committee on Climate Change

By Russell Bishop, Economist at the CCC Members of the CCC bioenergy review team went to Yorkshire to visit Drax power station. Drax is Western Europe’s largest coal-fired power station and has a generating capacity of 4000 megawatts, producing 26 TWh of electricity in 2010 meeting approximately 7% of the UK’s electricity demand.  The plant […]

CCC visit to Tilbury power station

15 September 2011 Members of the Committee on Climate Change

By Indra Thillainathan, Senior Analyst With new European environmental legislation set to close many existing coal fired power stations by 2015, work is already underway by Tilbury power station to convert it into one of the world’s largest dedicated biomass generators . Ahead of its scheduled re-commissioning in November, a few members of the CCC […]

Green growth: paradigm shift or just spin?

1 September 2011 Members of the Committee on Climate Change

by Alex Bowen and Sam Fankhauser, Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. This blog post is a reprint from a post on the Climate and Development Knowledge Network There is much talk at the moment about green growth – environmentally sustainable, biodiverse, low-carbon and climate-resilient growth in human prosperity. Policy makers are […]

Confused about costs of nuclear v. renewables? Read on!

9 August 2011 Members of the Committee on Climate Change

There has been a debate going on in the blogosphere lately over the relative cost of nuclear and renewables, citing analysis we produced for Government in our Renewable Energy Review. Alice Barrs, a lead economist on the review, delves into some of the finer detail of our work, to explain what we actually said, and […]

Victory for the CCC football team

29 July 2011 Members of the Committee on Climate Change

On Friday 15th July a team of CCC footballers came home victorious in the annually held Defra Network’s Sports Day.

CCC trip to Uptown Oil and PwC’s green headquarters

25 July 2011 Members of the Committee on Climate Change

Seven of us working on the upcoming CCC Bioenergy Report took a trip to Southwark to have a look at the work of a business that produces biodiesel from used cooking oil.