KPMG has refused to release the full findings of a controversial report which claimed that money spent on wind farms would be better used to encourage the building of nuclear or gas plants.

In November last year Reg Platt reported for Left Foot Forward on the preliminary findings of the report:

The Sunday Times and a Panorama edition reported on a yet to be seen report by KPMG (the launch of which has since been delayed and a press release has been pulled) that will apparently make the economic case for gas up to 2020.

The Guardian’s Damian Carrington quickly exposed the vast ‘wholesale prices’ gap in Panorama’s polemic on energy tariff rises and the cost of wind turbines.

Today, BusinessGreen has revealed that KPMG will never release the full study, due to concerns that it is “ripe for misinterpretation”.

Sorrelle Cooper, a spokeswoman for KPMG, told the site that:

“The assumptions and parameters used in the model – which examined the investment and lifetime costs of different energy generation sources – produced large swings in the financial outcomes.”

“To avoid any misinterpretation we have decided not to publish any findings, although we are discussing our analysis with interested clients and stakeholders in the energy industry.”

Jessica Shankleman, writing for BusinessGreen, adds that:

Cooper admitted there had been mishandling of the release of the report, maintaining that the draft press release had been leaked, although she refused to provide further details on how it had been made public.

However, Cooper stood by KMPG’s methodology, adding that the research team had since come to an agreement with RenewableUK over how the figures were derived.

She also maintained that KPMG had close ties with the green energy industry, was not “anti-wind” and had last week been involved in a major wind farm deal.

But a spokesman from RenewableUK said that while it had met with KPMG since the findings were published, it stood by its original concerns over the report’s methodology.

Regardless of the excuses given by KPMG, it’s hard to take this any other way than them failing to fully support their conclusions, and questions should now be asked of the Sunday Times and Panorama as to why they decided to base stories on an incomplete report in the first place.

The news is a welcome counter to the nimbyism of over one hundred Tory MPs today, who wrote to the prime minister in opposition to wind farms.

As Kevin Meagher argued earlier today on this site:

Wind farms are not to everyone’s visual tastes, but to talk about them ‘destroying the environment’ is so far wide of the mark as to be laughable. By far the most commercially viable form of renewable energy, which can easily be scaled up, wind is vital to Britain’s strategic energy interests.

As Europe’s windiest country, with a suitable onshore topography and hundreds of miles of viable coastline, we would be looking a gift horse in the mouth by not cultivating a free, abundant and truly renewable natural resource.

See also:

• Tabloid attacks on green movement mean we have to raise our game – Reg Platt, November 29th 2011

• Britain is the world leader in wind power – Chris Tarquini, January 21st 2011

• Energy minister: No dramatic increase in onshore wind power – Joss Garman, July 14th 2010

• Tory right turn on Huhne over energy policy – Roland Marcelin-Horne, June 16th 2010

• 100 reasons why “vote blue, go green” won’t work – Will Straw, December 18th 2009

Donna Hume is an energy campaigner for Friends of the Earth

Friday 13th gets people on edge at the best of times, but this month 30,000 solar sector employees had good reason to hold their breath: this was the day the government went to the Court of Appeal over its solar plans, which threaten to decimate the entire industry.

Friends of the Earth, alongside two solar companies, successfully took the government to court shortly before Christmas.

It wasn’t because we oppose reductions in payments - they should fall in line with the falling cost of installing solar panels - but because the proposed cuts took place eleven days before the end of the Government’s own consultation.

The move, described by MPs as “panicky”, threw the solar industry into chaos, severely denting investor confidence in all green energy projects.

You’d be excused for thinking that public enthusiasm for the scheme and the tens of thousands of jobs it created in a time of rising unemployment would be embraced by the self-proclaimed “greenest government ever”. Instead, Ministers have embarked on a slash-and-burn approach which couldn’t have inflicted more damage on a UK success story if it had tried.

The Treasury says there isn’t enough money to adequately fund the scheme, but unless it comes up with more money the solar sector could shrink by a massive 90 per cent. Unable to plan for the future, solar firms are already shedding staff, with up to 30,000 facing the chop. And the government’s legal appeal will simply prolong the uncertainty.

Ministers are also proposing rules requiring households to install insulation before receiving solar subsidies. We are in favour of better insulation, but the over-strict proposals will make it impossible for many to qualify for the scheme.

Furthermore, the government has pulled the rug from under this scheme just as thousands of lower-income families were set to benefit from sun-powered savings on their bills. Councils like Brighton and Hove and housing associations like Aster in Hampshire have shelved plans – with some having spent over a year raising the necessary funds.

A 2,000 panel scheme in the riot-hit Pembury Estate in Hackney has been pulled when it could have helped low-income families save up to £150 on their fuel bills every year. There are plenty more examples nationwide.

The coalition must now come up with an action plan to breathe new life into the feed-in tariff scheme, which was introduced by Labour, following a Friends of the Earth-led campaign. It must urgently get the solar industry back on a stable footing, and reassure businesses of its support for renewable power.

Instead of wasting time and money by appealing the High Court’s ruling, Ministers should now put proposals before Parliament – an approach they should have followed in the first place – for reducing solar payments by the end of February.

These proposals should take into account the Government’s consultation and new tariff rates should only apply to future installations – rather than backdating to projects after the December cut-off date. And to enable more people to benefit from generating their own clean power, tax revenues from the solar industry should be recycled to expand the scheme.

The big six energy companies have kept cash-strapped households hooked on expensive and dirty fossil fuels for far too long. It’s time to give power to the people to enable more of us to benefit from lower fuel bills. Expanding the subsidy scheme for clean energy would guarantee us a brighter future.

See also:

• Durban’s a letdown, Canada’s a dropout, and Russia’s leaking methane – Alex Hern, December 13th 2011

• Tabloid attacks on green movement mean we have to raise our game – Reg Platt, November 29th 2011

• Energy review will hit poor hardest – Alan Simpson, March 15th 2011

• The environmental and economic benefits of renewable energy – Guy Shrubsole, May 24th 2010

• Spain generates half electricity from renewables – Joss Garman, October 29th 2009

The EU is paying billions of pounds to foreign corporations to produce and then destroy greenhouse gases due to a loophole in the emissions trading scheme, according to a report from the think tank Civitas released this week.

The clean development mechanism (CDM) is a subset of the emissions trading scheme designed to encourage developing nations to clean up their industry. Emission credits, CERs, are generated by emission reducing projects outside of the EU and can be sold on, to encourage green investment.

Owing to the fact that some greenhouse gases are far more damaging than carbon dioxide, extra credits are given for reducing those emissions. One, HFC-23, a gas found in coolers, is 11,700 times more damaging, and so credits worth 11,700 tonnes of carbon are given for every tonne destroyed.

This means that a gas that costs only €0.17 per tonne of CO2-equivalent to destroy creates credits worth €12 for every tonne.

As Civitas reports:

Little wonder then that some firms, especially in China, now create refrigerant gases just to create the HFC-23 that they then destroy, to reap the rewards.

Indeed, of the largest ten generators of CERs, seven are HFC destruction facilities, showing just how lucrative a system it is.

Having cottoned on to this, the Chinese government has also been making a significant sum out of the scheme.

It charges a 65 per cent tax rate on HFC-23 CDM profits, which goes into a supposed ‘sustainable development fund’, the purpose of which is unclear. It has been estimated that, by 2012, the Chinese government will have generated $1.7 billion [£1.1 billion] from the tax.

This loophole was eventually banned in January last year, but the ban will only take effect from May 2013, “as a result of intense lobbying pressure from various organisations.”

The lesson to learn from this issue is that getting support for green taxes is only half the battle. If the drafting of the bills is left to the businesses and special interest groups, then this sort of problem will be endemic.

Green taxes must, first and foremost, reduce emissions. If they don’t, then they must be opposed, not supported, by environmentalists.

See also:

• Tabloid attacks on green movement mean we have to raise our game – Reg Platt, November 29th 2011

• On the Financial Transaction Tax, why is Osborne on the side of the one per cent? – Shamik Das, November 2nd 2011

• Gideonomics: A rogue chancellor fails to run the greenest government ever – Eleanor Besley, October 19th 2011

• The challenges facing new transport secretary Justine Greening – Richard Hebditch, October 17th 2011

• Exclusive: 98 of the FTSE 100 companies are addicted to tax havens – Asha Tharoor, October 11th 2011

As the years tick on, the pressure to tackle climate change increases. A deal which might have been acceptable in 1997 is not acceptable in 2011, and a deal which we need today will not be enough if it only comes in 2020.

The question that many have coming from the Durban COP17/CMP7 conference, the annual meeting of signatories to the Kyoto treaty and the UN framework convention on climate change, is whether it will just be the treaty we should have signed in 1997, or something that makes up for lost time.

The Independent’s leader summed up the issues well:

The dilemma facing the summit was how to unite the economic goals of fast-developing countries such as China and India to the environmental agenda of the Western countries that signed up to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. That treaty bound its signatories to significantly cut carbon emissions measured against a 1990 baseline, and it expires in 2012.

Now, at least, we do have the promise of a legal instrument because China and an even more recalcitrant India in the end agreed to a 2015 deadline to sign a global climate change treaty that will take force by 2020.

That timing, however, leaves an eight year gap when there are no worldwide agreements in place.

As Green MEP Jean Lambert wrote:

“Delaying comprehensive action until after 2020 is clearly insufficient, given the urgent measures scientists say are necessary to avoid climate change…

“The Kyoto Protocol remains in limbo and there is no guarantee of any further globally concerted climate action before 2020.

“What has become clear at this summit is that it is simply not enough to rely on the UN process; we must also find other ways to spur action to respond to the growing emergency of the climate challenge.

“The EU has talked a lot about the gap between pledged climate action and what is necessary to avoid climate change. It must back these words with action and move to at least the 30 per cent envisaged greenhouse gas reduction target for 2020.”

Underscoring the need for a strong, immediate replacement to Kyoto were the actions of the Canadian government, which today left the Kyoto treaty entirely over its inability to meet the targets set for it, and refusal to pay the fines incurred.

As the Guardian reported:

Despite criticism from environmentalists and the international community - China has called the move “irresponsible” through its state media - Canada is within its legal rights. The environment minister, Peter Kent, said:

“We are invoking our legal right to formally withdraw from Kyoto.”

Canada was meant to cut emissions by 6% by 2012 on 1990 levels, but instead they have risen by around a third.

Kent said yesterday:

“To meet the targets under Kyoto for 2012 would be the equivalent of… the transfer of $14bn (£8.7bn) from Canadian taxpayers to other countries - the equivalent of $1,600 from every Canadian family - with no impact on emissions or the environment.”

If Canada had remained in the protocol, it could have avoided this cost another way: by simply not meeting its targets. If that happened, the protocol’s compliance committee would begin a quasi-judicial procedure that would declare Canada “non-compliant”. Beyond such naming and shaming, the committee has few powers of sanction.

Finally, a story from Russia underlines the urgency of the matter:

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane - a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide - have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region…

Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf.

One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change.

How serious is this?

Could be nothing - could be big:

For a long time, we’ve been told that one of the potential positive feedback loops of climate change was the melting of things called methane hydrates (or methane clathrates).

These vast stores of methane on the ocean floor will, according the the clathrate gun hypothesis supported by people like former NASA climatologist James Hansen, melt as ocean temperatures rise. As they do, they will release vast quantities of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas.

There’s a reason it’s called runaway climate change.

Some scientists argue that it is exactly this process which kicked off the end permian mass extinction 251 million years ago. The mother of all mass extinctions (known as “the great dying”), this led to 96 per cent of all marine life being wiped out, and 70 per cent of terrestrial vertibrae.

See also:

• Exposed: The climate deniers’ sea levels lies – Shamik Das, December 1st 2011

• Anger at government’s failure to include shipping emissions in climate targets – Shamik Das, November 3rd 2011

• Huhne’s hot air may set back fight for climate consensus – Adam Corner, October 27th 2011

• Gideonomics: A rogue chancellor fails to run the greenest government ever – Eleanor Besley, October 19th 2011

• If Osborne gives up the lead on climate change, he can kiss goodbye to a recovery – Andrew Pendleton, October 10th 2011

The latest Spectator cover story claims the sea level rise in the Maldives is a “lie”. And their source for this claim? Known climate denier and pseudoscientist Nils-Axel Mörner, long-time critic of the IPCC and a dowsing believer.

Mörner’s ‘studies’ on sea levels have been trashed by real scientists, with the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory concluding in 2005:

“The Maldive Islands are often used as case studies within research into the impacts of potential future sea level change. Therefore, if such studies are to be realistic, it is important that the past and future variations of sea level in the islands are understood as well as possible.

“That objective led a fieldwork team to the Maldives, and resulted in a conclusion that sea level in the islands fell by approximately 30 cm during the past few decades. In the present paper, the suggestion of such a fall has been examined from meteorological and oceanographic perspectives and found to be implausible.

“A number of met-ocean data sets and regional climate indices have been examined, at least one of which would have been expected to reflect a large sea level fall, without any supporting evidence being found. In particular, a suggestion that an increase in evaporation could have caused the fall has been demonstrated to be incorrect.

“Without any real evidence for a hitherto-unrecognised process which could lead to a sea level change as significant as that proposed by the fieldwork team, one concludes that a rise in sea level of approximately half a metre during the 21st century, as suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report, remains the most reliable scenario to employ in future studies of the islands.”

When confronted over the magazine’s story this afternoon, Speccie editor Fraser Nelson went to ground, unable or unwilling to reply to George Monbiot’s grilling of him over the fact-checking of their hysterical claims.

Here is the exchange in full:

GM: “@frasernels Hi Fraser, writing abt your spectacular ballsup this week. Any eds on Spec got a science degree? george at monbiot dot info Thks”

FN: “@GeorgeMonbiot I think the author of the piece had a qualification or two in science. I could be wrong…”

GM: “@frasernels Not the question I asked. Which eds on the Spec have one?”

FN: “@GeorgeMonbiot let me read your mind… A publication is not qualified to run a science piece if the editor doesn’t have a science degree?”

GM: “@frasernels You’re doing almost as good a job at evading difficult questions as Ian Plimer. It’s a simple matter: yes or no?”

FN: “@GeorgeMonbiot my MA is in History & Politics. But the piece was checked by an outsider with a science PhD. Apols for not running it past u”

GM: “@frasernels Still not answering the question. Have ANY editors at the Spec – or any senior staff – got a science degree?”

GM: “@frasernels And question 2: who was this mysterious “outsider” and what was their PhD in?”

GM: “@frasernels Still with us? These are really very easy questions.”

FN: “@GeorgeMonbiot still waiting for a sensible question. But pls do your thought crime piece, ur always on great form when hunting heretics!”

GM: “@frasernels Blimey, how hard is this? Qu 1: Do any editors or senior staff on the Spec have a science degree?”

GM: “@frasernels Qu 2: Who checked Morner’s article and what was their PhD in? These questions sensible enough for you?”

GM: “@frasernels Still waiting Fraser. Two simple questions, so far met with evasion and bluster.”

GM: “@frasernels Come on Fraser, this really isn’t difficult, and a lot of people are now waiting on your answers.”

GM: “While we’re all waiting for a response from @frasernels, here’s my latest blog post: http://bit.ly/rAA7DH How Osborne’s trashing environment”

GM: “OK, @frasernels, this is your last chance before I conclude that you can dish it out but you can’t take it. 2 simple Qs. 2 simple As please.”

Though Nelson remains in hiding, someone who claims to have checked Mörner’s article, Tufty Sylvestris, emerged online, saying “it looks ok to me” – but rather let the cat out of the bag by conceding that “[The] Speccy is not a peer-reviewed journal”. You don’t say!

What, then, gives the weird righty rag the authority to pontificate on all things science?!

Fraser, it’s over to you…

See also:

• Fraser Nelson massages new figures to rehash old, discredited argument – Will Straw, August 17th 2011

• Fraser Nelson is wrong on the 50p tax rate – Duncan Weldon, February 24th 2011

• One in the eye for Nelson – Shamik Das, August 2nd 2010

• World on course for 3.5-degree rise – Guy Shrubsole, February 1st 2010

• Fraser Nelson is wrong on Britain’s AAA rating – Duncan Weldon, November 11th 2009

Reg Platt is a Research Fellow in Climate Change and Energy for the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)

Negative media focus on climate change policy has become commonplace. While in one sense this puts climate policy in its most vulnerable place for many years, I believe it will emerge stronger, more cost effective and better placed to lead the economy back to prosperity.

Barely a week goes by without a new headline splash on the cost of renewables. Recently, the Sunday Times and a Panorama edition reported on a yet to be seen report by KPMG (the launch of which has since been delayed and a press release has been pulled) that will apparently make the economic case for gas up to 2020.

The Guardian’s Damian Carrington quickly exposed the vast ‘wholesale prices’ gap in Panorama’s polemic on energy tariff rises and the cost of wind turbines.

The increasing profile of the Global Warming Policy Foundation is also a feature of recent times. For example, this Conservative Home article, entitled “In praise of the Global Warming Policy Foundation”, gave a highly positive account of their work.

The GWPF was set up by Lord Lawson in the run up to the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit. They describe themselves as:

“open minded on the contested science of global warming”

and

“deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the other policies being advocated”.

A brilliant expose by Bob Ward detailed how the GWPF is “spreading errors”.

It highlights how Lord Lawson has regularly quoted erroneous facts on the potential impacts of climate change, the underlying science of climate change and on the costs of climate change policies.

At the behest of the Press Complaints Commission, the Daily Mail has issued two corrections after it published errors on the cost of green policies, apparently sourced from the GWPF.

Earlier this week Chris Huhne, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, has himself been moved to address instances where the GWPF has, as he puts it, been “misinformed” and made “conclusions (that) are poorly supported by the underlying science evidence”.

With all of this negative media attention one might be forgiven for thinking action on climate change is in its most vulnerable state since going mainstream but in fact the opposite is true: in the UK scepticism on climate change science was still commonplace until only recently but scientific rationality has prevailed and a voting majority now believe man-made climate change exists.

This is why it is the cost and combination of policies to reduce emissions that are currently the main targets for detractors, and not the reason why they need reducing.

Even a second release of emails from climate scientists at UEA, clearly timed to impact the upcoming international negotiations in Durban, has achieved somewhat underwhelming coverage.

There is also some comfort to be taken from a recent study from Reuters’ Institute for the Study of Journalism into media reporting of climate change that concludes scepticism on climate science is largely an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon.

It is instructive to look at some seemingly contradictory coverage from the Daily Express, attacking green spending on the one hand while attacking cuts to renewable subsidies on the other; and the Daily Mail with features on ‘green taxes’ and community scale solar installations.

There appears to be friction between an editorial line that is against paying for green policies and a readership that is interested in the benefits that can come from green policies, specifically a policy to increase take up of solar PV technology.

The attention on costs, however, is not unfounded: climate change policy is suffering the consequences of a complacent approach that has led energy bill payers to bear too many costs without their knowledge or support. In this age of austerity it is right that green spending is rigorously reviewed in the same way as all other public spending. Climate change policy must embrace this period of creative destruction and evolve.

As Matthew Lockwood explains, fulfilling our obligations according to the EU target of generating 15 per cent of the UK’s energy from renewable sources by 2020 is not enough of a reason to subsidise expensive renewable technologies; advocates need a robust explanation for why the target should exist at all when other decarbonisation routes might be cheaper.

He argues for a focus on technology policy. In a similar vein I believe we need to move away from framing climate change spending through the lens of ‘cost minimisation’ and instead focus on ‘growth maximisation’. If policy options can be evaluated according to the return on investments they generate, important inroads would be made to overcoming the main block to faster action, the Treasury.

While the increase in critical attention on climate change policy is a challenge it is also an opportunity. Progressives and greens need to build a more robust formulation of climate change policy that takes account of the bottom line and will drive the UK’s economic recovery.

See also:

• Gideonomics: A rogue chancellor fails to run the greenest government ever – Eleanor Besley, October 19th 2011

• Cameron ditches “Vote blue go green” and tells BP: ‘Drill, baby, drill!’ – Joss Garman, October 13th 2011

• Is a ‘green populism’ possible, and can Labour help foster it? – Guy Shrubsole, September 26th 2011

• Government inaction on green economy is holding us back – Luciana Berger MP, September 3rd 2011

• Tory Right’s “deregulation zealots” threatening UK’s green growth – Joss Garman, July 27th 2011

Richard Dyer is a transport campaigner at Friends of the Earth

Another people’s parliamentary debate – and another headache for the government, this time on fuel prices. It’s a perennial problem. You only have to think back to the fuel protests in 2000 to see this issue isn’t going to go away with a penny off duty here, or a scrapping of the fuel escalator there.

Successive governments have failed to wean the UK off our addiction to oil. And with petrol prices spiralling, motorists are now paying the price.

Put simply, a radical new approach to transport is needed. We need cars that use less fuel and we need action to make other options – like walking and cycling for short journeys, and public transport for longer ones – more appealing.

With nearly six in ten car journeys ending before the five mile mark, a lot of this fuel is going up in smoke on travel which could easily be done by bike or bus. Yet we need Government action to make this more attractive. Taking to the saddle in winter, on main roads rather than dedicated cycle lanes, is often treated as being just as intrepid as venturing up the Amazon.

Making other transport options a smarter choice than cars will cut emissions too. Transport accounts for a quarter of UK emissions, with 90 per cent of this coming from road traffic. It will be considerably harder to meet our legally-binding target of cutting emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 if we don’t tackle these emissions now.

The Government urgently needs to steer us in to the fast lane to cleaner, greener transport – reducing carbon emissions, our dependency on foreign oil and enabling people to travel quickly and easily by public transport rather than gridlocked roads.

We’ll still need to use cars – so smarter, more efficient vehicles which use less fuel are a must.

We support EU plans currently being formulated to tighten emissions standards for cars. The car industry has frequently stalled on producing more efficient vehicles and the government must jump-start them into tough action.

At the same time, we need motoring around in gas-guzzlers to be made much more expensive.

Prices at the pumps are a squeeze on us all, and will continue to be so until the Government finally gets a grip on a transport system running on empty.

See also:

• Boris fiddles as London prepares for transport chaos – Alex Hern, October 19th 2011

• The challenges facing new transport secretary Justine Greening – Richard Hebditch, October 17th 2011

• Pickles and co are barking up the road to nowhere – Sian Berry, October 1st 2011

• The transport secretary’s oil addiction – Eleanor Besley, March 8th 2011

• Green challenges on transport policy – Rupert Read, November 15th 2010

Friends of the Earth today described the UK government’s omission of shipping emissions in its climate targets as “like an alcoholic giving up all booze except whisky”.

FoE were responding to the Committee on Climate Change’s Review of UK Shipping Emissions, published this morning, which warns the UK’s share of international shipping could account for up to 11 per cent of British emissions by 2050.

The CCC, like FoE, says shipping emissions should be included in the UK’s 2050 climate targets.

It sets out options for the inclusion of shipping in UK carbon budgets – a cap on the total quantity of greenhouse gas emissions that can be emitted over a five year period.

Under the Climate Change Act the UK has to cut its emissions by 80% (of 1990 levels) by 2050 – yet this target doesn’t include the UK’s share of emissions from international shipping or aviation.

Friends of the Earth’s transport campaigner Richard Dyer said:

“Leaving out the UK’s share of international shipping from our climate targets would be like an alcoholic giving up all booze except whisky. Ignoring the growing climate impact of shipping would be a titanic mistake which could sink our ability to develop a safe and prosperous future.

“The international community must also take urgent action to ensure the shipping industry plays its part in a low-carbon transport system.”

In 2007, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) estimated carbon dioxide emissions from shipping – then estimated at at 4-5% of the global total – could rise by up to 72% by 2020 if no action gets taken.

At the time, the Guardian reported:

Aviation carbon dioxide emissions, estimated to be about 2% of the global total, have been at the forefront of the climate change debate because of the sharp increase in cheap flights, whereas shipping emissions have risen nearly as fast in the past 20 years but have been ignored by governments and environmental groups.

Shipping is responsible for transporting 90% of world trade which has doubled in 25 years…

Britain downplays the problem, saying that ships in UK waters emit less than two million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. But no record is kept of the fuel used and most ships take on fuel outside Britain. Although the industry maintains that ships are more efficient at transferring freight than air, it admits improvements can be made.

More recently, in 2009, a study found one giant container ship could emit “the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50m cars”, concluding the health risks of shipping pollution had been “underestimated”.

The Guardian reported the findings:

Britain and other European governments have been accused of underestimating the health risks from shipping pollution following research which shows that one giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50m cars.

Confidential data from maritime industry insiders based on engine size and the quality of fuel typically used by ships and cars shows that just 15 of the world’s biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world’s 760m cars. Low-grade ship bunker fuel (or fuel oil) has up to 2,000 times the sulphur content of diesel fuel used in US and European automobiles.

Finally, some stats to ram home the scale of shipping pollution, which Friends of the Earth and the Committee on Climate Change both say should be included in the government’s emissions targets:

• There are 90,000 ocean-going cargo ships;

• Shipping is responsible for 18-30% of all the world’s nitrogen oxide (NOx) pollution and 9% of the global sulphur oxide (SOx) pollution;

• One large ship can generate about 5,000 tonnes of sulphur oxide (SOx) pollution in a year;

• Seventy per cent of all ship emissions are within 400km of land;

• Eighty five per cent of all ship pollution is in the northern hemisphere.

See also:

• If Osborne gives up the lead on climate change, he can kiss goodbye to a recovery – Andrew Pendleton, October 10th 2011

• Government continues not being greenest ever – Alex Hern, October 3rd 2011

• Labour must speak out against discriminatory pay for foreign seafarers – Ruwan Subasinghe, December 5th 2010

• Copenhagen – What about ships and planes? – Joss Garman, November 10th 2009

• World leaders still a long way off 2020 emissions targets – Joss Garman, September 9th 2009

Adam Corner is a research associate in the Understanding Risk research group at Cardiff University

In a speech to the annual Renewable UK conference in Manchester this week, the climate and energy secretary Chris Huhne launched a spirited defence of the renewable energy industry and the government’s commitment to supporting its growth.

In what has been widely interpreted as a direct response to the decidedly unsupportive rhetoric of George Osborne’s speech at the Conservative party conference, Huhne hit out at the “climate sceptics and armchair engineers” who sought to derail progress towards a low-carbon economy based on renewable technologies.

Huhne even went as far as labelling opponents of investment in renewable technologies ‘green economy deniers’ in a press release accompanying the speech.

For the vast majority of the public who consistently report highly favourable attitudes towards renewable technologies such as wind and solar energy, Huhne’s passionate speech is likely to have resonated.

But although Huhne’s support for renewables will be widely welcomed, he is playing a dangerous game by labelling those who oppose government investment in renewable technologies as ‘deniers’.

Although some see the word ‘denier’ as an unacceptably loaded term to use in climate change debates, its application to those who refuse to accept the scientific evidence of human impact on the climate is justified. On the basic question of whether man-made emissions of carbon dioxide are causing temperatures to rise, the science really is settled.

But the use of this term to describe people opposed to subsidies for renewable technologies is much more problematic - the politics of climate change are (and in some sense will always be) up for grabs. Of course, those who deny the science of climate change are also likely to oppose taking action to mitigate it. But it is perfectly possible to be opposed to a particular climate policy without disputing that something needs to be done.

If Huhne can’t make the argument for renewable technologies without labelling those who oppose their use as ‘deniers’, then it opens the door for anyone to use (and abuse) this approach. The obvious example is nuclear power: to its advocates, it is a tried-and-tested method of generating low-carbon energy. Proponents of nuclear power could use the term ‘nuclear deniers’ to denigrate their opponents, but they would be no more justified than Huhne.

There is a strong argument that the reason climate change has become such a politically divisive issue in the US is that ‘action’ on climate change has become synonymous with the policies and ideas of Al Gore, who was responsible for bringing the issue to the forefront of American politics over the last two decades.

For those who oppose Al Gore, opposing his policies comes naturally. The problem arises when the scientific case for climate change comes to be seen as indistinguishable from Al Gore’s policies to mitigate it.

It might be a bitter pill to swallow, but it is – perversely – in everyone’s interests for ‘alternative’ climate change policies to be developed and debated.

When the conversation about climate change pits progressive-policy against conservative-policy (rather than progressive-policy against science denial), the battle for moving forward on climate change has already started to be won. Everyone is talking about what to do about climate change, not whether it is real.

If government investment in renewable technologies is the progressive policy option of choice, then opponents to it should be taken on using the extremely strong evidence for renewables, not dismissed as deniers.

Perhaps one reason that the genuine ‘denial’ and obfuscation of groups like the Global Warming Policy Foundation has been able to capture so much of right-leaning thinking on climate change is that those on the left have been too quick to label policy-sceptics as science deniers.

Of course, some science deniers use ‘policy sceptic’ as a convenient smokescreen – their preferred policy alternative is ‘do nothing’.

But a recent paper by Wouter Poortinga and his colleagues at Cardiff University shows that when people express scepticism about climate change in opinion polls, they often mean very different things. Poortinga and his colleagues found that although uncertainty and scepticism about the potential impacts of climate change was fairly common, both trend (i.e., ‘is it getting warmer?’) and attribution (i.e. ‘are humans causing it?’) scepticism were far less prevalent.

Most people are highly favourable towards renewable technologies, and the arguments in their favour are persuasive. But it is critical that climate policy stays distinct from climate science. Otherwise, opposition to the former becomes denial of the latter – exactly the problem we need to avoid in the first place.

See also:

• Gideonomics: A rogue chancellor fails to run the greenest government ever – Eleanor Besley, October 19th 2011

• If Osborne gives up the lead on climate change, he can kiss goodbye to a recovery – Andrew Pendleton, October 10th 2011

• Exposed: Boris Johnson’s efforts to evade air pollution rules – Darren Johnson AM, October 4th 2011

• Government continues not being greenest ever – Alex Hern, October 3rd 2011

• Hammond hammers another nail in the coffin of the “greenest government ever” – Alex Hern, September 30th 2011

• “Greenest government ever” ordered to face High Court on air pollution – Shamik Das, September 16th 2011

• ‘Greenest government ever’ turning out to be less radical than CBI on mandatory carbon reporting – Willie Bain MP, August 8th 2011

Andrew Pendleton is the associate director (climate change, energy and transport) at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)

Cats notwithstanding, by far the most short-sighted contribution to this entire conference season was George Osborne’s statement that we no longer aspire to be a leader on climate change. It is, as Tim Vine says about crime in multi-storey car parks, wrong on so many levels.

In case we’ve forgotten, ground zero is the climate itself.

If ever there was an issue that required the kind of leadership David Cameron called for in his subsequent speech, it’s climate change, because now that the furore created by Lord Stern in 2006, the IPCC in 2007 and the Copenhagen summit in 2009 has died away, we need leaders who are prepared to rise above the braying tribal minority in political parties and stand the ground we’ve made up.

The next IPCC report is currently doing the rounds in draft form and it makes grim reading, with observed sea level rise and polar ice loss running at or ahead of predictions made by the climate models. We’re in very deep shit and we need leaders that are prepared to help us get out of it by leading rather than following.

Level one is the way people see this issue. While interest in climate change has undeniably waned since around 2007, people are no less concerned with polls suggesting that more than three-quarters of the UK public remaining convinced that humans are either partly or mostly responsible for climate change. The problem is that they are more concerned about the economy.

In recent IPPR consumer focus groups examining the key issue of the rising costs of energy and the affordability of household heating – which is also a critical poverty and health issue – people in a variety of different homes and locations told us that they thought it was important to spend some money on new forms of energy, but that they would like to know what they are paying and on what it is spent.

This isn’t only a communications issue. It does mean that policies such as the recent carbon floor price need rethinking as it will be tough to explain to households who foot the bill that it won’t reduce any carbon, probably will disadvantage UK businesses and most likely won’t make any significant difference to the levels of clean energy investment in the UK.

But this is a particularly keen issue for Mr Osborne because while the concept of having a more certain price for carbon is a good one, the clunkingly crap nature of the design of the UK’s scheme is of the Treasury’s making. It is a stealth tax.

Moving up to level two, at a time when jobs and growth are central to pretty much every speech made by any politician anywhere, not leading would seem to suggest not capitalising on the very significant opportunities that lie in low-carbon innovation.

Of course this will not appeal to the rabid right in the Chancellor’s party, but to anyone else who thinks that innovating is the key to achieving growth, generating jobs and increasing UK prosperity not leading in the development of lithium-ion battery technology, not leading in offshore wind power engineering and not leading the home energy efficiency revolution may seem madder than an asylum seeker’s cat. If we do not lead, others will. For instance, the US and Germany will be only too happy to patent the next generation of battery technology if we don’t.

Mr Osborne and his spin doctors might well say none of the above requires the kind of climate targets we currently have. The trouble is that the sunny uplands of levels three, four and five will only be reached if we set all of our activity on low carbon into a framework.

Manufacturers such as Nissan and Toyota have chosen the UK as a manufacturing base for hybrid and electric vehicles for two reasons. One is because the government paid incentives to encourage them to come here rather than France or Spain, the other is because they know there will be a market to sell to precisely because we have clear, distinct and long-term targets. The Chancellor and his advisers should go to the people of Sunderland or Burnaston why we don’t want to lead the world on this agenda any more.

By leading in the creation of a low-carbon economy, the UK stands to benefit hugely. We may have got the focus wrong in some areas - certainly too much policy cost has been piled up on the shoulders of energy bill-payers - and in many respects (such as actually cutting emissions) we may not be leaders anyway. But the overall goals are right and the aspiring heart of our approach is absolutely critical.

If George Osborne really thinks climate change doesn’t matter, that voters don’t care and that there isn’t business to be made in new technology then he should say so; otherwise, can we just assume his speech was part of the silly politics of the conference season and get on with leading and proving that we can lead.

See also:

• Government continues not being greenest ever – Alex Hern, October 3rd 2011

• Osborne dreaming of a race to the bottom – Alex Hern, October 3rd 2011

• “Greenest government ever” ordered to face High Court on air pollution – Shamik Das, September 16th 2011

• Will Osborne sell out “greenest government ever” in Budget? – Dominic Browne, March 21st 2011

• After Copenhagen, we need to change the climate argument – Andrew Pendleton, December 22nd 2009