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Scrap the Climate Change Act to keep the lights on, says Owen Paterson

Britain will struggle to “keep the lights on” unless the Government changes its green energy policies, the former environment secretary will warn this week. Owen Paterson will say that the Government’s plan to slash carbon emissions and rely more heavily on wind farms and other renewable energy sources is fatally flawed. He will argue that the 2008 Climate Change Act, which ties Britain into stringent targets to reduce the use of fossil fuels, should be suspended until other countries agree to take similar measures. If they refuse, the legislation should be scrapped altogether, he will say.

Shale is lighting up a new era of American optimism

This winter Jim Ratcliffe, the British billionaire founder of Ineos, the chemicals group, is trying to spark a local shale gas revolution. He has offered to share 6% of future revenues with communities or landowners if they work with Ineos to develop the energy source — far more than anything offered in the UK before. “This will be a game changer,” he argues, explaining that he copied the idea of a 6% pledge from America, where similar handouts have helped start a dramatic expansion of shale gas extraction since 2010.

E.U. Approves Plan for New Nuclear Power Station in Britain

The European authorities on Wednesday approved construction of Britain’s first nuclear power station since the mid-1990s, in a ruling that could clear the way for other European countries to plan nuclear plants as part of their energy future. The decision, by the European Union’s competition regulator, removes one of the final obstacles for the plant, at Hinkley Point in southwest England, which would produce about 7 percent of Britain’s current power supply but would not start operating before 2023.

Oil and trouble

Give commodity markets credit: they are anything but boring. Between 2000 and 2011 broad indices of commodity prices tripled, easily outpacing global growth and stoking Malthusian hysteria. Jeremy Grantham, a wealthy financier, noted at the time that it was not so much “peak oil” that would undo humanity but “peak everything else”. Yet since then commodity prices have slumped by about a quarter, and roughly 11% since June alone. That is not, however, an unalloyed good.

Obama Presses Chinese on Global Warming

President Obama, emboldened by his use of executive powers to fight climate change at home, challenged China on Tuesday to make the same effort to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions and join a worldwide campaign to curb global warming. Declaring that the United States and China — the world’s two largest economies and largest polluters — bear a “special responsibility to lead,” Mr. Obama said, “That’s what big nations have to do.” The president’s remarks at the United Nations Climate Summit, delivered in a packed chamber of the General Assembly, were broadly aimed at marshaling more than 100 world leaders to confront climate change. But his words were directly focused on putting the onus on China, an essential partner of the United States if a global climate treaty is to be negotiated by 2015.

New Report Identifies Major Clean-Tech Market Opportunity

A new World Bank Group report quantifies significant opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries to generate profits and create jobs by providing solutions to local climate challenges. Much of the emphasis on climate change has been on urging countries to act to avoid environmental catastrophe. This new report, “Building Competitive Green Industries: the Climate and Clean Technology Opportunity for Developing Countries,” frames responding to climate change as an extraordinary economic opportunity, particularly in developing countries.