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Today sees the publication of the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report. As a long-term and very engaged participant in the nuclear debate, I’ve absorbed each WNISR with careful attention – and huge admiration. The quality of the research and the level of detail is astonishing, and because…

Things go from bad to worse on the renewable energy front. 1.  Even those who are accustomed to George Osborne’s hostility to the renewables industry were astonished by his announcement in the Budget on Wednesday that renewable energy would no longer be exempt from the Climate Change Levy – this…

Kandeh Yumkella is the inspirational leader of the UN’s Sustainable Energy 4 All campaign. On Thursday last week, he gave the keynote speech to the 2015 Ashden Awards. SUSTAINABLE. ENERGY. FOR. ALL. This is perhaps the single most important challenge of all the different sustainable development…

It’s never a good thing to fall out with an organisation that one loves. But, at the moment, that’s how it is for me with Friends of the Earth. And it’s all about nuclear. The dispute is simply explained. On May 15th, Friends of the Earth released its ‘Priority List’ of policies for Amber Rudd, the…

Sorry if it’s beginning to look as if I’m engaged in something of a vendetta against Mr Ben van Beurden, the Chief Executive of Shell. But for all sorts of reasons he seems to have placed himself at the epicentre of the debate about what some have called ‘the Great Transition’: that inevitable,…

For those who dutifully followed the trail of my anti-nuclear invective yesterday, you may perhaps, even now, despite the weight and depth of the arguments against nuclear power, have come to the reluctant conclusion that we still need it. And the principal reason for people coming to that…