🌱 The Grumpy Optimists #85
The UK's response to climate change is woefully inadequate but we're cutting taxing on flights 🥱
Happy Monday 👋
Welcome back to another episode of The Grumpy Optimists. If you’re in the northern hemisphere, my word how good is it having so many hours of daylight? If you’re in the southern hemisphere, you’ve had your summer, you’re fine.
This week there’s good and bad news and a relatively short episode as I tried to spend as much time as I could in the sunshine over the weekend. To start with, the UK government’s performance is shockingly poor, this time in their climate plans, supermarkets look to tackle scope 3 emissions and water companies may start offering discounts for people who don’t pave over their gardens to prevent flooding.
Let’s dig into it. Oh, and if you haven’t subscribed yet, why not?
👀 Articles to read
🇬🇧 Is the UK’s climate ambition slipping? ‘Half-baked, half-hearted’. That’s the verdict as the UK unveiled its latest climate plan that means the UK is unlikely to meet its 2030 climate target, something its own government even admits. The problem with the latest climate update was a lack of new funding with campaigners frustrated that there is no increase in funding for home insulation and reduction in energy consumption. Heating in homes accounts for 14% of the UK’s emissions and as someone who lives in an e-rated home for energy efficiency, it also costs the UK a lot.
This is seen as a business-as-usual approach to climate action when what we really need is accelerated action. Friends of the Earth and Client Earth are willing to sue the UK government again after successfully challenging their woeful plan to reduce emissions in 2022.
If the post below doesn't sum up the UK’s lack of policy coherence I don’t know what does.
🔧 Germany's solar school trains the next generation of green workers. Germany's Renewable Energy Academy (REA) trains students in all things renewable energy. The academy aims to provide the skills and knowledge needed to work in the renewable energy sector, creating high-quality green job opportunities for everyone from pizza cooks to delivery drivers. Climate action can go hand in hand with highly skilled job creation.
🛒 Supermarkets come together to tackle Scope 3 emissions. Eight of the UK’s biggest supermarkets, representing an 80% share of the UK grocery market have come together with WRAP and WFF to measure and reduce their scope 3 emissions. The collaboration is seen as an important step towards achieving the UK's net-zero emissions target and reducing the environmental impact of the retail industry. Scope 3 emissions are notoriously hard to measure and reduce, yet most of these supermarkets will share the same suppliers, making decarbonisation easier and more streamlined.
🌾 Tesco to trial low-carbon fertilisers to reduce emissions. Fertiliser is not only responsible for producing a large proportion of the agriculture industry’s emissions, but it’s also volatile to price increases. Tesco is looking to tackle this by working with growers to trial new low-carbon fertilisers. Having worked extensively with the brewing industry at Zevero, the challenge with trialling new fertilisers is that it may affect the yield of crops, rising prices and creating food insecurity. It’s a tough balance between decarbonising and food production.
🚰 Water discount for people who don’t pave over gardens. In an effort to reduce water usage, some companies are trialling new methods to promote household conservation, including discounts for people who do not pave over their front gardens or install water butts. Our obsession with greying gardens reduces the amount of water the ground can absorb and leads to a higher risk of flooding.
🇦🇺 Australia passes its most significant climate law in a decade. After years of being climate laggards, the Australian parliament has passed new climate legislation aimed at reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. The legislation sets a net zero target for 2050 and importantly, states that emissions must be reduced and not just offset. As the world’s third largest exporter of fossil fuels, this is a significant and crucial move.
🧪 Liquid trees take to social media. A picture of a photo-bioreactor in Belgrade, Serbia has been doing the rounds on social media this week and I think it’s pretty cool. The fish tank on a bus shelter-looking reactor also known as LIQUID 3 is a 600L tank that uses microalgae to absorb CO2 and produce oxygen, replacing two 10-year-old trees and improving air quality in the process. Many have said, why not just plant trees, and yes, trees are great, but this system is specifically designed to go in areas where trees can’t. This is not a silver bullet, but we need every possible solution to help reduce our impact, perhaps we could start by taking cars out of our cities.
This week's episode was written after reading some of your fantastic comments about looking forward to the blog on a Monday (it’s genuinely wild that thousands of people read this every week) and a really great song called Caligula by Delachute, there’s an interesting meaning behind the song too.
The Grumpy Optimists 💚