The war reveals Britain’s exposure to volatile fossil fuel prices. More North Sea drilling will not shield households, building domestic green energy will
What should Britain do when war in the Middle East sends energy prices soaring? If the strait of Hormuz were blocked for the month of fighting that Donald Trump predicts, British households could face another brutal cost of living shock. Goldman Sachs warns of prices at the pump rising to 2022 levels. That would put more than 50p on each litre in the tank. Prolonged disruption to global gas supplies could see energy bills in the UK rise by £900 to £2,500 a year. Such uncertainty strengthens the case for going big on clean energy.
Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, has grasped this reality. By contrast, the Conservatives and Reform UK are doubling down on domestic fossil fuel extraction. The debate is framed around a simple claim of energy security: drill more at home. But the argument is rhetorical. Britain might export a bit more crude and have a smidgen more gas. But it would still need to import refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG). Households would remain exposed to global energy shocks. Clean electricity, by contrast, cuts gas demand and reduces exposure to volatile markets. The political pressures are jobs, tax revenues and the economies of Scotland and north-east England tied to a declining asset.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
03/09/2026 - 14:11
03/09/2026 - 09:27
Private equity group EQT to take 42% stake as supplier faces scrutiny over environmental record and CEO’s pay
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A leading European investor will pump fresh funding into Yorkshire Water including helping to cover a £600m loan, despite recent heavy sewage fines and a scandal over executive pay at the utility company.
EQT, a Swedish private equity group, said on Monday it would take a 42% stake in Kelda Holdings, the Jersey-registered parent company of Yorkshire Water, which has 5.7 million customers across Yorkshire and parts of the East Midlands and Lincolnshire.
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03/09/2026 - 06:00
Early spring sightings show colourful insect is a resident species for first time in decades, says conservation charity
The large tortoiseshell – an elusive and enigmatic butterfly that became extinct in Britain in the last century – is a UK resident species once again, with a flurry of early spring sightings.
Britain’s list of native butterflies has increased to 60 with the return of the insect after individuals emerged from hibernation in woodlands in Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, Cornwall and the Isle of Wight.
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03/09/2026 - 02:00
A Guardian investigation with DeSmog reveals thousands of tonnes of fish are illegally turned into fishmeal and oil off the coast of Guinea-Bissau
The only ice factory on Bubaque, an island in west Africa’s Guinea-Bissau, is out of service. Local fishers, such as Pedro Luis Pereira, are forced to source ice from factories on the mainland, about 70km away – a six-hour round trip by boat.
“The machines have been broken for months,” Pereira says, as he pulls in his nets on the shore of the island inside the protected Bijagós archipelago. “We’ve alerted the ministry of fisheries, but so far, no one has come to fix them.”
Foreign industrial vessels anchored near the port of Bissau. Photograph: Davide Mancini
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03/08/2026 - 22:26
Schools and highways close and Territorians living near major rivers leave amid possibly record-breaking rain
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Katherine’s mayor has warned locals to be wary of flood waters inundating the town after a crocodile was spotted on the local football oval, while residents are being warned to boil their water amid the record-breaking deluge.
As rain and storms continued to soak the Top End on Monday, the Bureau of Meteorology issued major flood warnings for thousands of Territorians near the Katherine, Daly and Georgina Rivers and Eyre Creek, with a flood watch covering nearly a dozen river catchments. The bureau also warned of severe thunderstorms and heavy rain in Darwin.
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03/08/2026 - 18:28
Victorian government says ‘it’s only fair’ Great Ocean Road tourists should pay to see famous limestone stacks
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Tourists will soon have to pay an entry fee to see the Twelve Apostles on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road, in a move the government says will help protect the site for generations to come.
The Victorian environment minister, Steve Dimopoulos, on Monday announced a fee for tourists to visit the $126m Twelve Apostles Visitor Experience Centre, which is due to open at the end of 2026.
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03/08/2026 - 12:25
Megawatt fast EV charging reflects a coordinated grid strategy the UK once used. Privatisation and fragmentation now make that infrastructure far harder to build
The future of electric cars arrived this week in China. The world’s biggest car seller, BYD, unveiled a new battery giving its latest electric models more than 600 miles of range. Remarkably, the Chinese motor-maker said 250 miles of range could be injected into its new batteries in just five minutes. If true, the last remaining advantages of petrol cars – long range and quick refuelling – are beginning to disappear.
But such technology requires megawatt charging points. A single charger can draw as much power as a small town in Britain. BYD’s system relies on chargers delivering around 1.5 megawatts of electricity – more than four times the fastest chargers in the UK. China is moving fast, planning thousands of megawatt charging stations within two years.
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03/08/2026 - 09:00
LeadCare II offers point-of-care testing but the equipment has had recalls globally due to the potential for inaccurately low readings
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Ella’s* 16-month-old daughter returned a blood lead level of 3.5 micrograms of lead per decilitre (3.5μg/dL) when she was tested last week.
That’s under the five micrograms the Australian guidelines consider the investigation threshold – the level at which a child’s blood test result should trigger a health response – but Ella is not reassured.
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03/08/2026 - 09:00
Once abundant in California, the white abalone had all but vanished. Now, thanks to an innovative breeding program, it’s staged a remarkable comeback
On a sunny January afternoon in Bodega Bay, some 70 miles north of San Francisco, the White Abalone Culture Lab is humming with activity.
It’s spawning day. Alyssa Frederick, the lab’s program director, invites me into an industrial room full of troughs and tubs of bubbling seawater. The abalone program is tucked away in the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory, a research facility devoted to studying ocean and coastal health. The goal is to bring the endangered sea snails, known for their iridescent shells and delicate meat, back from the brink.
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03/08/2026 - 08:00
Vermont and New York face high stakes to protect climate superfund laws as it faces attacks from Trump’s DoJ
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By rolling back a bedrock climate legal determination, the Trump administration has undercut its attacks on a groundbreaking state climate accountability law, green groups have argued in court.
Trump’s justice department has asked a judge to kill a first-of-its-kind 2024 Vermont “climate superfund” policy requiring major polluters to pay for damages caused by their past planet-heating pollution, partly on the grounds that that federal law, not state law, governs greenhouse gas emissions. But last month, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repealed the endangerment finding, the scientific determination giving federal officials the authority to control those very pollutants.
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