Why Hinkley is a very bad deal for Britain – BBC News

    Here at Hinkley Point alongside existing reactors is where George Osborne wants to build a new nuclear power station in Britain. It will be built by EDF, a French state owned electricity company, and will cost 24 and a half billion pounds, that’s more than Crossrail and the […]

Nuclear Cost – Letter to The Times, October 19 2015

                  The Times, letters, October 19 2015 To slash and burn renewable investment for the sake of costly support for new nuclear plants is unwise Sir, George Osborne assumes that energy demand will increase (“Nuclear deal with China is threat to UK […]

G7 fossil fuel pledge is a diplomatic coup for Germany’s ‘climate chancellor’ – The Guardian

  I was quoted extensively in an article in The Guardian by Karl Mathiesen on why the plan outlined by the G7 on Monday to phase out fossil fuels by the end of the century is, for some member countries, not quite as ambitious as it sounds.       Tom […]

WHOM THE GODS DESTROY

      Despite frequent headlines suggesting otherwise, EDF has not yet agreed to buy two nuclear reactors from its sister French state-owned company Areva. The British Government has yet to sign a contract to purchase the electricity the reactors will produce. Without that contract EDF will not make the […]

US and China emissions agreement – BBC World Service – 12 November 2014

                  Here is an interview I did recently for  the BBC World Service discussing why the emissions agreement between the US and China is so important.   “This is really important because the real problem with climate change is not so much technology […]

CHINA NIGHTMARE

  This piece first appeared in Business Green                   The prospect of the Chinese becoming owners, managers and even constructors of nuclear power stations in Britain has caused anxiety in some unexpected places. Both the right and the left, united in their […]

SPEAKING WITH A FORKED TONGUE

  This article first appeared in Business Green   . Last month, under pressure from activist investors, Exxon issued a report to their shareholders on climate change. To no-one’s surprise they found that “none of our hydrocarbon assets are now or will become ‘stranded’”. Some saw this as an important […]

After you Claude

                    Britons only generate 1.42% of the world’s carbon emissions. No-one else is doing much to reduce their emissions. We are doing a lot and should not do more until everyone else joins in. This is the facile, Treasury inspired, argument […]

‘Events, dear boy, events’ have put climate change back on the agenda

  This article piece first appeared in The Guardian on Wednesday 26 March 2014 The decline of climate change on leaders’ agendas has been reversed – not by new analysis, but two years of extreme weather                   British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, […]

Viewpoint: Can we risk another Fukushima?

  This article first appeared as a guest post for Greenpeace Energydesk By Tom Burke, Founding director of E3G 21ST NOV 2013 This article also appeared in The Ecologist   One of the more opportunistic responses to the meltdown at Fukushima was that of nuclear advocates claiming  that since there were […]