ProfCatherineMitchell

Energy policy and politics. Personal views only. Professor Emerita. Now also on @catherinemitchell.bsky.social

[ProfCatherineMitchell @ProfCMitchell]

This young man is doing a great journalist job …..

[Caolan @CaolanReports]

Every sign at this refinery in Ireland is in russian. The official website is a .RU domain.

There’s no reason to hide it because local politicians are openly doing it for them.

[Mark Z. Jacobson @mzjacobson]

The experiment is over – we know what does and doesn’t work to address climate

If we look at what has been proposed to address global warming, air pollution, and energy security during the past 25 years, only one solution – electrification of all energy sectors and generation of the electricity with wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro sources -- has made an impact. This solution has reduced enough world emissions and technology costs for the @IPCC_CH, to eliminate its worst-case climate scenario. What are the proposed climate solutions that never worked? (1) Fossil gas replacing coal, (2) ethanol replacing gasoline, (3) carbon capture, (4) direct removal of CO2 from the air by equipment, (5) blue hydrogen, 6) nuclear, and (7) geoengineering. We knew these were poor solutions back in 2009, when they were first evaluated. But, it has taken 17 years to overcome lobbyists pushing these techs. On the other hand, electrification of world transport, buildings, and industry and using clean renewables to provide the electricity while growing energy efficiency, also proposed in 2009, has worked, as evidenced by the world growth in electric vehicles, heat pumps, electric furnaces, and clean, renewable electricity generators. All-of-the-above policies, or let’s try everything and hope something works policies, have failed. Given the short time we have, we should never see another IPCC scenario that includes biofuels, carbon capture, direct air capture, nuclear, geoengineering or their derivatives, blue hydrogen, electo-fuels, or sustainable aviation fuels. We know what works. Let's focus on that going forward.

References

Elimination of most extreme IPCC scenario
https://t.co/y2F2mAbCTU

Components of a WindWaterSolar system
https://t.co/viWz8mbv3v

2009 paper evaluating energy technologies
https://t.co/QzjG2d417e

2009 paper proposing to transition the world to 100% WWS
https://t.co/axJJKhHr5n

More details here: "Still No Miracles Needed"
https://t.co/K6Yd0rGJ9e

Video
https://t.co/2U4FMPUC6l

[alan rusbridger @arusbridger]

We’re downplaying stuff that should be banner headlines. We’ve been
trapped into thinking of climate change as ‘woke.’ We – wrongly – think our
readers don’t care. And when we get the hottest May on record we, once
again, miss the real story. https://t.co/FjDk82cjEr

[ProfCatherineMitchell @ProfCMitchell]

A v good MA project / final third year essay would be to track the circulatory nature of a few dozen people over the last 10-20 yrs. Maybe set the boundaries as Boards / CEOs of energy, water, telecoms & financial services. It’s the opposite of diversity & innovation.

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

The gravy train continues.

Failed former CEO of Ofwat, David Black has reappeared at a consultancy company called BRG where he will "Advise firms and investors across regulated industries as they navigate shifting regulatory frameworks".

His boss? No less than former head of regulation at Thames Water one Colm Gibson.

As @PrivateEyeNews would say "Trebles all round". Well actually that's exactly what they did say. 👇👇👇

[ProfCatherineMitchell @ProfCMitchell]

Refreshing to read an analysis that I agree with by an MP. In the world I understand (energy), a particular type of economic ideology has trumped sense and uk society interest since the mid 1990’s. Every time the Govt fudges rather than resets the problem gets worse.

[Clive Lewis MP @labourlewis]

Whether it is Tony Blair’s interventions, the bond market’s reaction or privatised utilities warning of doom, the pattern is the same.

When anyone suggests progressive change, those with wealth and power push back. Whether the figure in question is @AndyBurnhamGM or @ZackPolanski, progressives need to understand what we are up against, and how to defeat it.

Very often, I find, science fiction names what politics struggles to. In James SA Corey’s series of novels the Expanse, the violent dystopian streets of Baltimore are given a name for what happens when the old order breaks down faster than people can describe it: the Churn. It is the brutal reorganisation of power, when familiar rules collapse and those who survive are the ones who read the signs early.
Britain is in one now. In fact, two churns are happening at once.

The first is electoral. May’s local elections were a rupture with the past. Labour lost roughly 1,100 councillors. Reform won 1,257 seats and 10 councils. The Greens won Hackney and Lewisham. In Makerfield, the parliamentary constituency where Andy Burnham is seeking a route back to the Commons, Reform took every council ward.

The progressive vote has fragmented and Reform has captured a large part of the anger. The container in which transformative politics could once be argued for and delivered – a dependable Labourmajority in the Commons – is visibly crumbling.

The second churn is deeper. Burnham named it when he said Britain had been “on the wrong course for 40 years”. That was a diagnosis of the political economy that has governed Britain since the late 1970s: financialisation, privatisation, hollowed-out public services and the transfer of wealth and power away from workers, communities and the public realm.

This is why the events of recent weeks matter. Burnham needs a state that is able to pay for big-ticket, social-democratic projects: council homes, clean energy, public transport, water, skills and resilience. Those things cannot be wished into being. They require public investment at scale.

That is where Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules become more than an accounting device. In plain English, they are self-imposed limits on borrowing. They are political choices, not laws of nature. But they matter because they set the boundaries of what Labour says it can afford.

They matter for Burnham’s possible project for the country, because the current rules would inhibit the kind of public investment that a new settlement with the British people would require.

Yet he cannot simply announce he will tear them up. Governments borrow by selling gilts. If investors believe a government will borrow recklessly, they demand higher interest rates to lend to it. That raises the cost of all government borrowing and squeezes the money available for everything else. This is the discipline every Labour politician now feels.

Three weeks ago, Burnham tested the boundary. He floated a defence carve-out: the idea that extra borrowing for defence could sit outside the fiscal rules, as Germany has done by using special funds to increase military spending. It was a narrow proposal but one that raised larger questions about how we finance what we deem to be important. What followed is what some call “market discipline”. From the period around Burnham’s Makerfield announcement onward, the pound came under pressure and gilt yields rose as markets priced political uncertainty. Private creditors warned against Thames Water being brought into public ownership. Then, last Monday, Burnham’s team told Bloomberg he would make no changes to Reeves’s fiscal rules if he became prime minister. The defence carve-out was ruled out too.

I was not surprised by the retreat. Nor do I think it is useful to call it betrayal. Burnham cannot win a leadership contest if the markets are running against him before he has even started. But the retreat itself is the lesson. It illuminates what is standing in the way of a new social democracy. It is not simply “the markets”. It is the economic architecture Britain has built: Treasury rules, Bank of England decisions, pension fund structures and investor expectations combining to discipline any politics that threatens the settlement. What happened last week was a lesson in how power works.

Burnham matters not because he is a saviour. Progressives have had enough of saviours. He matters because he has said aloud what Westminster still avoids: Britain’s crisis is rooted in the economic settlement itself.

That settlement, what economists increasingly call rentier capitalism, is not abstract. It is a country where water bills rise while shareholders are rewarded, where housing wealth matters more than people having secure homes, and where democratic choices narrow whenever they threaten asset holders. Meanwhile, the state manages the fallout: crumbling infrastructure, higher costs and a cost of living crisis deepened by rentier extraction.

That is why the reaction to Burnham’s comments on the fiscal rules is revealing. Chancellors rewrite fiscal rules all the time when it suits them. Gordon Brown had his golden rule. George Osborne had his surplus target. Philip Hammond revised the framework. Rishi Sunak changed it. Jeremy Hunt changed it. Reeves has changed it again. The question is not whether fiscal rules can change. They plainly can. The question is who gets to change them, and for what purpose?

There are three fights progressives now have to pick.

The first is fiscal. Democracy must regain the power to invest. Public investment is still constrained less by national need than by what ministers think the bond market, the Bank of England and the Treasury will tolerate. A real shift would start from need, not nerves.

That means a Bank of England mandate that recognises a basic truth: inflation is not only caused by too much demand. It is also caused by too little capacity. When there are too few homes, rents rise. When public transport is weak, people are forced into expensive alternatives. When energy is costly and unreliable, bills rise. Investment is not the enemy of stability. Done properly, it is how stability is built.

The second fight is ownership. Public goods should be built and owned in the public interest. Thames Water entering special administration is the obvious place to start. Regional public housing corporationscould build at scale on public land, financed by rental income rather than annual Whitehall grants.

That is also why the language of “public control” – used increasingly by Andy Burnham – deserves scrutiny. Few want a return to top-down nationalisation. But franchising, as the Bee Network in Manchester demonstrates, is not public ownership. Private operators running Bee Network services made hundreds of millions in profit last year. The network is better than what came before – but it remains a private-profit, public-risk model. Control without ownership leaves the fundamental problem intact: the public absorbs the downside while shareholders take the gain.

The third fight is constitutional. Proportional representation for Westminster, an elected second chamber and deeper devolution are not procedural tidying-up. They are conditions for progressive power in a fragmented country. The forces ranged against transformation do not need PR: they already have the City, the rightwing press, corporate lobbying, the Treasury worldview and the bond market. Progressive Britain has no equivalent machinery. PR is the glue that could allow a broad majority to govern together.

Burnham was right: Britain has been on the wrong course for 40 years. But last week showed the harder truth. The old settlement will not politely bow out for its replacement. It will price the risk, police the boundaries and demand reassurance before the argument has even begun. The churn is far from over.

* Clive Lewis is the Labour MP for Norwich South

* Clive Lewis will be speaking about these issues and more with Andy Burnham at Change Now! Mobilising the Progressive Majority

[ProfCatherineMitchell @ProfCMitchell]

Well done Bill McGuire & @guardian for publishing it. It’s supported by science. @ProfBillMcGuire explains necessary energy policies but we also need a political system which ensures their implementation & we need some way to counter media lies (Ofcom step up).

[Bill McGuire @ProfBillMcGuire]

A big piece in today's @guardian

Please note, I am being optimistic in my scenario😮

https://t.co/hlKSuP1clM

[ProfCatherineMitchell @ProfCMitchell]

I think this may be referring to NESO? IMO most people / Cos. have a vague understanding of climate change. Fewer understand the links between CC and resource destruction. A way to think about it is that the env. destruction, inc. CC, is greater than the sum of their parts.

[Robin Forest @GreenRForest]

Those mature trees were vital habitat. I spend weekends birdwatching and destruction like this during nesting season is devastating. The UK must do better. 💚

[Timothy Snyder @TimothyDSnyder]

We still remember the London Blitz, which lasted eight months. Ukraine has been under attack for fifty-one months. You can help defend Ukrainians from missiles and drones.
https://t.co/gumgAyz0DC

[Ros Atkins @BBCRosAtkins]

We analysed thousands of Donald Trump’s social media posts in 2026 - here’s what we found. Produced by Katerina Karelli. Graphics by Sally Nicholls and Mesut Ersoz. https://t.co/Ib1Pvk7grk

[Kevin Maguire @Kevin_Maguire]

No political party should have this man as a candidate if even half the allegations are true.

The question is why do Reform attract a relatively higher proportion of this type.

Read the @hopenothate report and cringe or scream.

https://t.co/kIo5Qzjyyp

[Dr Paul Dorfman @dorfman_p]

Nuclear test veterans hope for justice as secret files are released. Servicemen exposed to radioactive fallout in cold war weapons testing are using newly declassified documents to fight for a fair compensation scheme, In November 1957, thousands of servicemen on Christmas Island in the South Pacific watched the testing of Britain’s first megaton thermonuclear bomb. Witnesses compared it to seeing the end of the world. Many viewed the explosion on the island while wearing shorts and short-sleeved shirts, with sunglasses handed out to protect their eyes. Veterans claim they were exposed to needless risk and were the victims of gross negligence. Large numbers later suffered blood disorders and cancers, which they believed were caused by exposure to radioactive fallout. Most were denied war pensions because of ill-health. By contrast, those involved in the US nuclear testing programme, including the Manhattan Project led by J Robert Oppenheimer, benefited from a $2.6bn no-fault compensation fund. France agreed in 2008 that it would pay compensation to nuclear test veterans who suffered illness linked to radiation exposure. British veterans now hope the release of thousands of previously classified documents from the Merlin files into the National Archives will help support their near-70-year battle for justice. Some of these newly released documents analysed by The Observer detail risks of radioactive fallout, health monitoring of military personnel and orders for blood samples to be taken from servicemen that could be used for evidence in any subsequent claims for damages.

Observer 24th May 2026
https://t.co/zsZbDThXFj

[António Guterres @antonioguterres]

According to international humanitarian law, parties to conflict must distinguish between civilians & combatants at all times. Attacks against civilians & civilian objects are prohibited.

No more disregard for the law.

No more disregard for humanity.

#NotATarget

[Dr Paul Dorfman @dorfman_p]

Au revoir coastal nuclear.
From the East Riding of Yorkshire, where the soft cliffs of boulder clay at Holderness are retreating at rates of up to 4.5 metres per year – some of the highest rates in Europe – to the north Norfolk coast, to Suffolk and down to the Isle of Wight, communities are at the forefront of an eroding coastline, the retreat accelerated by the climate crisis. More than 10,000 properties, rising to 20,000 according to some calculations, are at risk from coastal erosion in the next 80 years, as well as at least 3.7 miles (6km) of railways and 114 miles of roads – of which the Slapton Line is a recent dramatic example. Across the country, work has been taking place over several years to predict where and when the worst erosion will take place, but there is no national adaptation strategy ready to roll out.
https://t.co/vJdVdp1V0E

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

You'll want to be sitting down for this bit.

Water companies are currently £82.7 billion in debt, have paid themselves £85 billion in dividends, leak over a trillion of litres of water per year, dump sewage for almost 4 million hours per year, have been convicted of over 1,200 criminal acts since 1989 and an average of 35% of your bill goes on nothing but paying more interest and yet more dividends.

And not a single company has ever lost their operating licence. 👇

[Clive Lewis MP @labourlewis]

No government should be able to win a big majority on a minority of the vote. Our voting system is warping our politics beyond recognition.

I have joined 65 other MPs in signing an amendment pushing for a National Commission on Electoral Reform.

This is a necessary first step toward building a more representative system - one where power reflects the people, not the quirks of a failing model.

[Sarah Longwell @SarahLongwell25]

This is staggering in both its corruption and the incentive it creates to do illegal things on Trump’s behalf knowing you can get both a pardon and a payout.

[Qais Alamdar @Qaisalamdar]

''Girls are being raped. Not metaphorically. Not as legal shorthand. The day their bodies bleed for the first time, they will be made pregnant by a man four, five, or six times their age, and their small bodies tell the rest. Thirty-two per cent of deaths for Afghan girls aged 15 to 19 are pregnancy-related and Afghanistan's maternal mortality rate is among the world's highest, 521 deaths per 100,000 live births.'' - Writes @NasimiShabnam

https://t.co/JP2QCCzYkI

[ProfCatherineMitchell @ProfCMitchell]

Sadly, I agree with your last sentance

[AukeHoekstra @AukeHoekstra]

Unbelievable! A president that is able to arrange for his own immunity for tax fraud. Hard to sink deeper as a country.

[Emma Wright @lakesdoglover]

@ProfCMitchell Very important point. I think examining market design, grid integration and investment signals in the wider whole system context would be highly valuable.

[Lewis Goodall @lewis_goodall]

More. International. Trains. Please.