Fires rage in Australia following record high temperatures. Getty Images
A few days after Typhoon Bopha tore through the Philippines in December, leaving hundreds dead and thousands homeless, a representative from the battered country began to speak at the UN climate talks in the Qatari capital of Doha.
Naderev Saño, the Philippine climate change commissioner, broke down as he made a plea to his fellow delegates, in what turned into one of the conference’s most riveting moments. Read more
The World Economic forum is getting underway in Davos, Switzerland. Getty Images
Fashions come and go and the agenda for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos is usually a pretty good guide as to whether skirts are long or short this year. This year’s title for the meeting is “Resilient Dynamism”, which is very cool. But the issues that have slipped down the agenda are energy security and climate change.
There are a few odd sessions, but the focus has shifted and apart from one brief reference to natural resources, neither energy nor climate are mentioned on the web page setting out this year’s themes. This is a very big change from only four or five years ago, when both were prominent topics at every meeting. Read more
The growth of wind farms and other renewable energy projects is heading for a sharp slowdown after 2020 according to official forecasts, despite ministers’ claims they want the UK to become a global centre of green power.
Figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change predict a tenfold increase in the amount of new renewable power capacity added between 2012 and 2020.
For the oil and gas companies involved in Algeria, the primary focus for the next few days will be the safety of their staff. Big companies such as BP and Statoil can from the outside seem inhuman. From within they work as families. Many people in London, Aberdeen, Stavanger and Oslo will know one or more of the men caught up in the desert attack. Read more
The UK’s Department for Energy and Climate Change has a new permanent secretary, as predicted before Christmas. The elegantly orchestrated process, along with a comparable process at the Home Office has reasserted the independence of the civil service appointments process. Sir David Normington, the first civil service commissioner is providing to be more than a match for Francis Maude, Theresa May and the others who want to make senior civil servants political appointees.
Stephen Lovegrove, the new man at the DECC, has a number of challenges to overcome. Read more
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