The Guardian

National Grid’s plan for the Suffolk coast is mirrored across the UK. We need an energy policy that protects our heritage

Energy, and its future costs and security, is one of the main issues facing this country, yet it has drawn little attention or interrogation in the general election debate.

Our local community faces devastation on a criminal scale, and that is sadly representative of similar cases across the UK. National Grid wishes to build across a vast area of peaceful countryside less than three miles from coastal Aldeburgh and Thorpeness, a thriving tourism destination for ramblers, ornithologists and nature lovers – and to make this a “concrete coast”.

Water companies have logged five sewage spills a day, every day, for a decade, analysis by the Observer shows

Water companies in England and Wales have averaged five serious sewage spills into rivers or seas every day over the past decade, the Observer can reveal.

Analysis of Environment Agency data has found that the 10 firms recorded 19,484 category 1-3 pollution incidents between 2013 and 2022, the most recent year recorded, an average of one every four and a half hours.

Communities in the Latrobe Valley – and those in six other locations around Australia – are on a new energy frontline. On Wednesday, the Coalition promised that, if elected to government, a part of the Loy Yang power station would be one of seven sites to host a nuclear reactor. But what do residents think of Peter Dutton's nuclear plan for their area? The Coalition's decision seems to have split opinions

• Confusion reigns about the Coalition’s nuclear proposal. Here’s how the rhetoric has shifted

• There is no shortage of Coalition U-turns on nuclear. But this Aukus example might be the most remarkable

Exclusive: State department official urges politicians to do ‘the right thing’, citing ‘collective responsibility’

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A senior US official has urged Australia and other countries not to back away from their 2030 climate commitments, insisting that “we all have a collective responsibility for the planet we live in”.

The message from Australia’s top security ally contrasts with rhetoric from the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, who claimed on Saturday the Labor government was “appeasing the international climate lobby” and “global climate activists”.

Thousands of people marched through central London to urge political leaders to take more decisive action in tackling the UK’s wildlife crisis. For the first time, mainstream organisations including the National Trust and the RSPB stood beside hunt saboteurs and direct action activists in the Restore Nature Now march, as campaigners called on the next government to take 'bold' steps to tackle the biodiversity crisis

• Restore Nature Now: thousands to march in London calling for urgent action

• Thousands march in London to urge leaders to tackle wildlife crisis

Costly new vehicles, limited choice and scarce charging points are holding back a switch to electric by businesses

Carbon emissions from vans in the UK have risen by 63% since 1990, new analysis shows, as cars are getting cleaner.

While more people are opting to drive electric or plug-in hybrid cars, van drivers still prefer diesel because electric vans are much more expensive with little choice of models.

Study suggests exposure to chemicals manufactured to resist water and heat likely to affect health of offspring

New research has found for the first time that PFAS “forever chemicals” accumulate in the testes, and the exposure probably affects children’s health.

The toxic chemicals can damage sperm during a sensitive developmental period, potentially leading to liver disease and higher cholesterol, especially in male offspring, the paper, which looked at the chemicals in mice, noted.

Thanks to the tireless work of campaigners in Surrey, fossil-fuel development must now take into account ‘downstream’ emissions

• Sarah Finch is a climate campaigner and a member of the Weald Action Group

This week I found out what it feels like to go beyond your wildest dreams. A case I fronted won at the supreme court, with potentially huge positive impacts for the climate. For almost five years, I had been mounting a legal challenge to fossil-fuel production at Horse Hill in the Surrey countryside. A group of residents, activists and lawyers had been pursuing a routine legal review of a council planning decision that had given an oil company the green light to drill four new oil wells and produce oil for 20 years.

The supreme court ruling means it will now be much harder for new fossil-fuel projects to go ahead as their full climate impact will need to be factored in from the start. Our challenge centred on the fact that the oil produced by the Horse Hill site would inevitably be burned, throwing carbon into the atmosphere and heating the planet. We expected it to be a routine legal procedure lasting six months. But as the case came together, its wider significance for the climate and the fossil-fuel industry at large became clearer, and months turned into years as it worked its way through the courts.

Sarah Finch is a climate campaigner and a member of the Weald Action Group

Daily heat records were broken in the early season heatwave, yet relief in sight as cooler weather forecast

About 65 million people were under heat alerts in the north-eastern and midwest states on Friday, as an early season heatwave in the US continued to roast the region.

Record temperatures were set in some areas, with heat indexes that combine temperature and humidity hitting 100F and 110F. Calendar-day highs were broken across Maine, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.

Environmental Research Center, a consumer protection non-profit, says it found ‘forever chemicals’ in eight flavors

A wide range of No Cow protein bars are contaminated with lead and toxic “forever chemicals”, recent filings with the California department of justice charges.

The filings, made by the Environmental Research Center (ERC), a San Diego-based consumer protection non-profit, states that its testing found PFOA, a dangerous PFAS compound, and lead in eight flavors of No Cow bars.

Missisauga officials have twice forcibly cut Wolf Ruck’s grass and billed him, after he decided to rewild his garden

Most mornings, Wolf Ruck walks the mown paths in his yard in Mississauga, Ontario, watching for insects landing on the goldenrod, birds feeding on native seed heads, and chipmunk kits playing in the tall grass.

The septuagenarian artist, film-maker and former Olympic canoeist began rewilding his garden with native plants three years ago, as part of a growing movement across Canada towards replacing water-thirsty lawns with “naturalised gardens”.

Scientists call for regulation to stop regional use of marine cloud brightening having negative impact elsewhere

A geoengineering technique designed to reduce high temperatures in California could inadvertently intensify heatwaves in Europe, according to a study that models the unintended consequences of regional tinkering with a changing climate.

The paper shows that targeted interventions to lower temperature in one area for one season might bring temporary benefits to some populations, but this has to be set against potentially negative side-effects in other parts of the world and shifting degrees of effectiveness over time.

UN says finding funds to tackle climate crisis is ‘a steep mountain to climb’, as talks end with little agreement

Finding the finance needed to stave off the worst impacts of the climate crisis will be “a very steep mountain to climb”, the UN has conceded, as two vital international conferences failed to produce the progress needed to generate funds for poor countries.

With less than five months to go before the Cop29 UN climate summit in Azerbaijan in November, there is still no agreement on how to bridge the near-trillion dollar gap between what developing countries say is needed and the roughly $100bn a year of climate finance that flows today from public sources in the rich world to stricken developing nations.

Conservationists hope insects carrying ‘birth control’ bacteria can save honeycreeper being wiped out by malaria

Millions of mosquitoes are being released from helicopters in Hawaii in a last-ditch attempt to save rare birds slipping into extinction.

The archipelago’s endemic, brightly coloured honeycreeper birds are dying of malaria carried by mosquitoes first introduced by European and American ships in the 1800s. Having evolved with no immunity to the disease, the birds can die after just a single bite.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

Mainstream groups including National Trust and RSPB will join hunt saboteurs and direct action activists for first time

Crabs, badgers and scores of dragonfly wings will be among the fancy dress worn by thousands of people joining more than 350 environmental groups marching through London on Saturday to demand the next government does not “recklessly” ignore the nature crisis.

For the first time, mainstream organisations including the National Trust and the RSPB will stand beside hunt saboteurs and direct action activists in the Restore Nature Now march, as campaigners call on the next government to take “bold” steps to tackle the biodiversity crisis.

Nuclear power? Really!?

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Community conservation groups are fighting to protect woodlands from illegal logging, farming and fires, but limited resources are a constant challenge and the task is getting ever more difficult

• Safidy Andrianantenaina is a Madagascan photographer and recipient of the revolutionary storyteller grant, a Photographers Without Borders and On the Edge joint project

Rishi Sunak’s decision to side with climate deniers isn’t just wrongheaded: it’s costing our environment and our economy

In 2019, the UK became the first G7 country to legislate for net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. At the time, I was the cabinet minister who signed this into law. We did so knowing that taking action to tackle the climate crisis was supported by all the major political parties. We had no time to waste. It had been the Conservative party in opposition under David Cameron that had backed the Climate Change Act more than a decade earlier because we argued that climate action was more important than political divisions. As a result, the UK’s internationally renowned framework of carbon budgets has seen our emissions more than halve since 1990.

Britain has long been viewed as a clean energy leader across the world. We pioneered the first successful emissions trading scheme, followed by the contracts for difference model for funding renewable energy projects that made the North Sea into one of the largest windfarms in the world. A few weeks after delivering the net zero bill, I helped to secure the UK’s bid to host Cop26 in Glasgow. There, more than 80% of countries followed our lead and committed to a net zero target.

Climate and clean energy leadership has created jobs, growth and regeneration. The impact has been transformative. For the first time, wind power now makes up the largest source of our electricity. Coal, which used to make up more than 40% of our power when I was first elected as an MP in 2010, will from next year be consigned to the history books. Our economy has grown by 80% since 1990, and at the same time our emissions have halved. When I signed net zero into law, I always viewed our plan as a mainstream, even conservative, vision. One of the legacies of Cop26 is the growth in clean energy markets across the world. Elsewhere, the Inflation Reduction Act in the US and the green deal in Europe have committed to at least a decade of support for green industries.

Yet the UK now risks falling ever further behind in the net zero race. We have seen Rishi Sunak decide to prioritise new oil and gas expansion at a time when our fossil fuel industries are in rapid decline and will become stranded assets within decades. His decision to renege on net zero means the UK has scaled back on measures that would have saved households £8bn a year in lower energy costs. It has cost us the ability to lead in new technological markets and risks losing Britain the greatest economic opportunity in a generation.

Chris Skidmore is a former Conservative energy minister

UK nuclear site pleads guilty to IT security breaches from 2019 to 2023

The UK’s most hazardous nuclear site, Sellafield, has pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to cybersecurity failings brought by the industry regulator.

Lawyers acting for Sellafield told Westminster magistrates’ court on Thursday that cybersecurity requirements were “not sufficiently adhered to for a period” at the vast nuclear waste dump in Cumbria.

The charges relate to information technology security offences spanning a four-year period from 2019 to 2023. It emerged in March that the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) intended to prosecute Sellafield for technology security offences.