TAG: Heat pumps
Germany’s budget crisis: No clear way forward after coalition misses deadline
BERLIN — The German government missed a self-imposed deadline for reaching a 2024 budget deal Wednes...
8 months ago
Labour will back ‘boiler tax,’ says Miliband
LONDON — The Labour Party will introduce a controversial “boiler tax” if it gets into power at the next election, the shadow energy secretary said on Tuesday.Ed Miliband, speaking at an event in London, said that Labour would “support the Clean Heat Marke...
6 months ago
UK government scraps heat pump plan
LONDON — The government has scrapped controversial plans to fine boiler manufacturers if they miss targets for installing heat pumps.The Clean Heat Market Mechanism (CHMM), which was due to start next month, has been “scrapped” until April 2025 in a bid t...
6 months ago
Claire Coutinho: The UK’s chancellor-in-the-wings?
LONDON — Late summer 2023. Claire Coutinho, a junior minister at the Department for Education and a rising star in the U.K. Conservative government, is enjoying a quiet morning at home when her phone rings.The caller has a message from one of Coutinho’s o...
6 months ago
Wanted: Someone, anyone to sell climate policies to UK voters
LONDON — Rishi Sunak needs all the help he can get selling his green vision to the British public.The U.K. prime minister reckons Britain can hit its headline climate goal — net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 — in a way which “brings people with us.” That’...
6 months ago
UK vows to avoid Europe’s ‘clumsy’ green policies as protests rage
LONDON — Britain will not repeat the kind of “clumsy” climate policies which have caused social unrest elsewhere in Europe, the country’s energy secretary declared.Claire Coutinho told POLITICO in an interview that “riots and protest happening across Euro...
6 months ago
Von der Leyen threads the climate needle to keep her job
BRUSSELS — Ursula von der Leyen has just pulled off a delicate green balancing act. The German politician secured a second term as European Commission president on Thursday with a political program carefully designed to woo both conservatives and environm...
2 months ago
Starmer’s ‘quiet’ climate radicalism sets up battle with Farage
LONDON — Early last year, U.K. Labour leader Keir Starmer’s top green lieutenant traveled to Berlin. He was there to take notes on a German government full of climate vim. Starmer’s man Ed Miliband — then in opposition, now the U.K. energy secretary — enc...
2 months ago
Italy’s budget mess leaves earthquake-stricken towns in limbo
AMATRICE, Italy — Gaetano Galli surveyed the quiet street and casually pointed out where the earthquake had wrought its havoc. There, the splintered wreck of a bungalow that caved in on a family of six; across the road, the spot where over a dozen were cr...
1 month ago
World fails first review of COP renewable energy goal
BRUSSELS — Reaching the landmark renewable energy targets agreed at last year’s global climate summit will remain a distant dream unless the world invests more than $30 trillion over the next six years. That’s the stark warning the International Renewable...
2 days ago
No one has a plan to fix Britain’s old, cold homes
LONDON — It is, says one former U.K. energy minister, “the biggest problem” blocking the country's efforts to go green.How do you kit out the U.K.'s millions of old, cold, drafty homes with better insulation and cleaner heating systems?After years in gove...
8 hours ago