News
Paris 2.0: Climate Leadership Faces Its Oxford Exam
Ad Astra Journal attended the Oxford Smith School World Forum this week and wrote a series of articles on the panels, as well as an interview with attendee Bill Hilf, Board Chair of the Allen Institute for AI. "The Smith School’s forum in the Examination Schools offered no easy blueprint for Paris 2.0. It did leave us with the questions that matter: who will invest, who will work together, and who will bear the cost?"
How wars in Iran, Yemen and Ukraine are hitting UK bank accounts
On Channel 4's "The Breakdown," Dr Sugandha Srivastav discussed the global oil price shock, the reasons UK consumers have been badly affected, and what the government can do mitigate this situation in the future. "It's another chance for the government to go faster on alternatives. And one of the alternatives I want to highlight is batteries. Currently in the UK, when the sun and wind, you know, when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, we use gas. Instead of gas, we can use batteries. Batteries will serve exactly the same function. They can fill in those gaps and do it without this dependence on fossil fuels. That's really the way forward," she said.
UK risks under-preparing for severe climate and nature threats, experts warn
A new Comment led by Professor Paul Behrens and co-authored by Professor Nathalie Seddon brings together experts in climate, nature, health, national security and financial risk to call for a more integrated approach to how governments assess and prepare for climate and nature threats.
Crown Estate seabed auctions could add £38 a year to energy bills
A new policy brief led by Nadia Schroeder has been covered in The Times. The brief examines how changes to seabed leasing by The Crown Estate (TCE) affect offshore wind financing costs, and may impact project delivery, bills and the UK energy transition. “This effectively constitutes an uplift in cost paid by developers and quite a lot of cash going into the Crown Estate and into the Treasury, at a time when everybody’s worried about bills,” said co-author Cameron Hepburn.
Seabed leasing fees threaten UK energy security and bills – Oxford report
New Oxford Smith School analysis finds changes to seabed leasing by The Crown Estate (TCE) have severely affected offshore wind financing costs and risk delaying the clean energy transition.
The bill has come due. But no one wants to pay for climate mitigation
Writing in Fortune, Stephanie Walton calls for the costs of transitioning to a more sustainable and resilient world to be reckoned with. "Our mistake was in assuming that a strong economic case equates to a strong financial case... Economics is about improving public welfare. Finance is about improving risk-adjusted returns. The two are not the same on mitigation. And at the end of the day, the finance – the P&L, the public ledger – precedes the economics. Someone has to foot the bill up front."
Almost a third of the world's farmland is influenced by the fashion industry, new Oxford report finds
The report, produced with DIRT Charity, finds the industry has influence over 30 per cent of global farmland, or 1.45 billion hectares, once leather and wool are counted alongside textile crops. It was led by two MSc alumni, Megan Siyi Liu and Clara Cecil.
Heatwaves Are Now Routine – So, How Are We Going To Adapt?
The UK has moved from needing to prepare for the possibility of climate impacts to managing impacts that are already happening. The problem, according to the experts interviewed in this Politics Home article, including Sam Fankhauser, Interim Director of the Oxford Smith School, is the failure to turn plans into measurable action.
Banks give higher credit risk ratings to lower emitters
A new working paper by Matteo Gasparin and Fulvia Marotta finds that banks give higher credit risk ratings to lower emission companies. "The results suggest that current regulatory frameworks may struggle to capture risks associated with the [energy] transition before they become visible in realised defaults," said Marotta.
Food & drink manufacturers can greatly improve sustainability and healthiness of their products with small changes
Leading UK food and drink manufacturers could significantly improve the overall nutrition and sustainability of their products by making changes to 10% or less of their existing product line, according to new research in Nature Food.
Low emission companies deemed higher credit risk by banking sector data models - Oxford analysis
A new working paper by academics at the Oxford Smith School and INET finds that banks’ risk models assign lower credit risk to higher-emitting companies, raising questions about whether transition risks are fully reflected in these assessments as the world switches to clean energy.
The climate crisis is already affecting childhood: in Argentina, the number of children at risk from heat stress will increase by 65%
Children are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts and will face intensifying effects of climate change during their lifetimes, according to a new study co-authored by Dr Rupert Stuart-Smith, Deputy Director & Senior Researcher in Climate Science and the Law. The study was covered by Argentinian publication Carbono. “This summer’s unrelenting heat across the UK and Europe illuminates the dangers of our weather after a century and a half of industrial emissions and will leave younger generations exposed to many similar summers in the years to come... Acting now and limiting global warming to as close as possible to 1.5°C would prevent these conditions from worsening; failing to do so means imposing a legacy of growing heat stress that today’s children will bear the brunt of," commented Dr Stuart-Smith.