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Simon Oldridge #CANBill Profile picture
Simon Oldridge #CANBill
@SiOldridge
Climate & nature policy | #CANBill campaign & @MPWatchNetwork | Cofounder @SDevonPrimary | Mostly on BlueSky—but aim still to call out disinformation here.
Oct 28 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The UK gives North Sea oil operators 91% tax relief for investment—but only for oil or gas, not renewables😲
Any incentive at all for new fossil fuels is madness.
This situation should be flipped.
But, that’s not what @RachelReevesMP is planning.
🧵1️⃣
gov.uk/government/pub…Image 2️⃣N Sea operators pay 3 main profits taxes. Each offers relief for oil & gas investment.
Reeves only proposes to address relief on the Energy Profits Levy:
removing the “Extra Investment Allowance” and merely reducing the “Capital Allowance”.
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…Image
Oct 27 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
Collapse of the #AMOC ocean current would force UK and Scandinavian citizens to flee as refugees—as agriculture fails. This could really happen in the next few decades, but we have a chance to stop it.
What can we do?
🧵1️⃣
theguardian.com/environment/20… 2️⃣Our societies face an existential threat, yet so many people are in the dark. But they deserve to know—and we need all hands on deck.
So Governments need to start being honest and brief the public.
Oct 23 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
The UK’s climate targets are no longer fit for purpose. They were devised 14 years ago before scientists realised how bad extreme weather would get at 1.5°C - and ignore international ✈️&🚢until 2033.
🧵/1️⃣
zerohour.uk/downloads/ambi…Image 2️⃣The 4th & 5th Carbon Budgets (targets) should have been tightened when the UK adopted its new tougher 1.5°C target in 2019.
That's because it's cumulate emissions that matter.
It's no good promising future action.
Bold cuts are needed now. Image
Oct 20 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
If Labour proceeds with the Conservatives’ #CCS plans, the UK's climate credibility will be in tatters. This £22B is mostly about building new power stations & blue hydrogen plants powered by highly-polluting imported LNG.
Here’s how they can avert catastrophe🧵1️⃣ 2️⃣These 𝗻𝗲𝘄 fossil fuel plants will have a carbon footprint around as bad as coal, even if the #CCS works.
Leading scientists are so concerned, they've written urgently to the Secretary of State.
My thread explaining the key points👇
Oct 4 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
People ask why I'm against carbon capture. I'm not.
Great - let's try retrofitting #CCS onto the likes of cement plants, power stations etc (though why should the public pay, and not the wealthy FF industry?)
But that's not what the UK's #CCS plans are about.
🧵1️⃣ 2️⃣At the heart of UK plans for #CCS is a drive to provide an ongoing market for North Sea gas. They mostly involve building 𝙣𝙚𝙬 fossil fuel infrastructure—power stations and #bluehydrogen plants and using creative accounting to pretend they're 'low carbon'.
Oct 2 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The UK Gov is about to commit £20 billion of public money to carbon capture.
Gov wants to exempt the #CCS industry from rules requiring it to prove that its plans will lower emissions.
Their argument: because the subsidy is just for building the plants - not operating them!
🧵1️⃣ 2️⃣Leading independent scientists have warned that #CCS plans risk worsening climate change - and that advocates are ignoring important factors like leaks of potent warming gas methane all along the supply chain.
Sep 26 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Letter from leading scientists calling for the Gov to halt & re-assess carbon capture plans.
We know the previous Gov was captured by Big Oil. Labour now really needs to listen to these experts.

Key points 🧵
@campaigncc @Andrew9Boswell @KevinClimatetheguardian.com/environment/20… 2️⃣Big Oil aims to slow the transition to clean power with promises of carbon capture - capturing CO₂ from gas power stations, #bluehydrogen production (made from nat gas) etc in new CCS industrial clusters like @NetZeroTeesside.
But there are multiple show-stopper problems....
May 19 • 12 tweets • 6 min read
This article from the Gov’s ‘Net Zero’ Secretary @ClaireCoutinho is insidious fossil fuel propaganda and needs challenging:
1️⃣ No. The Gov’s own expert adviser says “expansion of fossil fuel production is not in line with Net Zero” theccc.org.uk/wp-content/upl…
Image 2️⃣Yes, Coutinho actually argues that you need new oil & gas to pay for the green transition. What Orwellian nonsense!
We just need to tax *existing* fossil fuels properly instead of giving them huge backhanders & boosting their already enormous profits.

Image
May 12 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
I urge everyone to read this comprehensive warning from leading climate scientists about the grave dangers we face by failing to tackle climate change.
A thread quoting key points: 🧵
academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/arti…
Image 1️⃣"Scientists suspect the last several years have been warmer than any point in more than 125,000 years. Yet demand for oil climbed to over 100 million barrels per day in 2023, the highest in history."
and emissions keep rising... Image
Apr 21 • 8 tweets • 5 min read
How can #bbclaurak do a special on #netzero without bothering to research the basics and then totally failing to call out disinformation? A quick 🧵rebutting some of the worst of it....
bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00… 1️⃣Preposterous science denier @LukeJohnsonRCP says #netzero will make ordinary people poorer & colder. Yet study after study shows renewables can supply all our energy needs and deliver huge savings, with a rapid payback #bbclaurak

brookes.ac.uk/about-brookes/…
Apr 14 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
UK Gov is pledging £billions of public money to the fossil fuel industry for unproven industrial CO₂ removal. But here's how nature can do the job, with an array of co-benefits, at far lower cost. A short🧵 1/ zerohour.uk/reports/
Image 2️⃣ Restoring nature will:
✅ protect against extreme heat, flooding, drought ✅ absorb CO₂ at far lower cost than tech
✅ create lots of jobs
✅ mean putting ££ into local communities instead of giving it to the polluters
Mar 31 • 10 tweets • 6 min read
This is @ClaireCoutinho, the UK's Net Zero minister. Her twitter feed reads like it was written by an oil company.
Here's a quick flavour: 🧵
opendemocracy.net/en/policy-exch… 1️⃣🚨Misleading🚨
Once you account for all the manufacturing we've offshored, plus✈️&🚢emissions ignored, our total footprint has fallen by just 23% since 1990. <1% a year.
And that ignores large emissions from industrial fishing, military, and bioenergy.


Image
Image
Jan 1 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The Conservative Gov killed off a major program to insulate the UK's appallingly inefficient homes, and despite the Ukraine crisis, has done almost nothing to save wasted energy—the cheapest, fastest way to cut emissions.
UK homes lose heat 3X faster than German homes.
🧵1/4
Image
Image 2/ The Conservatives cancelled the Code for Sustainable Homes which would've required all new homes to be zero carbon (and super-cheap to heat) by 2016. They did this in response to lobbying from Persimmon Homes, a major donor to their party.
businessgreen.com/news/3072448/p…
Dec 8, 2023 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
Why is this man permitted to push Big Oil propaganda on the BBC, putting at risk the action needed to preserve our civilisation? The QT format doesn't give time for this to be called out.
So here's the fact-checking the BBC should do:🧵... Image 1️⃣"We're just one small part"
Would Hitchens accept that pathetic excuse from a child dropping litter?🙄
Anyway, UK is the 17th largest emitter of 195 nations, and 5th biggest in terms of excess CO₂ in the atmosphere. Take responsibility Peter!
zerohour.uk/the-uk-is-smal…
Dec 3, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Dear journalists. Please challenge ministers when they brag that UK has cut emissions by nearly 50%. That's only part of the story & highly misleading - because we've offshored so much manufacturing. More info: 🧵
2/ The UK has in fact barely cut emissions at all outside of the power sector since 2010. An abject failure.
zerohour.uk/graphics/
Image
Nov 29, 2023 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
The evidence that the UK Gov is now overtly blocking the action needed to avoid climate catastrophe. What have I missed?
A quick summary 🧵1/ 2/ Despite crystal clear science that the🌍already has enough fossil fuels to last until 2050, and blow well past 1.5°C leading to catastrophic damage...

Image
Aug 20, 2023 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
A 🧵on why UK emissions targets are far from sufficient for 1.5°C, or anything close. The media is focused on the Delivery Gap, but we really need to talk about the #AmbitionGap whilst there's still time to close it. 1/ Image 2/ The @IPCC_CH says we must limit emissions to 400 billion tonnes of CO2 from 2020 for a 67% chance of limiting global heating to 1.5°C. Shared equally per global person, allowing for population growth, that's 49 tonnes each.
UK targets would see us at more than double that. Image
Aug 2, 2023 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
A 🧵on why oil companies don't invest in renewables, what the UK Government is now overtly doing to assist big oil, and what it should be doing. 1/ 2/ Why don't oil companies invest in renewables when they're so cheap?
Answer: you can make huge profits by controlling super scarce fossil fuels with huge technical barriers to entry, backed by lobbying. You cannot from abundant wind, water and solar.bbc.com/news/science-e…
Jul 23, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
The UK's Net Zero Strategy plans for 'up to 29 MtCO2' to be removed annually by Direct Air Capture with Carbon Storage (DACCS) by 2050.
That means building 5 times the capacity of the world's only existing plant in Iceland every week from now to 2050. But worse than that: 🧵1/ 2/ DACCS extracts CO2 from air & bonds it to rock underground. The large amount of heat needed can be supplied by green hydrogen. But before we have surplus renewable power, the extra electricity to make that green H2 will all be supplied by gas power stations.
Jul 12, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Once we include the goods we import and international ✈️ & ⛴️, UK has only cut its carbon footprint by 23% since 1990. That’s less than 1% a year. Fiddling whilst Rome burns. But these figures are not complete: 🧵/5 2/5 UK emissions figs ignore ‘blue carbon’ - emissions from marine damage like industrial fishing, which releases as much carbon as aviation - eg dragging metal chains across the sea bed, shredding ecosystems.

amp.theguardian.com/environment/20…
Jul 8, 2023 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Government keeps delaying their Biomass Strategy. Now due 20th July. Bioenergy at Drax is absolutely catastrophic for climate, emitting more CO2 than coal! And that's just the start of it.
A quick 🧵/11
ember-climate.org/insights/resea… 2/ The theory goes that trees absorb CO2, so burning them is fine if you grow more trees.
But it takes forests up to 50 years to re-grow enough to pay back the carbon lost. With deadly climate tipping points looming right now, it's madness to burn trees.
imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial…