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Climate impacts and the co-benefits of action

Three different approaches to the impacts of climate change are briefly described in this post. The first focussed on public views about five climate issues of wide interest in the UK. The second presented to a UK audience the views of a panel of experts on a wider range of climate issues, with the aim of stimulating interest and action. The third concentrated on the ways in which the benefits from climate mitigation tend to be overlooked in the European context, and how this might be remedied. Citizens’ Panel A recent publication by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) described the work of a Citizens’ Panel on climate adaptation in the UK. The aim of the project was to understand public views on the subject, and so to guide the CCC’s future advice to the UK Government (CCC, 2026). There were two key questions: “Which of the impacts of climate change are you most concerned about and why?” and “What do you think should be done to adapt to these impacts?” The panel worked on five aspe...
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Locality, community and the energy transition

This post will draw on three papers published this year which are all concerned with the role of locally based energy projects in the transition towards net zero. The first discusses the situation in the UK; the second addresses the wider European picture; and the third concentrates on community energy in Portugal. Each paper covers a range of issues, but here the focus will be on the importance of community engagement and how to promote and evaluate it. UK energy projects Gupta, Zahiri and Gregg (2026) consider three kinds of project in the UK: community energy, local energy, and smart local energy systems; their study suggests ways in which the effectiveness of such projects can be improved. The differences between projects described by the terms community energy, local energy, and smart local energy systems can be loosely summed up as follows. Community energy projects are typically owned and controlled by members of a local community and aim to benefit the community. They oft...
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Air-to-air Heat Pumps

Introduction During a recent online forum about the UK’s Warm Homes Plan, a question was asked about the role of air-to-air heat pumps in low-carbon heating policy. The UK plan will be briefly outlined below, followed by a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of air-to-air heat pumps compared to air-to-water heat pumps, based on an EIRO publication. The Warm Homes Plan 2026 The plan is discussed in relation to the housing sector in an article from the Carbon Literacy Project (CLP, 2026). “Homes and buildings account for roughly one-fifth of UK emissions” and £15 billion is to be invested with the aim of upgrading five million homes by 2030. The existing Boiler Upgrade Scheme will continue to offer grants of up to £7,500 per property for installation of heat pumps and a “£2,500 grant per property will also be available for air to air (as opposed to air to water) heat pumps which can also provide cooling.” The UK Warm Homes Plan (DESNZ, 2026) notes the increase in sales...
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Optimising building efficiency with genetic algorithms

Introduction The use of digital twins in the planning, construction and operation of buildings was outlined in the previous post. The following discussion touches on the use of genetic algorithms and related software to optimise building design and performance. A selection of papers describing the use of genetic algorithms in this way will be cited together with references to background information. Genetic Algorithms The origins of software based on natural selection have been traced back to early computer scientists such as Alan Turing, John Von Neumann and Norbert Weiner (Mitchell, 1995). Genetic Algorithms (GAs) have found application in many areas where more conventional methods are difficult to apply, such as problems involving many variables. The ‘solutions’ proposed by a GA need to be evaluated, and this may require additional software specific to the problem in hand, in this case the computer modelling of buildings. Building Information Modelling The history of build...
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Digital Twins: from space to the home

Introduction The idea of a digital twin may stem from the explosion of an oxygen tank in the Apollo 13 space mission of 1970. “NASA employed multiple simulators to evaluate the failure and extended a physical model of the vehicle to include digital components. This “digital twin” was the first of its kind, allowing for a continuous ingestion of data to model the events leading to up to the accident for forensic analysis and exploration of next steps” (NASA, 2021). The importance of accurate digital models is clear in programs such as Artemis, which is intended to facilitate missions to Mars, when the constant communication needed to allow human intervention in case of problems will not be available. Digital twins also have many earth-bound applications such as product research and design, replacing costly prototypes; supply chain operations, giving manufacturers a comprehensive view of logistics, operations and potential bottlenecks; collecting data about products and their use, al...
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State of climate action 2025

  State of climate action 2025 is the title of a research report by the World Resources Institute (WRI), and is the subject of an article by the C40 Knowledge Hub. Here the report is described as setting out how to close “the global gap in climate action” so as to keep the Paris Agreement goals within reach. It “grades collective efforts … across key sectors” and finds that in each sector climate action has not been adequate to “achieve the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal.” Forty-five indicators are assessed in the report and none are on track to meet their targets by the end of this decade. The report sets “actionable targets for 2030, 2035 and 2050 across the world’s highest-emitting sectors  – power, buildings, industry, transport, forests and land, and food and agriculture” and assesses recent progress and the rates of progress needed for the future. A few examples of the targets are: to phase out coal at least ten times faster than at present; to reduce deforestation ...
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Climate, Exxon, AI and the Law

A recently published article from the Centre for Climate Integrity marked ten years since “investigative journalists first exposed Exxon’s secret internal climate knowledge and campaign of deception”. The journalists were from Inside Climate News, the Los Angeles Times and Columbia Journalism School, and their investigations and reports became known as #ExxonKnew. Exxon was not the only company which decided to “emphasize the uncertainty in scientific conclusions” about climate change and to execute decades-long campaigns of climate deception (CfCI, 2025a). The article claims that Exxon and other Big Oil companies “have faced growing scrutiny and efforts to hold them accountable” during recent years, and that ten U.S. states and many communities have sought to “hold the companies accountable for their deception and make them pay for the damage they’ve caused.” The Road Not Taken   Investigations into Exxon’s early work on climate modelling and its later attempts to conceal th...
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