The Sustainable Futures Report

This week: burping cows, HFCs, and Client Earth suing the government for failing to provide clean air. We'll look at what cityam.com said that the advertising standards agency (ASA) said about Friends of the Earth, and what the ASA says that it said. National Grid's Winter Outlook Report is out and Client Earth pops up again to urge the government to revive the climate change act. The Lords are st...

This time we have blackouts in Australia, protests about fracking and other fossil fuels in Lancashire, Nottinghamshire and North Dakota, a report from the World Energy Council meeting in Istanbul, problems with incinerators in Cardiff and Derby and fog harvesting in Morocco. As always, the text of this episode is at anthonyday.blogspot.co.uk where you can find hyperlinks to these stories. The Sus...

Fracking approved in Lancashire - no surprise there. What does Brexit mean for sustainability?  The oil price is on the move again, but where's it going? Why are children taking the US government to court?  Large problems with nuclear power, and not just at Hinkley C.  News from Canada on carbon taxes, and Suncor, a major producer of oil from tar sands wants to strand some of its assets.  

I took July and August off and here's why I'm deferring the next episode until October. If there are things you'd like me to include please get in touch - mail@anthony-day.com  

Well we're not quite out and I sincerely hope it's not all over. This is Anthony Day's Sustainable Futures Report for Friday 1st July and in a change to the advertised programme this is the final episode before September. Yes I'm going to talk about Brexit. I'll try and avoid all the things which have already been said. This week IEMA presented an important webinar on the legal consequences of Bre...

The big news in the UK this week is the EU referendum and by the time you hear this you will probably know the outcome. As I write this episode all I can say is that it is very finely balanced. The referendum has displaced most other news, some of which is arguably far more important. You'll remember that I have commented that each month this year has been the hottest month since records began. In...

This is Anthony Day with your Sustainable Futures Report for 17th June brought to you without sponsorship, subsidy or advertising. And because there's no proprietor to upset I can say exactly what I like. I'm going to talk about more undersea cables like the ones from Norway that we heard about last week, there's news about those children suing the US government and yes, we have just had the hotte...

Anthony Day with your Sustainable Futures Report for Friday 10th June, and I'm delighted to say that it could almost be summer. Gone is last week's cold spell, plants are bursting out all over, especially weeds in our allotment garden, and my bees gave me 20kg of honey last week. Amazing when you think that I got less than that for the whole of last season and didn't get any at all until September...

Yes, it's June, but in the UK you might not think so as it's been bitterly cold in the last few days, at least in the eastern half of the country. There's no word yet, but I do expect to hear shortly that globally, May 2016 will have been the warmest May on record. Following the warmest January, February, March and April. Excuse me while I throw another log on the fire. There's a new report out th...

Yes, this week it's all about fracking as North Yorkshire County Council gives the go-ahead. A giant cruise liner leaves Southampton and leaves under a cloud. And who's flying a kite? Under water? Do you have a buy-to-let or investment property? Will it meet the new energy efficiency requirements? All this and more.  

This week I'm concentrating on skills - the skills we need to build sustainable futures. The skills James Dyson's been talking about; skills mentioned at this week's Buy Yorkshire conference and skills covered at the Sustainable Best Practice Exchange. Also in this episode some comments on Ende gelände, the Queen's speech, Hinckley C (I couldn't leave that out, could I?), the future of bees and gl...

I'm a gardener. I've often been told that there is no such thing as weed. It's just a plant in the wrong place. I'm a consumer. We're increasingly told that there is no such thing as rubbish. It's just materials in the wrong place. This week we ask whether electronic waste is the new gold-rush and comment on a new report from the Environmental Services Association. What was the carbon footprint of...

The oil price is up - and down; the £ is down. Temperatures are up in Canada to record levels for May and wildfires have broken out in Alberta, leading to the evacuation of some 80,000 residents from the town of Fort MacMurray.  In Nevada the train goes up, the train goes down. It's called advanced rail energy storage. Solar Impulse 2, the electric aeroplane, flew up from Mountain View, California...

Lords are all over the sustainability news this week. They've been signing letters to The Times, signing international agreements and commenting on decarbonisation. Other people have been flying electric planes, talking about air pollution and counting green leaves. The weather is breaking more records - Michael Flanders and Donald Swann had something to say about that - and is the oil price on th...

The sustainable futures report for the 22nd April. Yes, this is Anthony Day. Here I am again with another episode and a lot to catch up on. The Sustainable Best Practice Exchange took place last week. There's a lot to report on that and I'll include it in future episodes. To keep exchanging best practice I'm setting up the Sustainable Best Practice Mastermind group and a number of conference deleg...

This is Anthony Day with the Sustainable Futures Report for the 15th April and another opportunity to hear my interview with David Emslie of Novalux LED Ltd. This week the Sustainable Best Practice Exchange takes place - in fact it will all be over by the time you hear this. I’ll tell you about it next week, about the launch of the Sustainable Best Practice Mastermind Group and how you can get on...

Less than a week to go to the Sustainable Best Practice Exchange! Hope to see you there. sbpe.co.uk  A while ago we were talking about Peak Stuff. Now people are talking about Peak Car. What are we going to drive, or are we all going to stop driving? And how will that change where we live? This week I'm talking about the new Tesla - 300,000 people want one -  about self driving cars, and about whe...

Hello this is Anthony Day. Have you booked for the Sustainable Best Practice Exchange yet? Still some places left and bookings must close on Friday 8th April. Go to sbpe.co.uk for more information and contact me for a deal you can’t refuse.  In this latest episode of the Sustainable Futures Report; notes on fuel duty and VAT after the Chancellor’s budget. Good news from Queen Street Mill. I ask “I...

This is the Sustainable Futures Report in another week when terrorists have attacked civilians in another European capital.  We feel for those injured and bereaved in these latest attacks, and indeed for those still coming to terms with Paris and other attacks elsewhere. In the sustainable world this week: solar-powered street lights, the hottest February, sitting in the dark for an hour, di Capri...

This week, of course, is dominated by the budget, and coming on a Wednesday it telescopes my deadlines. Not helped by the fact that I’m on jury service this week and the judge won’t let me take my laptop into court. Who needs a jury anyway, when we now have the thinking power of Google’s Deep Mind? Deep thinking has been going on at the National Infrastructure Commission, thinking about tunnels un...

  Kittens? Kittens? Could this be an unscrupulous attempt to boost internet hits for the Sustainable Futures Report - even to start it trending by talking about kittens? Perish the thought. Although the photo for this episode on susbiz.biz is really cute. Mind you, the news about the Hinkley C nuclear power station just gets worse and worse so somebody’s having kittens. I’ll examine who that’s lik...

There’s a lot of different stories in the news at the moment. Al Gore’s back and he’s optimistic. Oil is making the news again in several different ways. Thames Water is floating a new idea for installing solar panels, Google has had a crash, Client Earth is suing the government, we’ve had the warmest winter since 1659 and plastic microbeads are a bigger problem than you might think.

Is Brexit sustainable? Not everyone in the Johnson family seems to think so. Now winter is over SSE is closing power stations. Fortunately Scottish Power Renewables is going to build a new and enormous wind farm, although it won’t be doing much to bridge the electricity gap before 2020. The US oil and gas industry is emitting more methane than anyone thought and the UK oil and gas industry is emit...

In this edition for Friday 19th February 2016 I’m talking about why the new nuclear power staton at Hinkley may never be built and how China is closing coal mines, but the UK is planning to open a new one. PwC is taking the circular route to sustainability - Bridget Jackson tells us how - and Maggie Smallwood is leading Biovale on a similar journey. They say the road to hell is paved with good int...

Unpacking the Paris Agreement - Is it enough to limit dangerous climate change? That’s the question that was posed at an event at Leeds University last week. At a meeting of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society this week Professor Paul Rogers of Bradford University broadened the debate to talk about Climate Change and the risk of conflict. President Obama’s commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement...