August 2022
Dear Friends,
The environmentalist Bill McKibben has said that when it comes to the climate crisis, winning slowly is losing. Never has that been clearer than this summer. We’ve seen record heatwaves in Europe, an area one-fifth the size of Belgium burned by wildfires and incredible price increases in fossil gas that could leave nearly two-thirds of the UK in fuel poverty. Most of this is down to our failure to transition quickly to renewable energy and stand up to the fossil fuel industry.
With predictions that energy prices are set to nearly triple by early next year, Dr Simon Evans of Carbon Brief has written a thorough explanation of what’s happening. In summary, an 11-fold increase in UK wholesale gas prices since 2019 is behind 96% of the increase in household energy bills. And that increase is being felt especially acutely in the UK given that 85% of UK households use gas boilers, with 40% of our electricity generated in gas-fired power stations.
The good news is UK renewable energy is now nine times cheaper than gas, can be deployed at scale and will eventually displace fossil fuels as our primary way of generating energy. The bad news is that people need help with their energy bills now, as do churches and other places of worship. This autumn, let us use these interlocking crises – the cost of living crisis, the energy crisis and the climate crisis – to work for a more just world, one in which the Church plays a leading role in advocating for cheap, clean energy that protects our planet and each other.
The Operation Noah Team
