Renewable Energy

The US president has made the easily debunked claim that there are no wind farms in China

Fossil fuel price surge after US-Israeli attacks on Iran prompts calls to end dependence on ‘volatile’ energy source

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

The UK government must double down on its clean energy drive to protect bill payers from increasingly volatile fossil fuel markets in the wake of the US-Israel war on Iran, climate groups, academics and energy experts have warned.

Research published on Thursday shows that the last fossil fuel energy crisis, caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, cost the EU and the UK $1.8tn between 2022 and 2025, driving up bills and fuelling a devastating cost of living crisis.

The conflict in the Middle East has sent energy prices soaring, and for countries that import a high proportion of their fuel, it’s a reminder of the perils of energy dependence. As the recipient of almost 90% of Iran’s crude oil, China knows this only too well. Which partly explains why the country spent the last decade heavily investing in clean power.

To find out what else could be driving the strategy, Madeleine Finlay speaks to senior China correspondent Amy Hawkins.

And energy correspondent Jillian Ambrose reflects on how China’s ambitions could affect the rest of the world

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From the Chagos Islands to ‘windmills’ and sharia law, the US president’s comments do not bear much scrutiny

Donald Trump has been opining about the UK again, saying on Tuesday that Keir Starmer was “not Winston Churchill” and repeating his complaint about the deal to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Here are some recent things the US president has said about British issues, and how they compare with reality.

For months it has been adding to my mother’s distress when all she wanted was feed-in tariff payments go into her account

When my father died last year, nearly all the companies we had to notify were kind and empathetic, but not ScottishPower.

It had been paying feed-in tariff (Fit) payments for electricity produced from my parents’ solar panels into his account. My parents had bought the panels jointly in 2011, and my mother is named on the certification and was ScottishPower’s main point of contact, so she thought it would be a simple matter for the payments to be switched to her bank account. It was not.