Climate change

Where are the coldest neighbourhoods?

08 Dec 2022

Narrowing down our recent identification of 9,000 energy crisis hotspots, we’ve now identified 1,000 of the coldest neighbourhoods in England and Wales. Find out how we did this, who lives there and what the solutions are.

Spreadsheet listing coldest neighbourhoods

08 Dec 2022200 kB XLSX file

A spreadsheet of the 100 coldest neighbourhoods in each English region and in Wales, based on a deeper analysis of neighbourhoods previously identified as energy crisis hotspots.

Climate threats to UK health and security show COP27 is vital

09 Nov 2022

Rishi Sunak is at the world climate talks after initially saying he’d be too busy to attend due to domestic matters. To help him get up to speed on the importance of COP27, we’ve set out the 6 big climate warnings from the week he became PM.

Councils and the energy crisis - a plan of action

22 Aug 20221.18 MB PDF file

A report by the New Economics Foundation for Friends of the Earth identifying how and council could address the energy crisis with the right support from the government, including costings.

Energy crisis hotspot spreadsheet

Toby Bridgeman22 Aug 202227 kB XLSX file

This data includes the number of energy crisis hotspots - lower than average income, higher than average energy use - by local authority area, plus data on the number of homes within these that require loft or cavity wall insulation, plus the average current energy bills for Autumn/Winter 2022 following recent policy announcements.

Why the energy crisis demands street-by-street energy saving measures

Mike Childs22 Aug 2022

Mike Childs explains why the UK needs to roll out an energy saving programme, starting with the 8,927 neighbourhoods most in need.

Why 2020-30 is a make-or-break decade for climate and nature

Paul de Zylva20 Jul 2022

We face a climate emergency and nature is in crisis – what will it take for our leaders to do the right thing?

Who suffers most from heatwaves in the UK?

13 Jul 2022

New research identifies the communities most vulnerable to the health impacts of heatwaves.

Why we need more trees in the UK

Mike Childs, Paul de Zylva and Nick Rau22 Jun 20226.52 MB PDF file

More trees are needed to cool our cities, to make farming resilient, to restore nature, and to replace the UK's imports of timber which are having a devastating impact on wildlife-rich forests overseas. Can it be done, and done fairly? And how many more trees are needed?

Is the government's levelling up plan any good?

Sandra Bell10 May 2022

The UK government has made levelling up a priority. Senior Sustainability Analyst Sandra Bell sets out 5 tests to assess the strength of the government’s approach and whether it will help the poorest communities. As the government's programme progresses, including draft legislation following the Queen’s Speech, Friends of the Earth will use these tests to report on progress.

Justice moves centre-stage in IPCC climate report

Mike Childs24 Mar 2022

Latest IPCC report shows equity and justice are essential to successful climate action

The future of heating

Mike Childs21 Feb 2022

Meeting climate targets through electric heating backed by renewably-produced hydrogen.

Is flooding in Northern Ireland getting worse?

Mike Childs11 Jan 2022

This briefing examines why so many more homes are threatened by flood water, where they are and what we can do to manage flood risk.

Environment Act won’t halt deforestation or protect human rights

Clare Oxborrow06 Jan 2022

Commodity supply chains are trashing forests and trampling human rights. Clare Oxborrow explains why the government’s new Environment Act will fail to protect communities and why it must take effective action to regulate UK companies.

The future of Drax: old, inefficient, damaging and expensive

09 Dec 2021

Drax power station in Selby, Yorkshire is old, inefficient, environmentally damaging and will need £billions of subsidies to survive. We argue it should start preparing for closure and its workers retrained for decent jobs elsewhere.