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.
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.
Tackling climate breakdown – how do government strategies measure up?
Mike Childs16 Nov 2021
In the run-up to and at the climate talks at COP26, there was an avalanche of pledges, promises and strategies – but do they add up? Mike Childs, Head of Science, Policy & Research, gives his verdict.