Gwynt y Mor, the world’s 2nd largest offshore wind farm located eight miles offshore in Liverpool Bay, off the coast of North Wales
NEW public cash for green energy may be a “step in the right direction” but is “nowhere near enough” to meet the government’s own jobs and manufacturing targets, unions warned today.
The rebuke came as Energy Secretary Ed Miliband invited applications to the £200 million Clean Energy Bonus scheme, offering financial support for green developers on condition they funnel investments and jobs into into areas suffering from deprivation or reliant on the fossil fuel sector.
The government had set targets to boost domestic production in the green supply chain by 60 per cent by 2030, hoping to create 35,000 jobs in areas essential to a transition from fossil fuels, which are often reliant on imports such as wind blades and transmission cables.
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TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “We should be making the towers, foundation and cables for zero carbon energy here – instead of paying other countries and importing them.
“The Clean Industry Bonus is an essential step in this direction. It will help the North Sea workforce find good quality, secure jobs and boost UK industry.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer (not seen) during a visit to Elective Orthopaedic Centre in Epsom, Surrey, January 6, 2025
BACKING private finance in the NHS should be a red line for any health secretary, campaigners charged today.
NHS England chief Amanda Pritchard told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme last week that the government should “consider” using private capital to fix the NHS’s crumbling infrastructure.
Today, Health Secretary Wes Streeting faced questions on the same programme about a potential return to failed private-finance initiative (PFI) schemes, in which private firms built hospitals and high-interest repayments were made over the long term.
Mr Streeting said that he does not pretend there are not “enormous challenges” because of NHS capital shortfall, and is “very sympathetic to the argument that we should try and leverage in private finance.”
But he admitted that many of the PFI deals “did lumber the NHS with an enormous cost that it continues to bear.”
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Johnbosco Nwogbo, of campaign group We Own It, said: “Support for more private finance in our NHS should disqualify you from being health secretary.
“Many NHS trusts are still spending more on PFI debts than on medicines for patients.
Protests against the Rosebank oilfield in Edinburgh in 2024. Labour pledged in its manifesto to halt new North Sea licensing, but Rosebank was awaiting final approval when the party won the general election. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
Lobbyists argued it was unfair for their industry to be treated the same as others as end product – oil and gas – inevitably produced emissions
Experts have accused the fossil fuel industry of seeking special treatment after lobbyists argued greenhouse gas emissions from oilfields should be treated differently to those from other industries.
The government is embroiled in a row over whether to allow a massive new oilfield, Rosebank, to go ahead, with some cabinet members arguing it could boost growth and others concerned it could make the goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 impossible to reach. Labour made a manifesto commitment to halt new North Sea licensing, but Rosebank and some other projects had already been licensed and were awaiting final approval when the party won the general election.
Documents seen by the Guardian show the industry group Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) asking for Rosebank and other oilfields’ “scope three emissions” – those caused by the burning of extracted oil and gas – to be treated differently because that was the point of their business.
A court case recently found the licence granted to Rosebank by the previous government was unlawful as it failed to take these emissions into account.
The illegal Israeli settlement of Efrat is seen in this March 30, 2024 photo. (Photo: Wisam Hashlamoun/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“The Netanyahu government is operating on steroids to establish facts on the ground that will destroy the chance for peace and compromise,” said one group.
Israeli authorities are planning to expand a Jewish-only settlement in the West Bank by nearly 1,000 homes, a Tel Aviv-based peace group said Sunday as Israeli soldiers and settlers escalated attacks on Palestinians in the illegally occupied territory.
Peace Now said Israel’s Civil Administration has issued a new tender for the construction of 974 new housing units in Efrat, a Jewish-only colony located about 7.5 miles south of Jerusalem between Bethlehem and Hebron. The planned expansion will increase Efrat’s population of approximately 11,800 residents by 40% and geographically isolate Palestinian communities in the southern West Bank.
Emboldened by U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to power, far-right members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet have vowed to annex the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967 in violation of international law.
On Sunday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that “the goal for 2025 is to demolish more than the Palestinians build in the West Bank,” according to Al Jazeera. This, following the largest Israeli seizure of Palestinian land in the West Bank in decades last year.
“The Netanyahu government is operating on steroids to establish facts on the ground that will destroy the chance for peace and compromise,” said Peace Now, referring to the longtime Israeli practice of violating international law by colonizing and annexing Palestinian land to establish what one legal scholar has described as “de facto possession with the aim of attaining de jure possession.”
Peace Now continued: “It is now clear that military action alone will not bring a solution to the conflict or security to Israel, and that ultimately we will have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians. The Netanyahu government is harming Israeli interests and torpedoing the only solution that can bring us security and peace.”
In the United States, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a statement Monday that “the ongoing de facto annexation of the illegally occupied West Bank through the expansion of racially segregated illegal settlements is just one aspect of the far-right Israeli government’s ethnic cleansing of the entirety of historic Palestine and of its relentless efforts to block justice for the Palestinian people.”
Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at the Israel-based peace group Ir Amim, told Al Jazeera that “since the start of 2025, Israeli authorities have demolished 27 structures in East Jerusalem, including 18 residential units, in what appears to be a systematic effort to remove Palestinians from their homes while simultaneously expanding Israeli settlements.”
The Israeli settlement population has increased exponentially from around 1,500 colonists in 1970 to roughly 140,000 at the time of the Oslo Accords in 1993—under which Israel agreed to halt new settlement activity—to more than 500,000 today. Last July, the International Court of Justice, which is also weighing a genocide case concerning Israel’s annihilation of the Gaza Strip, said that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is an illegal form of apartheid that must end “as rapidly as possible.”
News of the Efrat expansion came as Israeli soldiers and settlers escalated attacks on Palestinians across the West Bank over the weekend. Occupation forces carried out raids in the towns of al-Issawiya and Salfit, near East Jerusalem, as well as the village of Nabi Saleh near Ramallah. Israeli troops also continued their siege and assault on Jenin and the Nur Shams refugee camp, where two young women, one of them pregnant, were shot dead last week.
Armed Israeli settlers from the Mikne Avraham colony also invaded al-Minya, south of Bethlehem, wounding 16 Palestinians including a pregnant woman who was attacked with clubs and rocks, according toMiddle East Eye. The Israeli newspaper Haaretzreported Saturday that settlers sicced dogs on al-Minya residents, wounding two people.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed 876 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel.
Since launching “Operation Iron Wall” on January 21, Israeli forces have killed at least 53 Palestinians across the West Bank. The Israeli offensive has forced around 40,000 people from their homes in what experts say is the largest displacement in the West Bank since more than 200,000 Palestinians were expelled during the 1967 conquest and occupation.
