Good news in 2025

It's nice to end the year on a positive note. Despite my ongoing brain function issues my main concern remains climate change and the clean energy transition. Every little helps but the big changes help more. So I have collated some news which shows progress we have made this year. 

GHG emissions from electricity continues to drop 

Firstly, Electricity carbon emissions intensity in the UK continue to drop. This was posted by Circular Ecology in June this year.

https://datadashboard.mcscertified.com/InstallationInsights

Ending the ECO will reduce the electricity/gas price ratio 

Unfortunately, the electricity/gas price ratio (also called the spark gap), which dropped during the energy crisis has begun to climb again. This ratio is important because when it is low it encourages greater use of electricity which has lower GHG emissions than gas. While electricity has low emissions, it means that switching to electricity reduces our emissions even with no other change. However, according to NESTA at least, the electricity price relative to gas is now climbing again. Fortunately this is due to policy costs on electricity which is something that the government is doing something about. They ran a consultation during the year and the upshot is that at least one of the substantial policy costs - the Energy Companies Obligation - is going to end in March next year. This was announced in the budget. Apparently even though the ECO is supposed to help households with large energy bills (mainly by supporting efficiency measures) overall it cost households more than it saved. 

Installations of ASHP have been growing steadily since about 2020.

This is primarily due to the Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS).

https://datadashboard.mcscertified.com/InstallationInsights 

ASHP installations 2018-2025

The BUS now includes air to air heat pumps and heat batteries.

Air to air heat pumps can provide cooling as well as heating and heat batteries such as Tepeo can use cheap time electricty. These options give more flexibility to households while still using low emissions electricity instead of gas. Granted the BUS is only £2,500 for each of these technologies but this is not unreasonable given the price of the technology,

New variant of wheat (MOV = multi-ovary) could triple yields.

Crop yields are threatened by extreme weather. However this impact could be partly offset by gene editing to triple the number of wheat grains per floret. So far scientists have identified the gene involved, which is normally dormant. If it can be switched it on then yields could be substantially increased, though there will doubtless be other constraints on growth.

Playing with mud increases our inner biodiversity and strengthens our immune system. 

When I was a kid I was told not to dig in the garden with my bare hands but it turns out this may have been bad advice because getting our hands dirty can improve the biodiversity of our guts and our resistance to disease, including auto immune diseases. My neurosarcoidosis is an auto immune disease and I also suffer from another three: eczema, ulcerative colitis (currently in remission) and coeliac syndrome. However, according to recent work in Finland measures as simple as mixing garden soil into a sand pit can be beneficial. I wish my parents had known this.