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Analysis reveals big regional disparities as critics say Labour’s proposed levy could slow uptake of EVs
Drivers in the south-west of England would pay nearly four times as much as those in London as a result of Labour’s mileage-based tax on electric cars, according to analysis of official data.
The 3p-a-mile road charge, announced in the autumn budget and due to take effect in 2028, is expected to raise £1.1bn a year, partly offsetting the loss of fuel duty revenues as drivers switch from petrol to electric vehicles.
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The fight for Hope Moor is set to be repeated across the UK as the government aims to hit its renewable energy targets
Instead of a slingshot, the Davids are brandishing a sculpture and a coffee table book. Their Goliaths are a Norwegian energy company and a UK energy secretary with renewable targets to meet.
A fierce battle has begun over one of England’s tallest windfarms, proposed for deep peat moorland overlooking the Yorkshire Dales national park, in what residents say will mark the irrevocable industrialisation of their rural landscape.
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Frome, Somerset: As the large raptor squirms and uses its wings to try to balance on a precarious perch, I find my own arms lifting in solidarity
Six, seven, eight, nine long‑tailed tits are on a foraging flit through hawthorn bushes, and the straggler drops obligingly on to a berry‑stacked twig before my eyes. Its tail works like the hand of a clock as the clinging bird jiggle‑jumps through a full 360-degree rotation, beak pecking for who knows what. The twig is unmoved by such exertions, for the bird weighs the equivalent of seven paperclips. What must it be like to inhabit the insubstantial ghost‑world of a long‑tailed tit, where you can leap and land all you like with no discernible impact?
Ahead and above, a bird 100 times its weight is weightless in the sky. The soaring buzzard masters gravity with its “fingertips” – the deeply separated primary feather tips on the wings. I cannot see the little flicks and tilts that enable it to descend in controlled steps; drop and hold, drop and hold.
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Images confirm xAI is continuing to defy EPA regulations in Mississippi to power its flagship datacenters
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is continuing to fuel its datacenters with unpermitted gas turbines, an investigation by the Floodlight newsroom shows. Thermal footage captured by Floodlight via drone shows xAI is still burning gas at a facility in Southaven, Mississippi, despite a recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruling reiterating that doing so requires a state permit in advance.
State regulators in Mississippi maintain that since the turbines are parked on tractor trailers, they don’t require permits. However, the EPA has long maintained that such pollution sources require permits under the Clean Air Act.
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Project in Ceredigion aims to help country catch up with large-scale nature recovery projects elsewhere in UK
A Welsh charity has bought more than 480 hectares (1,195 acres) in Ceredigion to establish Cymru’s “flagship” rewilding project, helping the country catch up with large-scale nature recovery projects under way elsewhere in the UK.
Tir Natur (Nature’s Land), founded in 2022, announced it had acquired the site at Cwm Doethie in Elenydd, or the Cambrian mountains, after a fundraising drive launched last year raised 50% of the £2.2m purchase price. A philanthropic bridging loan enabled the sale.
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Exclusive: High levels of banned ‘forever chemical’ have been detected in rivers and groundwater at 25 sites
A string of toxic pollution hotspots has been uncovered across Cumbria and Lancashire, with high levels of the banned cancer-causing “forever chemical” Pfos detected in rivers and groundwater at 25 sites.
The contamination, spread across a large area, was uncovered by Watershed Investigations and the Guardian after a freedom of information request revealed high concentrations of Pfos in Environment Agency samples taken in January 2025.
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Senators said repeal was ‘particularly troubling’ and was counter to EPA’s mandate to protect human health
More than three dozen Democratic senators have begun an independent inquiry into the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) following a huge change in how the agency measures the health benefits of reducing air pollution that is widely seen as a major setback to US efforts to combat the climate crisis.
In a regulatory impact analysis, the EPA said it would stop assigning a monetary value to the health benefits associated with regulations on fine particulate matter and ozone. The agency argued that the estimates contain too much uncertainty.
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The charger firm claimed the site operated 24 hours a day, but the parking operator had different ideas
I charged my electric car at the 24-hour Mer EVcharging station in my local B&Q car park.
I then received a £100 parking charge notice (PCN) from the car park operator, Ocean Parking. It said no parking is allowed on the site between 9pm and6am.
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Some districts are adding programs in clean energy and sustainability, while one state is infusing environmental lessons into culinary education and construction
On one end of the classroom, high school juniors examined little green sprouts – future baby carrots, sprigs of romaine lettuce – poking out of the soil of a drip irrigation system they built a few weeks prior.
On the opposite end of the room, a model of a hydropower plant showed students how the movement of water can stimulate electrical currents. In this class in South Carolina’s Greenville county school district, students primarily learn about one topic: renewable energy.
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Wild gardening is about shedding obsessions with tidiness, embracing a looser aesthetic and providing a home for ‘the most important creatures on the planet’
On a wintry January day in Manchester, I crossed University Green, navigating a paved path behind our hotel through lush patches of lawn. It was the start of the inaugural “Wilding Gardens” conference. For two days, scientists and practitioners were gathering to discuss new ways to think about gardens and nature, about what nature needs to thrive, and the untapped potential of gardens – if we step back and allow ecological processes to unfold – to help counter climate change and biodiversity loss.
Clumps of snowdrop flowers poked through the unmown grass and a grey squirrel streaked across it, from one bare-branched tree to another. Probably common alders, going by the University of Manchester Tree Trail. The world’s first industrial city seemed an apt venue for a talkfest on the urgency of rewilding suburban gardens to help save the planet from precisely what drew Marx and Engels there to study, 180 years ago: the impacts of industrialisation.
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