With voting in Labour’s leadership contest set to close at
midday today, why not take another look at what the candidates have
said about climate change and energy? Last month, we created a
grid, distilling the candidates’ thoughts on all the key climate
policy issues.

Oil and gas firms including BP, Chevron, Shell and ExxonMobil have
been lobbying EU leaders to scrap a series of environmental safety
measures for fracking – and the UK government is in support, says
the Guardian. In letters seen by the paper, the companies caution
that the measures would “seriously exacerbate an already ailing
investment climate for producing oil and gas within Europe”.
According to the paper, UK government sources say that any new form
of industry controls would be “an unnecessary restriction on the UK
oil and gas industry”. Elsewhere, former Friends of the Earth’s
climate campaigner, now Labour shadow energy minister, Bryony
Worthington, tells the

European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, has called for
an ambitious climate deal in Paris in December, and warned rising
temperatures could worsen the migrant crisis Europe is currently
facing. In his State of the Union speech, Juncker said Europe’s
priority is to adopt a robust and binding global deal,
reports

Oil and gas companies could be forced to pay millions of pounds to
help combat climate change under a “polluter pays” plan debated in
Britain’s Parliament, reports the FT. Under an amendment put
forward to an energy bill before the House of Lords, companies that
import or extract oil and gas in the UK would have to pay for a
portion of their fuels’ carbon dioxide content to be stored
underground. Peers backing the measure say it would revive
faltering efforts to develop a carbon capture and storage (CCS)
industry in the North Sea, but the industry trade group Oil &
Gas UK says it could harm North Sea operators. The amendment was
debated on Wednesday but the energy bill will not go to a vote
until October. Meanwhile, the

Falling oil prices could lead to 140 fields in the North Sea being
decommissioned over the next five years, a leading energy
consultancy has warned. Wood MacKenzie said that field closures
could go ahead even if oil prices return to $85 per barrel, from
their current price of around $49. But even a partial recovery to
around $70 a barrel would leave 50 oil fields facing the chop.
Meanwhile

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has defended his country’s
climate change policy during a regional summit in Papua New Guinea.
Australia’s planned cuts to greenhouse gas emissions have been
widely criticised for lagging behind other advanced economies.
“Unlike some other countries, which make these pledges and don’t
deliver, Australia does deliver when we make a pledge,” Abbott
said, adding that leaders of low-lying Pacific island nations
should be “be reassured by the seriousness with which Australia is
approaching this issue.”

There is a case for including nuclear in the UK’s energy
mix, but Hinkley Point in south-west England comes at a heavy cost,
says an FT editorial. To ensure that Hinkley Point is built,
ministers have guaranteed a price of £92.50 per megawatt hour for
35 years – more than twice the current market rate. It is also
higher than for every renewable source, except for offshore wind.
But the deal is not quite done, the FT notes, and while backing out
of Hinkley Point might “upset the French and embarrass the
government”, this may well be a better option than “saddling the
country with costs it cannot afford”.

Few technologies have had so much money thrown at them for
so many years by so many governments and companies as carbon
capture and storage (CCS), with such feeble results, says Pilita
Clark in the FT. Clark visits the site of a potential a CCS plant
next to Drax power station in North Yorkshire to find out why “no
one is holding their breath” on whether it will go ahead. On paper,
CCS looks simple enough, says Clark, and the scientific case is
compelling, “but the big question is: who is going to pick up the
bill?”

Strategies for adaptation and mitigation have generally been
treated separately in climate policy. But when it comes to
forestry, agriculture and land management, they can have
interacting effects. A new study reviews evidence in the scientific
literature about the opportunities, trade offs and possible
unintended side effects of considering adaptation and migration
policies together.

Gross domestic product (GDP) has come to define more than
just a country’s income, and now is the benchmark by which the
global pecking order is defined, according to a new study. But the
convergence of a socioeconomic, energy and environmental crisis
means policymakers are beginning to recognise its inadequacy as a
measure of economic success. The authors look at how, as new
indicators emerge and countries move past GDP, we may witness a
shift to a new world order, in which more equitable and sustainable
economies will play a leading role.