Infrastructure

2021 ◽  
pp. 255-284
Author(s):  
Alex Brummer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Interest Rate ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Suspension Bridge ◽  
Digital Transformation ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Rate Environment ◽  
The Uk

This chapter looks at the priority projects, the climate change agenda, and the low interest rate environment that constitute a big step forward for UK. It illustrates the UK as a country where Conservative and Labour parties after a decade of austerity agree that the UK needs to invest for the future. It also discusses the priorities of digital transformation and a lower carbon Britain outside the EU that look even more desirable after the Covid-19 experience. The chapter highlights Britain as the master of capital investment in the Victorian era as much of the infrastructure for creating the railways, the Clifton Suspension Bridge and the Bazalgette sewage system in London was designed and built in that period. It points out how long-term investment for the greater public good is not something that the UK has excelled at in more modern times.

Auswirkungen der anhaltenden Niedrigzinsen auf das Versicherungswesen

2015 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rolf Ketzler ◽  
Peter Schwark
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Interest Rate ◽  
Interest Rates ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Investment Strategy ◽  
Economic Point ◽  
Life Insurers ◽  
Low Interest Rates ◽  
Rate Environment

AbstractThe very accommodative monetary policy of the ECB and the related extremely low interest rates are involved with major challenges for the German insurance sector, in particular for life insurers. As long-term investors, insurers are not only affected in their capital investment strategy, but also by different households’ retirement saving patterns in response to the low interest rate environment. Several significant steps have already been taken in order to ensure the long-term viability of life insurance. These include changes in the product portfolio as well as new approaches in the investment strategy. In addition, new regulatory requirements have been established to strengthen the risk bearing capacity of life insurers. Given the substantial risks of low interest rates, from an economic point of view the question concerning an appropriate exit from the low interest rate environment needs more attention in the public debate. In this context, further progress regarding the economic reform policies in the euro zone is still necessary as a condition for the ECB to normalize its monetary policy as soon as possible.

Many Happy Returns? Investment Governance and the Political Economy of Time in UK Pensions Provision

2021 ◽  
pp. 209-246
Author(s):  
Craig Berry
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Pension Funds ◽  
The Political ◽  
Private Pensions ◽  
Pension Schemes ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Uk

We are increasingly conscious that private pension schemes in the UK are primarily financial institutions. UK private pensions provision has always been highly financialized, but the individualization of provision means this dynamic matters more than ever to retirement incomes. Furthermore, individualization has occurred at a time when the UK economy’s capacity to support a long-term approach to capital investment, upon which pensions depend, has declined. The chapter argues that pensions provision essentially involves managing the failure of the future to resemble the present, or more specifically present forecasts of the future. As our ability to manipulate the value of the future has increased, our ability to tolerate forecast failure has declined. The chapter details how pension funds invest, and how this has changed, and provides an original understanding of several recent attempts to shape pensions investment, ultimately demonstrating the limitations of pensions policy in shaping how provision functions in practice.

18. Climate Change Law

2019 ◽  
pp. 599-639
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Fisher ◽  
Bettina Lange ◽  
Eloise Scotford
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Mitigation ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Trading Scheme ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Eu

This chapter examines the fast-moving area of law relating to climate change. This includes a considerable body of public international law, from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to the legally innovative Paris Agreement 2015. The chapter also considers legal developments at the EU and UK levels, which both contain a rich body of climate law and policy. The EU and the UK are both seen as ‘world leaders’ in climate law and policy. In EU law, this is due to the EU greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme and the EU’s leadership in advocating ambitious greenhouse gas mitigation targets and in implementing these targets flexibly across the EU Member States through a range of regulatory mechanisms. The UK introduced path-breaking climate legislation in the Climate Change Act 2008, which provided an inspiring model of climate governance, legally entrenching long-term planning for both mitigation and adaptation. The chapter concludes with an exploration of climate litigation, a new and growing field of inquiry.

scholarly journals Energy efficiency, resilience to future climates and long-term sustainability: the role of the built environment

2010 ◽  
Vol 368 (1914) ◽  
pp. 1083-1089 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. J. Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Energy Security ◽  
Sustainable Consumption ◽  
Existing Buildings ◽  
The Uk

Just under half of all energy consumption in the UK today takes place indoors, and over a quarter within our homes. The challenges associated with energy security, climate change and sustainable consumption will be overcome or lost in our existing buildings. A background analysis, and the scale of the engineering challenge for the next three to four decades, is described in this paper.

scholarly journals Public health air pollution impacts of pathway options to meet the 2050 UK Climate Change Act target: a modelling study

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (7) ◽  
pp. 1-124
Author(s):  
Martin L Williams ◽  
Sean Beevers ◽  
Nutthida Kitwiroon ◽  
David Dajnak ◽  
Heather Walton ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
Air Pollution ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Road Transport ◽  
Air Pollutant ◽  
Life Years ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

BackgroundThe UK’sClimate Change Act 2008(CCA; Great Britain.Climate Change Act 2008. Chapter 27. London: The Stationery Office; 2008) requires a reduction of 80% in carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions by 2050 on a 1990 base. This project quantified the impact of air pollution on health from four scenarios involving particulate matter of ≤ 2.5 µm (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3). Two scenarios met the CCA target: one with limited nuclear power build (nuclear replacement option; NRPO) and one with no policy constraint on nuclear (low greenhouse gas). Another scenario envisaged no further climate actions beyond those already agreed (‘baseline’) and the fourth kept 2011 concentrations constant to 2050 (‘2011’).MethodsThe UK Integrated MARKAL–EFOM System (UKTM) energy system model was used to develop the scenarios and produce projections of fuel use; these were used to produce air pollutant emission inventories for Great Britain (GB) for each scenario. The inventories were then used to run the Community Multiscale Air Quality model ‘air pollution model’ to generate air pollutant concentration maps across GB, which then, combined with relationships between concentrations and health outcomes, were used to calculate the impact on health from the air pollution emitted in each scenario. This is a significant improvement on previous health impact studies of climate policies, which have relied on emissions changes. Inequalities in exposure in different socioeconomic groups were also calculated, as was the economic impact of the pollution emissions.ResultsConcentrations of NO2declined significantly because of a high degree of electrification of the GB road transport fleet, although the NRPO scenario shows large increases in oxides of nitrogen emissions from combined heat and power (CHP) sources. Concentrations of PM2.5show a modest decrease by 2050, which would have been larger if it had not been for a significant increase in biomass (wood burning) use in the two CCA scenarios peaking in 2035. The metric quantifying long-term exposure to O3is projected to decrease, while the important short-term O3exposure metric increases. Large projected increases in future GB vehicle kilometres lead to increased non-exhaust PM2.5and particulate matter of ≤ 10 µm emissions. The two scenarios which achieve the CCA target resulted in more life-years lost from long-term exposures to PM2.5than in the baseline scenario. This is an opportunity lost and arises largely from the increase in biomass use, which is projected to peak in 2035. Reduced long-term exposures to NO2lead to many more life-years saved in the ‘CCA-compliant’ scenarios, but the association used may overestimate the effects of NO2itself. The more deprived populations are estimated currently to be exposed to higher concentrations than those less deprived, the contrast being largest for NO2. Despite reductions in concentrations in 2050, the most socioeconomically deprived are still exposed to higher concentrations than the less deprived.LimitationsModelling of the atmosphere is always uncertain; we have shown the model to be acceptable through comparison with observations. The necessary complexity of the modelling system has meant that only a small number of scenarios were run.ConclusionsWe have established a system which can be used to explore a wider range of climate policy scenarios, including more European and global scenarios as well as local measures. Future work could explore wood burning in more detail, in terms of the sectors in which it might be burned and the spatial distribution of this across the UK. Further analyses of options for CHP could also be explored. Non-exhaust emissions from road transport are an important source of particles and emission factors are uncertain. Further research on this area coupled with our modelling would be a valuable area of research.FundingThe National Institute for Health Research Public Health Research programme.

scholarly journals Evidence of a recent decline in UK emissions of hydrofluorocarbons determined by the InTEM inverse model and atmospheric measurements

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (16) ◽  
pp. 12739-12755
Author(s):  
Alistair J. Manning ◽  
Alison L. Redington ◽  
Daniel Say ◽  
Simon O'Doherty ◽  
Dickon Young ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Inverse Modelling ◽  
Atmospheric Measurements ◽  
Annual Increase ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Inventories ◽  
Hfc 134A ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Global Growth

Abstract. National greenhouse gas inventories (GHGIs) are submitted annually to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). They are estimated in compliance with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) methodological guidance using activity data, emission factors and facility-level measurements. For some sources, the outputs from these calculations are very uncertain. Inverse modelling techniques that use high-quality, long-term measurements of atmospheric gases have been developed to provide independent verification of national GHGIs. This is considered good practice by the IPCC as it helps national inventory compilers to verify reported emissions and to reduce emission uncertainty. Emission estimates from the InTEM (Inversion Technique for Emission Modelling) model are presented for the UK for the hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) reported to the UNFCCC (HFC-125, HFC-134a, HFC-143a, HFC-152a, HFC-23, HFC-32, HFC-227ea, HFC-245fa, HFC-43-10mee and HFC-365mfc). These HFCs have high global warming potentials (GWPs), and the global background mole fractions of all but two are increasing, thus highlighting their relevance to the climate and a need for increasing the accuracy of emission estimation for regulatory purposes. This study presents evidence that the long-term annual increase in growth of HFC-134a has stopped and is now decreasing. For HFC-32 there is an early indication, its rapid global growth period has ended, and there is evidence that the annual increase in global growth for HFC-125 has slowed from 2018. The inverse modelling results indicate that the UK implementation of European Union regulation of HFC emissions has been successful in initiating a decline in UK emissions from 2018. Comparison of the total InTEM UK HFC emissions in 2020 with the average from 2009–2012 shows a drop of 35 %, indicating progress toward the target of a 79 % decrease in sales by 2030. The total InTEM HFC emission estimates (2008–2018) are on average 73 (62–83) % of, or 4.3 (2.7–5.9) Tg CO2-eq yr−1 lower than, the total HFC emission estimates from the UK GHGI. There are also significant discrepancies between the two estimates for the individual HFCs.

International carbon transition debates to intensify

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Coal Production ◽  
International Labour Organisation ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Carbon Neutrality ◽  
Developed Economies ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Eu

Subject Carbon transitions. Significance The EU in May failed to reach an agreement on how to achieve a long-term strategy on reducing carbon emissions. One of the issues underlying the persistent differences among member states was the question of how to achieve a ‘just transition’. This is becoming an increasingly significant element of national and international debates on tackling climate change. Impacts The International Labour Organisation believes a transition limiting heat rises to 2 degrees by 2030 would create 24 million jobs globally. Global coal production may stabilise as reductions in developed economies are offset by increases in Asia. The UK Treasury estimates that achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 will cost 1 trillion pounds (1.26 trillion dollars).

scholarly journals Ocean acidification and rising temperatures may increase biofilm primary productivity but decrease grazer consumption

2013 ◽  
Vol 368 (1627) ◽  
pp. 20120438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bayden D. Russell ◽  
Sean D. Connell ◽  
Helen S. Findlay ◽  
Karen Tait ◽  
Stephen Widdicombe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Primary Productivity ◽  
Interactive Effects ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Metabolic Theory ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Ecosystem Responses ◽  
Artificial Environment ◽  
The Uk

Climate change may cause ecosystems to become trophically restructured as a result of primary producers and consumers responding differently to increasing CO 2 and temperature. This study used an integrative approach using a controlled microcosm experiment to investigate the combined effects of CO 2 and temperature on key components of the intertidal system in the UK, biofilms and their consumers ( Littorina littorea ). In addition, to identify whether pre-exposure to experimental conditions can alter experimental outcomes we explicitly tested for differential effects on L. littorea pre-exposed to experimental conditions for two weeks and five months. In contrast to predictions based on metabolic theory, the combination of elevated temperature and CO 2 over a five-week period caused a decrease in the amount of primary productivity consumed by grazers, while the abundance of biofilms increased. However, long-term pre-exposure to experimental conditions (five months) altered this effect, with grazing rates in these animals being greater than in animals exposed only for two weeks. We suggest that the structure of future ecosystems may not be predictable using short-term laboratory experiments alone owing to potentially confounding effects of exposure time and effects of being held in an artificial environment over prolonged time periods. A combination of laboratory (physiology responses) and large, long-term experiments (ecosystem responses) may therefore be necessary to adequately predict the complex and interactive effects of climate change as organisms may acclimate to conditions over the longer term.

Auswirkungen der anhaltenden Niedrigzinsen auf das Versicherungswesen

2015 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Interest Rate ◽  
Interest Rates ◽  
Life Insurance ◽  
Insurance Industry ◽  
Life Insurers ◽  
Life Insurance Industry ◽  
Low Interest Rates ◽  
Rate Environment ◽  
German Life

AbstractHelmut Gründl discusses in his paper the effects of the present low interest rate environment on the German life insurance industry. By referring to a recent study of the “International Center for Insurance Regulation”, he assesses insolvency probabilities for life insurers with different capital endowments under different interest rate scenarios. Based on that, he discusses measures of insurance regulation that try to cope with the imminent problems of the life insurance industry. Finally, he has a look at product developments and investment strategies of life insurers in the presence of low interest rates. Hereby, he argues, that life insurance products with lower investment guarantees that are granted for a shorter period of time are regarded as the best remedy to avoid low interest rate problems in the future. Such product development also allows for a more risky investment policy of life insurers that can make life and annuity products more attractive.Rolf Ketzler und Peter Schwark explicate that the very accommodative monetary policy of the ECB and the related extremely low interest rates are involved with major challenges for the German insurance sector, in particular for life insurers. As long-term investors, insurers are not only affected in their capital investment strategy, but also by different households’ retirement saving patterns in response to the low interest rate environment. Several significant steps have already been taken in order to ensure the long-term viability of life insurance. These include changes in the product portfolio as well as new approaches in the investment strategy. In addition, new regulatory requirements have been established to strengthen the risk bearing capacity of life insurers. Given the substantial risks of low interest rates, from an economic point of view the question concerning an appropriate exit from the low interest rate environment needs more attention in the public debate. They argue that in this context, further progress regarding the economic reform policies in the euro zone is still necessary as a condition for the ECB to normalize its monetary policy as soon as possible.Focusing the perspective of German life insurance industry, the article of Heinrich Schradin starts with a brief description and discussion of the financial impact of the persistently low interest rate environment. Based on an empirical data set of German life insurers, the author illustrates actual limitations to generate sufficient investment income for to meet the given specific financial guarantees. Moreover, the core problem, caused by the use of volatile timing-related interest rates for to evaluate long-term cash flows, becomes obvious. The currently observed regulatory interventions are trying to overcome the existential consequences of the so-called fair value measurement. In consequence, the author derives four central theses:1. Life insurance in Germany suffers from insufficient capital adequacy.2. Persistent low interest rates threaten the fulfillment of financial guaranty commitments of German life insurers.3. The generally accepted principals of economic evaluation do not satisfy to the traditional business model of German life insurers.4. Under a business perspective, the development of new life insurance products is inevitable.

Community Opposition and Public Engagement with Wind Energy in the UK

2011 ◽  
pp. 310-327
Author(s):  
Matthew Cotton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Wind Energy ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Wind Farm ◽  
Electricity Supply ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mitigate Climate Change ◽  
The Uk

In the UK, wind energy is an important component of a renewable energy strategy designed to mitigate climate change and secure long term electricity supply. However, wind developments are exceedingly controversial amongst locally affected citizens. This chapter focuses upon the socio-political aspects of wind farm siting in the UK, examining the issues of Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) protest, the attitudes of developers towards ‘the public’, and the policy and practice of public engagement in wind siting decisions in light of recent changes to the domestic planning legislation for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects.

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