Do the dizzying array of big numbers in the new Defence Investment Plan stack up? Unfortunately this isn’t a simple question 🧵 www.gov.uk/government/p...

It's undersold how important the ZEV mandate is for consumers, so big disappointment to see target for 2030 go down to 50% from 80% - a massive reduction. This will see British drivers paying more for their cars, both to run and to buy.

The new EHRC guidance is a joke. It defines the protected category of sex by biology and then relies on enforcement based on appearance. The GRC has effectively been nullified. It's involuntary disclosure carries criminal penalties but then requires Anyone having a GRC to constantly out themselves.

An unsung hero here is the ZEV mandate, which is pushing down on prices with discounts and big incentives for manufacturers to give EVs mass appeal. Shame we can't muster the same ambition for heat pump regs - MCS show HPs are still rising in price!

England's first Land Use Framework is finally here. It's been a long time coming and there's a lot to welcome. But when it comes do decarbonising land it leaves lots of the trickiest details - on how to not just inform land use decisions but shape them - to future work www.gov.uk/government/p...

New work from us - we shouldn't waste the time we've been given to prepare for winter and get a proper social tariff sorted

💡 New @resolutionfoundation.org note on energy bills out over the weekend 💡 2026 energy bills are on track to be more than £200 lower, in real terms, than in 2024 – overwhelmingly driven by the Government’s discount kicking in this April. www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

🧵 New research on decarbonising UK farms and what it means for living standards. The good news is decarbonisation should be manageable and won't cost the world - but it'll still be hard, as farming's in a fragile situation. Here's what we found 👇 www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

Excited to be finally launching our new report on agricultural decarbonisation tomorrow morning - 9:30 online or in person for anyone who wants to join! 🐑🚜🐮 www.resolutionfoundation.org/events/net-z...

This is all a bit opaque but certainly seems like BUS and ECO are at risk. In a world where ECO levy is no more and £13.2bn is all we have for warm homes, stricter means testing is good & keeps tight focus on fuel poor homes But that only works if there's heat pump regs to keep demand on track

While esteemed colleagues won prestigious awards for great work last, I'm also proud to have won 2.5kg of smarties for best report title of the year, the best return on writing two words I'm ever likely to get www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

The Government released it's Carbon Budget Delivery Plan this afternoon, the first chance this Government has had to set out how it wants to reach net zero. For the first time, it adds up. But the decisions the Government is making on how to make it add up are far more important

💡💡💡 New @resfoundation.bsky.social note out today on cutting energy bills – and how paying for some costs on bills differently will see the poorest households more than £100 per year better off 💡💡💡 1/ www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

Salary sacrifice is a poor way of subsidising. More cash for those with higher tax rates (meaning more income) is the opposite of what we should be doing - getting solar panels onto the rooves of fuel poor families. Poorer families have less salary to sacrifice, meaning less or no subsidy for them

This is good from Simon Wren-Lewis on why the country's fiscal woes are not caused by OBR forecasts, the bond market or (most improbably) the frequency of fiscal forecasts.

Most of this change in energy bills being driven by an increase in standing charges, which are up for both gas and for electricity into Q4

Ready for your next step? We're hiring! 📣 If you have strong quantitative research skills and a commitment to raising living standards in the UK, you might be the right fit for our team. Find out more about becoming an Economist or Research & Policy Analyst ⤵️ buff.ly/7MNZRR4

Great to see Guardian cover our research today - it's flats and smaller houses that are most at risk of overheating, so should be no surprise that vulnerable families will be more at risk. Important to think about cooling homes as well as warming them!

New research from us today on how Gov should approach some tricky trade offs in its Warm Homes Plan

New data further proof that the ZEV mandate is doing its job - SMMT reckons we'll hit 23.8% BEV this year - 4 points up on 2024 and more than enough to meet the ZEV mandate's 28% target with all its flexibilities.

Good to see the flexibility roadmap out today. Flex is key to a cheaper energy system, so great that Gov is committed to this. Especially big savings coming for those with big techs like EVs and heat pumps. www.gov.uk/government/p...

Shame to see rising block tariffs suggested. A bad idea for poorer families that use lots of energy, but also not great for incentivising people to consume more electricity in electric cars or heat pumps

It's a shame that zonal pricing won't happen (but about time we make the decision!). The good news is that when it comes to electricity price signals, zonal isn't where the biggest gains are

Changing how we generate electricity means we also have to change how we use it. That means pricing electricity when and where it's expensive, to make our system more efficient and bring bills down - worth £200 a household. But there are risks to manage. [thread] tinyurl.com/y7z2u269

Salary sacrifice for heat pumps (shorturl.at/0D5lf) not the way forward - we should be making heat pumps cheaper for poorest not the richest As we showed for the EV scheme, salary sacrifice locks most low-income households out of meaningful subsidy and chucks huge sums to the highest earners

Great to see that solar on new homes may happen - here's more from us earlier this year on how we can make the best of the 'rooftop revolution' www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

🚨 🚨 🚨 New @resfoundation.bsky.social research out today on decarbonising home heating, looking at what shape policy should take so that poorer households can be more involved 🧵 www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

New @resfoundation.bsky.social research out this morning from @emilyfry.bsky.social, @camronaref.bsky.social and I which uses the first ever comprehensive analysis of public service use across the income distribution to show how we can make public services better for low-to-middle income families.

www.thetimes.com/uk/environme... Great from @ben-cooke.bsky.social - the crucial difference between rooftop and utility scale solar is it's utility scale that will push the electricity price down (a bit), but rooftop solar cuts bills a lot for those that get it

Paying off the locals might seem like a good way to increase support for new grid infrastructure. But it's a regressive way to tax and redistribute money - the @resfoundation.bsky.social has shown that the beneficiaries are likely to be better off. www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

Want to work in a thinktank? But worried it's only for "usual suspects"? Think again -- and sign up for webinar--this Weds 330-6pm--from @resfoundation.bsky.social & loads of other top tanks all looking for hidden talent www.resolutionfoundation.org/events/worki...

Today @resfoundation.bsky.social published new work on solar panels, and how the Government can make the best of its 'rooftop revolution' [THREAD] www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

Aviation thoughts: 1) When ministers say airport expansion will be consistent with carbon budgets, an important question is "will those carbon budgets include international flights?". I believe the Government has not yet confirmed that our 2050 net zero goal actually includes these emissions at all!

A thread on why the Government shouldn’t relax its targets on electric car sales

Ofgem has announced that the energy price cap will increase in Q1 2025, but only marginally compared to the current quarter (+1.2%), and Cornwall Insight predicts that the price cap will stabilise at current levels in Q2 2025.

Delighted that Ruth Curtice will be the next Chief Executive of @resfoundation.bsky.social. Ruth is a great talent who will thrive at RF. I’ll leave knowing we have a brilliant leader to take the organisation and its wonderful team into a new era. www.resolutionfoundation.org/press-releas...

Hello and welcome to all our new followers 👋 To ensure you're getting all the best analysis and insights, we've made a starter pack of all our staff on Bluesky. Make sure to give them a follow too ⤵️ go.bsky.app/5Anuz76

New report out today from us at @resfoundation.bsky.social launching the Unsung Britain project, a 12 month project investigating the economic circumstances of low-to-middle income families. Here's some of the findings from the report:

Transport taxes were one target for the Chancellor yesterday, with seven changes to how cars, vans and planes are taxed. These will raise £6.6bn and cost £5.5bn between now and 2029/30, with most of the cuts happening next year. [THREAD]

Poorer and younger households will be most impacted by the bus fare cap increasing to £3. The lowest income fifth take twice as many £2+ bus trips than the richest, and those under 30 take almost 4 times as many as the over 60's.

Unlike cars, it's not yet clear what role public transport will play in decarbonisation. @resfoundation.bsky.social take: buses and trains probably won't make a big dent in climate targets, but we should be worried that passengers may miss out on the big savings EVs bring. t.co/dCCJzMA8MX

🚨New report out today🚨 'Getting the green light', funded by the European Climate Foundation & written by @adamcorlett.bsky.social Jonathan Marshall @zackleather.bsky.social looks at the challenges of decarbonising UK travel & the impacts on low-to-middle income families.

Good from Ed Miliband at Labour conference – reviving minimum energy efficiency standards for private renters and extending them to the social rented sector will benefit the three-in-ten of the poorest families that are stuck in leaky rented homes