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UK shifts older wind and solar farms to fixed-price deals to reduce price shocks | Renewable energy

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The government has confirmed plans to move older wind and solar farms which make up almost a third of Great Britain’s power market on to fixed-price contracts to help protect households and businesses from future gas market shocks.

Under the plans, first revealed by the Guardian, renewable energy projects that earn subsidies on top of the market price will be asked to sign up to contracts that pay a set price for electricity as part of the government’s plan to “delink the price of electricity from the price of gas”.

The voluntary shift would mark the government’s most radical attempt to weaken the impact of soaring wholesale gas prices on the UK’s electricity costs, which are some of the highest in any developed economy.

Officials confirmed the market intervention alongside plans to accelerate the rollout of clean energy projects and encourage the uptake of electric alternatives to fossil fuels as the “only route to energy security and bringing bills down for good”.

The measures were set out ahead of a speech on Tuesday by Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, in which he is expected to say that the lesson from the second fossil fuel shock in less than five years is to “double down, not back down, on our mission for clean energy”.

The Guardian reported last week that the so-called “legacy generators” will be offered the opportunity to sign up to the new contracts, which are similar to deals struck by low-carbon projects since 2017, or face higher windfall taxes on their profits.

Securing the bulk of the UK’s electricity from fixed-price contracts should mean electricity costs will fall and bill payers would be less exposed to sudden market price shocks.

The proposal was first put forward by analysts at the UK Energy Research Centre in April 2022 to guard against surging gas prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They said it could save between £4bn and £10bn a year if market prices remained high.

The UK has emerged as one of the countries most exposed to volatility in the fossil fuel markets because it generates about 30% of its electricity from gas plants, which set the price for the market overall.

This means higher market prices provide a windfall for renewable energy, biomass and nuclear reactors – unless they generate power based on a guaranteed fixed-price contract known in the industry as a contract for difference.

Since late 2022 generators have faced a 45% tax rate on electricity sold at market prices above £75 a megawatt hour through the electricity generator levy put in place after the war in Ukraine led to record-high gas market prices across Europe.

Power market prices have surged again in recent weeks, from about £74/MWh to more than £100/MWh, and officials fear they will climb higher if the disruption lasts into winter.



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Ukraine war briefing: Moped ban in Crimea as official says noise is Kyiv plot using youth | Ukraine

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  • Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, has banned riding moped scooters, quad bikes and motorcycles at night-time, saying they sound like ⁠drone attacks and suggesting children are doing it deliberately at Kyiv’s behest. Sergei ​Aksyonov, the Russian-installed governor of the illegally occupied peninsula, said the ban would be in place between 8pm and 6am from Wednesday onwards.

  • Oleg Kryuchkov, Aksyonov’s adviser, claimed ‌separately on Telegram: “The enemy is recruiting your children for night-time ridesThe moped ⁠noise hampers the work of defence systems. Their engines sound similar [to drones].” ​Ukraine has recently intensified drone attacks on Crimea, nominally the home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet – targeting the peninsula’s supply routes and triggering a fuel crisis. A limit of 20 litres (5.3 gallons) of fuel per car at petrol stations would continue, Mikhail Razvozhayev, ​the governor of Crimea’s biggest city, Sevastopol, posted on Tuesday. Long lines of motorists queueing in Russian-controlled Crimea, southern Krasnodar region in Russia proper, and elsewhere underscore the sensitive domestic fallout from Ukraine’s strikes.

  • A Ukrainian drone attack started a fire at the refinery that is the ⁠largest fuel supplier to the Moscow region, and two industry sources told Reuters that it had halted operations. The strike on Gazprom Neft’s refinery in south-east Moscow on Tuesday damaged a primary refining facility that accounts ⁠for 53% of the plant’s capacity. Emergency services said the ⁠fire was put out and did not affected operations – information that was contradicted by Reuters sources. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, said the Moscow refinery was hit from a distance of 500km (310 miles). “This is a just response to Russian strikes – and to the dragging out of a war that must be ended.” Gazprom Neft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

  • The US could soon reinstate sanctions on Russian oil shipments, Donald Trump indicated, as leaders at the G7 summit moved on Tuesday to put the war in Ukraine back on top of their agenda. Trump said the sanctions on Russia – partly waived by the US due to the Iran war, ostensibly to help lower oil prices – can go back in place as more oil moves through the strait of Hormuz. “Soon we’ll be able to do that because the oil is now flowing. We’re in a position to do that soon.”

  • Russia should make peace with Ukraine, the US president said after a “very good” meeting with Zelenskyy. “Look, Russia should make a deal,” Trump told reporters, adding that too many young men were dying on the battlefield on both sides. “I’m gonna do whatever I can.” The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said of Trump’s statement: “I found him to be very cooperative, and ‌I also saw him listening very attentively. And ‌in that respect, once again, it gives me a certain degree of optimism that we here, as Europeans and as Americans, are now doing everything we can, together, to end the war.”

  • A Ukrainian ⁠Su-24M bomber aircraft crashed on a mission in ⁠the Khmelnitskyi region ⁠in ​western Ukraine on Tuesday ⁠and its two-member crew was killed, ⁠the Ukrainian ​air ‌force said. Ukraine is estimated to have about a dozen of the ageing SU-24 family of warplanes. They are used to launch the Scalp/Storm Shadow cruise missiles supplied by Britain and France.

  • Russian strikes on Ukraine killed at least eight people on Tuesday, officials said. A drone strike in Nikopol, central Dnipropetrovsk region, killed “a mother and son – a woman of 87 and a 51-year-old man” as well as a third person not immediately identified, said the regional governor, Oleksandr Hanzha. “The enemy targeted people ‌walking along the road with an FPV ​drone,” Oleksandr Hanzha said on Telegram. He posted a ​blurred photo ​of a ​wheelchair on ​a ‌road and ​what appeared ​to be a body underneath.

  • Russian shelling of the Donetsk region city of Sloviansk killed three people, while drone strikes on the southern Kherson region killed two people and wounded 16, according to officials. Five Russian ⁠attacks on the ⁠south-eastern Ukrainian ⁠city of ​Zaporizhzhia left one ⁠person dead, three injured and set ablaze ⁠a ​home ‌and a ‌shopping centre, ‌said Ivan Fedorov, the regional governor.

  • Repairs to the nearly 1,000-year-old Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery in Kyiv could take around two years, an official said ⁠on Tuesday. A ⁠Russian attack on ​the complex set fire to the roof of the Dormition Cathedral within ⁠the vast Unesco world heritage site. More than ‌80% of the 11th-century cathedral’s roof had been damaged, but firefighters managed to prevent the fire from spreading inside the cathedral, Maksym Ostapenko, director general of the complex, was cited as saying by Interfax Ukraine news agency.

  • A Russian artist critical of Vladimir Putin and the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been shot and killed in ⁠the eastern Polish town of Biała Podlaska, a prosecutor has said. Local media identified the victim as Robert ⁠Kuzovkov, who was also known by his artistic pseudonym, Semyon Skrepetsky. Pjotr Sauer writes that five shots were fired at the ⁠victim, including one ⁠to the head, in the attack on Monday, ​according to Marcin Kozak, a spokesperson for the district prosecutor in Lublin. Two Belarusians ⁠had been detained but no one had yet been charged. Other Russian exiles suspected Kadyrov was responsible.

  • The Chinese ⁠embassy ​in London said it had complained to British ⁠authorities about sanctions on several entities, including four from ⁠China, for allegedly supplying key military equipment ​to Russia. “China has consistently promoted peace talks and strictly ​controlled exports of dual-use goods,” an embassy spokesperson said. “Normal exchanges and cooperation between China and Russia should ⁠not be disrupted or affected.” Britain’s latest sanctions ​package, ​announced on Tuesday, includes cracking down on ​third-​country suppliers of critical military equipment to Russia in China, Thailand and Turkey.

  • The US extended by 15 days until 1 July a sanctions waiver on Serbia’s Russian-controlled oil company NIS, allowing it to continue importing and processing crude, the firm said. Washington has demanded since early 2025 that Russia’s sanctioned Gazprom Neft sell it stake in NIS, which has been threatened by US financial sanctions that have been repeatedly postponed. Talks on the sale of the Russian-held stake in NIS to Hungary’s MOL energy company have gone on for months, with the US Treasury’s foreign assets control office extending the deadline for their completion until 16 June.



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    Streeting would 'be prepared' to trigger leadership contest as early as next week

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    But the former health secretary told BBC Newsnight he would prefer for the prime minister “to take a decision on his own terms”.



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    Argentina v Algeria: World Cup 2026 – live | World Cup 2026

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    Key events

    32 mins: Algeria get on the ball in Argentina’s half for the first time in ages. They work the ball from side to side then look to attack down the right but Almada tracks back effectively.

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