Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Cassandra Etter-Wenzel, PhD Candidate in Energy Policy, University of Oxford

As the Middle East conflict intensifies and oil and gas prices swing wildly, the UK has seen renewed calls to drill more in the North Sea. The argument is straightforward: if Britain produces more of its own oil and gas, household energy bills should fall.

But our analysis suggests the effect would be minimal. Even if the UK maximised North Sea extraction and returned revenues directly to households, the reduction in energy bills would be at most a modest £82 per year – far smaller than the savings expected from accelerating the shift to renewable energy.

In fact, a faster transition away from gas-powered electricity could cut household energy bills by three times as much as maximising North Sea oil and gas.

Why UK energy bills are so high

A typical UK household has a single “dual fuel” bill covering both electricity and gas. This can be divided into several different components.

The largest share is the wholesale cost – the price suppliers (the company named on your bill) pay for electricity and gas – which accounts for about 41% of the bill. The rest covers the costs of running and maintaining energy networks (23%), operating costs and debts (15%), policy costs such as environmental and social levies (12%) and VAT.

At the wholesale level, the UK does not consistently pay more than other European countries. At various points since 2022, countries such as Italy and Germany have faced similar or higher wholesale costs.

Yet UK households still pay some of the highest retail electricity prices in Europe. That’s because of how the electricity market works.

In Britain, the wholesale electricity price is usually set by the most expensive generator needed to meet demand. That generator is often a gas-fired power station. As a result, electricity prices tend to rise and fall with gas prices – even when much of the electricity is produced by cheaper sources such as wind or solar.

Gas also dominates home heating – 85% of UK households still rely on gas boilers, far more than in most comparable countries

This makes UK households highly exposed to swings in global fossil fuel prices. Gas prices are set on international markets, which are heavily exposed to geopolitical shocks, as seen both in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and again today.

Britain’s poorly insulated homes – among the least energy efficient in northern Europe – compounds the problem. This means households consume more gas to achieve the same level of warmth.

Why more North Sea drilling wouldn’t cut bills

Producing more oil and gas in the North Sea would not create the UK’s “own special supply”, nor could its price be set specifically for UK citizens.

That’s because any new production would be sold on international markets at international prices. The UK simply doesn’t have the ability to extract, refine and use oil all by itself even if it wanted to – some international trading will always be necessary.

The only way North Sea extraction could reduce household bills is through government revenues. Taxes and levies on oil and gas profits – the so-called fiscal “take” – could in principle be redistributed to households.

To explore this possibility, we modelled a scenario in which the UK maximised North Sea oil and gas and used all revenues collected to subsidise lower energy bills.

Even under those assumptions, the effect would be limited. Household bills would fall by between £16 and £82 per year. That’s roughly 1% to 4.6% of the current average household energy bill of £1,776, according to UK regulator Ofgem.

Bigger savings from renewables

A different policy direction – one that reduces the role of gas in electricity production – produces much larger savings.

If the price of electricity was set by cheaper renewable energy rather than by gas, our analysis suggests households could save £105 to £331 per year through lower wholesale energy costs.

That is roughly three times more than the “maximise oil and gas” scenario.

Importantly, these savings would also be recurring. Once electricity prices are less tied to volatile gas markets, and instead are set by cheaper and infinitely available resources – wind and sun – households benefit every year.

Savings could be still higher if the structure of electricity bills were rebalanced. At present, many policy costs – including support for renewables – are added to electricity bills rather than funded through general taxation.

If those policy costs were moved into general taxation, as announced in the government’s autumn 2025 spending review, the average household could save up another £110 or so annually. In our renewables scenario, that would bring the total savings to about £441 per year.

Moving policy and system costs from bills onto general taxation is one way to make energy costs fairer and more egalitarian. That’s because energy bills take a larger share of income from lower income households while taxes better reflect ability to pay.

Our analysis used oil and gas prices in January 2026, prior to the breakout of the US-Israel war on Iran. In other words, ours is a conservative scenario that assumes relatively favourable conditions for fossil fuels. If global prices rise further, the advantages of renewable energy would become even greater.

Reducing exposure to fossil fuel shocks

Recent history illustrates how costly dependence on fossil fuels can be.

Research by our colleagues at Oxford Smith School found that if the UK had moved away from importing Russian oil and gas after its 2014 invasion of Crimea, it would have saved about £22 billion in energy costs during the price spike after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Similarly, had the UK adopted the “balanced net zero” pathway proposed by its official advisory Climate Change Committee, it could avoid spending around £70 billion on crude oil and natural gas between 2022 and 2030.

Today’s energy crisis simply reiterates this argument: if the UK was less reliant on oil and gas today, it would be in a much better economic position.

The best way to keep energy bills low in the long run is to reduce dependence on gas altogether. That means expanding renewable generation, investing in energy storage and grid infrastructure, improving home insulation and electrifying heating through technologies such as heat pumps. Support for vulnerable households will also be crucial during the transition to a lower-carbon energy system.

Our findings refute speculation that draining the North Sea of all oil and gas would significantly lower bills and make the UK energy secure. Even if further fossil fuel extraction went ahead and all tax revenues were returned directly to consumers, the savings for consumers would be modest. Meanwhile the UK would remain exposed to geopolitical shocks and be economically worse off.

Staying the course on clean energy would not only save households three times as much money but render the UK truly energy secure for generations to come.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Would more North Sea drilling lower UK energy bills? Our analysis says no – https://theconversation.com/would-more-north-sea-drilling-lower-uk-energy-bills-our-analysis-says-no-278467

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Justin Stebbing, Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University

Weight-loss injections that have become famous for helping people shed pounds may also help some patients with advanced cancer live longer when the disease has spread to the brain, according to a new study.

These medicines belong to a group of drugs called GLP-1 receptor agonists, and they include Wegovy and Ozempic. They were first developed to treat type 2 diabetes, but over the past few years they have drawn global attention because many people taking them experience significant weight loss.

The new study does not show that these injections directly treat cancer. Instead, it suggests something more subtle but potentially important: they might help some very ill patients live longer.

The study focuses on brain metastases. This happens when cancer cells travel from somewhere else in the body – such as the lung, breast or skin – to form tumours in the brain. Unfortunately, brain metastases are relatively common and usually indicate that cancer has reached a late and dangerous stage.

Many patients in this situation also have type 2 diabetes. This matters because the condition can make serious illness harder to manage. High blood sugar can cause chronic inflammation, damage blood vessels and weaken the body’s ability to cope.

In my own clinical practice, I often prescribe steroids to help patients with brain metastases manage symptoms such as swelling in the brain. Steroids can be very effective, but they also tend to raise blood sugar levels and can make diabetes harder to control. This has led researchers to ask whether GLP-1 drugs might have additional benefits.

When diabetes drugs meet cancer care

Laboratory studies suggest they may protect brain cells, reduce inflammation and help preserve the brain’s blood supply. Until now, however, there has been very little evidence from everyday clinical practice showing how patients with both diabetes and brain metastases fare when they take these medicines.

The new study, published in Jama Network Open, set out to explore that question. Researchers used a medical database of anonymised health records from 151 hospitals and healthcare systems around the world.

They searched for adults who had three conditions: cancer, type 2 diabetes and brain metastases. The records covered patients seen between 2018 and 2024. The researchers were particularly interested in whether these patients had been prescribed a GLP-1 drug – such as semaglutide, dulaglutide, liraglutide or tirzepatide – around the time their diabetes and brain metastases were first diagnosed.

To make a fair comparison, the team matched people who received one of these injections with similar patients who did not. They took into account factors such as age, sex, type of cancer, other medical conditions and treatments including chemotherapy, radiotherapy and steroid use. Statistical matching cannot eliminate every difference between groups, but it helps reduce the risk that the results simply reflect one group being healthier at the start.

In total, the researchers identified more than 19,000 patients with cancer, brain metastases and type 2 diabetes. Among them, 866 had been treated with a GLP-1 drug, while over 11,000 had not. After careful matching, the analysis compared two balanced groups of 850 patients each who were similar in terms of their cancers, body mass index, diabetes control and other health issues.

The researchers then followed these patients for up to three years after their brain metastases were first recorded. Their main question was straightforward but important: how many people in each group died during that period?

The researchers found that patients who were taking GLP-1 drugs were significantly less likely to die during the follow-up period than those who were not. Overall, people taking GLP-1 drugs were about 37% less likely to die over the three years.

The pattern was fairly consistent across several major cancer types, including lung cancer, breast cancer and melanoma. It also appeared across different drugs within the GLP-1 class.

When researchers compared GLP-1 medicines with other modern diabetes treatments – including drugs called SGLT2 inhibitors and DPP-4 inhibitors – the GLP-1 group still seemed to fare better. That hints that something about GLP-1 signalling itself might be beneficial, rather than the effect simply coming from better blood sugar control.

Important limitation

Even so, the researchers emphasise an important limitation. This study looked back at medical records rather than testing treatments in a controlled trial. To do that, researchers would need randomised clinical trials in which patients are deliberately assigned to receive a GLP-1 drug or another treatment and then followed over time.

So how might these so-called weight-loss jabs help people whose cancer has spread to the brain?

One possibility is that they help indirectly by improving diabetes itself. Better blood sugar control, reduced body weight and improved heart health could help patients cope better with surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy.

But there may also be more direct effects on the brain. Scientists have discovered that GLP-1 receptors are in brain tissue and play a role in controlling inflammation, protecting nerve cells and helping maintain the blood–brain barrier – a protective layer that keeps harmful substances out of the brain.

Animal studies suggest that activating these receptors can reduce damage in brain cells and help them function properly. In theory, that might help the brain tolerate metastatic tumours better or make it a less favourable environment for cancer cells to grow. The new clinical findings are consistent with these ideas, although they do not yet tell us which mechanisms matter most in people.

For patients and families reading about this research, it is important to understand what the results do – and do not – mean. The study does not suggest that people with brain metastases should rush to start GLP-1 drugs, nor that these medicines can replace standard cancer treatments such as radiotherapy, surgery, targeted therapies or immunotherapy.

The potential benefits were seen specifically in people who already had type 2 diabetes. Like any medication, these injections can cause side-effects such as nausea and vomiting, and there are ongoing discussions about rare but serious risks.

Anyone considering them would need careful guidance from both their oncology and diabetes teams rather than making decisions based on a single study.

Still, the findings open up an intriguing new line of research linking cancer, metabolism and brain health. If future trials confirm that GLP-1 drugs genuinely improve survival in patients with brain metastases and diabetes, they could eventually become part of supportive care for people facing this difficult complication.

Justin Stebbing does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Could Ozempic help people whose cancer has spread to the brain? – https://theconversation.com/could-ozempic-help-people-whose-cancer-has-spread-to-the-brain-277999

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lotanna Emediegwu, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Manchester Metropolitan University

Geopolitical tensions rarely stay confined to the battlefield. They ripple through global markets – particularly energy and food. The war between the US, Israel and Iran is a reminder of how quickly conflict can affect food security far beyond the region.

One of the most consequential developments of this conflict has been the disruption of shipping through the strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally passes.

Iran has also targeted energy infrastructure in neighbouring Gulf states. Oil and gas facilities in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar have reportedly halted operations after drone attacks. Because the Middle East accounts for roughly 30% of global oil production and about 17% of natural gas production, such disruptions quickly rattled energy markets.

Higher energy prices may bring windfalls for oil-exporting countries. But they also push up the cost of producing and transporting food. That is why this conflict is likely to have consequences for food security, particularly in developing economies.

Food production depends heavily on energy. Fuel powers agricultural machinery, irrigation systems and transport networks that move food from farms to markets. Energy is also crucial for processing, refrigeration and long-distance shipping.

Fertiliser production is another key link. Nitrogen-based fertilisers rely heavily on natural gas and other energy inputs. When farmers’ production costs rise, it eventually filters through into food prices.

Read more:
How the Iran war could create a ‘fertiliser shock’ – an often ignored global risk to food prices and farming

Food prices had already begun rising in February 2026 for the first time in five months. This was driven mainly by higher cereal prices – particularly wheat – following frost risks in parts of Europe and the US. There are also continuing logistical disruptions in the Black Sea region amid the Russia-Ukraine war.

The current surge in energy prices is likely to intensify these pressures. For example, the futures price of wheat (whereby traders buy and sell wheat at a predetermined price for future delivery) in Chicago recently approached a two-year high. This came amid fears of higher transport and production costs.

Similar pressures could emerge across other staple crops if the Middle East conflict continues to disrupt energy supply.

In a 2024 study, Marco Rogna and I examined how changes in international agricultural commodity prices are transmitted to domestic markets in developing countries. The research looked at staples including maize, rice, sorghum and wheat, across countries in sub-Saharan Africa, east Asia and the Pacific, and south Asia.

Our findings show that increases in international food prices are quickly transmitted to domestic markets in many developing economies. This is largely because many of these countries depend heavily on food imports or food aid for staples they do not produce in sufficient quantities.

When global prices rise, local food prices typically begin to increase within a month. In most cases, the strongest effects occur quickly and then gradually fade within about two months. But even short-lived spikes can have serious consequences for households that spend a large share of their income on food.

Food insecurity

The degree of impact also varies by commodity. Our results suggest that wheat prices are particularly sensitive to global shocks. In some developing economies, a 1% increase in global wheat prices can lead to a local price increase of up to 1.5%.

One notable exception is sorghum. Around 80% of the land devoted to growing this grain around the world is in developing countries, particularly in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. It is largely consumed locally as a staple that can be used for flour, for example. Because production and consumption are mostly domestic rather than tied to international trade, sorghum markets are less exposed to global volatility.

Regional differences also matter. Countries in east Asia and the Pacific are more exposed to global maize price increases because they rely more heavily on these imports. By contrast, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are more vulnerable to fluctuations in rice prices because of their growing reliance on imports due to climate change, internal conflict and rapidly growing populations.

Political institutions can also shape how global price shocks affect local markets. Our research found that democratic developing countries often respond more quickly to rising food prices than non-democratic ones. For example, when international rice prices rise, non-democratic countries such as Afghanistan may experience roughly twice the increase in domestic rice prices as democratic nations like Nigeria.

These discrepancies could be explained by the fact that democratic governments face stronger pressure to intervene through subsidies, trade adjustments or food support programmes.

As these tensions disrupt global energy markets, governments in developing countries will need to prepare for possible food price shocks. Policies that strengthen domestic food production, particularly for locally adaptable crops such as sorghum, can reduce reliance on volatile global markets.

Governments can also draw lessons from developed economies by investing in strategic grain reserves, improving food storage and transport infrastructure, and expanding targeted welfare programmes to support vulnerable households during price spikes.

In an interconnected global economy, major conflicts rarely stay local. Households in poorer countries thousands of miles away may feel the impact not on the battlefield but at the dinner table.

Lotanna Emediegwu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why developing nations could be the first to suffer as the Middle East conflict raises food prices – https://theconversation.com/why-developing-nations-could-be-the-first-to-suffer-as-the-middle-east-conflict-raises-food-prices-278164

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Chris Macdonald, Lab Director and Fellow, University of Cambridge

The UK’s use of land is indefensibly inefficient. Roughly 5% is used for buildings and roads, 10% for forest and woodland, plus 20% for arable crops. But the largest share, around 50% of our country, is dedicated to livestock.

Producing protein by raising, feeding and slaughtering animals can consume ten times more land than extracting the protein directly from crops. In other words, the UK is dedicating the largest share of its land to the least efficient form of protein production.

Better still, emerging technologies such as cell cultivation and precision fermentation could produce the same quality and quantity of protein on hundreds of times less land.

Despite devoting roughly half the country to raising and feeding livestock, the UK produces only around 60% of the food it consumes. This leaves it dependent on imports and vulnerable to climate shocks and disruptions of global supply chains. The UK also still has to rely heavily on millions of tonnes of imported animal feed, often sourced from regions where forests have been cleared or ecosystems degraded.

Animal agriculture is a major environmental and ethical burden. It contributes disproportionately to greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution and nature loss.

In a lose–lose trade-off, more land-efficient livestock systems can clash profoundly with public sentiment: intensive farming means many dairy cows never set foot outside and many hens spend their entire lives indoors, often confined to spaces no bigger than a single sheet of A4 paper.

Emerging technologies such as cell cultivation and precision fermentation offer a transformative alternative. Protein grown from cells or microbes programmed to produce certain proteins can be made hundreds of times more efficiently, while delivering the same or better nutritional quality.

Research shows that increased protein intakes have significant health benefits, especially for older people. For example, high-protein diets help prevent sarcopenia, the age-related loss of muscle mass and strength that reduces mobility and independence.

My latest study shows that high-protein content is now a key driver of meal choice among UK consumers. So, securing and expanding sustainable protein supply aligns with both consumer preferences and the growing evidence on optimal health outcomes.

Read more:
New food technologies could release 80% of the world’s farmland back to nature

Some nations are already motoring ahead with this protein transition. In the US, for example, companies such as Upside Foods, Good Meat and Wild Type are using cell cultivation technology to grow animal meat cells such as chicken and beef.

Other companies in the US such as Perfect Day, The Every Company and Triton Algae Innovations are applying precision fermentation technology — a process in which microorganisms are programmed with instructions to produce specific animal proteins — to manufacture animal-identical proteins such as whey, egg white and other dairy proteins.

Rather than resembling factory farms or slaughterhouses, these facilities look like breweries, with rows of stainless-steel tanks where microbes or animal cells convert simple nutrients into proteins (just like yeast converts sugars into alcohol during brewing).

While the US has already approved and begun limited sales of cultivated meat, the UK remains in the regulatory development phase, with no products yet authorised for human consumption.

Indoor and controlled-environment farming could similarly revolutionise fruit and vegetable production. For example, automated vertical farms provide predictable, year-round yields, insulated from droughts, floods, seasonal volatility, trade wars and global supply chain disruptions because they aren’t subject to external variables.

Powering protein

An energy transition underpins such a food transition. The UK would need to expand renewable energy and develop its nuclear capacity to meet the needs of this energy-intensive form of food production. Renewables provide scale; nuclear provides stability. Together, they could power innovative protein facilities, indoor farms and electrified heating and transport, enabling a fully domestic, self-sufficient food-energy system.

Read more:
Four myths about vertical farming debunked by an expert

The benefits of this land-use shift could be transformative. The masses of land freed up could be used for more trees and national parks; more biodiversity and leisure spaces; cleaner air and water. More predictability, less suffering.

The great protein transition won’t be easy. It will involve challenging negotiations and significant investment. It will take time and forward-thinking leadership. But the prize is well worth it: a national-scale protein transition would strengthen independence and national security.

The UK stands at a crossroads. By embracing the protein transition, it could one day feed and power itself, building resilience against increasing climate and geopolitical uncertainty.

Chris Macdonald does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How a new plan for protein could transform the UK’s national security – https://theconversation.com/how-a-new-plan-for-protein-could-transform-the-uks-national-security-277661

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Philip Howell, Professor of Geography, University of Cambridge

Pets play an important role in many people’s lives. In the UK, six out of ten households have at least one pet, dogs being our most common companions (assuming we don’t count fish individually). But it isn’t easy to be precise.

The 2025 figure of 13.5 million pet dogs has recently been bumped up to correct for a significant undercounting in previous UK estimates. This compares with around 11 million pet cats, although there are similar problems in trying to count these ungovernable beasts and their stray cousins.

Another point of debate is why we have these relationships at all. What motivates pet owners – and when did we start the process of turning wild animals into the “fur babies” of the family?

Equally importantly, what’s in it for the animals? Were their wild ancestors lured in by the promise of a warm fire, perhaps on some kind of contract to kill mice or protect sheep? Or did they purposefully inveigle themselves into our homes and affections to offer companionship, comfort, even therapy?

All these questions are raised by a wonderful new exhibition, Pets & their People, in Oxford’s Bodleian Library.

Pets and people

The exhibition is curated by Charles Foster, who is a noted naturalist but otherwise pleasingly difficult to pigeonhole. As the author of both Being a Beast (2016) and Being a Human (2022), Foster’s intention has long been to show how those statuses are inseparable.

In his work, Foster suggests that far back in our human history, shamans and other spiritual figures attempted to enter the lifeworlds of other animals. But then, as hunter-gatherers gave way to Neolithic farmers, people came to imagine themselves as members of a distinct species – lonely lords of creation.

There is a glorious image on display from the Ashmole Bestiary (an illuminated 13th-century manuscript containing descriptions of real and mythical animals) of Adam giving names to the animals. This image exemplifies, for Foster, human power and privilege, with these newly christened critters placed in their separate enclosures – cages that would contain them hereafter.

Pets, this exhibition suggests, similarly aided human beings in the achievement of selfhood, even if the distinctiveness of humans from beasts is always tested and troubled, now just as much as in the distant past.

The power of human beings to shape pets for their variously selfish reasons is acknowledged. The show explores the results of breeding in brachycephalic snouts and other defects to best-in-breed winners.

On the theme of mixing and muddling, we are also reminded of companion animals being thoroughly anthropomorphised, and of humans being transformed as if in sympathy into beasts.

One example is poet Philip Larkin’s doodle of himself as a rabbit ensconced in a chintzy armchair, extremely Larkin-esquely watching snooker on cable TV with a measure of spirits to hand. The pets of authors Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith unexpectedly get a look in too, alongside the more familiar examples of Lord Byron’s Boatswain (a Newfoundland dog) and poet Christopher Smart’s Jeoffry (a cat).

Nineteenth-century photographic calling cards, or cartes de visite, remind visitors that when asked to display ourselves (now on social media, dating sites, even on Zoom calls), many of us hold up our pets to the camera – which is to say, pets are us.

The age of selfies only confirms this long history of entanglement. The idea is that (a little like Larkin) we lean on our pets to tell stories about ourselves.

Virtual pets like Tamagotchis or the current fad for robot pets seem harder to explain, and pet rocks even more so (there is a specimen on show, a triumph of 1970s marketing chutzpah). But the emphasis is on our millennia-long lockstep with nonhuman animals.

Pets, ancient and modern

Visitors are encouraged to think that love for pets and grief at their loss are the same, whether we are considering ancient Egypt or early modern England.

The argument that the concept of “pets” is a more recent phenomenon (I’ve contributed to this idea with my research) is a fainter refrain. But there are still plenty of surprises in this exhibition to back up its stress on continuities.

Two extraordinary papyri records for the purchase of dog bowls make the point. There are other instances of commercial opportunism on display – from the production of mummified cats in ancient Egypt to the advent of the pet industry in our day. The lesson is that animal companions break the bank as well as break our hearts.

I understand that attempts to secure examples of celebrity dog bling for this exhibition were to no avail, but once more the conclusion is quite secure: when it comes to pets, contemporary excess has a long history.

However, what pets are and what they mean is still a puzzle for researchers – we don’t even have an accepted definition of pet. While the term “companion animal” doesn’t have much poetry about it, scholars tend to use this more neutral language to account for the variety of relationships people have had with animals, over the course of thousands of years and in innumerably different cultures.

Researchers don’t know quite why some of us love pets and some of us don’t. Or why love for pets is sanctioned at times and denounced at others. Still, this exhibition reminds us that head-wrangling questions are more satisfying than rote answers. Perhaps being human is indeed about looking at our pets and asking what separates us from them.

Pets & their People is at the Bodleian Library until September 27

Philip Howell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Pets & their People explores the long, strange history of human-animal companionship – https://theconversation.com/pets-and-their-people-explores-the-long-strange-history-of-human-animal-companionship-278153