Bob the Builder returns after 15 years in E.ON Next clean-energy advert

Bob the Builder, the British children's television character, has returned to screens after a 15-year absence in a 90-second stop-motion advert for E. ON Next, the UK brand of German energy company E. ON. Known as a construction worker, the character does not appear on a building site in the advert. Instead he enters a "net-zero training academy", swaps his yellow hard hat for an E. ON-branded one and learns to install solar panels, home batteries and "low-carbon heating" equipment.

In the advert, Bob holds a newspaper headlined "Britain needs more green skills for a clean energy future" and says he is helping people switch to clean electricity so they can control and cut their energy costs. E. ON said the advert is intended to promote skills training. Helen Bradbury, the company's chief people officer, said Bob the Builder had always inspired people to solve problems and build important things, qualities she said Britain now needs for the transition to clean electricity. A company spokesperson also said that combining a home battery with time-of-use tariffs alone could save the average household 255 pounds a year.

Britain currently has some of the highest household electricity prices in Europe. Net-zero taxes, subsidies and system costs are estimated at about 22 billion pounds a year. The 2030 clean power target forms the political backdrop to the advert. Meanwhile, Netflix is developing a live-action reboot of Captain Planet, a character from a 1990s animated series created by Ted Turner, with Leonardo DiCaprio among the executive producers. Separately, BBC nature presenter Chris Packham lobbied for a cameo in the soap opera EastEnders so that a flood could hit the fictional Albert Square and he could walk through it holding a placard. He told the Radio Times that the role would let him communicate with people outside his usual audience and that he hoped the message would be "woven into the wider output, including news, weather and drama".

The Times has reported on the largest study of people aged 16 to 25, which found that four in ten were so anxious about climate change that they were hesitant about having children, while 45% said climate change was affecting their daily lives. A global survey published in The Lancet Planetary Health released the findings under a summary titled "children and young people feel sad, worried, anxious and angry". Recent research published in Nature analysed Antarctic ice core data and found that atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane were broadly stable over three million years, while temperatures went through long cooling periods and interglacial peaks without a curve matching greenhouse gases. Cardiff University's Carrie Lear said the study did not "rewrite the role of carbon dioxide" and described today's rapid rise in carbon dioxide as extremely worrying. Tim Naish said it was too early to abandon existing conclusions.