This is just very good news. It's also not just about the solar and resulting energy bill and emissions savings. It is also an enabling move for more energy storage, more heat pumps, more dynamic energy management. There are huge potential benefits all round. www.businessgreen.com/news/4413004...

NEW Solar panels to be mandated on vast majority of new homes in England Currently about 40% of new builds have solar; new rules should push that to about 99% Story 👇 www.thetimes.com/uk/environme...

'But renewables will never be able to replace fossil fuels' Spain shows that they can. Wind 46%, solar PV 27%, hydro 23%, solar thermal 2%, other renewables 2%. www.pv-magazine.com/2025/04/22/s...

Interesting looking new platform (if I can call it that?) to access social media from a variety of other platforms, including Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads. Should help to democratise access to information and give far greater control over what you see. Definitely the direction we need to head in.

Henry Paulson, former US Treasury Secretary (under Bush), making the case for accelerating uptake of clean energy to power growth in AI. '...sticking with gas would be to sacrifice speed of development and bet against the rapid decline of solar and battery storage costs' www.ft.com/content/1374...

Some good news at last www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

NEW: Why are hydrogen cars outsold by Ferraris (& EVs)? Why have H2 projections massively outstripped reality? Find out + see the latest hydrogen "ladder" by @iain-staffell.bsky.social based on new review with @mliebreich.bsky.social @dankammen.bsky.social www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-w...

Astronomers have found thousands of planets outside the solar system. All of them are, to my knowledge, garbage. Happy Earth Day to the only good one 🌍

The battery giants really are battling it out.. Now CATL pushes past BYD with 520km on just five minutes of charging time. Incredible progress🤯 www.ft.com/content/b4c8...

Feels like another important milestone reached for @bsky.app. For comparison, twitter had an estimated 40 million users in 2010: www.businessofapps.com/data/twitter...

If the link between decentralisation and democracy is not immediately obvious then have a read of Mike's article, and then follow this by reading a recent article by another person with some knowledge of the internet, the very founder of it, Tim Berners-Lee. www.ft.com/content/79d2...

Please watch this over the weekend and help spread the word. It's the story of a solar power project helping to save several hundred babies' lives each year in Sierra Leone. More than ever we need good news stories about clean energy, and people looking after each other. youtu.be/yMxJzLNc214?...

Did you know how much of the power generation capacity added each year world-wide was in renewables? 2022 it was 80 % 2023 it was 86 % 2024 it was 92,5 % Not because the whole world suddenly turned „woke“, but because it’s the cheapest!

In 2017, @mliebreich.bsky.social started Project Bo, an initiative that brought solar power & batteries to a NICU in Sierra Leone, preventing life threatening power cuts. Now we need your help to further improve care & conditions. For more on how you can help, visit projectbo.org

This is a screenshot from the remote monitoring of the #ProjectBo PV system at the Government Hospital neonatal unit in Bo, Sierra Leone. See that blue line? That's the batteries. Overnight 14-15th April, a long power cut. Only the minigrid kept the oxygen, heat & lights on! youtu.be/yMxJzLNc214?...

If you're in doubt as to the importance of international aid, then watch this excellent episode of Cleaning Up telling the story of how solar and batteries are helping to ensure the power remains on to help save the lives of vulnerable babies in Sierra Leone. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMxJ...

The data are in: Battery-electric cars require only 40% the repairs as internal-combustion-engine (ICE) cars BEVs: 4.2 breakdowns/year per 1,000 vehicles ICEs: 10.4 breakdowns/year per 1,000 vehicles www.carscoops.com/2025/04/new-...

While generally I think China is in a stronger position on this trade war, the rare earths stuff is completely paper-tiger nonsense that will just shift more of the rare earths supply chain from China: 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/b...

The Good Friday Agreement was signed 27 years ago today. It was an act of delicate diplomacy, which delivered peace and security to a part of our country where those qualities had long been absent. Those achievements should never be taken for granted.

What China's push to replace exports to the U.S. with domestic demand looks like: Jingdong, China's biggest online retailer, pledges to buy 200 bn yuan ($27 bn) of goods from export firms over the next year. That's not pennies even for the huge firm, with 160 bn yuan turnover.

What the dollar normally does in a crisis vs what it's doing now, via RBC

Spain is ignoring calls to reconsider its nuclear decommissioning plans, betting renewables and battery storage will make up for the upcoming energy shortfall. It migh be able to pull it off Free link to my latest on @bloomberg Green www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Economic uncertainty update: The thing about veering wildly between policy positions, favouring and then discarding a new maverick advisor each week, and using contradictory justifications at every turn, is that even if one particular pivot is in the direction of sanity, chaos is the constant.

Strong message here from Ursula von der Leyen: The EU is prepared to deploy its most powerful trade measures and may impose levies on US digital companies if talks with Trump fail to end his tariff war against Europe. Interview by Roula Khalaf, Henry Foy & Andy Bounds

JPMORGAN: To argue that today’s 145% China tariff clarification “is somehow less of a shock as a result is very misguided .. The sudden stop of roughly $450bn in US imports and the resulting disruption to US supply chains would be a significant blow .. We maintain our call for a US recession ..”

Good morning. The United States now has the highest tariff rates in the world.

As you watch the trade war escalate between the world's two largest economies, keep these two charts in mind, from @davidfickling.bsky.social '[Chinese] companies and consumers will feel the pain from tariffs much less than Americans' www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Happy Liberation Day to all who celebrate the release of money from your retirement accounts into thin air.

Trade deficit. I have bought food from say, Chilis. They have never bought food from me. There is a trade deficit with Chilis. I’m still doing fine. The trade deficit argument SOUNDS compelling, but it’s a straw man with no relevancy

An amazing view above the Minnesota State Capitol in St Paul right now. This must be bigger than anyone imagined. 👏 These are some of the largest protests the US has seen in years. #HandsOff #FiftyFiftyOne (🎥 Sara Schmitt)

The silence speaks volumes. #fucktrump

New York! 😳 Fifth Avenue is filled. Trump will hate this 🎉 #HandsOff #FiftyFiftyOne #HandsOff2025

This is remarkably close to what we had six days ago. The average tariff rate of most European nations was about 1%.

Are Trump‘s efforts to shrink the global economy a secret ploy to reduce global CO2 emissions? 🙄

NEW 🧵 A quick thread of charts showing how Trump’s economic agenda is going so far: 1) US consumers are reacting very very negatively. These are the worst ratings for any US government’s economic policy since records began.

We need to talk more about US tariffs and what they mean to poorer countries and the people whose livelihoods depend on exports to richer countries, and less about uninhabited islands in the sub-Antarctic and penguins. This explainer highlights Bangladesh as one example. There are others.

Breaking now: Ministry of Economics reporting the tariffs have not caused significant changes to our trading volumes

"The US accounts for 13% of global goods imports. Even if the US cut off all goods imports, 70 of its trading partners would fully make up their lost sales to the US within one year, and 115 would do so within five years." www.ft.com/content/1efd...

We've been talking an awful lot about how the Trump tariffs will hit the big players: the UK, China, Canada, France, Germany etc But it's time to talk about the ones who DON'T have loud voices. Because some of the poorest countries in the world are going to be crippled by what happened last night

I remember the fair trade dream when countries were given the chance of trading their way out of poverty. Botswana for instance through diamonds - now subject to a 37% tariff. The Ivory Coast through cocoa - now contending with a tariff of 21%. How will they cope?

Normally when a country does something utterly self-defeating, its currency loses value. Historically that has not been the case with the US. But the dollar is falling. Making America Normal Again.

This is from an excellent site run by Kate Morley, based on open source data for the GB grid. You can check it out here: grid.iamkate.com

Preliminary data suggests that the global average increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration in 2024 will be a record. Not just a little record, but 25% higher than the previous record. (This is the global average, as opposed to Moana Loa) gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/... 1/

It's a shame this has to feel like a fight, but sadly it does. We certainly are up for it though, because it's the right thing to do for jobs, economic growth, energy security, energy costs, for our planet and for future generations. #GreatBritishEnergy #NetZero www.theguardian.com/environment/...

This week, someone said of the UK's net zero target: "Why is it 2050 in the first place? No-one knows." It feels like a good time to be resharing this @newscientist.com primer, on what net zero actually means. Few years old but the basics stand👇 www.newscientist.com/question/net...

'The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is at its highest point in 800,000 years, according to UN research that found 2024 was likely to have been the hottest year on record and the first to surpass 1.5C above pre-industrial levels' www.ft.com/content/3691...

To be clear, the reason why we are at ~1.5°C above the pre-industrial is because of the massive amounts of greenhouse gases we have emitted. Our focus on the specifics of 2023/4 is pretty much orthogonal to that.

WMO State of the Climate report (spoiler alert: it’s not great). @hausfath.bsky.social and I have a short article in it looking at the contributions to the temperatures in 2023+2024. wmo.int/sites/defaul...

Dear BBC - none of these answers are correct. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Just came across this fascinating piece by @davidfickling.bsky.social charting how China came to dominate solar PV manufacturing, not least for the cautionary lessons it offers about trade tariffs. www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...