The future is electric

Taking this one step further: a group of EU politicians are today proposing a new tax on Equinor so that the conflict cash flowing into coffers from the current fossil fuel crisis goes back to EU citizens, not just Norwegian citizens www.nrk.no/urix/ber-nor...

This is what "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" thinking gets you: a leader fundamentally incapable of acting in a way suited for the times, and scrambling to worsen fossil fuel reliance rather than decouple society from it Reactionary centrism always ends up as a pro-fossil ideology

🧵Shocked by the performative "vibes" environmentalism on display from Chúk Odenigbo, apparently a columnist and guest of CBC's (normally-sound) What on Earth podcast. Sometimes questioned by host Laura Lynch but never really challenged. Let's dig in! www.cbc.ca/listen/live-...

Ends with "Spain — at least for now — still needs at least some gas and nuclear power in its system to avoid possible imbalances from renewable energy." When in fact according to this thread from @kevinjkircher.com (today!) it wasn't a factor in their recent blackout. bsky.app/profile/kevi...

I don't understand the reasoning here. Ford claims to want the province to be a powerhouse of EV construction so he should want more EVs to be sold? And to avoid "fragmentation" he could make his own EV mandate!

Canadian gvt gets a reality check from visiting EU officials www.nationalobserver.com/2026/03/02/n...

"The 15-Hour City believes everything has its place. Houses go in one location, businesses in another, and in between is a dark sea of soul-crushing concrete and asphalt." buff.ly/fLNN71n

If you want the TL;DR - electric bikes and mopeds displacing gas powered ones are having four times the climate impact as the move to electric cars. There are 20m electric cars and 1.3m buses and trucks so if you look at it that way it is not really surprising.

A fact that sounds like bullshit but is actually true: There is more square footage of parking *per car* in the US than there is square footage of housing *per person.*

I feel like a lot of Newfoundlanders still have an oil version of this ad playing in their heads...

The problem with political pledges is they very often leave the bulk of the projected work to the end of the time period (ie after the current term in office) so can't be counted on. Eg look at Canada's consumer carbon tax, EV sales mandate... Tech advance will continue but policy may not follow.

Delighted to see @ketanjoshi.co doing the homework to measure what I see as the *real* AI energy problem - firehosed AI video from advertisers. Meta will likely be the worst offender, but if it works commercially (subsidised by VCs) you could end up sitting through more (climate-busting) video ads

“Rather than reinvesting those profits in the Canadian economy, the four companies paid out $79.7 billion in dividends and share buybacks, nearly ¾ of which went to foreign shareholders, including 62% to American shareholders.” www.theenergymix.com/u-s-owned-oi...

This is the outcome I have been quietly hoping for all along - ditch the economically dubious green hydrogen but keep building the wind turbines and use them to displace polluting electricity sources. Or serve energy intensive industries. Just not AI datacentres or bitcoin mining, please!

I think @ketanjoshi.co first pointed me to the @iea.org claim AI-led energy efficiencies would more than compensate for the industry's actual usage. I just looked up the claim to find the justification behind the pretty graphs... and there doesn't seem to be any?! www.iea.org/reports/ener...

Freight transport was 14.7% of NL's emissions in 2023 and considered "hard to abate" (www.gov.nl.ca/eccc/files/2...). But we have lots of electricity and most travels along the TCH so maybe we should be examining how to support truck electrification if the Chinese are making it work?

I just received a very interesting email from a reader who worked in nuclear power plant inspection and security for many years during the 1990s and 2000s. His basic point is that Microsoft's plan to revive the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant is ludicrous on its face.

Never mind the economics - if h2 leaks 10-50% at filling stations, the future climate implications are staggering if not fixed (even if it's 3x less harmful than natural gas leaks news.mit.edu/2024/new-cli...). www.h2-view.com/story/boil-o...

🇳🇴 Norway is supporting the construction of potentially the world’s biggest electric container ships 🚢🔋, amongst other vessels. The two ships, which are capable of carrying 850 containers, will sail between Norway, Sweden and Germany with a 100 MWh battery.

Four trends to consider in relation to Canada’s wildfire situation: 1) The total number of fires per year is declining 2) The number of very large HUMAN-caused fires is declining 3) The number of arsons is declining 4) The total burn area is *increasing* This suggests a strong climate influence.

Depressingly I suspect the underlying reason we don't see bigger rich world government action is in this map. Most of us will be less affected and can buy our way out of the crisis. The global South will be screwed (again) to allow us to keep profiting.

Curves are pointing the right way, but absolute numbers of EVs remain worryingly small. We need to move more aggressively to promote EV purchases and take measures to boost transit and active transportation use so that the huge existing fleet of ICE vehicles is used less and retired faster!

David Attenborough, a world-famous science educator, has made a bestselling movie exposing the waste and harms from #BottomTrawling... But are fish harvesters still allowed to use it off Newfoundland's shores? @justinbrake.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzG9...

A HISTORIC MILESTONE: For the first time, solar power generated more electricity globally than nuclear, making it the world’s 4th largest power source. In just 5 years, solar output nearly tripled—from 79 TWh (Apr 2020) to 233 TWh (Apr 2025). The energy transition is speeding up. @ember-energy.org

Worth considering when our leaders talk about building "natural" gas (methane) production in NL and elsewhere in Canada for export to lower emissions in the developing world. The numbers don't add up.

"climate realism" reading a lot like "sacrificing the global south and just shooting for 3 C" www.cfr.org/article/our-...

shared EVs for social housing. another area where social housing can provide a buoy against energy poverty

Encouraging - for all the posturing, particularly on the right, the British seem to understand the need for drastic changes to combat climate change and, crucually, to grasp that we can't just geoengineer or carbon capture our way out of the problem.

Hard to overstate the significance of this Nature paper by Christopher W Callaghan & @jsmankin.bsky.social. It suggests Chevron caused US$791bn to $3.6 trillion in heat-related losses 1991–2020 and all emissions from the major oil and gas producers cost the world around $28 trillion rdcu.be/ei0T5

While the PCs are clearly worse, the real scandal here should be that clearly neither major 🇨🇦 party is serious about its climate goals. And here in NL our emissions reductions goal (which we won't meet) is only a 30% reduction by 2030. And we're pledging to double our oil production. Madness

The 🇨🇦 Tory platform is ludicrous. Eg shipping fossil gas to India to replace coal a) assumes they want it b) might produce more emissions than coal anyway and c) if effective can't be credited as an emissions reduction by us because it would "belong" to India www.nationalobserver.com/2025/04/23/n...

Industrial carbon pricing is Canada’s single most powerful tool to reduce emissions and protect competitiveness—and it costs next to nothing for households. That’s largely because it applies to large exporting industries. Learn more ⬇️ 440megatonnes.ca/insight/indu...

With this plus a mutually beneficial deal with Quebec, NL would finally be able to profit from its hydro and wind power potential. No need to turn our electricity into green hydrogen (inefficiently) to ship it to Germany...

Canada and 62 nations have agreed to price emissions from international shipping—a positive sign that coordinated action on climate is still possible. The new system will incentivize and fund cleaner fuels and technologies and support developing countries. apnews.com/article/ship...

Getting the remaining homes in NL off heating oil needs the kind of all-out effort being shown in Europe - Denmark will ban natural gas heating in buildings by 2030. Swiss cities like Basel, Zurich, and Winterthur have announced full or partial gas grid shutdowns.

EU policymakers are mulling over the idea of introducing international carbon credits as a solution to reaching the 2040 climate target, but our analysis shows that only one in every 27 is likely to represent real emissions reductions

It's not clear this $30bn+ project would connect to Newfoundland but they talk about it providing a better justification for us developing our great wind potential than green hydrogen and a more stable market than the US. Let's goooo!

They cut CIME funding because it "promotes exaggerated and implausible climate threats, contributing to a phenomenon known as “climate anxiety” cimes.princeton.edu In other words, it's important to keep youth unaware of their history and of the threats to their future. The opposite of woke: asleep

The people at CBECI were kind enough to send me a copy of their updated Bitcoin power consumption data At the end of 2024, Bitcoin's total consumption for 2024 *did* end up matching that of Pakistan. 2024 saw the biggest jump in power consumption ever. Absolutely wild stuff -> ccaf.io/cbnsi/cbeci

Scandalised by this @cfr.org "climate realism" initiative. Rarely does one see such a blunt expression of morally bankrupt FYIGM thinking from a mainstream "left leaning" US organization. Is this what we've come to now? Let's break it down:🧵www.cfr.org/article/our-...

If, like us, you could use a bit of encouraging news... the researchers claim these windows that are also solar panels can be made inexpensively (once they are out of the prototype stage) www.euronews.com/next/2025/03...

Not advocating violence when doing climate protest here but it is interesting a recent study of climate protest - mainly in North America and Western Europe -seems to suggest surprisingly non-violent action and even violence don't lead to worse public opinion towards climate action.

"New solar plants, even without subsidies, are within touching distance of new US gas plants. This is remarkable because US gas prices are only a quarter of prevailing gas prices in Europe and Asia. It really raises the bar on what is possible even in the current market..."

A free webinar on the federal and provincial assessment processes that apply to renewable energy infrastructure in Newfoundland and Labrador from East Coast Environmental Law. Timely! mailchi.mp/0e0986910710...

A welcome initiative of the NL Environmental Network - an opportunity for electric vehicle advocates and skeptics to meet, discuss and learn from one another about the environmental costs and benefits for NL of this important shift. More friendly conversations on contentious topics are planned!

RIP President Carter, who nailed our society’s foundational environmental problem: “Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.” 🌎 e360.yale.edu/features/jim...

Would have liked to have seen some mention in the pr of need to minimize the environmental impact of the dams, but the addition of 3.8GW of non-nuclear firm renewable energy to the grid seems like a huge environmental win (and a giant financial boost for this province!) www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

The second order effects of self driving vehicles are arguably even more alarming - it will make suburban sprawl and endless commutes more appealing because drivers will find the time they now spend looking at the road more enjoyable.

If two thirds of the household in Norway use heatpumps, this should also be possible in Canada. www.theguardian.com/environment/...