Think of CO₂ removal like a time machine. How far back does planting 100 million trees take us? One mature tree takes up ~25 kg of CO₂/year, so 100 million trees will take up 2.5 MtCO₂. That's a time machine that takes us back ~33 minutes in a year. Nature will not save us from fossil fuel CO₂.

Electricity ratepayers feel pain from *bills*, not prices. If my price goes up 10% but my energy use goes down 20% (from insulation or a more efficient air conditioner, say), then *my bill goes down 12%*. Energy efficiency is weirdly absent from discourse on electricity affordability.

Good China Books Review article on the growing genre of migrant workers' literature. About one-third of China's working population, and nearly two-thirds of migrant workers, work in the gig economy. chinabooksreview.com/2026/05/21/w...

Chinese researchers have created a bamboo-based plastic as strong as petroleum-based plastics, which can fully biodegrade in soil in just 2 months phys.org/news/2025-10...

Almost 100% of new cars sold in Norway last year were electric. Not just because of oil wealth. Because of carbon taxes, EV incentives, and thirty years of consistent policy. New newsletter: Norway: The World's Most Instructive Energy Paradox janrosenow.substack.com/p/norway-the...

Germany's electricity mix, 2000 vs 2025: Renewables: 6% → 62% Fossil fuels: 62% → 36% Nuclear: 30% → 0% Nuclear's exit was filled by renewables, not coal or gas. Want more of this content and more detail and links to sources? Subscribe to my new Substack: substack.com/@janrosenow

Of all the made-up intentionally-hollow tactical-false-promise greenwashing technologies out there, space solar I think is the one that just makes me the angriest. Not even sure why, maybe because it should be the most obviously nonsensical but is treated as completely reasonable

I've been touting the inevitable win of electric trucks over combustion and hydrogen trucks for over 10 years now. Glad to see it's finally happening. www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/bus...

BREAKTHROUGH: SaltX Technology and Holcim have produced Portland-quality clinker - the core ingredient in cement - using a fully electrified process. No fossil fuels. The goal is now a pilot plant targeting Europe's first fully electric cement facility by 2028. www.globalcement.com/news/20714-s...

Let me remind everyone that fierce debate exists over the different classes of ebikes allowed in cities.

I was reminded this morning of something IBM noted in 1978: "A computer can never be held accountable. Therefore, a computer must never make a management decision."

Corn ethanol serves no purpose and is purely a handout to farmers. It costs more and emits more than normal petroleum. And it takes up half as much land area as all urban and suburban land in the US. If we replaced the land with solar, we'd get 3x as much power as the US uses.

Some reflections on getting rejected: The secret skill of highly successful people? Getting rejected (a lot!) without letting it erode their sense of self-worth. Nobody puts that on their CV. More in my Substack article: janrosenow.substack.com/p/on-rejection

GORGEOUS

"Under limited CCS growth rates, deployment... could be reduced by a factor of 7 relative to a scenario that does not consider injectivity or growth rate limits... Delayed mitigation combined with slower-than-expected CCS deployment could result in large &prolonged temperature overshoot"

It’s the 250th year of American independence, and the Pope and the King of England are reminding Americans of their revolutionary values, principles, and ideals Somewhere, John Adams is confused as fuck

This seems really bad? I mean, if you want the oil to stay in the ground, the cartel that set production quotas to limit output and keep oil prices high was a good thing. It felt like a possible useful player in a managed energy transition.

Potentially hyper-cheap sodium batteries are becoming commercially available and are getting LFP battery specs. This is nuts! This could lead to *incredibly* cheap batteries! electrek.co/2026/04/27/c...

Europe's electricity: 29% fossil fuels in 2024, down from 53% in 2005. Progress. But transport is still 92% fossil. Buildings: 71%. Industry: 61%. And 95% of EU oil and 88% of gas imported. Switching suppliers doesn't fix this. Electrification and efficiency do. More here: rdcu.be/feOjc

This is already demonstrably incorrect. And Wright isn't even dead yet.

Chinese researchers report 700 Wh/kg lithium-metal battery www.pv-magazine.com/2026/04/02/c...

Cars are parked 20 to 22 hours a day on average, which is plenty of time to recharge an EV using a standard AC outlet leahy.substack.com/p/my-non-fos...

The next tipping point in the energy transition is approaching. Overall, solar has already been cheaper than fossil power for a while, but upfront costs used to be higher. That's no longer the case. Solar is now competitive upfront AND has vastly lower operating costs (no fuel).

We bought an EV years ago and have so far saved over $7000 in avoided gas costs. And our electricity is now free because our solar panels have completely paid for themselves in saved electricity costs. My interest in the price of fossil fuels is purely political.

100% Of Copenhagen’s City Buses Are Now Electric cleantechnica.com/2026/04/03/1...

Zelensky discusses the bizarre attitude of so-called allies, which is completely disconnected from reality. Please listen to this.

I feel like “the world passed peak gas-powered car sales in 2017” is not a widely known fact

South Korea's President: “South Korea must swiftly transition to renewable energy.” “Relying on fossil energy is extremely dangerous for the future. We do not produce these resources ourselves, and chasing imports has led to the current crisis.” www.chosun.com/english/nati... #energysky

BYD Electric Bus Sales Rose 71% in March cleantechnica.com/2026/04/02/b...

Awesome view from Artemis II this morning.

1/ Why is atmospheric CO₂ accelerating faster than fossil fuel emissions are growing? The answer is buried in the data, and it's more worrying than most people realise. A thread. 🧵👇

"Solar saved Europe €3bn in fossil fuel imports in March: Which country is leading the way?" www.euronews.com/2026/04/01/s...

More than 1.3k RTs on this AI slop image and fabricated caption. Let's have some standards here people

German Truckers To Face Over €1,200 A Month In Additional Diesel Costs cleantechnica.com/2026/04/01/g...

We need to see FIDs, but Trump’s attacks on Canada may have formally ended the Biden & earlier era of 🇨🇦 allegiance to the North American business model of ICE SUVs and trucks, with a fast transition towards the global trend to Chinese based transnational EV makers.

This is also a counterpoint to several articles saying that Pakistan has been doing better because it has lots of solar - not untrue, it *has* to be doing better than it would have been without the solar, but it's still not great. And a lot of the data is estimated for Pakistan.

This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

$200 A Barrel Oil? — Bloomberg Says It’s Possible cleantechnica.com/2026/03/30/2...

Ukraine’s leader says he signed 10-year deals worth billions of $ with three wealthy petrostates 🇶🇦🇸🇦🇦🇪at the end of last week…involved the supply and joint production of Ukrainian drones, as well as expertise, in exchange for Gulf energy and other “scarce resources.” www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

IMO, a substantial part of the world will take the Gulf crisis as a signal to increase & diversify fossil fuel production, & another part will see it as a signal to cleanly electrify. The two dynamics will lead to faster ~2/3-3/4 clean transition, & longer, thicker fossil tail 1/

As of Dec 2025, China has more than 1,000 watts of solar capacity installed per capita. That's roughly 2.5 standard 400W solar panels per person ☀️ Half of that capacity was built in just the last 24 months! It has already overtaken the US and the gap is quickly getting bigger.

The LNG we import in Europe is far from clean. Visible methane plumes at US gas sites rated “grade A” resulting in much higher upstream emissions. Auditors don’t measure emissions — they review operator data that studies show is massively understated. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

In 2025, more power was generated worldwide from renewable energy than from coal, and 91% of new renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels. Each year nuclear adds only as much net global power capacity as renewables add every two days.

What do you think about the chances of the Dutch authorities approving Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" @aukehoekstra.bsky.social? Elon Musk is playing this up and it seems a large part of Tesla's share price hinges on it.

🇪🇺🇺🇦 Kallas: "Today I am pleased to announce that we are providing Ukraine with an additional 80 million euros, obtained from proceeds from frozen Russian assets."

European residential heat pump sales increased in 2025 www.pv-magazine.com/2026/03/23/e...

people who use social media < 1 hour a day: 73% say democracy is the best form of government people who use it 5+ hours a day: 57% the more time you spend on social media, the less you believe in democracy (and for the bots: the less you believe in democracy the more time you spend on social media)

Hungary has the highest solar share of any country in the world - 27% of all electricity from solar in 2025, up from just 2% in 2018. In August 2024, solar hit 37% of monthly generation. The country now has >8 GW of installed capacity - a target supposed to be reached by 2030, hit 6yrs early.

Plato said only the previously sick should ideally be doctors, and he’d certainly argue only cyclists be allowed to design bike racks.

Human actions often have unintended consequences