It was very interesting developing these short @apolitical.bsky.social courses for civil servants on electricity grids, featuring a range of Imperial experts, including @iain-staffell.bsky.social. Any non-experts in government looking to learn about future electricity networks, check these out! 👇

We are all used to stories of the UK in decline… Electricity is no exception: demand has fallen for 20 years as we outsource industry. But Britain has turned a corner: demand up two years in a row. AI data centres now consume more power than Birmingham and could 4x by 2030.

MISLEADING: A new academic paper by @qmul.bsky.social has attracted significant media attention by claiming that EVs & heat pumps deliver no proven carbon savings in UK ahead of 2030 clean power target - and should therefore be postponed. Here is why this paper should never have been published.🧵

What do people in oil & gas and climate activists disagree on? Not “is climate change real”... The clash is on pace + trust. How fast can we change without unacceptable disruption? Can the fossil industry be trusted as part of the climate solution? www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Clean energy cost projections that ignore actual financing terms are wishful thinking. Cool new paper finally gives empirical, national-level WACC for 10 key technologies across 176 countries. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

UK-based high density pumped hydro firm RheEnergise has successfully generated electricity for the first time - they tell me they hit their full output capacity of 500 kilowatts. Here's my piece from late last year which discusses their tech: share.google/gomKZ5pZ4aEG...

We interviewed UK climate activists and oil & gas employees on what the energy transition should look like. I expected polarisation. Instead: surprising shared ground on urgency, cutting demand, and how government must set the pace. Can we achieve more together? www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Where did Britain get its electricity from in 2025? Explore the data for yourself on the Electric Insights dashboard: www.electricinsights.co.uk#/dashboard?p...

Where did Britain get its electricity from in 2025? 🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️ 🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️ 🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️ 🌬️🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌳🌳🌳 🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌊☢️☢️☢️☢️ ☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️🔥🔥 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🇳🇱🇧🇪🇩🇰🇩🇰🇳🇴 🇳🇴🇳🇴🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷 Explore the data for yourself on the Electric Insights dashboard: www.electricinsights.co.uk#/dashboard?p...

Britain's electricity demand has turned a corner. After twenty years of de-industrialisation... electric cars, heat pumps and data centres meant demand grew by 3% this year. And that growth was more than met by renewables, so emissions keep falling. www.thetimes.com/business/ene...

If you do any cost analysis or economics for energy then stop assuming 8% is your discount rate! Getting specific data on costs of capital was a nightmare, until now: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Batteries are now Britain’s biggest form of energy storage. More than 6 GW installed and ~45 GW already consented or being built! But, batteries aren't going to solve the problems of wind curtailment... Long-duration storage is the next big challenge.

Do climate conferences actually achieve anything? A lot of people have strong opinions, but we wanted measurements, so we look at how the stock market moves during yearly international meetings called COPs – explanation below, or read the paper here: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Dirty or damaged solar panels waste vast amounts of clean power. Introducing SolarSynthNet: a deep learning model that spots cracks, dust & snow. It's the new state-of-the-art with 97%+ detection accuracy and is built for real-world farms. Paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Climate models have underestimated the departure of high temperature extremes from monthly means. If we assume these model biases persist in future projections, then the climate models are also likely underestimating the magnitude of future high temperature extremes. www.nature.com/articles/s43...

1/ New study @UniLUT on the techno-economic potential of global offshore wind power doi.org/10.1016/j.ap.... Potential within 200 NM & 1000 m depth adds up to 27.3 TW or 66200 TWh, with 2/3 on floating foundations. Economic potential is projected to grow, with declining costs.

The UK is installing solar panels at its fastest rate in over a decade! renewablesnow.com/news/uk-inst...

There will be no transition without transmission! Power grids are the hidden star of the net-zero story. Our new study maps how Europe's Transmission System Operators are using innovation to keep ahead. From NWAs to AI, see what they are doing here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🕯️ The recent blackout in Spain & Portugal shows how the grid is the front-lines of the energy transition. ⚡ Innovation is key to keeping the lights on. Our new study reveals what Europe's TSOs are rolling out to stop it happening again... 📕 See where they are betting big: doi.org/10.1016/j.es...

Global hydrogen demand has grown 𝟯𝘅 𝘀𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 than the experts predicted. For 50 years, analysts have projected rapid uptake (6-15% pa.). Instead hydrogen has tracked global GDP, growing ~3% pa. Will hydrogen finally take off - or are we still being too optimistic? 📖: www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Why are Ferraris outselling all hydrogen cars combined? Decades of R&D from top automakers couldn’t make fuel-cell cars mainstream. BEVs now outsell them 1,000-to-1. Great breakdown by Nathan Johnson & @iain-staffell.bsky.social for @carbonbrief.org 🔗 www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-w...

We must stop focusing hydrogen research and investment into dead-ends. EVs out-sell fuel cell cars 1000:1. Find out what's hot and what's not as the famous @mliebreich.bsky.social Hydrogen Ladder enters the peer-reviewed literature. New paper in Nature Reviews: www.nature.com/articles/s44...

For decades, forecasts of a clean hydrogen economy have relied on rapid scale-up driving down costs. However, production costs are dominated by engineering and energy, and supplemented by transport, storage & usage costs which seem unlikely to exhibit rapid reductions. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

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...

🧵 NEW: Is Britain really a high tax country? Our collective tax bill is at its highest share of GDP since the 1940s But actually, the tax and NI paid by the average worker are at their lowest in decades. What’s going on? 1/7 @thetimes.com Free link 🔗 www.thetimes.com/article/25aa...

📢ANALYSIS: UK emissions fell 3.6% in 2024 to lowest since 1872 🏭Coal lowest since 1666, when Great Fire ravaged London 🚗EVs pushed oil down despite more traffic, saving £1.7bn 🌇Gas down on "cleanest ever" power 📈📉Since 1990, CO2 -54% / GDP +84% www.carbonbrief.org/... 1/9

Why academia is sleepwalking into self-destruction. My editorial @brain1878.bsky.social If you agree with the sentiments please repost. It's important for all our sakes to stop the madness academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

Despite how much we love hedgehogs, humans are a key factor in their decline 🦔 New from @drhedgehog.bsky.social @wildcru.bsky.social - a look at the status of our beloved garden visitors 👇 bit.ly/41H01yP @mplsoxford.bsky.social

You know that fossil fuel & food companies work their way into UN COP climate negotiations. You know they secretly push their corporate agendas. Would you like to see how? This new paper uses machine learning to uncover what happened at 20 years of COP side events: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Quick update: www.renewables.ninja now has access to weather inputs for 2024. So, if you want to model wind & solar farm output – heating & cooling demand – or just grab raw meteorological data, you now have hourly data from 1980 through to 2024 at your fingertips! 🌎🌍🌏

Want to work with us on the AMOC? 🌊 We have a 3-year postdoctoral position to fill. Check it out here: potsdam.pi-asp.de/bewerber-web...

Here's an eye opening new tool for academics... Find out the gobsmacking amount of money you have spent on publishing open access journal papers. Tool: pubanalyser.streamlit.app Code by @davidbann.bsky.social github.com/dbann/pubana...

🔋 Why is UK electricity so pricey? Dr Iain Staffell (@iain-staffell.bsky.social) at @ic-cep.bsky.social explains that the auction system sets prices by the most expensive source – often gas Even as our grid decarbonises, prices remain high... a strange paradox ⬇️ www.thetimes.com/uk/environme...

Wind power is getting a lot of hate Trump vows to ban new farms that "drive the whales crazy" Germany's AFD want to "tear down all these windmills of shame" Misinformation is running wild. So let's cut the crap and review the real barriers facing wind power www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A great long-form article on why Britain's power prices are so high, and what we can do about it... www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

Great news on the road to decarbonising UK electricity! www.thetimes.com/article/54ca...

The UK's Clean Power Mission aims for 95% clean generation by 2030! Gas will only be used sparingly for things like flexibility and balancing. This requires a huge effort over the next five years... but it's in line with our last decade of progress. Chart from www.electricinsights.co.uk

Even though coal-fired power generation is falling fast across Europe and America, it is still rising globally. China burns more than the rest of the world combined. Read more in this quarter’s Electric Insights report. reports.electricinsights.co.uk

The new Electric Insights report is out, covering the major events in decarbonising UK energy over the third quarter of this year. My favourite chart for this quarter: the global coal phase-out league table! See the full report here: reports.electricinsights.co.uk/reports/q3-2...

Fossil fuels are providing less than 10% of Britain's electricity right now... So long to Europe's dunkelflaute woes 🌬️

🌞 New Paper Alert! 🌞 We review how solar PV performance is affected worldwide by environmental factors (temperature, dust, extreme weather...). As PV moves beyond the hotspots of China, US, Europe, these can make or break productivity! 🔌💡 Free to read: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

It's great to see the UK increase its climate ambitions, raising the 2035 NDC from 78% to an 81% reduction from 1990 levels. I'd love to see us go further and up the 2030 pledge also. A 2% increase (from 68% to 70%) is well within reach: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

More bad news for UK wildlife, sadly, in this article by Helena Horton. Many organisations and individuals are doing amazing work to try to stem these declines. But, as pointed out in the piece, government action is needed. #UKbirding www.theguardian.com/environment/...

“I paid £100,000 at Oxford to get my PhD” No you did not. You pay for the chance to earn a degree. For the supervision time, research materials. And if the work you produce over 3-4 years is deemed good enough by two independent experts, then you get the degree. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Levelized Cost of Storage offers a standard way to assess the economics of different storage tech. Stakeholders need simplicity to guide better investment decisions - knowing what's cheap beats hypothetical 'system value'. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

New research shows Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) could cut UK heating bills by up to 40%. It's similar to heat pumps but with higher efficiency, perfect for large new housing & commercial developments. Time to harness clean heat beneath our feet! inews.co.uk/news/how-und...

So... a couple of weeks back I posted a quick'n'dirty chart showing how fast electricity generation from gas had collapsed in the UK Now here's the proper write-up of what happened, why, and what it means, by @DrIAGWilson & Daniel Donaldson: theconversation.com/wind-powers-...

There has been lots of news around the new Labour Government's energy policy... but what will it all mean for the UK's decarbonisation? This new paper finds 17 million tonnes of CO₂ savings per year by 2030 compared to previous plans! Free to read: doi.org/10.1016/j.es...

I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone shout about this. Britain's power system is totally ditching fossil fuels. Gas-fired power: collapsed by 40% over the last 3 mo. Coal: virtually extinct. Carbon emissions: lowest ever. Stay tuned for more in Electric Insights out next month.