Quite blunt from the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2025: "Solar Adds Hundreds of Gigawatts, Nuclear Remains Irrelevant in the Market" www.worldnuclearreport.org/IMG/pdf/wnis...

Very interesting piece about China's changing approach to pricing renewables generation in its grid.

Lots to read here, and they have a 10-minute video documentary. "Nobody could come out here and say this well's not leaking."

I have a suggestion for Mexico: Make It Happen!

This looks really interesting. Directly link to the Atlas in Katie's second post.

Largely due to replacing on-platform gas turbines with connections to land-based hydro and wind, Norway's oil and gas sector is burning natural gas at levels last seen more than 20 years ago.

India has broken my graph. 30 GW of renewables added so far this year, ahead of 28.6 GW for all of 2024. robbieandrew.github.io/india

Involution: “It’s like riding a bicycle: As long as you keep pedaling, you might feel exhausted, but the bike stays upright.” Fantastic article about the crazy state of the Chinese auto industry, and how it got there.

I track monthly cement production data for a number of countries. Interesting to note that Russia's production of cement - a key commodity for infrastructure - is down considerably in the last few months compared to 2024.

New paper by a colleague.

Lots of interesting points in this article.

Pet peeve: "releases about half as many CO₂ emissions" Just say "releases about half as much CO₂". "emission" and "release" are the same thing here. We do not count CO₂ as 1 CO₂ emission, 2 CO₂ emission, .... We are not counting how many emissions there are; we're counting how much CO₂ there is.

I'm lucky enough to live five minutes' walk from this stream. Sometimes it helps to just pause here and ponder, especially when the stream is charged with recent rains.

Just moved a chart that was kind of hidden on my website, now more easily accessible on Singapore's page here: robbieandrew.github.io/country/?cou...

1/10 Interesting new IMF paper on the extent of industrial policy subsidies to Chinese manufacturers and SOEs (to the extent information is available) and their impact on productivity. www.imf.org/en/Publicati...

Holy cow. www.transportenvironment.org/articles/plu...

Increasingly, during the tail end of summer, electricity on India’s power grid is getting sourced mainly by solar, wind, and hydro for an hour or two around midday. I don’t think that’s happened before in India

Nice close to the article. Energy Secretary Attacks Offshore Wind and Dismisses Climate Change Chris Wright, who travels to Europe next week to promote American gas, called climate change “not incredibly important.” 🎁🔗 www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/c...

Forecasting is hard. The US EIA has been doing it for decades, but in 2008 it thought that US natural gas production would be flat. And 2008 happens to be the year that fracked shale gas began to take off. This poor outlook led to high prices, which gave extra stimulus to shale producers.

Interesting opening paragraph from a 1982 report. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.2...

I imagine you can find a quote from the current White House administration for any position at all. But apparently they're proud of this: www.whitehouse.gov/articles/202...

"Oil companies typically asked the Railroad Commission for permission to flare 10 days after they had already burned the gas." Oil and gas companies in Texas follow the rules, but permits are almost always (99.6% rate) granted to flare gas that they don't want to capture.

Ah, something I had quietly wondered: why are there so many aircon units that can't run in reverse? Surely it's not hard? But allowing the thing to run in both directions adds enough manufacturing cost that when competing in a market only for cooling, you don't do it. heatmap.news/ideas/heat-p...

Yes, we should be planting trees, but we can't have trees everywhere. "So reducing fossil fuel emissions remains the primary tool for tackling climate change."

When one person's views of truth propagate to millions via an AI chatbot that too many simply believe. The grand echo chamber becomes even more insulated against alternative views.

Nice analogy from @hannahdaly.ie demonstrating the unfairness of the grandfathering that is inherent in the "temperature neutrality" approach being used by some countries with high livestock methane emissions, such as Ireland and New Zealand. www.irishtimes.com/environment/...

Don't look to the markets to reflect real risk. Markets are "conventional wisdom processors", where participants are all trying to guess what the average participant thinks. We're not so far removed from sheep as we like to believe.

New paper that adds environmental conditions to a global model of shipping emissions based on individual ships' movements. @jukka-pekka.bsky.social

Heck, does this mean those science folks might one day come up with shoe soles that do NOT slip on ice?!

China has had enormous success with LNG trucks, particularly in the northeast with cheaper LNG. But is it now the turn of batteries? ▸LNG and Battery combined now represent about *45%* of total heavy truck sales in China. ▸Diesel is on the way out ▸Hydrogen is an also-ran

Up until last year, this was Folgefonna alpine ski slope in Norway. In recent years they've been hauling snow up from nearby to keep it operating, but the company has now gone bankrupt. In the short time since, the ski lift has toppled, as the glacier melts away. www.nrk.no/vestland/ski...

Data centres vent waste heat to the air, and generally this heat is at too low a temperature to be captured and utilised. But by first boosting the temperature using solar thermal (which requires no power) the heat can be economically converted back to electricity, increasing overall efficiency.

Norway's Progress Party is certainly right-wing, and with current polling is the largest on the right, but it most certainly doesn't appear to be business-friendly going into this election.

60%-70% of new pure-electric heavy trucks sold in China in the last year were rechargeable, and 30%-40% were battery-swappers. www.cvworld.cn/news/Onedata...

According to estimates by motorintelligence.com, sales of Teslas in the US have picked up in July and August.

With sufficient data in for July, the year-to-date estimate of India's fossil CO₂ emissions is now +0.3%. See: robbieandrew.github.io/india/

The other thing this figure shows is the big increase in India's imports of natural gas in 2024 because of government demands that gas-fired power stations produce more electricity that summer. The extra LNG must have cost those companies a pretty penny. robbieandrew.github.io/india/

Our 400+ page comment on the DOE climate working group report is now out. Our conclusion: The merchants of doubt are back, and they're coming for climate science.

Stadig kamp mot KI, for å kunne få nytte av det.

I thought it was odd that this 2024 article said that tiny Mauritius was the third-largest provider of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Indian solar. Now I learn that Mauritius actually means "USA", because substantial private US funds are channeled through Mauritius. Singapore too. Tax reasons.

US tariffs on India are likely to hit India's solar industry pretty hard. Blue is value of exports to the US, black is everywhere else. (Chart from Bloomberg)

Quick PSA: I feel like everyone should have to read this before they get a licence to drive on the internet these days. Context collapse describes us all suddenly turning up in each others' conversations and assuming we know what the others are talking about, as well as their motivations.

Europe's ACEA released Europe-wide car registration data for July this morning. My data are already updated: robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/

The rise and fall of KG-D6. India's discovery of a significant offshore gas reservoir didn't end well. On the promise of dramatically increased supply, lots of gas-fired power plants were built. But the wells dried up. Geology wasn't on their side this time. robbieandrew.github.io/india/

What a situation we're in. ▸He said countries were “destroying themselves” with wind energy and said, “I hope they get back to fossil fuels.” The most powerful country in the world is now punishing other countries for addressing the climate crisis.

I heard @cleanpowerdave.bsky.social mention on the @volts.wtf podcast that "sales of oil-powered cars peaked back in 2017. They've been falling for almost eight years now. It's insane", so I've updated my data back to 2015 to show this. robbieandrew.github.io/carsales/

The first shipment of CO₂ captured a couple of months ago at a Norwegian cement plant has now been injected into the subsea storage site.

Interesting graph from a 1992 report. The 1973 Arab embargo led to huge shifts in energy policy around the world, but fuel economy of European cars was already good. The Americans (seeing this was possible) introduced fuel economy (CAFE) standards for the first time, starting 1978.

📍China vows to strengthen the National Carbon Market The long-awaited full text of the high-level Opinions dated 24 May has now been officially released by the State Council It sets out the roadmap of China's carbon market, sectoral expansion, switch to Absolute Cap etc

Americans get around a lot more than Europeans do. (Chart excludes walking, cycling, swimming, ...)