The unrivalled David Roberts' team has used 4 of the stories in my latest newsletter for posts on Bluesky in the last two hours. Why wait for David's posts when you can subscribe at Substack for free and get the best unpublicised energy stories earlier in the day? carboncommentary.substack.com

High winds and good sun in the four weeks from late August meant that the GB would have needed 8 TWh of storage (c.10 days national power use) with its target 2030 renewables capacity. Current battery capacity would meet just 0.1% of this. www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2025/10...

More renewable electricity supply lowers wholesale prices. I looked at the first 220 days of 2025 and showed that a day in which UK wind and solar supply 50% of total generation typically has a 'day-ahead' price 40% less than a day with 20% wind and solar. www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2025/8/...

Andrew Neil wrote a wildly inaccurate article on offshore wind the Daily Mail last week. In the article below, I specified the 15 most obvious errors. Sad to see such an experienced journalist publishing work without carrying out even basic research. www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2025/9/...

Really think that Tim Parrique's book on degrowth (Slow Down or Die) is worth reading, even if you disagree with it. Growth is no longer improving rich societies, he says. Short FT review commends its though-provoking content while expressing strong reservations. www.ft.com/content/e7d6...

Will UK will meet its 2030 clean power targets? The topic is well covered but I tried a different approach, using 1/2hr generation data from last year to model the impact of more solar+wind in 2030. The exercise showed the targets are very unlikely to be met. www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2025/5/...

FT article on the large sums now flowing into Enhanced Rock Weathering as possibly a cheap carbon capture route. www.ft.com/content/ffc2... Surprisingly, no mention at all of the likely benefits in the form of better agricultural yields and reduced fertiliser use. www.ncl.ac.uk/business-and...

The implications of last week's announcement from Canada about the first new SMRs to be ordered. Summary: on the basis of this deal not clear that SMRs are going to be any cheaper than full size nuclear reactors. www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2025/5/...

My daughter Ursula is studying in Barcelona. A photograph from her yesterday of a large circle of people around a battery-powered radio listening to news about the power cut.

The human brain consumes about 20 watts of power. Today's numbers from the IEA suggest that AI in data centres will consume about 240 terawatt hours by 2030. That means at the end of this decade artificial intelligence will use more energy than human intelligence.

Actually, I was wrong. There is one visible number. It suggests BP is expecting a 95% capture rate. (Percentage of CO2 emitted actually stored). If I am right may be worth pointing out that no power station carbon capture project has ever achieved a capture rate as high as this.

£22bn planned to be spent on UK carbon capture. First deals were signed 2 months ago. Just sent copy of 750 page contract. All vital numbers redacted. No way to work out how much BP is paid, or the cost per tonne of CO2. But most of the payment will go directly on elec. bills. How can this be right?

Does anybody have a rough estimate of how much cooling would result today from a 27GT reduction in CO2 in atmosphere? (I'm working on the value of cutting contrails and this is the approximate warming equivalent of the typical global coverage of contrails today).

Development of Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) as a carbon removal fix has been held up by difficulties measuring CO2 captured. German leader InPlanet has just announced a verified amount for its project in Brazil. A first. Personal view, but ERW has huge potential. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Better Energy, builder of 50% of all new renewables in Denmark since 2020 entered 'reconstruction' today. (Similar to Chap. 11 in the US, which protects insolvent cos). It blamed falling electricity use. I wrote a post on how similar forces affect the UK. www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2024/12...

The future of transport. Solar-powered lie-flat 3 wheel cycle. The friend who took the photo estimated maximum speed of 60 km per hour. Seen here in a supermarket car park (though seems a trifle unclear where the shopping bags will be stored...)

I wrote a piece on the striking global increase in climate scepticism in recent years, using survey data from Ipsos and YouGov. www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2024/10...

UK promises £22bn to CCS operators. But across the Atlantic, latest well for CO2 drilled by ADM in Illinois is leaking. Has been closed because of risk of pollution of drinking water. Second failure there. No successes. Perhaps trial projects in UK would have been better than huge commitment now.

Another sign that decarbonisation is actually happening. The port of Hamburg, the 2nd largest in Germany, saw a c.4% fall in volumes shipped in H1 2024 saying 'the impact of the energy transition is becoming increasingly evident in bulk cargo handling, particularly with the decline in coal volumes.'

In a previous life I worked on competition economics, including trying to stop early attempts to drain cash from water companies. Interviewed yesterday by Utility Week about Thames Water, I said that public ownership was inevitable. My reasoning is here: www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2024/4/...

Hannah Ritchie wrote an extremely useful summary of my chapter on steel decarbonisation here: www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/green-stee...

Major study of effect of better insulation in Paris social housing shows 28% cut in energy use. Much bigger cut than typical. Perhaps we're getting better at insulating older flats. www.apur.org/fr/nos-trava.... Another impressive result: top floor heatwave temps up to 15degrees lower

Implausible claims about CO2 capture, industrial heat pumps, cost reductions for electrolysers, hydrogen tenders, advances in grid batteries and six other stories on my free newsletter at carboncommentary.substack.com