Tram stops to be transformed as part of an eco-initiative | RailBusinessDaily Tram stops across the West Midlands are set to become vibrant wildlife havens as part of Metro’s latest environmental initiative. The first ‘eco-island’ Tram stops across the West Midlands are set to ...

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NEW: Details of UK govt plans to "break influence of gas on electricity prices"

Carrot: Offer fixed-price "wholesale CfDs" to old renewables, replacing wholesale ££ but not RO top-up
Stick: Higher windfall tax of 45–>55% on 1 July for old renewables/nuclear
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Sorry for the LinkedIn link but we came up with a cool concept that @ember-energy.org is bringing to life. Fossil Dependence Day. The point in the year at which your country becomes dependent on imported fossil fuels.
www.linkedin.com/posts/electr...

Again: young people might not realize that this kind of repugnant racism was unacceptable to express publicly, *not that long ago*.

ONE MORE HOUR TO REGISTER

THREAD: The IEA global energy review 2026

* CO2 record high, but growth nearly ground to halt
* Clean energy shaved 3bn tonnes off CO2
* Fossil-fuel power pushed into reverse
* Age of Electricity "confirmed"
* "Extraordinary" solar growth
* Batteries up 40%
* EVs up 20%
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Ed Miliband to double down on net zero with measures to combat Iran energy shock As fossil fuel prices soar ‘the era of clean energy security must come of age’, energy secretary will say

I have a request in to Ed Milliband's people for a pod interview. If you have any connections or inside info, help me out! Put in a good word! Really want to talk to this dude.

If so, might be worth getting in touch with this Mini dealership
www.oxfordmini.co.uk

But you’re opposing this project?

Is it specifically the Mini EV that you want to hire?

Average new UK electric car price is now lower than petrol vehicles Autotrader says average EV cost is £785 cheaper, in an important milestone in the move away from fossil fuels

Forget "total cost of ownership." In the UK, the average EV is now cheaper than the average ICE vehicle, up front. Sticker cost.

And of course the savings just keep accumulating after that.

California's power grid saw its lowest emissions since......I think at least this century, right?

ember-energy.org/data/us-elec...

Good morning with good news: Solar globally grew by 600 TWh in 2025, largest ever rise from any source, excl rebound yrs.

RE & nuclear growth was more than total electricity demand growth.

Fossil fuel generation DECLINED!

RE = coal generation!
iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ade8f... #energysky

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

I’m an engineer who’s been working in cutting carbon / decarbonisation for over 20 years. I’m currently working on a project to identify potential solar sites across Sussex.

I’ve never promoted or worked for fossil fuels or nuclear - I have no idea where you’ve got that suggestion from.

In China battery electric trucks and hybrid trucks now outsell diesel trucks for the first time.

Yup - that’s how they work!

Gas generation falls as wind farms set new quarterly generation record New data shows wind generation reached 29.2TWh during the first quarter, as gas power output fell 16 per cent year-on-year

Gas generation was down 16 per cent in the first quarter due to the UK's latest wind power generation record. If it weren't for renewables this fossil fuel-induced energy crisis would be even worse. www.businessgreen.com/news/4528492...

We need both solar and wind.

And I don’t understand how you propose we get cheap power in the summer without solar at scale.

drax Sunday June 1 2025 00:00 - Monday September 1 2025 00:00 Demand & price Demand 27.41 GW Price £73.32/MWh Environment Emissions 105g/kWh Temperature 18.84°C Supply Coal 0.00 GW 0.00% Gas 6.49 GW 22.45% Solar 2.99 GW 10.38% Wind 7.55 GW 25.92% Hydro 0.26 GW 0.89% Pumped Storage 0.27 GW 0.92% Imports & Exports 4.71 GW 16.51% Biomass 2.62 GW 9.06% Nuclear 3.99 GW 13.86%

British wind and solar are complementary: when one drops, the other delivers There are very few days a year in Britain with both low wind and solar

And even IF we don’t massively increase demand in the summer / year round, how will we reduce gas use in the summer without significantly building out solar?

Our summers aren’t windy enough to rely on wind power to supply our electricity on a daily basis.

We need solar. At scale.

And as we decarbonise other areas of society, demand will rise year round.

Here’s a few of the decarbonisation projects I’ve worked on - all of them operate year round:

- We need power to charge our EVs and eHGVs.
- We need power to run industry.
- We need power to run our crematoria.

drax Sunday June 1 2025 00:00 - Monday September 1 2025 00:00 Demand & price Demand 27.41 GW Price £73.32/MWh Environment Emissions 105g/kWh Temperature 18.84°C Supply Coal 0.00 GW 0.00% Gas 6.49 GW 22.45% Solar 2.99 GW 10.38% Wind 7.55 GW 25.92% Hydro 0.26 GW 0.89% Pumped Storage 0.27 GW 0.92% Imports & Exports 4.71 GW 16.51% Biomass 2.62 GW 9.06% Nuclear 3.99 GW 13.86%

We don’t need to generate power just “when we’re cold”. Electricity is vital for society to function.

Last summer (June-Sept), we were reliant on gas for 22.5% of our electricity.

We urgently need more solar to displace gas - especially during spring and summer when we have less wind.

An allegory for our times

A graph showing the rise in citations for our 2023 motonormativity paper, up to 101 in total today

Given the considerable lags in the academic publishing process, I'm surprised and gratified by how rapidly motonormativity is becoming a thing in the literature

A partially decorated Xmas tree left out in the street

I saw this left out in the street on Thursday (16 April). Still decorated with tinsel and a few baubles.

Looking forward to working with this fine chap tomorrow. Here's a flashback to when Abdel had a go at announcing stations on the the line to Pwllheli.
#JustForFun

oking ahead, we project that installed onsite gas‑fired generation for data centres could expand rapidly to 2030, reaching 15 GW to 27 GW globally, equivalent to around 9 GW to 5 10 15 20 25 30 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 Low High Installed onsite gas capacity GW 5 10 15 20 25 30 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 GW Installed onsite battery storage capacity IEA. CC BY 4.0. 58 International Energy Agency | Key questions on energy and AI 20 GW of data centre demand once reliability‑driven overbuild requirements are considered (Figure 6.4). In the United States, where this growth is mostly concentrated, we pro

6 - 13% of data centre growth in the US could be powered purely by new-build fossil fuelled power stations. Could be 30 gigawatts of new fossil gas in the US by 2030.

sat

The details of the IEA's satellite analysis: 5.6 gigawatts of new fossil gas-fired capacity is verifiably under construction in the US to power data centres (!!)

ne consequence of GPUs being networked together and operated synchronously is that their workloads, and therefore their power consumption, are also synchronised. During AI model training and use, there are typically periods of intense computation, followed by periods of less computationally intensive data exchange and periods of computational downtime. Because computation requires power, this variability leads to large swings in IT power demand. These swings occur across timeframes ranging from microseconds to seconds to several minutes. As the power density of AI hardware increases, the absolute size of these swings also increases. Software-based mitigation strategies can help smooth these swings, but they may result in more wasteful electricity consumption. Depending on how data centres of this kind are configured and connected to the grid, these swingsin power use may have implications for grid stability, potentially leading to voltage instability and harmonic distortion on local grids. Figure 4.1 ⊳ Power envelope of GPU workload and power density of data centres by first operational year

We are definitely not talking anywhere near enough about the risk of data centre induced blackouts, which is a very real and material risk if this isn't managed properly

Initial signs indicate AI is boosting productivity in some sectors, which may push up overall economic growth. There are a wide range of projections of the impact of AI on GDP. Based on cooperation with the OECD and economic modelling of the possible task-by-task productivity boost coming from AI, this report provides a first-of-its-kind analysis of the implications of an AI-driven GDP boost on the energy sector. Stronger economic growth from AI does not translate one-to-one into higher energy demand. It is concentrated in knowledge-intensive services and high-income countries, where the elasticity between energy demand and economic activity is lower. Estimates show that, depending on the scale of uptake, an AI-driven growth boost could raise the level of global energy demand by between 1-4% in 2035 compared with trends without this AI boost. Effects are concentrated in advanced economies, particularly the United States, although emerging and developing economies also benefit from increased economic activity. Ultimately, what matters most for energy demand are energy policies and energy technologies. In our analysis, the impact of energy policies and energy technology developments on energy demand is much larger than the potential impact of an AI-driven economic growth boost.

I'll save my comments for the section (we're still in the summary!!) but this really reads like a very significant drawback from the excessively bold and overly optimistic report from last year.