What mattered this week

Russia’s run out of petrol & buying electric cars 🤯

Run out? Ukraine hits refineries. Now, fewer under half their petrol stations have anything. In some big cities, one in four. (InsideEVs)

So? Sales of plug-ins doubled. Dealers sold out. Moscow’s chargers up from 1,500 to 8,000. All Chinese cars, obv. (Carscoops)

Meaning? The world’s second-biggest oil producer can’t fill its own cars.

Elsewhere? Denmark 88% electric last month. UK 28%, a record. (electricfelix)

The Tories doubled the cost of net zero. Because they can’t use Microsoft Excel 😡

Doubled? UK Conservatives published net zero cost “close to £1tn”. The CCC’s number was £478bn. Someone add a subtotal line to the final total… and counted the lot twice. (Carbon Brief)

And the real number? Actually, a lot lower. £108bn. The CCC cut it last year because EVs got cheap.

Where did this mess come from? A Spectator piece in January, repeated by a think tank in March, now party policy. Nobody checked 🫣.

Your vegetables are half the food they were

Half? Nutrients in cereals and veg down 20 to 50% since the 1960s. (The Grocer)

But isn’t CO2 ‘plant food’? More CO2 means bigger but emptier plants. By mid-century: wheat protein down another 13%, zinc down a third. (AgNavigator)

Anyone measuring? Britain last fully checked what’s in its fruit and veg in 1991. Maybe it’s time to look again.

One thing to worry about

The biggest penguin colony on Earth is in the South Sandwich Islands.

Since 2011 it’s lost over half a million birds. 63% of the colony.

The sea ice goes, the krill go, the penguins go. (National Geographic; British Antarctic Survey, Current Biology)

One thing to be optimistic about

Solar+batteries are cheaper than gas. In Europe. Today.

Germany’s latest solar-plus-battery auction cleared at 5.1c per kWh. (pv magazine). Gas today’s costs about 17c per kWh, before cost of building the power station.

If you’ve got more time…

Earth’s energy imbalance is the whole damn thing. How much comes in from the sun, and how much goes out again. Spark has a useful explainer.

Our basic problem: The planet is absorbing twice as much heat as twenty years ago. The greenhouse is keeping the heat in.

Piers Forster’s team have the numbers: How a record-high “energy imbalance” is driving global warming (Carbon Brief).

• Energy imbalance 1.12 W/m² over 2013 to 2025. The latest twelve months: 1.78. (NASA CERES, via earthenergyimbalance.com)

• Up 40% since 2019. More than double two decades ago.

• Warming now 0.27°C a decade, the fastest ever.