What mattered this week

Wind & solar alone meet 50% of UK’s power in September

What happened? Last month, 50.4% electricity from the wind and the sun.
Why does it matter? Even ten years ago, few thought this could be done.
Read more: Ember’s data explorer

China’s rare earth blockade to halt new energy progress

What happened? China announced export bans for rare earths. While not actually ‘rare’ all the messy, environmentally damaging refining is done in China.
Why does it matter? Batteries, solar, EV motors all need it. As do microchips, F35s etc.
Read more: Atlantic Council: “Critical minerals in crisis”

AI datacentres gobbling up water is totally fake news

What happened? Various people up in arms about data centre water usage (Techmonitor) - but it’s not true. Half UK data centres don’t use water at all (TechUK)
Why does it matter? One piece of paper uses 2,500 prompts worth of water. A single pair of jeans equivalent to decades of your AI use.
Read more: The Weird Turn Pro

One thing to worry about

Don’t buy a hybrid car. Plug-in hybrid cars emit 5x the carbon they claim, says a new EU report.

Also, extremely complex, so more problems than other cars (InsideEV).

One thing to be optimistic about

Solar panels are terraforming deserts.

What causes this transformation? The solar panels provide consistent shade, which helps retain moisture, lower soil temperatures, and reduce evaporation.

 Glass Almanac covers a new study of a massive 1GW farm in China and what’s going on.

If you’ve got more time…

Those white streaks behind planes? They’re contrails and they trap heat almost as much as jet fuel does.

Hannah Ritchie explains in Sustainability by Numbers, simply rerouting flights to avoid cold, humid air could slash aviation’s warming impact:

• 3% of flights cause 80% of the problem

• Rerouting adds about 1% to flight time

• Costs around 50¢ a passenger

• Could halve aviation’s warming - overnight

So why aren’t airlines doing it? Because no one’s asking them to - and they’d rather not talk about it.