What mattered this week

New Chinese electric cars so good Morgan Stanley admits Euro & US manufacturers are screwed

Bit much surely? No. "China may already have won the EV battle,” they say - as it has “the best products”.
Example? MS called Xiaomi YU7 (their second ever car) ‘a Ferrari for VW money’. $30k base model. $40k gets you 0-60 in 3s & 835km range.
Another? BYD has overtaken Tesla in Europe (FT).
Best commentary: YU7: read it and weep: CarNewsChina.com; @rwang07 breaks down Morgan Stanley’s analysis

Example no.735: Solar & batteries will eat the world

This week’s example? Batteries dispatched 10GW during California’s evening peak - a third of all power. Read @nicolasfulghum
Another one? Solar driving prices so low that Danish offshore wind isn’t making money. Read @jenshigh.

Oh, won’t anyone buy Saudi’s hydrogen? 😢

Build it and they will come? Turns out, no. Neom’s $8.4bn project only has one customer.
Who’s at fault? Tbh- the Europeans, who made a big noise about wanting hydrogen to replace gas. But won’t buy, it as expensive. Moi? Hypocrite?
Best commentary: Bloomberg (£); Saudi Energy Consulting

One thing to worry about

UK farmers are having a nightmare spring. Soil moisture is critically low, and crops are failing. Where they do establish, yields down >40%. (iNews)

The UK’s wettest 18-month period was… as recent October 2022 to March 2024.

We’re in a volatile world now. Get ready for a wild ride.

One thing to be optimistic about

How much solar are we building? This is an old one, but great and getting better.

“Expert” forecasts are the shallow lines - and then there’s how much solar has actually been built.

If you’ve got more time…

What do you do with a problem like… being a bleeding-heart liberal petro-state?

Canadians want to save the planet - but sell a lot of what’s heating it up.

Fossil fuels are 27% of Canadian exports… so the new Liberal Energy Minister had a tricky balancing act as he laid out his strategy this week.

The answer? Basically “Drill baby, drill… and all the other stuff as well.” Everyone gets something: Alberta keeps the rigs. Ottawa keeps its climate credentials.

And the maple syrup keeps flowing.

iPolitics.ca does a job of trying to explain it.