What mattered this week

Europe: Biggest evacuation in decades 🔥

How bad, really? More than 250,000 people fleeing in France and Spain. Fire in the suburbs of Bordeaux. Macron sent in the army. Two firefighters died defending Bordeaux's airport. Gironde fire moving at 1,000 hectares an hour (a football pitch every 3 seconds). Spain declared a national emergency: one fire near Madrid has burned 32,000ha – 3x size of Paris. The smoke is visible from space. In some places, boats the only way out. Wildfires in the centre of Edinburgh. 🤯

Why so flammable? France driest since records in 1947. No rain in most of UK AT ALL in July.

Other impacts? Europe's grain down 9m tonnes.

Read more: France 24; Euronews; drought data from World Weather Attribution and ECIU

The world's oil safety net is a single 40-year-old pipe

Oil went through $100 – why isn't it $150? A pipeline across Saudi Arabia, built in the 1980s. With Hormuz too dangerous, the East–West line to the Red Sea is suddenly keeping the world running.

How much is riding on it? Aramco has cranked it to its full 7m barrels a day. One tube, built as an afterthought, now doing the work of the world's most important shipping lane.

Nice pipeline you’ve got there. It’d be pity if someone… bombed it.

Read more: Bloomberg (£); CNBC explainer

West’s great nuke hope has a fuel problem. It's called… Russia.

Um, that was dumb? Probably. The advanced uranium SMRs need has one commercial supplier: Russia. Bill Gates’ TerraPower cut ties with Rosatom's trading arm after Ukraine – and is now betting on a South African workaround. But that’s 2031, earliest.

Why do I care? Because every Western SMR carries this asterisk, in very small print.

Read more: CNBC; Neutron Bytes; World Nuclear News

One thing to worry about

The UK’s Geological Society combed the geological record for a precedent for how fast CO2 is rising right now.

It found one: "the instantaneous, meteorite-induced event that caused the extinction of non-bird-like dinosaurs 66 million years ago."

That's the list. (UKGS)

Don’t look up.

One thing to be optimistic about

The world's largest wind turbine is now spinning off China's coast: 26 MW.

Blades half as long again as a football pitch. One machine powers 55,000 homes 😀

And it's built to shrug off a typhoon 🥳 (New Atlas)

If you’ve got more time…

Britain has a new PM with an actual economic theory. What does it mean for energy?

His philosophy: Private money costs more than public debt. Sell private owners an essential asset and consumers pay more. Forever. So buy it back, borrow at government rates, pass the saving on.

In water, they’re probably right. Thames Water is the red-faced villain, standing in front of us.

But in power this isn’t the case. Read more