What mattered this week

The year's biggest commodity shock isn't oil. It's the anchovy 🐟🐟🐟

Anchovies? Catch down 40%. Prices up 80% – an all-time high. Oil had a war, anchovies didn’t)

So I don’t get any on my pizza. Why do I care? Um, they are the foundations of the global food system - feed the world's farmed chickens, fish, shrimp etc. Matters a lot.

What happened? El Niño – forecasters think may be the strongest ever.

Read more: Bloomberg (£); The Economic Times

Hydrogen's report card: 1% clean, 99% FILTHY DIRTY

Is H2 meant our saviour ? So says people making cash from it. Demand 100m tonnes last year - and low-emissions kind barely made 1m.

Why? It’s hugely, hugely expensive to make cleanly. So much so it isn’t going to happen. Even the IEA now says 2030 goals are "increasingly out of reach".

Read more: IEA Global Hydrogen Review

Airlines forced to buy carbon offsets that ACTUALLY EXIST. Poor them

Um? Airlines claim carbon-neutral using "offsets” – often for forests that were never in danger. Now? The UN accepting only verified, government-backed credits.

The issue? There aren’t many. Airlines needed 56m tonnes for 2024. Only 32 million exist. Prices are heading for $100 a tonne – up to $127bn by 2035.

Read more: FT (£, Kenza Bryan); CarbonCredits.com

One thing to worry about

Heat isn’t a weather story anymore:

• France's government faces a no-confidence vote over its heatwave response – after ~1,000 excess deaths (DW)

• America's 250th-birthday fireworks were cancelled at a heat index of 46°C (BBC)

• The Tour de Suisse leader got heatstroke and couldn't remember the race she was winning. (Guardian) and the Tour de France is bracing for its first heat-cancelled stages

One thing to be optimistic about

Britain's cheapest new car is electric. The Dacia Spring for £11,990 – lower than every new petrol car on sale.

And it’s good - Top Gear says “everything you want: low cost, low weight, low impact, but lots of fun”

If you’ve got more time…

The funeral was for the wrong body

Government after government, backing away from green energy.

The World Bank dumped its climate target. UK weakening EV targets. EU watering down their “green deal”. The White House paying Duke Energy $129m to cancel an offshore windfarm. Canada cancelling its carbon tax.

Except none of it matters. Read more here