In partnership with

What mattered this week

World 50% electric China 67% electric, Bali out of petrol. And Germany demands more fossil cars for no good reason 🤯

EVs up again? China: 47% battery, 20% plug-in hybrid, 33% fossil. Five years ago pure fossil >90%. (Ember). RoW: 50% electric now. 👏

And Bali? Queueing since Sunday. “Sorry, no fuel” on the forecourts. Officials claim it’s “purely a distribution issue”. Hmm. (AP; Euronews)

Europe’s answer? Scrap EV targets & encourage fossil-car makers. A fossil indeed. (Clean Energy Wire; AM)

Meaning? World biggest car market has moved on. Europe is protecting the thing that runs out.

Nuclear: Remains as hopeless pipedream, solar now bigger, major SMR falls over in 8 months

Solar? 2025: more electricity from solar than from nuclear, first full year ever. Nuclear’s down to 8.8% of world power, lowest since 1981. (WNISR via pv magazine)

Why? Solar added 510 GW last year. Massive. Nuclear closed seven reactors and opened four. Not one of the last 16 finished on time; average build, eleven years. Hopeless if we want power. Which we do.

And what about the small ones (SMRs)? Romania signed off its NuScale reactor in Feb. Eight months on: 80% of the conditions unmet, “can’t continue as planned”. (Romania Insider)

One thing to worry about

England’s hedgehogs: down 80% since 1981.

Not sure my kids have ever seen one tbh (PTES)

One thing to be optimistic about

Electric tractors can’t be done, they said.

Here’s one, from Germany: ten hours usage, battery swaps in five minutes or two hours on a fast charger. (Farmers Weekly)

If you’ve got more time…

Hydrogen is a massive disappointment. Long-term readers know my extreme scepticism.

This week Princeton reported where hydrogen might be useful, in Prioritizing demand-side use of clean hydrogen.

• Works, they say: steel, refineries, ammonia. Big cuts, cheap per tonne.

• Maybe, they guess: cement, shipping, aviation, firm power. Depends what hydrogen costs in 2035 (and where batteries go)

• Forget it, as we all know: cars, trucks, trains. Batteries already win on cost and emissions, and are getting better on both.

• The catch (one of many): subsidising hydrogen tends to send it to the wrong place.

Discover laptops with built-in intelligence.

Shift your workforce into hyper-productivity mode with Dell Pro laptops powered by Intel® Core™ Ultra with Intel vPro®. Shop on Dell Premier.

Explore More