⏳Solar staggering, Heat staggering, Tech staggering

Solar beats nukes; Home Batteries work; Hottest day(s)

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What you need to know

Solar production equals 5 nuclear plants… a day 🤯

Great for the world? Yes: prices plummeting.
Great for the industry? No: solar manufacturing in crisis. Supply far outstrips (surging) demand. China built so much capacity, no other country can compete - even with tariffs.
Read more: FT(£) on solar glut; SolarPowerEurope on growth; Taiyang on consolidation

Cheap solar means Afgans get hygenic, low-labour fruit dryers, without a grid. Changes lives, countries. (AfghanAid)

Corporates: adaptation reshaping operations

Adaptation? It’s a thing. New climate, new problems. 100-year storms? Think - annually.
Meaning? Read WaPo article. Supply chain risk. Production plants moving. Can workers live in places like Phoenix or Las Vegas - seeing 5 consecutive day above 115°F?
Read more: Washington Post on adaptation; Guardian on US’s extreme heatwave

Home batteries: now 7-year payback in the UK

Really? Really. We’re on the cusp of this working.
Easy? No… you need the right Octopus tariff, plug in an EV and know what you’re doing. But here for all soon.
Read more: Dan Grey has excellent analysis on X/Twitter

One thing to worry about

The record for ‘hottest day on earth‘ stood for the last 100,000 years.

Broken last Sunday. And again on Monday. Then, Thursday. (Copernicus).

In related news: lowest ever sea ice, for this date.

One thing to be optimistic about

The reddest of Red States is cookin’ on gas… for solar, wind and batteries.

If there’s one thing Texans understand more than guns & oil… it’s money 🤠🤑.

If you’ve got more time, read this…

Think scaling batteries is a minerals problem? This new report from RMI will set you straight.

  • Known reserves of lithium, cobalt, and nickel are twice the level of predicted demand

  • Recycling means we only need to mine 125m tons of battery minerals ever

  • That is 17 times smaller than the amount of oil currently used every year

  • And about 20 times cheaper

  • In the 2040s end-of-life batteries become the mineral ore, limiting the need for any new mining at all

Repeat after me: we are human, we invent. There’s an age of abundance about to arrive 🎉. (If we don’t boil in the meantime.)

Battery minerals are not the new oil. Even as battery demand surges, the combined forces of efficiency, innovation, and circularity will drive peak demand for mined minerals within a decade — and may even avoid mineral extraction altogether by 2050.

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