What you need to know

UK Energy Act 2023: even the tumbleweed ignored it

Why this matters? It doesn’t, for business. Call it industry admin: frameworks for grid, carbon capture, nuclear and heat. Which may impact in 5-10 years. And Labour will change things before then anyway.
Your challenge? Business climate/energy investments should be in places with serious commitment. The USA has the IRA’s $369b, the EU claims €578b across different schemes. The UK has, err, £185m, for electrification of manufacturing 🤷‍♂️ .
Read more: Watson Farley Williams

Finance to industry: Like money? Show us carbon plans

Why this matters? 367 big finance houses (L&G, Nomura etc) this week publicly asked 2,100 large emitters (steel, chemicals etc) to set clear carbon targets.
Your challenge? Need finance? You’d better have a carbon reduction plan.
Read more: CDP

Google AI runs 12 cities’ traffic: lower pollution, higher speeds

Why this matters? Magic recipe: cheap sensors, cheap wireless networks and expensive AI. Air quality up 18%. Fuel consumption down 20%.
Your challenge? Energy usage (of all types) isn’t monitored or managed well enough. AI is going to make energy savings a lot easier 🤑.
Read more: Engadget

One thing to worry about

If 2023 had a needle, it’d be far in the red - climate records broken all over (see below).

But why? This week James Hansen, one of the most famous climate scientists, published one idea: historic air pollution has had a cooling effect on the planet, hiding the underlying warming. But we didn’t see it properly (wrong type of satellite, thanks NASA). As we clean up pollution, we’re seeing radically accelerating change.

Read his “Faustian” article here (and his dry OUP paper here). Note: many scientists think Hansen is a bit nuts, so also read Michael Mann’s rebuttal.

If he’s right, time to buy a farm and a gun.

One thing to be optimistic about

Who owns the operating mines critical to the energy transition? Despite the scare stories, it’s mainly friendly countries, hello/bonjour/hola to 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇧🇲🇽🇦🇺🇨🇱

If you’ve got more time, read this…

Why do we underestimate the speed of climate and energy tech adoption? We achieve more, faster, than we expect. Read this Rocky Mountain Institute report: humans predict linearly, but tech goes exponential.

The IEA got solar wrong for this reason. Coloured lines are annually updated linear predictions, 2006-18. The black line is what happened. Exponential. 🤯 

Thanks for reading. As a reminder, for the last 15 years, I’ve been founding energy transition businesses including Estover Energy (industrial biomass CHP), and co-founded 3ti (solar/EV charging/batteries). I sit on the board of Active Energy Group (high carbon bio).

My new business is Beaverbrook Energy - the energy services company of the future. Follow us on LinkedIn ahead of our 2024 launch.