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🗞️ 2024 was a huge year for me, with great sadness and much chaos. I shared my experiences on LinkedIn — and on my website, if you hate LinkedIn.

What you need to know

Jimmy Carter: Sure, he fixed your fridge, but his cardigans screwed the planet

Err, my fridge? Yes. Carter, RIP, invented energy efficiency laws: thanks to him things like fridges use 75% less power. Saved $1T of energy spend since 1980.
What’s this about knitwear? Sadly, his cardigan-clad & sacrifice-heavy speeches of gloom made Americans HATE energy efficiency for a generation, so later politicians avoided building on what he started. Much more carbon as a result.
Read more: Rolling Stone on his environmental legacy; Vox on what he did for fridges; Columbia Insight on how ‘The Sweater Man’ hurt energy culturally

UK renewables had a great 2024

UK… did a thing? Yes! Renewables generated 45% of our electricity in 2024.
So Net Zero’s easy, right? Err, no. The next bit will be more challenging: grid upgrades and lots of storage. Not cheap or quick.
Read more: Carbon Brief 

Single Chinese hydro plant to power 300m people & really annoy 1.5 billion others

Damn, they think big. $137bn to build a 50km reservoir, at the end of earth’s deepest canyon. Requires 25km tunnels through Tibet’s mountains. At 60GW, it’s like 40 of the largest nukes.
Everyone happy? Not the Tibetans (remember them?) - it’s a holy site. Or the Indians or Bangladeshis, who like the river flowing on to them. For, you know, drinking water and farming and stuff.
Read more: Interesting Engineering

One thing to worry about

The 10 hottest years on record were… the last 10 years. (PA)

One thing to be optimistic about

California’s natural gas consumption dropped a quarter in 2024.

25%. In. One. Year.

Basically, cheap batteries capturing daytime solar, for evening use. (@mzjacobson)

If you’ve got more time, read this…

Rob West is pessimistic. And when Rob writes, please listen. In his ThunderSaidEnergy end-of-year piece, he outlines why net zero in 2050 won’t happen.

We’re facing a 2.5-3.0°C increase.

That is not good. Actually it is really, really bad.

Read it here, and weep. 

You can also watch him explain why he changed his mind:

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