Talking Climate Tech 032
⚡️Community Energy | 💣 BBB Carbon Bomb | 🧠 Bad Grok | 🥵 Climate Chaos | 🧊 Ice, Ice, Melty |⚡ Pylon of the Month
Here we go, slight variation this week, just...because. 🤷♂️
After a couple of 🔦 Startup Spotlight weeks, onto researching the next technology and sector. A mega-mix extended news fest for you today instead, and a focus on Community Energy, which I will also include some more on next week.
🔎 Deeper Dive
UK Industrial Strategy ⚙️
We've finally got one – not sure it's what everyone wanted, but I guess it's better than not having one. 🤷♂️
Core sectors covered - Advanced Manufacturing / Clean Energy Industries / Creative / Defence / Digital + Tech / Financial Services / Life Sciences / Professional Services.
Not everyone is happy - aviation, logistics and supply chain, and agriculture might feel aggrieved and potentially underfunded / focused going forward.
Clean Energy Industries as a growth lever for the UK, here you go.
Concerningly, CCUS tops the bullet point list [not alphabetical], and Hydrogen makes an appearance. 😔
Let's hope we don't fall further into the Business As Usual trap.
We are the Power 👥
You might not have realised, but it's Community Energy Fortnight at the moment in the UK, 1-14 July. Community Energy England.
Yes, a whole fortnight, not just a day or a week! 🚀
Earlier this week attended a CE launch event by Energise South Downs, pitching their fundraising launch for x3 solar projects - 283kW with 54t CO2 avoided annually. A great start for this new community programme in and around the Petersfield / South Downs region.
Community Energy is such an inspirational, rewarding and vital aspect of the energy transition. This is fully embodied in the film by Patagonia - We Are the Power 🎬 🍿
A funny, heartwarming and inspiring 39 minutes of film-making, charting the origins of community energy in Europe. Please take some time to watch via the link above - you will be entertained and empowered about the energy transition!
Together, we can bring the benefits of renewable energy production home. One million European citizens are involved in today’s growing community-energy movement. By 2050, it could be more than 260 million citizens, each helping to generate up to 45% of the European Union’s electricity from community energy - providing local jobs, reduced energy bills, a healthier environment and a stronger social fabric.
The technical and reward merits of CE projects are clear:
⚡ Decentralised energy
⚡ Lower costs for consumers
⚡ Alleviating fuel poverty
⚡ New skills and learning
⚡ Energy security
⚡ Community bonus funds for wider use
Perhaps the most important aspects are a little overlooked - they are felt and shared, rather than practically delivered:
✅ Empowerment and feeling valued
✅ Pride in the local parish/village/town
✅ Bringing people and the community together
Community projects enable people to feel like they are contributing the the energy transition; that they are having an impact; that big corporate utilities are not in control; that energy is for all and can deliver wider benefits; the reward of local trust, collaboration and partnership.
The transition needs to be built bottom up, not just top down.
Feeling emboldened and ready to go after that film!? 👏
We are progressing, it's just been slow, and slower than in Europe, as you might expect. 🙄
With GB Energy soon to deliver its Local Power Plan, which encompasses CE and with a provision £400m low-interest loans for community groups, we are surely coming into the age of UK community energy. 👏
Reducing friction in developments - funding, consents, planning, investment access etc. will be key to enabling CE to scale-up nationwide. We desperately need this to meet the onshore wind growth targets as part of Clean Power 2030.
Energy Minister, Michael Shanks:
Rolling out more onshore wind is a no-brainer – it’s one of our cheapest technologies, quick to build, supports thousands of skilled jobs and can provide clean energy directly to the communities hosting it.
After years of decline, we’re giving industry the tools to get building again, backing industrial renewal and secure, clean, homegrown energy through our Plan for Change.
In advance of that, why not put a literal flag in the ground - check this out, you can take action in two minutes - VoteWind!
Just go online and find somewhere local to you to place a turbine - let's make it happen people!
Get your turbines here!
💥 Trump Watch
Back over in Don-Town, the usual shenanigans, grifts, and wealth redistribution occur at pace.
The Big-Beautiful-Bill edged through despite all best efforts. The fallout continues - just watch a few of the MAGA faithful on YouTube, now they realise DJT has cut their Medicaid, and this is going to impact them directly. 😩
Even MTG and Joe Rogan have baulked at the impacts of the BBB. Perhaps this is the beginning of the fractures in the MAGA wall, or it could mean the tightening of the authoritarian grip. 🤔
BBB x 7bn Tonnes 🌐
No it's not some new fashion or music colab, Its the climate impact of the BBB:
President Donald Trump’s dismantling of climate policy means the US will add an extra 7bn tonnes of emissions to the atmosphere from now until 2030, compared to meeting its former climate pledge under the Paris Agreement.
I looked that up; it's about 1000 x the Great Pyramid of Giza, in carbon pumped into the atmosphere in the next 5 years. Entirely needlessly, to grease the wheels and palms of fossil fuel profiteering. 🤯
Great analysis in full here from Carbon Brief. There is more, of course:
Based on the most recent central estimate of the “social cost of carbon” in 2030 from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), published under the Biden administration, those 7bn tonnes of extra emissions would cause global climate damages worth more than $1.6tn.
Want to check out the key impact? Swallow this bitter pill:
This is why the pushback, visibility and awareness have to be maintained on what is happening in the US. Like it or not [sic], the decisions made there impact our traction in climate change mitigation and adaptation, and every individual.
Grok Apple 🍏
It never falls far from the tree, does it? Just like its master and trainer, its bias and opinions are shining through, with pure Dark MAGA intent.
Musk's Grok AI, bumbling around X/Twitter, in recent weeks, has shown natural balanced positioning, remarkable humanity, and centre-left leaning. Who could have imagined this was the most humane logic for it to follow!?
Clearly that doesn't align with the far-right fanboys and Musk's own views. So he's been tweaking it...it didn't go well, or perhaps it went exactly as he intended. 🤔
Great breakdown here if you want to get into the details.
A reminder, there are of useful and beneficial functions for AI, some of which we discussed as part of EP03 in the Energy Transition:
Kane Watkinson
Trump v Elon, Again 👊
To round out this week, Musk is thinking about going head-to--head with Big Orange, launching his own political party, such is his anger at the BBB undoing all the 'good work' DOGE saved, and adding about $3tn onto the already unsustainable debt.
And cancelling EV credits obviously, and other stuff he might want. Originally named the 'America Party'. More here.
Without the $250m he donated to Don, would he have got back in? Will he disrupt enough to upset the balance? Will he release some Epstein Files juice on Trump?
A point to remember; he also happens to have had the keys to the entire US national data kingdom while poking around as DOGE. Data is money, and data is control in modern times.
With news on the planned UFC Whitehouse celebration for Americas' 250 year anniversary 🤣 we've gone from this....
To this, again....
🏡 Konfab News
Not one, but two new articles from guest-colabs have arrived in draft form this week; more coming soon on those, standby. Articles, like buses really. 😄
Edit done on video podcast 05, back to 04 next [explain later], and recorded 07 today. 😌
I'm going to push on and get these all out through the summer so we can hit that 10 series target for year 1 by October.
😃 Good Stuff
Not all billionaires are crazy narcissist megalomaniacs. Check out Warren Buffett, still shoveling some of his $150bn fortune out the door before he runs out of time, he's 94!
Warren Buffett donated...$6 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Gates Foundation and four family charities...the donation of about 12.36 million Berkshire Class B shares boosted Buffett’s overall giving to the charities to well over $60 billion.
🌍 Climate Watch
Yep, more heat, more extremes, more impact. This is the new norm, and unfortunately, it's ramping up...
António Guterres, UN Secretary General, this week:
Extreme heat is no longer a rare event – it has become the new normal.
🇪🇺 Heatwaves in Spain, Italy and France. BBC reports.
🇪🇺 New records in Spain, evacuations in Turkey. Guardian reports.
🇺🇸 More heatwaves and extreme temperatures. CNN reports.
🇺🇸 Texas floods >100 dead, many children, SKY News reports.
That Texas river rose by 26 ft in 45 mins. 🤯
🇮🇳 Extreme heat kills >100 in last 3 months. AP reports.
Inside Influence 👀
Worried, we should be. Best get some fossil fuel guys at the helm to steer us out of this then...Politico reports.
The IPCC is about to appoint a Saudi Aramco 18-year vet to the panel for recommendations for fossil fuel reduction strategies. 🤔
Saudi Arabia holds the work of the IPCC in the highest regard and is committed to upholding the scientific integrity and independence of its processes.
Apparently, it's all ok after all....
You can digest Client Earth's excellent Greenwashing files here.
Ice, Ice, Melty 🧊
Not worried about the IPCC being hijacked by Big Oil?
Well, this might help tip the balance. Courtesy of the University of Southampton, who have uncovered something rather alarming in the Antarctic Southern Ocean;
Antarctica is losing sea ice at an alarming rate, and scientists now say the Southern Ocean has suddenly become much saltier, letting heat rise and melt ice from underneath. It’s a feedback loop that’s speeding up climate change
Full report here from Science Daily.
Bit of a bombshell and depressing ending this week on Climate Watch. That's the reality. We can't do much about today or tomorrow's climate impact, but we can make big moves now, and make a difference for the next generation in 20 years time.
Now is the time to ramp up - not delay, reduce, restrict, pause, consider, reflect, hesitate.
⚡Pylon of the Month
We are almost into the summer holiday season, so let's have a holiday-focused Tower of Power to get us in the mood. 🏖️
Although, I think it's hotter here in the UK than Greece at the moment... 🥵
What's Pylon HQ got to say about this arrangement from September 2022?
...it captures a tension pylon where the line is changing direction as well as a suspension pylon with the lines continuing straight. I also like the fact that the three conductors are side by side rather than stacked, as is usually the case in the UK. I'm guessing that this is to reduce the height of the tower, but it isn't something you see very often in the UK.
The island has a 150kV connection running to the mainland. As the author keenly points out, Greece is somewhat of a laggard when it comes to renewables, although it is now making strides to phase out coal and take advantage of Solar/Wind.
Another hot summer week ticks by, so I still suggest you go find yourself somewhere cool and have a rest...you've earned it.
Thanks as always, let's keep pushing forward - remember, the momentum is unstoppable despite everything you might see and hear! 🌍
Kane
