Talking Climate Tech 045
⚙️ Big Heat Pump | 🔋 $1bn Home Battery | 🌳 Drax Again | 😎 BlueSteel Minewater | 👟Methane Sprint | ⛳ $100m Trump Golf | 🛩️ Fuel Laughs | 🔥 COP30 Stuff
Welcome back after last week's Interlude; I hope you had an interesting exploratory catch-up with some of the content from recent weeks.
Back to our usual format this week, let's go ▶️
I hope you enjoy reading this week's post - currently, Talking Climate Tech is a free newsletter - you can always become a supporter by popping something in the tip jar and keeping the coffee machine stoked!
🗞️ News Roundup
Big Rig ⚙️
Go big or go home in Boston 🇺🇸 as reported in the FT:
The world’s largest industrial heat pump is coming to Boston. Manufacturer Everllence and private utility Vicinity Energy are partnering to bring a 35 megawatt system, which will provide 50 metric tonnes of steam an hour and serve more than 70 million square feet of building space.
Nice to see the US 'getting on with it' despite headwinds from Trumptown and utilising the Charles River as a source - more cities can readily adopt water source HP quickly for high impact.
Petrol Freshener? 👃
For those EV owners missing out on the gasoline hit, a Kia dealer in Finland has the answer:
... is said to smell of heavy motor oil with ‘top notes’ of petrol
Sprinkle of Stardust 🌟
Let's hope not. Stardust Solutions a US-based, Israeli-led geoengineering startup, just raised $60 million to commercialise technology to reflect the sun’s heat back into space. 😩
Because that's easier and cheaper with known risks, right? Much better than actually cutting emissions and all that boring stuff.
Let the lobbying begin in Trumptown - they just forgot to disclose their efforts to date.
China Still On The Turn 💨
Quick update from the ever-excellent Carbon Brief:
China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were unchanged from a year earlier in the third quarter of 2025, extending a flat or falling trend that started in March 2024.
💸 Investment News
$1 billion Dollars 🔋
This is a big one! Base Power, Series C raise, hits the big $1bn. What remarkable new innovation? A Simple one - batteries for homeowners.
Reuters here. This is the son of Michael Dell, yes that Dell, Zach Dell. Expect more big scaling moves.
The startup offers battery systems to homeowners that can be used as a backup for a monthly fee and sells stored power to utility networks during peak demand.
Solar and home battery storage really can get us a lllooooonnnnnggggg way in the transition. We have the tools.
🔎 Deeper Dive
Drax is still a thing!? 🌳
Yes, apparently so. We are still burning old-forest trees imported from North America and pinning all the supply chain emissions on those suckers, while kidding ourselves that we are clean and green with biomass burning.
In 2024, Drax received at least 90 truckloads of confirmed coastal old-growth whole logs from three cutblocks in the Skeena region.
In 2024 and 2025, Drax received at least an additional 425 truckloads of whole logs that likely included old-growth trees.
Analysis from stand.earth here. Below; Cutblock on Stellat’en territory containing old growth trees that was logged by West Fraser, and linked through the timber mark (EM5776) to Drax’s Burns Lake wood pellet plant. Photo by Desiree Wallace / Stand.earth, June 2025.
Drax is arouind 8% of UK power gen, so a hard nut to crack. We have pumped billions into this beast. More from Politico:
Conservative ministers handed Drax an estimated £6 billion in subsidies between 2012 and 2024. Their Labour successors earlier this year unveiled £2 billion in fresh support.
Ember reckons the Yorkshire plant was the U.K.’s single largest source of CO2 emissions in 2024 — producing 13.3 million tons.
Legacy Coal Heating Up ♨️
We have covered the Mine Water Geothermal Heat opportunity in a few updates, check out 026 and 027, and have an interview planned with one of our fellow German minewater advocates soon. 🎙️
Again, nice to see more MSM coverage, this time remarkably, from Oilprice.com, they must be following me. 😆
...a quarter of U.K. homes sit on top of sites where MWGH could be used to provide low-cost, low-carbon heat
And a quick reminder on the why?
Heating currently contributes around 40 per cent of energy use in the U.K. The country's building heating is a major contributor to emissions, accounting for between 17 and 18 per cent of total greenhouse gases, primarily from burning natural gas.
Add on those 'levelling up' benefits for areas that desperately need socio-economic regeneration post-mining industry shutdown, and we have ourselves a major policy initiative. A bit slow on this one DESNZ, CCC etc.
Methane Sprint 👟
Most people recognise that methane has a higher GWP, around 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide, but only lasts around 20 years, whereas CO2 can last into the hundreds.
Great quote on cutting methane from Durwood Zaelke, the president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development:
...it’s the only strategy that has a chance of working. Cutting carbon dioxide is a marathon, but methane is a sprint
Like many things in the climate transition, we know the answers; we either choose not to take the path or are prevented from doing so. 🤔
I include this story as it's positive to see methane reporting in the MSM, Fiona Harvey again in The Guardian.
A peer-reviewed paper published in Science;
...substantial cuts to methane could delay key tipping points: it could reduce the likelihood of the Amazon rainforest dying back by about 8%, and of disruption to the Indian monsoon by about 13%.
The study also found that reducing methane paid for itself three times over – or six times over if health benefits were included. Cutting methane by a third by 2030 would be worth about $1tn a year for the global economy
COP26 back in 2021 signed up 150 countries to cut methane levels by 30% by 2030. Obviously, that hasn't happened. 🙄
The EU tightened its methane regulations, which is great, to reduce emissions in upstream LNG and gas supply, and then we decided to shake hands with the Agent Orange 🍊 for US LNG, from the dirtiest of shale sources.
There's venting and flaring to tackle, of course; controlling that would help, plus legacy FF and mine leaks. It's all easy, simple stuff that we know how to do.
Funny how it always comes back to a lack of impetus from the FF industry, before we get started on BigAG and the rest. Methane catch-up on FF sector-related challenges, with more info in weeks 012, 029, and 039.
💥 Trump Watch
Could it be finally happening? Could the regime fall with the full release of the Epstein files?
It feels like a lifetime for the ray of light to finally creep into view - are we approaching an end-of-days event? 🙏
Let's hope we are all put out of our collective misery soon.
In the meantime, some climate-related impact from Trumptown. ⬇️
Proping Up Good Clean Coal ⚙️
My LinkedIn post on that here. Trouble is, they keep breaking down.
DoE throws in $100m to keep the fires burning in the legacy plants, on top of the $625m it promised earlier in the year for 'good clean coal'.
Analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund of data from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, via Heatmap,
Coal has the highest “equipment-related outage rate” Coal’s outage rate was over 12%. Wind’s was about 6.6%
Trump v Animals 🦅
Because why wouldn't you want to get rid of endangered species if they are in the way of some logging, mining or oil revenue?
More from CBD
Trump v More Wind 🥊
Another one bits the dust with a knockout blow in the 'war on wind'. This time, 'Leading Light' in New Jersey, via Heatmap.
A juicy 2.4GW to go with the rest we have looked at in recent weeks. Wonder how they will be powering all these DCs while gas turbine lead times are 5-7 years. 🤔
Golf Watch ⛳
He has finally done it! Cracked the $100m barrier. 👏
72 days / 306 days in office = 23.5%, taxpayer cost $100.8m
🏡 Konfab News
Linkedin Rewind ⏪
Since the last newsletter proper [7th November], you might not be surprised to hear I have posted quite a lot on LinkedIn. 🤣
Aside from the Trump baiting and a load of other stuff, a couple of focused posts to catch up on:
Read the Post - COP30 x Brazil x BigAg 🐄
Read the Post - A tale of 2 battery strategies 🪫 🇺🇸 v 🔋 🇨🇳
Read the Post - Evacuating a city of 10 million because of no water 💧
Read the Post - 👥 Community Energy - A UK Call to Action 🗣️
Despite writing all that good stuff, want to know what the post with the most impressions was during this period? 👇
15k impressions in first 24 hours and rising - just shows how the LinkedIn algo is pumping political discourse in the US and UK right now. 🙄
Climate Tech Impact_South Event 03 🚀
Just in the nick of time - as usual, about 2 weeks before the event 😆 - I have managed to activate the event, tickets, and.... 🥁.... built a little website home for it.
I've even strong-armed x1 speaker in already, just need to find another victim 🧛♂️
Please share the word if you know anyone who might be in attendance distance of Southampton.
Additionally, you may want to review the Event 02 report to learn more about the event technologies and discussions - we captured insights from both speakers and the audience.
Add the code warmth when you arrive here and click through to read the report.
The survey is still open if you want to have a say in the future of the Talking Climate Tech newsletter ⬇️
Kane Watkinson
😃 Good Stuff
Want to see something funny? Of course you do, its Friday - Oli Frost, legend, take a bow.
What's it about?
Private Jet fuel has a tax exemption. Crazy right. I mean, it's not like the uber wealthy need a break while the rest of the population is pumping fuel tax revenue into their cars and homes in the UK.
The Jet Collectors say scrapping the fuel duty exemption for private jets could generate £2billion a year for the Treasury.
Let's hope Rachael Reeves ticks this easy one off, in the forthcoming budget.
More on the campaign here:
🌍 Climate Watch
COP30 Stuff 🌐
Not getting into all this today, we can take a deeper dive once the dust has settled.
I can tell you the lobbyists count;
More than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access to the Cop30 climate negotiations in Belém
That number, outnumbers every actual country's number of delegates, apart from hosts Brazil. Remarkable.
Oh and BigAg is still cracking on in the race to out-do the FF industry for biggest dicks at COP30, from DeSmog:
At least 195 influencers — from models and news anchors to doctors and right-wing activists — posted Instagram content sponsored by 10 of the world’s biggest livestock, fertilizer, and food companies in the 12 months leading up to the talks
And there was a tent on fire. How ironic.
Tropical Billions 🌴
This is the policy the UK said it would fund, and then didn't, we looked at last time in 044.
Over USD 5.5 billion announced for Tropical Forest Forever Facility as 53 Countries Endorse the Historic TFFF Launch Declaration
That's something good from COP30. We will be back for more on COP another time, if it's still standing.
The time for action is well beyond now.
Thanks for your time, interest and support as always, let's keep pushing forward - remember, the momentum is unstoppable despite everything you might see and hear! 🌍
Kane
