Cutting meat by 30% ≈ flying 70% less ≈ 1/6 of cars electric ≈ decarbonising nearly all cement plants. 🌍
Dr @iain-staffell.bsky.social and Dr Nathan Johnson show ~20 such ‘climate wedges’ are needed to limit warming to 1.5°C. #ClimateAction #NetZero
My global decarbonisation pathway, built on www.climatewedges.com It deploys 20 wedges to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
An infographic showing the 36 strategies that can deliver at least a wedge of mitigation. It explains the scale of deployment each one needs, across the electricity, industry, buildings, transport, and land use sectors.
There is no single “correct” path to decarbonise.
There are six trillion.
Our new paper in Science puts 36 climate solutions into one common unit, so you can build your own pathways.
Paper: doi.org/10.1126/scie...
App: climatewedges.com
What would your pathway look like?
It was very interesting developing these short @apolitical.bsky.social courses for civil servants on electricity grids, featuring a range of Imperial experts, including @iain-staffell.bsky.social. Any non-experts in government looking to learn about future electricity networks, check these out! 👇
Read the full article in this quarter's Electric Insights: reports.electricinsights.co.uk
Two charts showing data from Electric Insights. Britain’s annual electricity demand over the last 50 years. Growth in electricity demand last year compared to the previous decade across several countries.
We are all used to stories of the UK in decline… Electricity is no exception: demand has fallen for 20 years as we outsource industry.
But Britain has turned a corner: demand up two years in a row. AI data centres now consume more power than Birmingham and could 4x by 2030.
MISLEADING: A new academic paper by @qmul.bsky.social has attracted significant media attention by claiming that EVs & heat pumps deliver no proven carbon savings in UK ahead of 2030 clean power target - and should therefore be postponed.
Here is why this paper should never have been published.🧵
What do people in oil & gas and climate activists disagree on? Not “is climate change real”... The clash is on pace + trust.
How fast can we change without unacceptable disruption?
Can the fossil industry be trusted as part of the climate solution?
www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
Thanks for the shout out John, I'm hoping this will be a useful dataset for the community!
Clean energy cost projections that ignore actual financing terms are wishful thinking. Cool new paper finally gives empirical, national-level WACC for 10 key technologies across 176 countries.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
UK-based high density pumped hydro firm RheEnergise has successfully generated electricity for the first time - they tell me they hit their full output capacity of 500 kilowatts.
Here's my piece from late last year which discusses their tech:
share.google/gomKZ5pZ4aEG...
We interviewed UK climate activists and oil & gas employees on what the energy transition should look like.
I expected polarisation. Instead: surprising shared ground on urgency, cutting demand, and how government must set the pace.
Can we achieve more together?
www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
Finally... The Christmas present I really wanted 😂
Only now do I realise Bsky shows emoji properly in the app... Thru look a mess on the Web version, hence I double posted this screenshot 😖
As Will and Dan said, pumped hydro storage consumes more energy than, it produces, so it would show up as slightly negative on the whole.
We can split out battery storage, but aren't doing it on the live website yet because it's super complicated
Britain's electricity mix in 100 emoji: Wind: 31% Solar: 6% Biomass: 8% Hydro: 1% Nuclear: 12% Gas: 27% Coal: 0% Ireland: 0% Netherlands: 1% Belgium: 1% Denmark: 2% Norway: 3% France: 8%
Where did Britain get its electricity from in 2025?
Explore the data for yourself on the Electric Insights dashboard: www.electricinsights.co.uk#/dashboard?p...
Here's the breakdown:
🌬️ Wind: 31%
🌞 Solar: 6%
🌳 Biomass: 8%
🌊 Hydro: 1%
☢️ Nuclear: 12%
🔥 Gas: 27%
⚫️ Coal: 0%
🇮🇪 Ireland: 0%
🇳🇱 Netherlands: 1%
🇧🇪 Belgium: 1%
🇩🇰 Denmark: 2%
🇳🇴 Norway: 3%
🇫🇷 France: 8%
(and I wish Bluesky would add country flags to its emoji ... )
Where did Britain get its electricity from in 2025?
🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️
🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️
🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️🌬️
🌬️🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞🌳🌳🌳
🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌊☢️☢️☢️☢️
☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️☢️🔥🔥
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🇳🇱🇧🇪🇩🇰🇩🇰🇳🇴
🇳🇴🇳🇴🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷
Explore the data for yourself on the Electric Insights dashboard:
www.electricinsights.co.uk#/dashboard?p...
Britain's electricity demand has turned a corner. After twenty years of de-industrialisation... electric cars, heat pumps and data centres meant demand grew by 3% this year.
And that growth was more than met by renewables, so emissions keep falling.
www.thetimes.com/business/ene...
If you do any cost analysis or economics for energy then stop assuming 8% is your discount rate!
Getting specific data on costs of capital was a nightmare, until now:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
None at the moment, but several have got through the planning stages and could potentially go ahead...
In the Clean Power Action Plan, Government sees 23 to 27 GW of batteries needed by 2030, and also 4–6 GW of long-duration storage.
There are nearly a dozen proposed hydro schemes which could add 10 GW.
Read about it in full on Electric Insights: reports.electricinsights.co.uk?p=2564
Map of the UK showing energy storage projects by technology and status. Colour signals the technology: batteries, pumped hydro, and other types. Bubble size indicates power capacity (MW).
Batteries are now Britain’s biggest form of energy storage. More than 6 GW installed and ~45 GW already consented or being built!
But, batteries aren't going to solve the problems of wind curtailment... Long-duration storage is the next big challenge.
Do climate conferences actually achieve anything? A lot of people have strong opinions, but we wanted measurements, so we look at how the stock market moves during yearly international meetings called COPs – explanation below, or read the paper here:
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
Dirty or damaged solar panels waste vast amounts of clean power.
Introducing SolarSynthNet: a deep learning model that spots cracks, dust & snow. It's the new state-of-the-art with 97%+ detection accuracy and is built for real-world farms.
Paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Climate models have underestimated the departure of high temperature extremes from monthly means.
If we assume these model biases persist in future projections, then the climate models are also likely underestimating the magnitude of future high temperature extremes.
www.nature.com/articles/s43...
Would this give supermarkets the incentive to lower the cost of the healthier food (and raise cost of the unhealthy) and for producers to make their unhealthy foods less calorie dense?
1/ New study @UniLUT on the techno-economic potential of global offshore wind power doi.org/10.1016/j.ap.... Potential within 200 NM & 1000 m depth adds up to 27.3 TW or 66200 TWh, with 2/3 on floating foundations. Economic potential is projected to grow, with declining costs.
The UK is installing solar panels at its fastest rate in over a decade!
renewablesnow.com/news/uk-inst...
There will be no transition without transmission!
Power grids are the hidden star of the net-zero story. Our new study maps how Europe's Transmission System Operators are using innovation to keep ahead.
From NWAs to AI, see what they are doing here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
The TSOs that were interviewed, and the size of their innovation teams.
From AI-driven dispatch to energy storage and dynamic line ratings - we interviewed the heads of innovation at 11 European TSOs to understand their priorities, best practices, and approaches to regulation.
What would you prioritise to keep the lights on?
